The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout

honorable Moravian stock, where, from time immemorial, couples had first known each other on their wedding night. They confessed the next day how shocked they were at their own boldness, but soon their consciences were appeased by the tacit understanding that they would marry as soon as possible.
    Without even asking, he accompanied her home the next day as well, and she did not seem at all surprised. She made him her grandmother’s potato soup with dried mushrooms, and then they talked about their families—as it turned out, from villages quite near each other. The conversation was so ordinary that he felt ashamed again. Everything he had ignored the day before, when immediate, irrepressible desire had made it so simple and natural, suddenly became a puzzle. What would happen from here? Where to start? What to say? How to touch her? He bitterly regretted the awkward ignorance and powerlessness that made him feel so uncertain, and finally he decided to slink home to his den. But Jitka just smiled at him and stretched out her hand to the lamp. How simple, he thought gratefully amid the rustling of sheets and clothes; his cheeks were still burning, but after that there was nothing but bliss.
    This ritual repeated itself every evening, and Morava soon realized that the same steps led a different way each time. It seemed he was constantly charting a new path across an unknown landscape, but at the same time Jitka was uncovering more layers in him as well.
    Morning celebrations soon joined their evening ones. They grew accustomed to falling asleep and waking up in each other’s arms: his chin in her hair, her mouth clinging to his breast. They would greet each other with sleepy smiles and a kiss scented with childhood, and close their eyes again until the shrill ring of the alarm clock drove them out of bed.
    This silent morning motionlessness opened a new dimension of love in him, and when he would meet Jitka at work later or even just think about her, this was what he remembered. Those Moravian traditions were so ingrained in his character that he never imagined his loved one as she gave herself to him; instead he pictured her in that miraculous state of repose, where instead of touching her body he seemed to approach her soul.
    The horrors of their work were implicitly left behind on Bartolomejska Street when the day ended, and they did not waste words on them at home. However, they consciously let the atrocities of war intrude on them more and more each evening. Jan Morava would plug a well-hidden spool (commonly called a churchill) into the radio and cast through the signal jammers’ waves for Czech voices bringing hope and fear. Day by day it grew clearer that the world’s struggle against the Third Reich would be decided in the battle for the Protectorate of Bohmen und Mahren.
    Morava had never frightened easily, despite his peaceful nature. He was from a line of blacksmiths and was never afraid of the older kids; they quickly learned that little Jan would do his level best to return every blow he received. Although at work he saw on a daily basis the horrors people inflict on one another, it had never occurred to him that he himself might become a victim. Strange, but true: love awakened this instinctual, animal fear in him overnight.
    He remembered how as a small child he would wake up in the middle of the night, sure that something awful had happened to his mother. In a flannel nightshirt soaked with warm sweat, he would pad to the door of the sitting room where his parents’ solid bed stood, noiselessly open it, and strain his ears to catch his mother’s soft breathing beneath his father’s loud snores. If he was unsure, he would glide up to the frame, confirming with a careful touch that her hand and cheek were still warm. Although his father was a tall, sturdy man, Jan could not imagine him surviving without her.
    More than twenty years later, a similar fear consumed him that an evil force would rip Jitka from