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Scenes from Dives
- Purdue University Press
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~(ene~ from Oive~: Inthe Omnibm on the Night ofthe Murder. She fled her mad pursuer from the back alleys of the Old Town into the flood of light, into the Ferdinandstrasse, which she usually never dared enter in the middle of the night Here she thought she was safe from her jealous lover's attacks ofrage. But hardly had she set foot within the orbit ofthe incandescent lights when the butcher knife penetrated her throat unerringly and fatally. Her body described a wide arch as it plunged to the pavement and twice lurched up convulsively. Before passersby grasped the horror of what'had happened, the murderer had already plunged the knife six times into his own chest. Both bodies were taken to the morgue. In the gray.,.yellow face of the dead woman, over which the green headband had slipped, a policeman recognized Kotab from the Omnibus pub in the Small Ring. Another officer had been sent to the dive and there corroborated that the murdered woman was indeed Karoline Kotab. Now the atmosphere of murder and death.has intruded on the apathy of this bar. A long room barely two and a half meters wide, the light vault of the cdling-one can truly imagine himself seated inĀ·the inside of an omnibus. Once that may have been an honorable name, in the period when traveling in a carriage was something elegant. Nowadays the name would have to be different, if it were going to have a noble ring to it-at least "automobile." . The walls must have been brown earlier; now they are covered with black, cloudlike spots, the fallout of dirt and smoke. The narrow room has space for just two thin tables, set at a distance from each other of barely a foot; all the Egon Erwin Kisch, the Raging Reporter guests sit next to each other, like at a bar. The musicians are down below. A baldheaded violinist with hollow cheeks and twitching eyelashes; a thickset accordion player with hair combed down way over his eyes; and an elderly guitar player whose nose and cheeks have shiny places. The row of extra guests follows hard on the band. Pockmarked, brutalized women. And men whom you can see creeping behind them inthe alleyways at night. For a moment conversation dies down when I enter the premises. But I greet a one-legged party girl by her nickname, the Czech greeting "Te buh, I Revoluce" ["Hi there, Revoluce"] legitimizes me sufficiently, and conversation picks up again. A pockmarked beauty sobs to a side: "She was a hussy; she deserved what she got ten times over. But it's a shame about Jarda." "Who knows if he's dead," a gigantic recruit comforts the girl. His overcoat is much too small for him; a one-year volunteer is probably still pining for it. "He's dead," says a frail man without a brow. "They've already taken him to pathology; I know it for a fact." . "All you ever know is crap, you twisted pretzel," the soldier yells at him, and the man without a brow shudders nervously. "A pity about him! Ijust can'thelp crying." The pockmarked one says it. "You must have mixed your tears with salt in atub, you're so sensitive you are, dearie," the unbelievably fat waitress landa calls to her. She was trying to direct the conversation into a more cheerful channel. But the pockmarked blonde wouldn't let herself be yanked out of her sentimental mood. "He was a great guy ...." And then, after a tear-filled pause, she began humming: "Co dela rna zena [What's my wife doing] ... That was his song!" "Yeah, that was his all right," confirms the one-legged Katty Revoluce and then shouts to the musicians: "Violin player, play your instrument!" Accordion, guitar, and violin strike up and everyone presentjoins in singing the murderer's favorite song: What's my wife doing, When I'm not at home? What's my wife doing, When I stay away. 124 [18.209.66.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:29 GMT) In the Omnibul on the Night of the Murder . She sits by the window AridĀ·calls to the fishermen: . "My husband left today!" "She always said that one day a lover would geteven with her for all the others." Her head leaning on the edge ofthe table, Frau Broum, the most defiant of all the women assigned to the Prague morals police, had until now...