Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

‘Yes,’ Peter nodded, ‘this region is to witness the realisation of the ancient dream of the Czechoslovak masses. There will be a sea here. It will be the Czech Sea, as a gift from ordinary Soviet people to the ordinary people of Czechoslovakia.

‘I see,’ I said.

‘There will be this second Central European Balaton, which is why the main engineering works are being carried out by experienced Hungarian comrades — inlanders,’ said Peter, and I didn’t have a clue what he was on about, so I asked him where all the people had gone.

‘Most of the population has already been evacuated,’ Peter said. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded pretty stupid.

‘All around here will be flooded,’ Peter went on, and he waved an arm, and that wave across the area around Siřem was probably meant to take in the deserted villages left over after the fighting.

Then Peter talked about women. He didn’t mean the poor women that toiled in the fields, but described some gorgeous women on horses. He said he believed the riders were part of the Little Supremo’s contingent. He talked about women jumping right over his armoured jeep on their horses — black, grey and piebald. He didn’t manage to talk to any of the women and they rode off. He wanted to inform the Little Supremo about the reservoir project. He believed the Little Supremo and his contingent were detained in some inaccessible regions. He would be grateful, assuming I was a local, if I’d conduct him to the Little Supremo.

I hadn’t a clue what he was on about, but I wanted to make him happy, since he’d found me, so I nodded.

‘Be a good lad, Ilya,’ he said, ‘find the Little Supremo.’

Now Peter and me were sat next to the statue of the Czech patron saint, who was armed, in a village where some of the men had probably been killed and the women run away into the forest, and the remaining folk evacuated, whatever that meant, and Peter struck me as the craziest soldier I’d ever met. The thing about him was, he was happy. He was obsessed with finding the Little Supremo, who I knew nothing about. Peter said I seemed like a godsend, just when he needed one. ‘Together, we’ll creep our way through each and every army to the inaccessible regions,’ he said, ‘and we’ll find the Little Supremo.’

I nodded. Then everything went so fast that I didn’t have time to regret the brevity of our alliance.

I told Peter that I’d noticed the odd hoofprint from time to time in Chapman Forest, and once I’d heard female laughter. Peter was overjoyed.

We mooned around there, chatting. I translated into Russian the inscription LET US NOT PERISH, NOR THOSE WHO COME AFTER US on this statue of an older style of fighting man, and I told him that before long the only thing left of the Czech land would be its name, a fate that has befallen many other foreigners as well, as history shows. Peter started laughing and assured me I was totally wrong, then he span me such a yarn that if the nuns were around he’d have had to gargle a whole bucketful of tar.

He told me about the Little Supremo. His army corps’ scouts had learned about the Little Supremo from their women prisoners.

Apparently, it was all about some new tactic in the fight against sovietization. ‘It’s the only way for smaller nations to prevent themselves from being totally submerged in the Eastern Empire,’ said Peter.

When stories about the Little Supremo spread among the divisions, the number of deserters rose. After the Czech insurgency had crushed Peter’s division, he decided to find the Little Supremo and offer him his services.

Peter had first learned of the Little Supremo from a female prisoner. She even came, apparently, from a place I’d mentioned — a Siřem girl!

‘What did she look like?’ I gasped.

‘Pretty, young and wearing a tracksuit,’ Peter said, but he didn’t know her name. After the Siřem girl had filled the other prisoners’ heads with silly ideas, talking about the Little Supremo, they escaped. All the women who had refused to be evacuated wandered off into the forest.

‘What had she told them?’ I asked.

‘They call it the Prophecy of the Little People,’ said Peter.

And off he went, though because he told me about the prophecy in Hungarian Russian, it’s possible I didn’t quite grasp it all. But what he said was roughly this. The heroic Czech men having fallen in battle against troops from the five armies despatched by the Eastern Empire, their womenfolk were left forlorn and weeping. They walked on and on through dusty fields on a terrible journey, attacked and violated by enemy soldiers. There was no-one to stand up for them. Then suddenly the women found their hero: a tiny man, who, all by himself, was pulling along a captured enemy tank on a rope. They were amazed at his strength and virility. He took pity on the women and went with them into the forest. Since that day, the bellies of the widows of those heroic warriors, as well as the bellies of young maidens, have been growing and rounding out, and many of them will soon bear little warriors. So little that it will be easy for them to slip between the checkpoints of the five armies and continue wreaking havoc on the enemy until his total annihilation. They would dwell in caves and forest hideaways, and they would be impossible to track down.

Peter laughed, waiting to see what I made of it all.

‘You’ve really never heard of the Little Supremo?’ he asked, un-believing.

I thought he’d been wandering about that deserted landscape for too long. He was hooked on a fairy tale. It was obvious what had really happened, although there is a big difference between pulling a tank along and jumping over it. But it was entirely possible that Dago had been snatched by the women.

Peter was still laughing. He was really looking forward to this Czech boy leading him into the inaccessible regions of Chapman Forest. He was a deserter. He had no idea that the Siaz zone was trapped in a ring of steel by the armies of the new Russians. If I’d told him, perhaps he might not have bled to death later on my shoulder. After all, I liked being with him. I wanted to go on further with him. It had also crossed my mind that our progress would be safer in an armed jeep. Except I was wrong, as so many times before.

Peter slept in the jeep, between the machine guns, me with my bed-roll at my back. I went behind the school, not wanting to be too close to the road.

Somewhere in the grass, among some titchy little apple trees, I curled up in a ball and fell asleep. When I opened my eyes again, there beyond the school orchard I saw the flames of a campfire flickering and, because I’d had the training, I was wide awake at once and crawled silently towards it.

Unfortunately, what I saw was the ghastliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life: two men were carving up a third, who lay on the ground.

These guys had sticks, on the ends of which were chunks of meat freshly cut from the carcass. I could only see the outline in the grass, dancing in the glimmer of the fire. They didn’t speak Russian or Czech, but something similar. I could understand them. It was how Mikušinec or someone used to witter on in the night.

They were just saying that a bottle of something with a bit of a kick to it would slip down nicely with Teddy.

Then one of them took a pinch of ash from the fire and scattered it over the bedarkened grass that lay all around, and said, ‘We thank thee, Uncle Ted!’

The other did the same, also thanking poor Ted, who was lolling about in the grass, but also disappearing inside their bellies.

And they stuffed themselves.

Perhaps my tummy rumbled or I made a bad move or they’d had the right training, but suddenly they were beside me and dragging me, unarmed, across to the fire. Their grip loosened and I sat on the grass right next to what was left of Ted, and they observed, in Russian, that I was only a boy, and heaved a sigh of relief. I probably startled them, and I heard myself saying, ‘ Tovarishchi kanibali, ya ne vkusnyi malchik ,’173* which was supposed to mean they were to leave me alone, because I wouldn’t taste nice.