Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

A village always means noise. It’s a living confusion of honking geese and waddling ducks, squabbling hens and ganders. But there was no sound. Not a hoof clip-clopped. There were no cats or dogs either.

The Bandits had talked about checkpoints, where Nato and the Russians inspected anyone left alive. I hadn’t run into any such checkpoint, so I didn’t know if the lads were talking rubbish or not.

I entered these villages by roundabout ways, across a field or through the forest.

The first one was a shock. I was following the route Skryje-Bataj-Tomašín-Luka-Ctiradův Důl. I didn’t need to consult my maps. Our chain of tanks had rolled through this way. Someone had to have survived the passing of our column. There must be people somewhere in cellars, woodsheds, or the underground passages beneath the cottages. If I got collared now by someone who’d seen our attack or even spotted me scuttling off to report or something, that wouldn’t be good. But there was nobody anywhere. I was on my guard. My nose sniffed the air, even while I was asleep. I couldn’t smell either food or smoke anywhere.

The ruins had burnt out long ago. Things lay around here, there and everywhere, but only broken pots, smashed settees, general mess, rubble, rags, refuse. It looked as if someone had picked over things. The women with Hanka hadn’t been carrying anything when we saw them in the field.

I picked up various rags and tatters, and made myself a snug for the night at the edge of the forest. I carried my rag bed on my back. The nights were cold. I wanted to get to Još’s. And I don’t mind admitting, I wasn’t feeling my best. Which is why I drank that strong liquor one night. I was talking to the gippos. Later on, I heard about the women and saw some guys eating a guy. That was on captured territory. Oh dear!

In the evening I reached a school. It was the one where we’d met the Bulgarians with the mermaid. They’d guided us direct from there to Siřem. Somewhere in a classroom there must still be the pages that Captain Yegorov had torn out.

I sat down in the school entrance under the graffiti that got up Captain Yegorov’s nose. I started crying when dusk veiled the statue of Wenceslas, the patron saint of the land of the Czechs, along with its inscription.

I was wondering when my shitty childhood would come to an end, and what things would be like afterwards. I was disgusted with my own genes. I uncorked Dýha’s canteen, saying, ‘I reckon you’re already with the Legion, guys!’ and started drinking. I thought long and hard about the boys from the Home from Home, and then realized I was sitting bawling my eyes out on a war road, where there was no traffic and Chapman Forest all around me, and that I’d have to become a lone bandit in a region of Death. Death, who I’d tried my very best to keep fed with people. I tried to empty the canteen at the same rate as the twilight changed into darkness, and I cursed into the dark, and because I was trying to find the darkies, I spouted all the gypsy words I knew, and my swear words and foul curses were like the noise from the longshirts’ dormitory when they were scared. But somewhere amid all the dylinos! and degeshas! I must have garbled some gypsy fairy-tale magic spell, because I was suddenly inside a gypsy shack!

It was Još’s shack. A big place, full of rags and smashed crockery all over the floor, broken things, half-rotted straw. There was nobody there.

‘So I’ve found Još’s valley, and they’re gone!’ I said to myself, and I reached into the vast hearth, where there were a few scorched cans and masses of little bones, as well as a big pile of white embers, and it was completely cold. I leapt to my feet and started jumping up and groping behind the beams as well and sure enough they did have her there! But she’d been painted over. She had black hair and she was all swarthy, this Czechia of theirs. So I left her where she was behind the beam; I couldn’t go around with one like this. I went outside and I saw Chata coming out of the forest towards me, and my hair stood on end, because it was Chata and it wasn’t Chata.

And Chata said, ‘What d’you want?’

‘I’ve found you!’ I said, and I wanted to go with him, but I couldn’t.

‘Listen Chata,’ I said, ‘I’d like to stay with your lot. Can I go with you?’

‘Tricky!’ said Chata.

‘Dýha says you wanted to liberate the darkies… er… your brothers, who’d been taken prisoner!’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but that’s the thing, we didn’t manage to.’

‘Listen, Chata,’ I told him. ‘I’m lost round here. Can’t I stay with your lot?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Chata said with a smirk.

And now old Još was standing next to him, and I could sense I couldn’t go with him either. Još said, ‘You wanna be with us because no-one makes war with the Gypsies, right?’

‘Yeah.’

And old Još said, ‘But they can kill us anyway, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So there you have it!’ said old Još.

‘Like I said, we failed. To free our brothers,’ Chata said, pretty impatiently.

I’d completely had it by then. Još was old and the skin on his face was all crinkly like the crocodiles in The Catholic Book of Knowledge . I had a feeling he wouldn’t laugh at me, so I asked him, ‘And can I be all on my own for all time?’

‘’Course you can’t,’ said old Još.

‘So, what am I supposed to do then?’

‘Look, we’ve gotta get going,’ said Chata. ‘The brothers are waiting!’

Then they were gone. They weren’t there any more. All I could hear was Chata laughing: ‘Saying he wants to go with us… ha, ha, ha!’

I sat outside the school again and tried to put the stopper back in the canteen. I managed, then I started to fall over backwards, but because I’d got a bed of rags on my back, made up of stuff picked up at the cottages, I landed softly and was asleep in no time.

And that’s how I was found in the morning, asleep, curled up like a dog, my thirsty tongue hanging out, by Peter, who was in charge of a machine gun-armed Soviet jeep. He was also inspector of reservoirs.

He kicked me in the leg and I yelped, and from his uniform and really weird Russian I gathered he was from the army corps of the Hungarian People’s Republic. He wanted to know how to get to the Little Supremo.

I soon realized that Peter was crazy. In turn, he took me for some stupid peasant kid. He was quite happy to sit me in his jeep and give me something to eat and drink, and we chatted together. I picked up his semi-automatic from the back seat, and all he did was laugh and tell me to be careful, because it was loaded. I showed an interest in the two machine guns mounted on the back, so he explained how they worked, and he also boasted about the ones mounted in front. Next I wanted to examine his Nagant revolver and dagger, so he lent me them both and I laughed, because I assumed that was how a stupid peasant, especially one who’s still just a kid, would laugh, and then I really was very happy, because this guy wasn’t teaching me or training me or interrogating me, and if it came to that, well, he’d already offered me a way to take him out with a variety of weapons.

Peter questioned me as to what I was doing within the reservoir project catchment area. I told him I’d come out of the forest.

He nodded and said it was because of people like me that the Soviet command had appointed him inspector. He’d been driving around collecting leftover people, because here in the forest region even rural life had come to an end. But now he was looking for the Little Supremo. Otherwise there was nobody here any more. They’d all been evacuated.

I told him I’d noticed all the villages were abandoned and generally odd.