Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

There’s a lot going on between the Home from Home building and the barricade. Behind the barricade — piled high with bundles of paper, school desks, chairs and anything else that could be dragged outside the Home from Home — giraffe heads perched on long necks were waving; and beyond the barricade, which in the grey light of dawn seemed to be getting higher and higher, ‘Happy Song’ soldiers were flitting about, dragging bundles of paper and various other things. I couldn’t recognize their faces at that distance. All I could see beyond the rampart were vague flittering figures in uniform. Crouching low I carried on… and I had to slip past the first tank of the chain of defence that had lined up ready to fire. They must have been able to see me! So I walked on slowly, just walking… At the very moment when I felt a gun barrel in my back, I heard, ‘ Eto Ilya — it’s Ilya!’ Timosha looked closely at me from under his tin helmet. He was worn out! A second gunner in a raggedy sailor shirt and camouflage dress was just as tired-looking. They stared at me, but without really trying to work out where I’d been all that time… ‘Great to see you! Off to the captain with you!’ said Timosha, severely. He was staring at my tracksuit top. Perhaps he wondered why I wasn’t wearing the tankman’s jacket that he had pinned me into with his own hands. With a wave of his gun he chivvied me round behind the tank in the direction of the barricade. The other one never opened his mouth. They were saving their breath, and saving on movement. I knew this kind of stiffness. They could scent battle in the air, and wanted to be prepared. I went where they told me.

The first light from the sky had diluted the shadow of the Home from Home into wisps that the gunners shredded as they moved around in it. They were pouring water onto the bundles of paper they’d piled up as defensive mounds — a burning barricade is hard to defend. Also on the barricade they’d put the stove from the kitchen workshop, and piles of wood from the cellar. They’d gone and chopped up the cubicles! There were all sorts of boxes and piles of bricks. They must have gutted the insides of our poor Home from Home… I walked slowly over to the barricade, walking as tall as possible, so as not to be mistaken for some enemy saboteur on a recce and killed by a burst of gunfire. But the helmeted gunner on sentry duty just waved to me. He recognized me… I skipped over the paper bundles in his sector and there I was, standing outside the Home from Home.

In my head I sorted out what I was going to say to Captain Yegorov. It was obvious from the unit’s combat situation and the dead tank that the Bandits hadn’t been fibbing: the new Russians didn’t want this lot.

It crossed my mind that the ‘Happy Song’ tankmen and gunners were digging their own graves, and that inside the barricade, surrounded by the winds around the Home from Home, I was about to enter my own grave. The poles we had used to break cinder strips into crushed ashes, and to catch flying scraps of charred paper with, had been used to reinforce the barricade. I stepped aside for some soldiers, getting a nasty bang on the knee when I tripped over the wash-tub… The company sergeant, whose face I couldn’t make out in the morning mist, gave me an earful. Accompanied by two gunners, he was dragging the tub along, filled with broken bricks, to add to the barricade. The bustle of work was mixed with the cries of small and fully grown animals, and it was obvious that more refugees from the Socialist Circus had arrived. I really wanted to take a good look at the animals, but there was no time, because I wanted to get inside and straight down to the cellar before daybreak, when everything is visible.

I edged at a snail’s pace through the pushing and shoving mass of bodies. The soldiers were getting on with building the barricade, and the animals kept getting under their feet. I edged towards the front door of the Home from Home, stepping over and sometimes tripping on the hosepipes they were using to fill some buckets with stinking water, and then I realized that they were dousing the barricade with water from the cellar… They had even chopped up the Bulgarian seaside sideshow and tossed its painted planks on top of the bundles of paper. The camels were hobnobbing with some other animals, including the seaside donkey — well, that was no surprise! There were some big fat does, too, like I’d never seen running around here. They were gobbing at everything and lashing out with their feet. Some gunners were dragging them along with ropes behind the Home from Home, and I heard a sharp burst of automatic fire, followed by another. I had barely got a decent look at them and they were already being executed. Tough luck. Nobody took any notice, and they didn’t take any notice of me either. How come, when I hadn’t been with them for so long? They didn’t care a damn about me… Then suddenly I heard ‘Ilya!’ and again ‘Ilya!’ and there was no mistaking the voice of Captain Yegorov. I stiffened to attention, then the cloud of dust kicked up by the fat deer in the haze of daybreak dispersed, and right there in front of the door of the Home from Home I saw a knot of people, and my captain was calling me from the middle of it! Soldiers were jammed around the wolf’s cage, which was wide open, and the wolf was just lying there on its side. He was huge, lying there as if at death’s door. I stepped forward, since it was my captain calling, then suddenly I was overwhelmed by an image that escaped from my head.

I saw myself in my torn tankman’s jacket. I was running out of the door of the Home from Home in answer to my captain’s call. I dashed outside with a kitchen knife in my hand, a great long carving knife pointing down… ‘Ilya!’ Captain Yegorov called again, and at last I saw him, squatting down next to the open cage. Margash came running from the kitchen to the wolf with a knife, and before the other soldiers gathered round the cage blocked my view, I saw Margash lift up the wolf’s head. I saw the wolf’s tongue flop out of its mouth, and I saw Margash cut its throat. But everyone thought it was me doing it…

I got past them easily. I slipped inside the Home from Home. I ran alongside the hosepipe that was snaking down the steps. I ran into the cellar. I was there in no time.

The hosepipes had sucked gallons of water out of the cellar. Footsteps echoed down there, as if you were not alone. I didn’t need a light to get to the grave cubicle. The grating was down on the floor. Little Monkeyface lay under a dreadful, grubby sheet on the iron manhole cover. He was completely covered up. I could hear a droning sound. It was the wind from the bottom end of the cellar, where there were more cellars. I reached out and touched the sheet, and I was glad it was too dark to see.

I wasn’t thinking about anything. My head was full of the churned-up leftovers of everything I’d been through. Yeah, I got the idea of staying there with him. But then I made up my mind to live as long as possible instead. I decided to wait until I grew up and to see what it was like. In the meantime, I’d gone there to hide with Monkeyface, because there was nowhere else in the world for me to go. Then the drone of the wind was interrupted by some volleys from outside. The walls of the home shook. Bits of plaster fell into my hair. Kozhanov’s army had attacked.

I patted the sheet in various places to find where his foot, shoulders, knee were. I was with him. He couldn’t forgive me. Nobody could forgive me. I could have waited until the end of the battle, then turned myself in for them to execute me, though they would probably just finish me off without any fuss. There wasn’t any point in that. I went back to him. I was guarding him, my little brother, keeping a lookout in the dark. What more could I do?