Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

What should I say? I didn’t know. So I said, ‘Hi, how are you?’ In Czech, obviously.

She moved her head, which sent a ripple through the bath full of foam. I could see her lips moving. She was trying to say something, and at last a single word escaped her mouth, ‘Siaz.’ And straight away I said, ‘Czechia!’ and I dived at the bath and started dragging her away, but she was tied up. I scampered all around the classroom looking for something, but couldn’t find anything, so I flew back to the girl and gnawed at the rope and bit it, and it worked! It was done! I undid the other one with my fingers. It worked! She could hardly stand. She was dripping wet and naked. I was embarrassed. There was no time… I grabbed the flags from the corner — there was nothing else! — and she wrapped one around her, and then we were headed across the classroom and down the corridor to the back, and there was the little window. I helped her. In the window she bent down and briefly rested her face against mine, and I blushed under the axle grease… I reckoned she would make it safely into the forest.

I went back to the classroom and the cabin, and Scarface was there. He was examining the ropes and looked depressed. He had just fetched a bucket of hot water to add to the bath. He poured it on the floor, turned the bucket upside down and sat on it, saying, ‘You’ve gone and spoilt it!’

‘I’ll tell the Captain you’re not Bulgarians, and you’re for the firing squad!’ I told him.

‘You’ve gone and spoilt it, kiddo,’ Scarface said again.

And something occurred to me, so I asked him, ‘Do you know Još?’

‘Of course we know Još,’ said Scarface. ‘We was on the way from his place when we got caught up in the war between all them idiots, so we invented a circus, because circus folk can go anywhere, and we’re Bulgarian so we don’t have to speak Russian or Czech. But what was that big-shot soldier guy saying about some great circus he’s looking for? That’d be a godsend!’

I couldn’t decide whether to mention the girl.

‘We picked her up on the road,’ Scarface said, without being asked. ‘Some soldiers found some girls hiding, but this one escaped. So we saved her.’

‘Saved, eh?’ I said.

‘Think what you like, kiddo. Now we’ve got to stay with this column. We’ll say she’s asleep, or sick like, we just won’t let anyone in, see.’

So we were agreed.

And in the morning our column headed for Siřem.

If Captain Yegorov thought — having integrated the Bulgarians into the ‘Happy Song’ tank column — that his luck had changed for the better, I knew mine had changed for the worse. And then I had my work cut out with Dago, who kept shouting ‘Bastards!’ at them in Russian. He absolutely hated them. For him they were a disgrace to all circuses, while he was a credit to them. Perhaps he was remembering those glorious moments when the soldiers of the column had gaped in wonder at his somersaults, because now they ignored his protests at the Bulgarian circus folk. And Dago shrivelled up. He retreated deep down inside himself again and ceased to care what was going on, though we still chatted together.

The soldiers of the column were very happy with our Bulgarians, and most of all with the mermaid, that’s for sure.

They attached the painted cabin to a tank at the safest position in the column, namely in the mid-rear, because they wanted to spare the mermaid as many of the consequences of any sudden attack as possible. They believed the girl was sleeping inside.

The two scruffs guided the column towards Siřem. They looked after the donkey nicely, it has to be said.

‘I’ve already been through one war. I originally trained as a musician, see,’ Dago told me during the easy ride of our lead tank along the tarmac road. ‘This wasteland we’re driving through’ — his free hand swept the Czech horizon — ‘is once more a battleground between East and West. I changed my name and profession in order to live again — too bad!’

I wanted to ask him what instrument he played in that other war, and who he was fighting and stuff, but he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways.

‘You might be little, Ilya, but you know lots of things. How old are you? You don’t know? You understand, though, Eastern man holds his little hammer in high regard, but he’s only got the one, its handle all shiny from use… And Western man has a whole cupboard full of stuff, all sorts of radios he’s got, rockets and ballpoint pens, all those twentieth-century playthings and it’s affected his brain.’

Now I had to laugh. I kept a few pencil stubs with my maps, and the odd Western ballpoint would have done me very nicely.

‘You know it all, Ilya. I’ve been watching you. When Eastern people lose a million loved ones in the war, they tell themselves, “Oh well, can’t be helped.” They hold each other by the hand and they make a kurgan of packed earth… With Western man, one of his nearest and dearest kicks up a fuss and straight away it’s on television, and there’s a great hoo-ha and tears all round… so who will come out on top?’

‘Well, who?’ I asked him, just to see if he knew.

‘Listen… You’re a saboteur. I’m a spy, an animal spy, see? We circus folk are close to the animals. We get these strange vibes from them… Something’s afoot. I think the Soviets, with things getting a bit tricky, are going to try out some new secret weapon, and that’ll really be something!’

I hadn’t heard about any secret weapon before then, so I let Dago go on, just tugging on his rope now and again, because sometimes he could get quite heated and I couldn’t let him get too noisy.

‘Listen, Ilya. We’re both up this Czech end of shit creek, stuck in this war between the Eastern Empire and the West! And you know what we who are in the middle have to do, don’t you? We have to survive, understand? And that’s not gonna be easy! If the armies of the Eastern Empire use their secret weapon against the Western forces of Nato it’ll be Armageddon, an incredible battle! Do you know what Armageddon is? No? Well, you’ll find out soon enough.’

I listened to Dago, at least it helped pass the time as we drove on, and since he didn’t get too excited I didn’t even have to lash him with his rope. All the way, Dago kept asking me riddles and inventing fairy stories… I did think he might be showing off… A spy might be more than a saboteur, but if either is caught behind enemy lines, they both go to the wall, no questions asked… It says so in black and white in A Manual for Saboteurs . So why was he getting so smart with me, this midget? I’d no idea.

We were advancing on Siřem. Captain Yegorov didn’t even look at me as he tied me to the sacks that evening.

I had a dream about sea foam with a girl tied up in it, and in my dream the foam in her bath changed into the tar water that the nuns used to serve us in mugs and make us gargle painfully for lying and swearing, but through the dreamy waves of greying foam I also saw the beauty of Sister Dolores, so it was a nice dream… I woke up and immediately realized how close we were to Siřem.

I could never have guessed that our tank column would be attacked by demons, that Captain Yegorov’s good fortune would rise again, and that the Third World War would break out.

That day we travelled through blazing sunlight and the battle-scorched land of the Czechs without a shot being fired, and we casually set up camp for the night in a village that we’d flattened only a few days before. It was only a stone’s throw from Siřem, only twice the tanks’ range from Chapman Forest, and Commander Baudyš used to run his field exercises all around here. Seated next to Dago and despite the fading light, I recognized the spot where Mikušinec and I had nabbed Šklíba in a wet field smelling of raw earth and handed him over for elimination. Oh dear. The forest track up to Fell Crag started here.