Mendelssohn is on the Roof (16 page)

The young men often told stories about Suchdol, their pride and joy, where nobody ever gave in to fear tactics, where the mayor, for instance, distributed the entire town treasury to the unemployed during the Depression and then was arrested for embezzlement. After Munich he had been forced to give up his office, and a Nazi warrant was put out for his arrest immediately after March 15. But they hadn’t managed to catch him, and they probably never would.

After quite a long while Franta reappeared one day and Reisinger knew he had come for his guests. As they were leaving Franta said casually, ‘Thanks a lot, friend. We won’t forget what you’ve done for us.’

When they were gone the house felt empty and deserted to Reisinger.

A
NTONIN BECVAR LIVED in Prosek. It was a long walk from the last stop of the tram at the end of the day, and he had to get up early in the morning. But Prosek had its advantages in wartime. People were able to keep rabbits and chickens in the backyards of their little houses. People also kept goats.

He came home from Municipal earlier than usual. His wife was out in the yard doing laundry in a washtub.

‘Marena, come in the house,’ whispered Becvar, ‘
everybody
can hear us out here. I have some news for you.’

‘I know,’ Marena scolded as they sat down in the kitchen. ‘That Paroubek bilked you out of the wood slats you gave him a down payment for. I always told you he was cheating you. And Santroch is coming for the rabbit hutch the day after tomorrow.’

‘It’s not Paroubek, not at all.’ Becvar waved his hand. ‘If he doesn’t bring the wood slats I’ll find them elsewhere. For your information, I was kicked out at Municipal today.’

‘What did you do wrong? You were blabbing somewhere, right?’

‘Not at all. It’s all on account of that statue I was telling you about. They canned Schlesinger, and so he took it out on me. I was about to go in for lunch, I was hardly out of the door when the guard yells at me that I should go to Personnel. So I went there and they told me I was
dismissed
as of today and that I was to register at the
Employment
Bureau. So I said I wanted to know the reason I was dismissed, but they said they didn’t know themselves, that
the notice was signed by Dr Buch. Imagine that, after so many years of service they give me an hour’s notice like you give a maid. All that talk about a job with a pension! I should have stuck to cabinet making.’

‘Of course you should have,’ said Marena. ‘Everything’s different now.’

Three days later Becvar received a summons to come to the Employment Bureau. It stated a time and a room number.

He knocked and entered. An official sat behind a desk.

‘Morning,’ said Becvar. ‘I’m here with the summons.’

‘Hail to the Homeland,’ answered the official, according to regulations. ‘Now, let’s see what you have here. I see. Becvar Antonin, formerly employed as a worker at Municipal, married, no children. Sit down, Mr Becvar.’

Becvar sat down.

‘So what will it be,’ Becvar asked, ‘CKD or Letov? I’d rather go to Letov, it would be closer to home.’

‘Neither CKD nor Letov,’ said the official, almost
apologetically
. ‘You are definitely conscripted to the Reich.’

‘But that can’t be possible.’ Becvar jumped up from the seat. ‘I’m over fifty. What would they do with me there?’

‘The order came from higher up. The file from Municipal states that you are an asocial element and a malingerer.’

‘That’s baloney,’ said Becvar angrily. ‘I’ve been working since I was fourteen, and I’ve been at Municipal for ten years.’

‘I know, Mr Becvar,’ said the official, trying to calm him down, ‘I believe you. But what can I do?’

Becvar grew even more excited. ‘What’s going to happen to me now? I’m supposed to leave everything here at my ripe old age and go off to work in the Reich somewhere?’
Suddenly he had a better idea: ‘Look, couldn’t we make a deal somehow, like that I wouldn’t go to the Reich, like that I was sick or something. I’d make it worth your while, you know …’

The official shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s a direct order from a Reich official. His stamp is on the paper and the Employment Bureau is required to inform him as soon as the order is fulfilled. You must have done something wrong to make them go gunning for you.’

‘Yeah, sure, it’s a long story,’ said Becvar. ‘It’s on account of a statue. Then I was denounced by a certain Schlesinger because he had to go to the front. I didn’t do anything bad at all.’

‘You’ll have to go to the Reich one way or another. It’ll be better if you stay out of their sight.’

‘Yeah, sure, but why all the way to the Reich?’

‘Look, I like going to the theatre. I saw a play recently called
Harlequin the Comedian
. It’s a completely different world there, with real honest-to-goodness people living in it who love, who hate, who are jealous of each other, who kill for love. Meanwhile, these four walls covered with dirty whitewash, and this work of mine – sending people to the Reich – that’s all just a dream, it’s not reality.’

‘Yeah, sure, except I’m a part of that dream, and you’re obviously sending me to the Reich no matter what.’

‘I can’t help you. Here are your papers. Day after tomorrow you’re leaving from the main station.’

Becvar left without a word, slamming the door behind him. Out in the hallway he spat disgustedly.

‘That one’s crazier than the Krauts with that play of his.’ And suddenly he felt homesick for everything, even the lifeless streets of his native city, even the rabbit hutches
and the little yard in Prosek. They were sending him off to a foreign land he didn’t know or care about; they’d give him all sorts of awful stuff to eat, because Germans don’t know how to cook and they ruin even the best food. He’d have to sleep on a bunk in some dump there. And in the end he’d certainly be killed by a bomb, because bombs were dropping day and night there.

And then there was Marena. They’d been together twenty-five years and they’d never been separated once, if you didn’t count the time Marena was lying-in in a hospital. What would she do without him? Of course, he’d send her money from there, but what good did money do these days? Why, they’d be dead of hunger by now if they had to live off the pay he got at Municipal. It was just barely enough for their rent and coupons. The main thing was those rabbit hutches; they brought in extra provisions. Well, nothing could be done about it, Marena would have to manage on her own. She’d pull it off
somehow
because she was a tough woman. Boy, would she carry on when he told her the news. ‘I always told you to keep your mouth shut, Tony, but not you, His Highness always thinks he knows better, and look at him now – off to the Reich.’

But it didn’t happen that way. When he came home to the little yard Marena said to him, ‘You don’t have to tell me, I can see it written all over you that things turned out badly. Where did they send you? Somewhere out in the country?’

‘If only it was the country. The rats are sending me to the Reich.’

‘But you’re over fifty. How can they do that?’

‘They can do anything they want.’

‘The dirty bastards!’ Marena said angrily. ‘Well, they’ll get theirs one of these days!’

And that was it. No reproaches, no crying or carrying on. Just anger and hatred. Marena was a fine woman, Becvar thought to himself. Then they began to figure out how to manage things once he left. Marena could trade off some things for food. Today everything had a price. Then there were the rabbits. She couldn’t eat them all, so she ought to sell a couple here and there. Marena seemed calm. But she was on the verge of tears.

The neighbours came over. They had obviously heard everything, since Becvar was talking out in the yard. Some offered help, others had malice peeping out of their eyes: Becvar is going to the Reich and we’re staying here.
Meanwhile
, Becvar acted as if he were getting ready for a holiday. He was leaving the day after tomorrow. Marena had her hands full of work and Becvar had a lot of running around to do. He also stopped off at Municipal to sign some papers and say goodbye to Stankovsky.

‘This was all that idiot Schlesinger’s doing, the lousy Kraut,’ said Stankovsky. ‘Just be careful you’re not clobbered by a bomb like Sehnoutek. All that was left of him was his coat. Actually it was just rags and they sent them to his wife. But they refused to bury just the coat at the cemetery, so she’s got it at home now.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not croaking. I’ve got years for that.’

They shook hands.

‘So look, come home soon. That statue is still lying on the roof there, you know. Nobody’s minding it, and it’s only missing a hand.’

‘That damned statue.’ Becvar sighed. ‘It really played a dirty trick on me.’

The next day Becvar said goodbye to his wife at the main station and departed for the Reich. This time Marena cried.

Bad luck had been dogging Becvar from the moment they sent him to the roof of the Rudolfinum. Now he was working in a munitions factory, though doing the bare minimum – what did they expect from an older person, and a politically re-educated one at that. Becvar actually knew various trades, but why should he say anything about it here? In any case, everything was mixed up in the Reich. A barber worked on a milling machine and a worker from Ringhoffer’s tapped beer. There were air raids all the time, day and night. At those times they all ran to a shelter and work stopped. In fact, everything turned out just as he had imagined it in Prague: he slept in a bunk and the food was awful. It was only bearable because everybody received packages from home and Marena sent him some, too.

And then disaster struck. They used to sit around in the dark telling stories during the blackout hour organised in the buildings every night. When his turn came around, all he could think of was the time he was a volunteer fireman back in the days when Prosek was still a village and not part of Prague. The building must have had a spy, because he was called in the next day and informed that he was being transferred to the fire brigade. And that was the beginning of a hellish life for Becvar. Not only did the job involve putting out fires – which was futile in any case – but they had to drag dead bodies out of basements and carry off the wounded. All the while bombs were whistling and any one of them could knock him off in a second like a nine-pin.

The fire brigade was made up entirely of foreigners, but the commander was a German and he had a revolver. There
were also fifty-five men all over the place, so sneaking off was out of the question. Becvar found a countryman in the brigade, a certain Ruda Vyskocil from Prostejov. He used to work in a clothing store there before being sent to the Reich. Ruda taught him not to get involved in anything unnecessarily – he was a crafty Moravian. It was a miserable job and many of their number were carried away on stretchers when walls collapsed on them or they were struck by shrapnel. Becvar and Vyskocil were lucky; nothing had happened to them yet. But how long could such a streak of good luck last?

‘Do you call this living?’ Becvar once said to Vyskocil. ‘Pulling dead bodies out of cellars and waiting for a bomb to drop on your head. I’m a pretty easy-going chap, but I’ve had enough of this. I mean it, I’ll just crack up and do something crazy. One time they sent us up on the roof to pull down a statue, and later that friend of mine Stankovsky took home the rope and said it was good for hanging, and I couldn’t figure it out because the rope was much too thick for hanging clothes. Now I know what he meant.’

‘There’s time enough for that, Tony. Meanwhile, you better just try to stay alive and out of a concentration camp. They’re beginning to lose the war, and if you don’t do anything stupid you might live to see the end of it. Then you can settle accounts with them.’

‘Yeah, sure, except I’m not the type for that sort of thing.’

And then came the great air raid. Half the city was on fire and the bombs kept coming down. They were crouched near the entrance of a shelter, waiting for the bombing to end. But this time it seemed it would never stop. And they were scared, scared to death, even though sitting in a shelter during an air raid like that wasn’t much better than being
out on the street. Still, a shelter provided a certain security, however dubious. A person imagined that the danger wasn’t so great there. But everybody knew perfectly well that they were kidding themselves, because they often dragged dead bodies out of the shelters.

Becvar stayed close to Vyskocil. If a person had to die, it might as well be near a friend. But they couldn’t even talk to one another, the bombs were whistling and exploding all around.

The bombs came nearer and nearer to their shelter. It was a terrible spectacle to see a house collapse before their very eyes or catch fire from the roof down. They were used to this, except the fear was worse as the bombs came closer and closer to their shelter. They couldn’t tell what the people in the shelter were doing because the terrible thundering, whistling and crashing kept them from hearing any sounds from below. But people there were surely groaning, trembling and throwing up. They had seen that many times also.

Just then they heard the sound of a bomb falling so near to them that, by reflex, they tried to dive into the shelter. However, the commander with the revolver stood on the steps and wouldn’t let them down with the Germans. They had to stay out on the street.

All that was left of the house across the street was a single wall. And on the top of the wall they saw the figure of a woman holding a small suitcase. Her mouth was wide open; she appeared to be shouting with all her might, but in all that noise you couldn’t make out a single word. How she got on top of that wall and how she stayed there was a complete miracle. There was no guessing how long she could hold on. The wall was bound to collapse any minute.
Another strange sight was a completely undamaged statue in a niche of that very wall, looking out with a dull,
complaisant
gaze at the battered street. There had probably been a pharmacy in the building, because the statue was of a woman in a flowing robe with a snake twined around her. The screaming woman stood directly above the serene trademark of the pharmacist.

Antonin Becvar was terrified. His nerves were giving out and the worst thing was that he couldn’t confide in Vyskocil; he wouldn’t have heard him even if he had screamed right into his ear. Becvar didn’t want to look at the woman, who kept opening her mouth wide. But somehow he had to keep looking at her, because if he let his eyes drop lower he would have to look at the ridiculous statue in the middle of the ruins. Her smile annoyed him. It reminded him of his unlucky adventure on the roof of the Rudolfinum. But the woman on the wall with her mouth that opened and closed yet uttered not a sound irritated him even more.