Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

In the evening, we were allowed to make bonfires, and Captain Yegorov gave the order for Siřem to be taken the following day. His orders included the declaration that once Siřem had been captured work would begin on constructing a circus township and that the ‘Happy Song’ tank column’s battlefield meanderings would come to an end, and so a joyful mood reigned in the camp.

Dago refused to climb off the tank and join us by the fire, which the two scruffs were stoking with branches from Chapman Forest, but he kept leaning over from his post on the front hull, holding out his mess tin… There was a bustle of joyful activity around our lead tank’s bonfire.

Gunner Kantariya found a harmonica somewhere and, defying the censorious look of the dour Gunner Timosha, he uncorked a demijohn of meths looted from somewhere and probably kept for just such an occasion, and the sub-machine-gunners fraternized with ‘our Bulgarian brothers’, whose meths intake led to the revelation of such talents that now even the column’s NCOs took a shine to them, and nudges and jokes and questions about the — as all the soldiers believed — peacefully sleeping mermaid came thick and fast.

‘You’re not gonna recognize Siřem, kiddo,’ Scarface told me, though I hadn’t asked him about it. ‘The whole square is full of flowers, and there’s beautiful wreathes and burning candles everywhere — like a cemetery, it is, but beautiful!’

‘Come and join us,’ the other one said, offering me a gulp from his mess tin, ‘and you can stay at Još’s place, with them other kids of yours, like.’

‘Our kids, you mean,’ Scarface corrected him. ‘And who are you exactly? You a Russki?’

That was a question I didn’t fancy answering. I’d been going over what he’d said, that Chata and Bajza and perhaps a few more from the Home from Home were living in Još’s cottage somewhere in the forest. And to the doleful strains of Kantariya’s harmonica it crossed my mind that I probably ought to make my escape then and there and find the lads. But I didn’t do it, because our camp was attacked by demons.

Before we caught sight of their vile, diabolical snouts, and before the evening calm of our forest retreat had been riven by the horrible snorting and baying of these strange creatures, and our ears deafened by the clatter of their approaching hooves, something whizzed through the air and Kantariya’s harmonica groaned and fell silent. The gunner leapt to his feet and yanked a long arrow from the instrument, its sharp tip glinting in the firelight. Obeying every instinct of a commander of saboteurs, I grabbed Scarface’s full mess tin from him and poured it on the bonfire, which blazed up with a blinding flame, me knowing nothing of the properties of meths. Unfortunately, it looked as if I’d given our attackers a signal, and they were upon us.

Fearsome animals with wailing devils’ heads spat gobbets of white foam at us. The warriors who sat astride the jagged backs of these monsters screamed deafeningly, but the sub-machine-gunners kept up their fire. With all the shooting we might have gradually killed each other. The enemy cavalry rushed past and over us, and in no time at all the thunder of hooves could be heard far away, towards Chapman Forest.

The bonfires were scattered on the instant and the darkness rang with the commands of the NCOs, and above all the smooth, perhaps slightly tense voice of Captain Yegorov. The tank commanders called in their positions, and in just a few moments the column had become a dark, silent wall of steel and armaments.

We might have held on like that until daylight, but after a short while Gunner Kantariya returned from a recce and, to the relief of all who saw him, the corners of his mouth were twitching mischievously. Gunner Timosha went along with him to report, and only when we saw his placid face and direct, proud gaze did we heave a sigh of relief.

Soon, from the obsurity over by Chapman Forest, we heard the odd clink, or possibly the sound of a pebble sent flying by a hoof, but the commands barked out in muffled voices by the NCOs kept us in the dark and silence. Snuggled up to Dago on the front tank, I listened out intently, when suddenly the night sky high above us turned bright. Dago’s cry of amazement was punctuated by a rapid pop-pop-pop … the sound of flares going off, and the darkness ahead of us burst into a myriad lights, Captain Yegorov having ordered the simultaneous deployment of all the searchlights and floodlights and signal lamps and any bright lights the tank column possessed. And we, thunderstruck, were treated to an incredible sight, because approaching across the field that in the darkness had merged into one with the rustling forest came a great, jagged, un-horselike, cavalry monstrosity, high above the beast’s wobbling humps were two heads on necks that reminded me of some fat snakes in The Catholic Book of Knowledge , but the really horrible thing was that little human heads were poking out everywhere from the monster’s body. I yelped and Dago shrieked, which wasn’t surprising, since we had no idea anything like that lived in Chapman Forest.

The privates in our column were also all agog and sort of entranced. You couldn’t hear a single shout or shot as the many-headed creature proceeded towards us in the blinding light, slowly and seemingly inescapably. I was all set to slip off the hull plate, and I would swear that for the first time during our operations on Czech soil one or two of the other men in the column were tempted to make a run for it… It came towards us… The quiet that surrounded the slow march of the multi-beast towards the tanks was suddenly broken when the dwarf Dago let out a joyful yelp, and whistled and cried ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Bravo!’ in Russian, and our scouts Kantariya and Timosha now went among the tank crews bringing calm and reassurance to the men, who were still paralysed with fear… We’d only run up against more shattered remains of the Socialist Circus Project: two riding camels and the Mongolian boys who looked after them.

Illuminated by all those lights the riders dismounted from the camels, of which you could now tell there were two. They were young boys, no bigger than me, and as I saw them, one by one, surrounded by brightness, I remembered that vision of long ago, that night when Dýha and I and the little choirboys came out of the basement and stood face to face with Commander Vyžlata, and I first saw Margash.

The camel boys formed a circle around their snorting animals and tried to calm them down, since they evidently didn’t like our silent wall of tanks.

And then I saw Captain Yegorov come striding along with the two gunners by his side. He had left the safety of the tanks and was heading straight for the lads swarming around their camels. Not bothering about Dago, I ran off after Yegorov. Exploiting my position of interpreter, I offered my services. Kantariya and Timosha seemed impressed by my bravery, but in truth I was dying to find out who these people were, and all about their camels.

Some of the boys gathered around the animals held bows and arrows, others had knives at the ready, and they all spoke Russian.

Yes, they were part of a broader contingent of the Socialist Circus Project, they replied to my first question. Asked why they had attacked us, they said that they attacked anyone and everyone.

Then Captain Yegorov barked out a command, and the camel boys fell sheepishly silent. He left them in no doubt as to his rank as commander-in-chief of the Socialist Circus Project.

The boys briefly discussed the matter in an unintelligible language, but they seemed to be convinced when they saw the pips on Yegorov’s tank-brigade jacket, and also, more likely, by the fire power of his sub-machine-gunners. Their knives abruptly disappeared.