Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

Suddenly we heard whistling and shouting — ‘La-a-a-ads!’ — and it’s Martin with the altar boys behind him, and the Bandits!

They reached us and sat down around the fire, and you could tell they were all on speaking terms. They chatted away like normal, and Dýha had a picture of Czechia glued to his tracksuit. The altar boys extracted the chicken. Pepper tapped the clay with a knife and it fell away from the meat. It smelt great. I munched away at the bones and meat, and it was hot and good. Martin stood up and explained — chiefly to me, as he’d told the Bandits already — how the altar boys had met him when he lost his way in the woods, and they’d taken him to their den on Fell Crag and they’d made peace… And the blanket? The altar boys had rigged it up to look as if Martin had got away by swimming!

Then Freckles stepped up and said, ‘I’m on guard and I see this ghost! And the ghost’s this here borstal boy Martin and he’s dragging blankets along! And he’s blubbering. Yeah, you was, be honest! He sees me and he says, “Excuse me, which way is it to the cemetery?” Ha, ha!’ Freckles laughed so much that he ended up on his back, kicking his legs in the air. ‘Yeah!’ and ‘Sure!’ roared the others and they laughed like mad… Then we talked about what would happen if the Russians stormed the country. There’d be a war, obviously, and the Bohemian Lion would roar! It’d be a right old ding-dong! Brilliant!

We sat in the grass and made friends with the altar boys, and talked about what fun we had when we were at war and reminisced about different events in that war, then Holý said, ‘Peace can be fun as well!’ ‘Too right!’ we all shouted. Then Pepper got up and said that they’d had their den, their defensive position, up on the crag, for a long time and that they could use a couple of extra hands. And we cheered and roared and Dýha shouted, ‘Long live Czechia! Long live Siaz!’ and everyone else joined in. I leaned across to Dýha and looked at the crumpled picture of Czechia on his tracksuit… And Dýha said it would be best to get a picture of Czechia permanently tattooed on our skin… Mikušinec explained that Czechia was depicted naked so that she could drag crying babies out of burning cottages and breastfeed them on the spot, at least that’s what the old biddies at the church used to say, and Dýha told him, ‘You’re a baby yourself, man.’ Holý said, ‘Yeah, when we join the fighting, the nuns’ll bring us food and medicine and ammunition up to Fell Crag. They could get past the patrols dressed up as crippled old women going out to collect firewood…’ Then he went on to say that he respected us guys from the Home and that it was great that the guys from the Crag and the guys from the Home would make up a joint defensive force, but there’s one thing he wanted to make clear to avoid any squabbling and arguments: ‘Nuns is nuns, guys, right? And we ain’t got no nuns.’ We muttered and said things like ‘Yeah!’, ‘Uh-huh’, and ‘Right!’ Now we were all chatting normally again, so I asked Dýha, ‘Where’s that Bajza kid and Chata… and little Silva?’ ‘Those lads, they don’t want gippos, and they preferred to go to Još’s anyway.’ ‘I see,’ I said, ‘and there’s someone else missing… Páta?’ Dýha shrugged, saying, ‘Dunno,’ and passed me a bottle, and I took a swig and it was the first time I’d felt good all day.

When I woke up I had a headache. Little stars were crashing about inside my head and I threw up. All that was left of the bonfire were some smoking twigs and there was nobody around on the trampled grass any more… They’d cleared off. It was dark. I was chilled to the bone. My bones were all aching, as if someone had been tugging at them… I reached the church and kept to the shadows by the cottages and the village pond, and there were no dogs and no people anywhere. I went down the hill towards the Home from Home and there were no lights on inside… I knew I was going to run away at last.

All I needed to do was tell Margash.

And I would tell him that I hadn’t had his dream.

I got to the bottom of the hill and there in the grass… it was the whole gang of altar boys, and the Bandits as well. They were sitting on the slope, gawping at the Home from Home, and none of its lights were on and it was dark all around us and the moon was shining.

‘Hi!’ I said, but only Dýha turned round and said quietly, ‘Ciao!’

I’m glad, because I thought they’d run away from me to Fell Crag, that they didn’t want me in their den. Martin came over and said, ‘Hi! They don’t want you,’ and I said, ‘I know, but I don’t care,’ and Martin said, ‘Liar! You do!’ and I said, ‘Wrong… I don’t!’ And then Dýha and Mikušinec and some of the altar boys came over, and Freckles said to me, ‘Come up to the crag with us, but you must bring weapons and things.’

I ignored him. I looked at Dýha.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get some knives and stuff!’

And I asked, ‘What’s with the Home? What’s going on?’

‘Look, man,’ said Dýha. ‘They’ve taken the longshirts away! All of ’em! On lorries.’

That was quite a shock, because the Home with no longshirts… well, it was weird!

‘We saw it. They took ’em away. They had their tracksuits and anoraks on, everything. The youngsters have gone!’ Dýha told me, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself.

‘Some blokes shoved them on the back of the truck,’ he said. ‘We’ve combed the whole place in case any of the little ’uns were hiding, but no. Not one, man.’

We kept staring and we could hardly see the Home from Home in the dark, and it was full of silence. It was our Home from Home, and it wasn’t . Something had changed. I could tell, and I didn’t like it.

‘And is Vyžlata there?’ I asked, ’cause we both knew that was what mattered most now.

Dýha shrugged, ‘We haven’t seen him. Nor that new boy!’

The boys in the grass said nothing.

‘You command the saboteurs,’ said Dýha.

So I said, ‘Yeah, but I’ve said all I want to.’ I set off. Mikušinec called after me ‘Ilya!’ and someone else called out quietly: ‘Ilya, kid, watch yourself!’

I pretended not to hear. I walked on quickly. If I turned back now and asked Mikušinec for the picture of Czechia, he’d let me have it. But there was no turning back. I was outside the Home from Home. I reached for the door handle. The door opened.

I peeked into the workshop-kitchen: shiny tools oiled and tidy everywhere. I drank from the tap, gulping down the cold water and remembering how I used to stand guard in there. Beneath me was the cellar. I felt sick. In my head and in my body. I must have been made ill by everything that had happened.

I went up the stairs, moving fast like a rat. On the first floor I almost tripped on a bundle of documents and broke my neck. There were still vast piles of this twentieth-century tat that we hadn’t had time to burn. The beds in the dorm had no blankets, pillows, nothing.

I went on, invisible. There was someone in the Home from Home. I could tell.

I took off my shoes and tip-toed past the dining room. You can’t hear me, I thought. I am a commander of saboteurs. Private Fedotkin was watching to check I didn’t do a bunk. I wanted to get that stuff — the knives and things. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

I slunk from step to step, and I was outside the shortpants’ dormitory.

I slipped across to Dýha’s bed, grabbed a floorboard, then another, and I stuck my hand in the secret hiding place.

The knives were wrapped in old documents. I crammed the matches, the ball of string and some other small items inside my tracksuit top, stuffing them in there with my maps. The blade of a kitchen knife stuck out through the paper and was all shiny. I kept the knives in my hand and left.