The Cremator (Modern Czech Classics), page 16
‘Why, you sent me to get the programme yourself so that I’d know who was going to box . . .’ said Mili, and then he revealed that he had twice been to the Youth Club, where they had their training.
‘Why,’ said Mili, ‘it said come and see us . . . Well, that leaflet,’ he said, ‘that application form which Mr. Reinke gave me . . .’
‘But that’s wonderful, Mili, to be friends with a boxer,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl after a while, and thought, he’s friends with a boxer, perhaps he won’t be so soft, so effeminate after all, as Willi says; perhaps he’ll get over it. Then he said aloud: ‘You must be hard, courageous, one hundred-percent, Mili. After all, you’ve got German blood. From me . . .’ he added knitting his brows. ‘After the holidays you’ll go to the German grammar school. Well, yes,’ he smiled at Lakmé, who was taken aback and looked dejected, and turning back to Mili, who was gazing at the cat. He said:
‘It’s certainly a good thing to go out with a boxer. Boxing is a combative sport, ein Wettkampf. The Führer considers it one of the best. If only you didn’t stray about so much, Mili. You’d better not even go to the bridge. Is that boxer of yours training hard?’ he gave a smile, returning the photo to the boy, and when Mili nodded, he said: ‘What is he telling you, what do you two talk about . . .’
And then to his horror, he learned what the boxer was telling him, what the two were talking about. Why he was training so hard. Why he was learning so hard how to box. Why his punches had to be driven home. Because the Germans had poured into our country. Because they were bullies. Because they had taken our freedom . . . As he spoke, Mili’s face took on a sheepish look and he gazed at the cat. Mr. Kopfrkingl kept control of himself and shook his head sadly. There’s still time to enlighten him, he thought, gazing at Mili. I’m going to explain it to him soon, make him see sense, convince him. And he went to the radio, where Almaviva was just finishing his sweet song to Rosina, and lightly pushed the cat aside who had got between his legs.
Before the Whitsun holidays, the Gestapo arrested Josef Zajíc and Beran in the crematorium. Then came the turn of the director, Srnec. ‘It seems rather hard,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl, the NSDAP member with the sterling German soul, to himself, ‘what the Gestapo has done. But there was probably nothing else to be done about it, nothing at all. After all, the happiness of millions of people is at stake. We’d be committing an offence against the people,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl to himself, ‘an offence against mankind if we didn’t know how to get rid of evil-doers, if we sat on our hands and just looked on at their destructive work.’ So, the Gestapo arrested Zajíc, Beran and the director, Srnec, in the crematorium . . .
Mili and Zina went to Slatiňany for the Whitsun holidays to stay with their good aunt, who, had she been a Catholic, would have been canonized when she died, though she’s already a saint: they went to her with a bunch of lilies. It was during those days that a decision on an important matter in Mr. Kopfrkingl’s life was to be made: on his promotion.
‘My heavenly one,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl to Lakmé in the dining-room, ‘the children have gone to Slatiňany for the Whitsun holidays to stay with our aunt, with that good soul of ours, who’s already a saint . . . and we’re alone. They’ve arrested Mr. Zajíc, Beran and Srnec, the director, at my workplace . . . God knows why, apparently because of their feelings of hostility towards the Reich, the German people, mankind . . . What?’ he smiled at Lakmé, who was horrified, ‘why are you frightened? Because they’ve arrested Zajíc, Beran and the director? Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to them, why should anything happen to them? They’ll just transfer them to another place of work . . .’ Then he said: ‘I’m supposed to become the new director instead of Mr. Srnec. I’m supposed to become director because I’m an expert . . . Since we’re on our own now, my dear, how about putting our best clothes on and having a nice little dinner-party? Without wine, of course, I’m abstemious . . . and then we’ll have a bath in our beautiful bathroom as is proper after a Roman banquet. Could it be our heavenly wedding anniversary today?’ he smiled tenderly. ‘Or, at least, the blessed anniversary of the day we met in the zoo by the leopard . . .? No, it isn’t. Alright, but let’s pretend it is . . . come,’ Mr. Kopfrkingl took Lakmé by her arm and led her to the kitchen to get the food ready.
Towards evening, when the food was ready, Mr. Kopfrkingl asked Lakmé to put on her best dark silk dress with the white lace collar. After she had put it on he took her into the dining-room and seated her at the table. He brought sandwiches, almonds, coffee and tea, turned on the radio, and then sat down at the table too.
‘Do you hear, my heavenly one?’ he smiled tenderly. ‘What they’re playing now is the chorus and bass from Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor”. It’s interesting. It’s such perfect funeral music, and yet it’s not played in our place very often. Anyone having it played in our hall would indeed have an uncommon funeral. They played the “Unfinished” for Mrs. Strunný once, Dvořák’s Largo for Miss Čárský, and Friedrich von Flotow’s “Last Rose of Summer” for Miss Vomáčka recently. The flaw is that it’s not the deceased who choose the music, as a rule, but the mourners! And they don’t choose according to the taste of the dead but according to their own. They choose things they like themselves, not what their departed ones would like to have had.’ Then he said:
‘This is Lucia’s big aria from the third act. It’s sung by an excellent Italian singer.’
And as they ate to the accompaniment of Lucia’s big aria on the radio, Mr. Kopfrkingl said:
‘Our life is before us, my purest one. The whole world is open for us, my ethereal one. The sky is open for us.’ He pointed and glanced at the ceiling as though drawing attention to the stars, a magnificent picture, or an apparition. ‘The sky over which not a single little cloud has passed during the whole nineteen years of our being together, the sky I sometimes see over my Temple of Death when nobody is being cremated. But I’ve noticed that our ventilator in the bathroom is broken. I’ll have to have it repaired tomorrow. For the time being I’ve put a string with a noose in there, so that we’ll be able to switch the ventilator on from the chair. That curtain over there in the corner . . .’ he pointed to the window, ‘which Willi told us about on Christmas Eve, has not been any trouble since. Do you hear that beautiful song?’ He pointed to the radio from which the sounds of Lucia’s big aria wafted over to them. ‘How very true it is that those who die without ever learning the beauty of music are poor. Where’s Rosana, I wonder . . .?’
After dinner, Mr. Kopfrkingl kissed his heavenly one and said:
‘Come, my indescribable one, before we undress, let’s get the bath ready.’
He took the chair and they adjourned, the cat watching them.
‘It’s hot in here,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl in the bathroom and placed the chair under the ventilator. ‘I probably overdid the heating. Switch on the ventilator, my dear.’
When Lakmé got onto the chair, Mr. Kopfrkingl stroked her ankle, cast the noose round her neck and said to her with a tender smile:
‘What if I hanged you, my dear?’
She smiled down at him, perhaps not understanding him very well. He returned her smile, kicked the chair away and that was that.
He put on his coat in the hall and went to the German Criminal Investigation Department. He made a statement:
‘She apparently did it out of despair. She had Jewish blood and could not bear living by my side. Perhaps she sensed that I was going to divorce her, that it was not compatible with my German honour.’ And inwardly, he said to himself: I was sorry for you, my dear, I really was. You were dejected, withdrawn. Of course. No wonder. But as a German I had to make the sacrifice. I’ve saved you, my dear, from the suffering which would otherwise have been in store for you. My heavenly one, how you would have suffered in the just and happy new world, on account of your blood . . .
Lakmé was cremated in Chrudim near Slatiňany . . . and Mr. Karl Kopfrkingl was – after the Whitsun holidays – appointed director of the Prague crematorium. He pensioned off Mr. Vrána of the porter’s lodge in the courtyard, who sat there because he had something wrong with his liver. He’s old now, he thought, he’s been here ever since I came, almost twenty years ago. Let him have a rest. He gave notice to Mrs. Podzimek, the cleaning woman, to quit. After all, she was almost frightened here, he said to himself, I’ll rid her of her fear then, of that curse. . . But he kept Mr. Dvořák. ‘You know, Mr. Dvořák, what I like about you is that you don’t smoke and drink . . .’ he told him, ‘that you’re abstemious . . .’ And he also kept Mr. Pelikán and Mr. Fenek too for the time being. I ought to save him, he sometimes thought to himself in his office, he’s hardly able to stand. When he passed the porter’s lodge, Mr. Fenek cried, cringing like a dog.
XIV
Yes, what their mother had done was a shock, for the children, but one has to come to terms with all sorts of things in life.
‘Life today, my dearest ones,’ Mr. Kopfrkingl told his children as he stood under the lamp in the dining-room with the newspaper in his hands, ‘life today is one big battle. We live in great, revolutionary times and have to stand up straight in the face of every sacrifice and hardship. Our heavenly one is now among the blessed, like her mother. Gracious Nature freed her from the fetters of this world. She has peacefully returned to where she came from, to dust. The ether has opened for her, and possibly by now she has already entered a new body. Cremation accelerates . . . She was a nice, good woman,’ he said with the newspaper in his hands, ‘faithful, quiet, modest. The light everlasting is shining for her now, now she is enjoying heavenly peace.’ Then with a glance at the newspaper he said:
‘Nothing is certain in human life. The future is uncertain, and that’s why people are often afraid of it. The only certain thing in life is death. But now it’s quite certain that a new, happy order will be established in Europe. The Führer’s new happy Europe and death are the only two certainties which we, the people, have today . . . There’s a beautiful poem here in the papers . . .’ he turned over the pages of the newspaper. ‘It seems as if it was written precisely in honour of our departed one. I’ll just read the first verse out to you,’ he said and read:
‘When, at dusk, daylight is wedded to darkness . . .’
Then he glanced at the picture of the wedding procession by the wall chart, the timetable of death, and said, filled with concern:
‘Flames cannot hurt any more . . .’
Then he put the newspaper aside, took the book about Tibet out of the bookcase and said:
‘I must take even more care of you than before, my gentle ones, now that we’ve lost our mother. Zina dear . . .’ he smiled at his daughter and then glanced at the book about Tibet he was holding in his hand, ‘you’re beautiful like your mother. You’re going out with Míla, but it’ll be necessary for you to go to the German school after the holidays. Mili too,’ he gave the boy a long, searching look, and then glanced again at the book about Tibet, frowning a little. That boy, with his gentle effeminate soul, worried him more and more. He’s never been like me, he thought, with a glance at the book, he’s never been like me, and now he’s straying even more than before. Let’s hope he doesn’t wander off somewhere one night so that I have to get the police to search for him as they did that time in Suchdol. Instead of toughening him up and strengthening him, that apprentice of his, the boxer, is misleading him, leading him astray . . . Suppose he ends up like that unfortunate Vojta Prachař in our apartment house. And one day . . .
One day he talked about him to Willi at the Casino, in the presence of the fairhaired beauty, Marie, who looked like an angel or a first-class actress and whom he called Marlén.
‘Mili’s worrying me more and more,’ he sighed with a glance at the carpets, pictures and glowing chandeliers. ‘He seems to be getting softer and more effeminate all the time. He’s never been like me and he is straying more than ever. I’m worried that he’ll spend a night in some place like Suchdol again. He didn’t learn much from that boxing-match,’ he glanced at the glasses filled with cognac on the table, ‘we saw the other day, unfortunately. He himself wouldn’t box for all the world, and yet it could be useful to him one day, as you said. He apparently learned only one thing from that boxing-match – he made the acquaintance of the butcher’s apprentice. But that apprentice of his, the boxer, it seems, is misleading him, leading him astray instead of toughening him up and strengthening the German blood he’s inherited from me. It makes me sad. Suppose he ends up,’ he glanced at the glasses filled with cognac on the table, ‘like that unfortunate Vojta Prachař from our apartments . . .’
‘His mother was half-Jewish,’ said Willi and glanced at the fairhaired Marlén, who was leaning on Mr. Kopfrkingl’s shoulder. ‘And obviously it shows. Milivoj is an individual of mixed blood of the second class. According to the Reich Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, paragraph 2, he is an individual of mixed Jewish blood of the second class, the so-called quarter-Jew . . . Vierteljude derjenige, der von einem volljüdischen Grosselternteil abstammt. It’s the law,’ he said gazing at Marlén who was leaning on Mr. Kopfrkingl. ‘Laws are here to serve people, as you say, and we must hold them in reverence. I’m afraid, Karl, he won’t be admitted to our grammar school. I’m afraid he won’t even be admitted to the Hitler Youth. You are sure you won’t have a cognac?’ he pointed to the glasses on the table, but Mr. Kopfrkingl shook his head, pushing one of them away slightly.
‘We’re approaching Warsaw,’ Marlén gave a laugh.
One Saturday afternoon in the week when the swastika flew over Warsaw and the Reich armed forces were advancing on the East, Mr. Karl Kopfrkingl put on his new high black boots and a green Tyrolean hat with a braid and a feather, which he had only just bought from a German hatter in Můstek. He put a nice little pair of pincers into his pocket and took Mili to see round the crematorium: it was possible to do so, as there was no cremation on a Saturday afternoon. It was beautiful outside. They ran into Jan Bettelheim and Vojta Prachař in front of the house. They were standing there, leaning against the wall and looking at the parked cars. They nooded to Mili, asking him where he was going. Mr. Kopfrkingl halted, smiled affably and said that they were going for a stroll. Mili was gazing at the boys, and they at him as though devising some kind of plan in their minds, and Mr. Kopfrkingl said:
‘You must come and see us again some time, boys. You haven’t been to see us for such a long time. Only you mustn’t go too far when you’re outside. Unfortunately, it’s not a good time for wandering about nowadays.’ Then he smiled again, at the parked cars, and said: ‘So, these are the coloured cars according to your theory, aren’t they, Mili? The green ones are military and prison vans, and the white ones are ambulances. For angels.’ And with a nod to the boys they went on . . . After a few steps Mr. Kopfrkingl said:
‘It’s possible that we’ll also have a nice coloured car soon, Mili. You’ll ride in it as Jan Bettelheim used to do. We could go for a drive on Sundays. Somewhere further than Suchdol, of course, to a castle or a mansion-house, for example. You’d like that, I think. Dr. Bettelheim doesn’t have a car any longer, unfortunately.’ Then they arrived at a pink confectionery shop and Mili halted.
‘Well, wait a minute, you sweet-toothed little brute,’ Mr. Kopfrkingl gave a smile and delved into the pocket where he had the little pair of pincers. ‘Here you are. Buy yourself a choc-ice.’ Then he reached into his pocket once more and said: ‘Here you are, buy yourself a chocolate ring too.’
Mili bought himself a choc-ice and a chocolate ring, and they went on. Near the Vinohrady cemetery some kind of advertisement was posted. A little old fat man was standing under it reading it. As they came nearer, Mr. Kopfrkingl noticed that the little man had a stiff white collar with a red bow tie. As he noticed it, he raised his head a little.
‘Pity,’ he said to Mili and his voice shook slightly. ‘A pity that your heavenly mother’s not with us.’ Then he noticed the advertisement and felt that some of the letters wanted to jump out of it:
Drapes and curtains repaired by
JOSEFA BROUČEK, PRAGUE – HLOUBĚTÍN
7 Kateřinská Street
‘We’ll go through the cemetery,’ he said to Mili. ‘It’s much nicer to go the back way than through the courtyard. I used to take a stroll here at lunchtime before I became director. A pity that your heavenly mother has been called to meet her Maker.’
As they were going through the cemetery gate, they heard a noise and some cracking sounds beyond the first tombstones, as though somebody was jumping about and hissing. And then a woman with a string of beads and a feather in her hat rushed out at them, pointing behind her and squeaking. A small fat man with a bowler hat and a stick raced after her shouting: ‘Where are you dashing off to, you . . . there are no towers here, this is a cemetery. You were in a cemetery . . .’ and he stopped, shaking his head furiously at Mr. Kopfrkingl, at his high black boots and the green Tyrolean hat with the braid and feather, and said: ‘She’s a fool, she does it to me all the time. She thought I was taking her out to some kind of massacre . . .’
‘She’ll get over it, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl kindly, and the fat man took off his hat and began to wipe his forehead.
‘Come,’ said Mr. Kopfrkingl to Mili kindly. The boy was gaping. ‘Probably some kind of fit, she’ll get over it. The angel in our midst, the doctor, will help her. Mili,’ he said, ‘don’t ever dream of putting a banger into your mouth. It could land you in big trouble. Did you like the chocolate ring?’
Then they went through the cemetery, passing the graves with wreaths laid on them, and found themselves in front of the crematorium. A little cur with a long nail on his little finger was trembling in the porter’s lodge. He saw the director in his high boots and the Tyrolean hat with the feather and bowed, his eyes swollen and tear-stained. ‘Will I be able to save him, I wonder?’ thought Mr. Kopfrkingl. ‘I’ll have to dismiss him or help him to get into the lunatic asylum.’ He waved his hand at him and went on. He led Mili into the corridor, to the cloakroom, to the extinguished furnaces. The place smelled of lysol and the boy was shaking like a leaf.
