Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

Sister Alberta was smiling, like she was welcoming me back too, and she pat-patted her ancient hands. Páta was laughing and invited me to sit. I sat down on a length of timber. It was the shelf which had collapsed that time when I kicked everything off it. Mr Cimbura struggled across to me. He was offering me something… and he straightened up and bellowed, like he used to in the square, when everyone gathered round him: ‘Little Ilya’s the squire now!’ and Mr Cimbura spluttered with laughter as he spoke. He could probably see I was looking at him real angry, like, so he pretended to have a bad coughing fit. But he stuck a half-rotten cucumber in my right hand and a potato in my left, and he started messing about. He bowed to me like I was a king being crowned on the telly in some fairy tale for the masses. Páta was giggling and did the bowing-before-the-king thing after Mr Cimbura, while Sister Alberta kept on clapping, and then she said, ‘Welcome, lad!’

‘Your dad, sonny,’ said Mr Cimbura, ‘brought back from his travels this weird woman. God alone knows in what deserted wilderness he picked her up. Your mother was a vile-looking creature, I can tell you… Well, because of that ugly mug of hers, you and your kid brother turned out how you fucking did — not your fault, my lad… The Jerries wanted to chop your dad’s head off, but he got round ’em by letting on about all sorts of secret hideouts. But he couldn’t get round the Commies. They went after his aristocratic blood like leeches… So, now he’s enjoying his eternal rest in his Siřem tomb.

‘The truth is, your dad decided to make a run for it, but his plane flopped down into the mud, and the mud of Siřem and the water of Siřem put the flames out, and we, the people of Siřem, we pulled you and your kid brother out. Your brother came off bad, like, we know. Your parents died inside the plane. It ain’t true they didn’t give a damn about you. All they did was die, and that’s all there is to it!’

There were masses of candles in the vault. It had been a long while since I’d seen people sitting in the half-light, their shadows flitting all over the wall whenever someone moved… The shadows were bigger than the people… My own shadow looked enormous above me the moment I changed position… It crossed my mind that as soon as I grew as big as that myself, all these fairy stories would finally come to an end.

‘How come my dad crashed his plane?’ I asked, putting on a really deep voice.

‘Good question,’ squeaked Mr Cimbura from his pallet of rags. ‘Rumour has it that all the Siřem folk took it real bad that the squire wanted to do a runner and leave us here. That wasn’t right, now, was it? So you see, it turned out we were right. He shouldn’t have run away from his people… He came a cropper! It’s possible someone drilled a hole in the fuel tank, making it burst, so the plane took off and fell right back down in a blaze… Who could have done such a thing? Wicked undercover fascists? Evil commies? Some local with a grievance?… But listen, sonny, that was all a long time ago!’

‘How long?’ I asked.

Mr Cimbura said that we were not going to argue over time. When the Good Lord — or whoever it was — had created time, He had made plenty of it, and Mr Cimbura went on to say that all that mattered now was that I had survived everything and that I was finally home, and when the Czechs were once more their own masters, I would be the one and only lord and master of Siřem — me and me alone. ‘And that’s exactly what we’re celebrating right now, sonny,’ said Mr Cimbura.

I was squatting on the collapsed shelf, the cucumber in one hand and the potato in the other… and Mr Cimbura bowed to me again, as if to his lord and master, and giggled, though I well remembered how he had always hated the nobility… I didn’t believe a word Mr Cimbura said. I wanted to get away.

So I didn’t toss aside the things they had used for my mock coronation, but I placed them on the ground next to me. Páta handed me a jar of sweetcorn. They had tomatoes and bread and salami as well, so we ate.

I put some salami and lots of bread in my pockets. I watched Páta while I did it. He gave me the nod. So they had plenty. I grabbed the cucumber and potato while I was at it.

Once we had finished eating I asked Mr Cimbura, ‘Where are the girls?’

‘This here is the girls’ bunker, sonny,’ he said, ‘but you went and frightened ’em off, staring in on ’em like that, just as they was working on it.’

‘Where are the girls?’ I asked again, because he hadn’t answered. Obviously, I had only one girl in mind.

‘Every decent village built shelters like this one for the protection of young girls — they’ve done it ever since the Tatars invaded,’ Mr Cimbura muttered, ‘but these Russians with their modern spy satellite technology, they can ferret out any woman anywhere, even underground. Never used to be like that, no sir! This time we failed, that’s all there is to it!’

‘So the Russians found ’em?’

‘Some they found, some they didn’t, sonny. This time we just failed,’ said Mr Cimbura.

Páta said it was not a bad place to live, here in the girls’ bunker. He’d known worse… and he and Sister Alberta tended to Mr Cimbura’s wounds, since a symbol of national resistance like Mr Cimbura should never fall into Soviet hands!

‘And what about the sisters?’ I asked Sister Alberta, and she murmured that the Lord of Heaven is competent at His job, and every peasant is mindful that ‘dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’, and so the Lord returns human lives to nothing, as He sees fit.

I hadn’t a clue what she was on about.

And Páta said that only Sister Alberta had come back to Siřem, because she was a local and her papers said that she was a resident of the village, so she had to wait there to be evacuated. And Sister Alberta said she couldn’t care less about any evacuation — that there in the vault they made up the last cohesive Siřem family, taking turns to tend to the old man’s wounds. Mr Cimbura would only emerge into the light of God’s day when he was fully fit again, and as a symbol of national resistance his miraculous appearance would provoke another uprising. All three of them said this at once.

Then I told them about the villages with no people in them, and I asked, ‘Where have all the people gone?’

‘Look,’ said Páta, ‘when I saw you up top, I attacked you… I thought you’d escaped from a train. I’m sorry I went for you like that. Those runaways steal all the time, because they don’t have nothing… and there isn’t room in the girls’ bunker for everyone… I didn’t know it was you. I’m sorry, okay? You forgive me now, don’t you?’

‘What are those train runaways running away from?’

‘Don’t you know?’ asked Páta, amazed. ‘Everyone who lived here has been put on a train to Russia. Everybody from the insurgency zone. They say you get given a new cottage and stuff, but I’m not so sure… I don’t wanna go!’

‘Me neither,’ I said.

‘So stay,’ said Páta, and lay on his back. Then we were silent. I lay in some rags, the steam coming off me. It was hot in there. The candles flickered. I lay still and dried out. I didn’t think about what Mr Cimbura had said about my parents. I was thinking about what he had said about those Russian satellites. Maybe they can’t see Mr Cimbura and Sister Alberta because old people don’t have as much body heat. But they could pick up me and Páta. A platoon of Soviet paras could burst in on us at any moment. I wasn’t going to hang around. I didn’t care what Mr Cimbura said about my parents. Not one bit!

Now I sprawled out in some comfort. I heard Páta yawn. It was a good thing the girls or someone had brought in so many blankets. Down here you couldn’t even hear the shellfire or anything. If the new Russians had joined Yegorov’s tank column, we knew nothing about it.