Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

Then some more volleys cracked. They were coming in waves. They were probably still blasting away at our tanks in the circular defensive line. Then, in a break between volleys, I heard him. But he only made me cross. Considering everyone in the column thought Margash was me, he could at least have learnt to move like a saboteur! He blundered through that cellar as if he owned the place. The camel lads were close on his heels. Some had torches. We could see each other.

He stood in front of me in a tankman’s jacket that really belonged to me! He was covered in blood, breathing fast. I was surprised he was not surprised to see me. They must have come to get Monkeyface. They had hauled him out before, after all! Now two of the camel lads pounced towards him, but I wouldn’t let them near.

‘Ilya!’ said Margash. ‘I’m glad to see you! It’s great you’re here.’

‘Sure,’ said I. ‘So you’re off to that beautiful land of yours now, are you?’ I said it to show him I hadn’t forgotten anything. I spoke Russian so the camel lads — the cellar was full of them — could understand. Margash wasn’t carrying a knife this time. But he took off his jacket and handed it to me.

He stood in front of me, stripped to the waist. He handed me the jacket and tugged at my tracksuit top.

‘Quick,’ he said, ‘we’ll take him away!’

‘You’re takin’ Monkeyface away?’ I shouted back, because the cellar walls were shaking with further bursts of shellfire.

‘Yeah!’ shouted Margash, because now the pounding was non-stop. Some of the camel lads were over by Monkeyface, and I couldn’t stop them doing anything. I turned round quickly, because they had whipped the sheet off him and were covering him with some skins they’d brought along. And Margash tossed one big hairy skin right in my face. It was the wolf.

‘I had this dream, listen!’ shouted Margash.

‘No!’ I shouted.

‘You’re gonna kill Captain Yegorov,’ Margash said in his normal voice, because the tanks had stopped spitting shells. Outside there was just the crackle of light arms and the chatter of machine guns, so we could hear each other… If he had told me this in some sun-dappled clearing in Chapman Forest, or even in my dreams, say, I’d have laughed, but he was telling me back there in that cellar, and my whole body was covered in goose pimples. The Home from Home was shaking from shellfire and my tank column comrades were dying.

‘You said your dad was a wolf!’ I said to Margash, hurling the wolf skin back at him. ‘Why did you do this?’

‘Captain Yegorov ordered me to,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to kill him.’

The camel lads were saying something to Margash in their incomprehensible lingo. They gently raised up Monkeyface. He was still lying on the floor. Five or six of the camel lads picked him up and set off out of the cellar.

Margash was buttoning up the tracksuit top I’d given him, and explaining that they were going to take Monkeyface to that wonderful land where there was lots of grass and where all boys are brothers.

‘Are you glad?’ he asked.

I nodded, because I did want them to take Monkeyface away, and I put on the tankman’s jacket. It had splashes of wolf’s blood on it, but that would soon dry out.

‘The Captain’s waiting for you,’ said Margash.

He stooped, shifted the iron plate over the former grave to one side, fished down below, and handed me something wrapped in a rag: it was Commander Vyžlata’s black pistol.

The camel lads were going down the passage ahead of us. We had become Monkeyface’s funeral procession. We were taking him outside. I stuffed the pistol in my belt. I had no idea what would happen next.

We’ve came out of the dark of the cellar into the daylight. We stood outside the Home from Home, blinded and deafened by the explosions. The ‘Happy Song’ servicemen lying or kneeling inside the barricade were blasting away with their guns. I could tell the circular defensive line of tanks beyond the barricade hadn’t been broken yet, but it wouldn’t be long, because assault tanks were rolling towards the Home from Home from all sides. The mist had cleared. The light falling out of the sky onto the fighting men was dotted all over with pinpoints of smoke, and those manning the barricade were setting off yellow and dark-blue smoke flares to make themselves less easy targets. So I was coughing, defenceless and exposed to the gunfire, but what happened next?…

If I were being told this by some stranger — even one who knew all about combat scenarios — I’d laugh in his face. I would know that telling lies in childhood had never led to him gargling vile, dark tar… but this is what happened: there, outside the door of the Home from Home, despite the clangour of battle and in the very thick of it, the camels calmly stood, all harnessed up, gently bobbing their heads, and then, right there in front of Margash, the lead camel, a truly gigantic beast, knelt down and Margash hopped onto its back, and the camel lads passed Monkeyface… his relics… up to him; then they calmly took up their positions on the wooden seats, and the kneeling camels, laden with lads, got to their feet and towered over everything, ignoring the shooting, the shouting and the choking of the injured; they ignored the bits of iron whizzing through the air; they walked on as if they really were part of one of Margash’s dreams and not reality… I had an idea that Margash was dreaming right then, and that the dream was happening. But I wasn’t dreaming, so because of the whistling bullets I hurled myself to the ground. The camels walked on through the shellfire. Suddenly part of the barricade was ripped out by an explosion. I could see and hear soldiers screaming. Just a few paces from me one of them reared up, but it was not Kantariya! He dropped his Kalashnikov and fell headlong into a sack of paper. Shrapnel and odd bullets drummed into the barricade, into the paper saturated with cellar water, and now blood as well. I could see that the fat deer had been killed by the defenders, who had used their bodies to pad out the bulwarks around a machine-gun nest. The camels walked on through it all, slowly up the hill, striding along serenely with their load of lads, and I got this idea that of all the people there I was the only one who could see them, so I was becoming part of Margash’s dream… The camels strode uphill, unnoticed by the fighters. Untouched by any of the projectiles, they vanished in the clouds of smoke.

I had no idea that instead of instant death — and with it the kingdom of heaven — camels were capable of passing through sustained fire into a dream landscape of peace and quiet. I was glad. I never saw them again.

I was floundering about outside the Home from Home with the bloody wolf skin in my hand, and because the gunfire had eased up briefly, again I heard ‘Ilya!’ It was my captain calling. I went looking for him.

I hoped little Monkeyface would be safe in the saddle of a dream-world camel. I hoped he would travel all the way to a wonderful land. Then I resolved that another of Margash’s dreams would come true, and I pulled out the pistol. I released the safety catch and went in search of the Captain.

Captain Yegorov loomed in front of me so abruptly that I dropped the raised gun. Then Kozhanov’s lot started firing again. Captain Yegorov stood there as if there was nothing going on. He looked at me, fixing me with the searching stare of a seasoned, front-line warrior.

I hoped that the Captain would attribute any small differences between myself and Margash to the rapid changes that come about during an adolescence spent under fire… I half-crouched and tried to protect my head at least. The Captain stood motionless. He glanced at the wolf skin I was clutching, and his lips rippled into a tiny smile… He was glad he had found me! Shots crashed all around us, taking splinters out of the door of the Home from Home. We were veiled in a cloud of smoke, this time from a red flare. The Captain made a move towards me, not bothered by the black pistol I was offering him. My captain hugged me briefly, clutching me to him… It was just like that moment when the legend of Fedotkin and his boy came to life and Captain Yegorov embraced me on the burning tank… I couldn’t bring myself to squeeze the trigger. The Captain took the wolf skin from me. I stuffed the gun with the safety catch back on down my trousers, and ran after the Captain. The wolf skin full of its gobbets of dark blood led me through the smoke of the flares as I chased after him.