The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout Read Free Book Online Page A

Thus far no one had ever offered him the chance. But last night for the first time, love had lit up his world more dazzlingly than the pilots’ magnesium flares, and now he wanted desperately to live.
    That morning, when Jitka had opened her eyes, he had felt fear instead of happiness at her presence: how easily he could lose her or be lost to her in this strange time!
    He asked himself: Is happiness a cage for souls to cower in, robbed of their courage?
    No! He remembered the passages his grandmother used to read to him from the Bible: It is a shield that would protect him, Jitka, and their children from harm.
    My love, I swear to you: in the name of our happiness, I will catch that butcher!

    MARCH
    An insistent thought woke him: today! He kept his eyes closed so as not to frighten off the long-awaited images.
    He saw himself there again as she lay down on the dining-room table transformed into a sacrificial altar. A couple of times in the past few days he’d heard her reproach him sternly for losing his nerve. He countered that he had a cold, that he must have caught a draft as the pressure wave (he’d remembered it only later) blew out the window-panes. He knew, though, that it was a feeble excuse. Something in him balked; he had gone soft again, and it took all his strength just to keep his workmates from noticing.
    Brno still haunted him, though it hadn’t been a complete catastrophe. Even if he had screwed it up, at least he’d saved his skin for the next attempt. And after all, the newspapers had hashed and rehashed the story; even in the words they used to humiliate him—labeling him mentally ill—he heard a poorly concealed sense of admiration and horror. In the end, though, a depressing sense of his own failure won out. Add to it the memory of how the girl screamed and fouled herself, and the whole affair had tied his hands for years.
    Now that he had finally dared to accept the mission again, he was eager to see what the newspapers would say. On the second and third days he was patient when the news brought only pictures of disfigured victims from the first Prague air raid—although it annoyed him that his immaculate work would not be contrasted with the random results of bomb explosions.
    On the fourth day he was constantly tempted to break the strict rules he had set for himself and sneak into the director’s office—where the daily papers resided—during the man’s short daytime absences. In the end he held out and was all the more disappointed. The focus of attention was the Prague air-raid victims’ state funeral; there was not a word of his deed.
    He was alone in the enormous building; he had locked up and made his rounds, and could therefore head home. There, however, he would have to report. Instead, he sat down on the wide marble staircase, turned out the light, and tried in the dark to make sense of it. The silence began to hum unbearably, and the sound, which had no discernible source, made him wonder if he was crazy. Or in shock? After all, a large bomb had fallen close by. He knew from the army what a concussion was; a Hungarian grenade had practically fallen on his head in 1920, instantly ending a promising military career. What if this new shock had turned his wishful thinking into a hallucination?
    Finally, a thought saved him. The narrow beam of his flashlight led him down to the cellar; years of practice let him choose the keys from the large ring by touch. He spat angrily at the stone-cold furnace; they’d shivered all through February in winter coats, since the Krauts had requisitioned all the coal. By the back wall, blocks of ice gleamed.
    In December, when they stacked the cellar with thick slices cut from the frozen river, he had prudently scouted out a corner where there were already more than three dozen pieces; it would be safe here through May. Although he could now turn the lights on, he stuck with his flashlight. He leaned against the wall, stretching his free hand behind