The Cowards Read Free

didn’t.
    All he said was, ‘We’ll take it from the top,’ then waited for us to quiet down, rapped, and we started in again. In those days we didn’t dare improvise very much and just went by the score. We had a great band though. Better than anything for miles around, that’s for sure. We played Bob Crosby-style Dixieland very well. The only trouble was in the bass. Fortunately, though, the bass played so softly that it didn’t make much difference. I’d memorized my part. I just closed my eyes and fingered the keys on my sax, thinking how nice it would be to start daydreaming again, as usual, since dreaming’s been ahabit with me for as long as I can remember. Ever since ninth grade, to be exact. That’s when I fell in love with Judy Garland and that’s when it all began. I thought about myself and about her, but mainly about myself, and I thought how things would be
if
. And usually the thoughts themselves were so wonderful that they were enough for me. Sometimes I even thought it was probably better just to think about something than to actually live through it in real life, at least in some ways. So I started daydreaming again. It was really a wonderful feeling to sit there playing a piece of music that had practically become a part of your own body and at the same time to be daydreaming with your eyes closed. The syncopated rhythms echoed through my skull and I thought about Irena, or rather about myself, how much I loved her and how wonderful it would be to be with her, and how it was really better to be with her this way than for real and not know what to say or what to do. This way I didn’t have to say anything at all, or just say something and then listen to how it sounded in my imagination and not to think about anything particular, just about Irena in general. There was supposed to be a revolution coming up and it was nice to think about that, too. And have your last will and testament all written up, like I did. Saying that I’d never loved anybody in my life except Irena and that all I wanted in the world was for her to know, as she read these lines, that everything I’d done and gone through was important only because it had all been in some way connected with her, that I’d lived and died only for her and that I’d loved her. The best part of the whole thing was the past tense. But the rest was pretty good, too. That part about ‘these lines’ and how I’d ‘never loved anyone else in my life’ and that ‘I don’t want anything in the world’. Words like that – ‘world’ and ‘life’ – sounded great. They were impressive. And when I thought about it honestly, it was a good thing, too, that I was in love with Irena and that she was going with Zdenek and maybe I was better off just daydreaming and writing testimonials to my love. Of course it would have been nice, too, if I’d been going with her myself. Everything was nice. Absolutely everything. Actually, there wasn’t anything bad in the whole wide world.
    ‘Benno,’ said Lexa when we’d finished, ‘come on, tell the truth. You practised while you were in the concentration camp, didn’t you? Your blues sound like Armstrong.’
    ‘It was the bedbugs. They really bothered me,’ said Benno.
    ‘Honest? There were bedbugs?’
    ‘What did you think, man? The place was crawling with them.’
    ‘Why, Benny’s still scared of them,’ said Helena.
    ‘Scared stiff,’ said Benno.
    ‘Where at?’ said Lexa.
    Helena raised her eyebrows and pretended she hadn’t heard. ‘He practically takes the bed apart every night before he goes to sleep. Why, he even leaves the light on all night long.’
    ‘Why?’ I said.
    ‘Bedbugs are scared of light,’ said Benno.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Sure. A simple trick like that’s enough for them. As long as the light’s on they don’t come out. They’re awfully dumb.’
    ‘They sure are,’ said Lexa.
    ‘Except in camp we weren’t allowed to keep the lights on and that was rough.