Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

Kozhanov stroked the wolf pelt, and said, ‘Very good, comrade. This’ll make some excellent wolf-skin caps for our Russian winter. Very good.’ Then he ran a finger across the rough surface of the dinosaur egg and said, ‘This is an outstanding souvenir, comrade. Take good care of it… Of course, you don’t need the drivers, or the lad!’

Timosha and Kantariya were hunched under the pickup’s tarpaulin. I stood to attention. Captain Yegorov placed a hand on my shoulder, looking down at his feet, at the carpets we were trampling on, and said, ‘This is my son. All his companions died in battle.’ And Captain Yegorov gave a little snivel.

And Major General Kozhanov said, ‘Ah, comrade of mine! Such is war, motherfucking bitch that she is!’ and he also started snivelling. Then he said, quietly, ‘Keep the lad then, and fly to safety! Fly like eagles!’

Kozhanov suddenly squatted down among the carpets and produced a flask from his coat pocket, uncorked it, took a swig, then passed it to Yegorov, who also squatted and drank. The Major General stroked the wolf skin and said, ‘Go ahead and make a nice warm cap for yourself, and one for the lad.’

After a while, Kozhanov said, ‘Well, we’ve had a little sit-down before the journey,’ and he stood up and climbed out, followed by Captain Yegorov. I hopped out as well, the tarpaulin clipping me across the head.

Major General Kozhanov was smiling now, and he told us, ‘The way is open, but just wait a moment…’ He disappeared under the black tarpaulin of the command post and reappeared almost at once. Inside he had taken off his flat officer’s cap and replaced it with a helmet with a metal spike. The helmet, decorated with a red star, looked old-fashioned and it was all shiny… ‘Nice, eh?’ Kozhanov laughed in our direction, but his paras weren’t laughing. They were rigid, holding their rifles. The horses’ tails on the lances were flapping in the wind, and Kozhanov said, ‘Kill just the drivers.’

There was a burst of gunfire, then another. They merged into one. I didn’t turn around, but out of the corner of my eye I could see two paras dragging Kantariya by the legs. He had a hole in his head, his arms trailing across the ground. Then I heard a revolver crack. That was them finishing off Timosha. It made me feel sorry.

Captain Yegorov felt sorry as well. Anyone could see that. Major General Kozhanov put an arm around his shoulders, gave him a bit of a shake, and said, ‘I know what you’re feeling, dear comrade. Your unit’s been destroyed. I’ve been through all that several times… See it as a necessary rearmament of our forces. We won’t be lacking tanks any more anyway. All around here,’ he swept his arm over Siaz, ‘will be one big storehouse for our nuclear arsenal.’

We sat in the driver’s cab, the steering wheel still warm from Kantariya’s hands. We would soon be beyond the sectors I had described and drawn in my maps. We were waved through crossroads and junctions by traffic controllers with signal flags, and here and there I spotted boards nailed to trees saying Louny in Russian letters, and an arrow marked on them, so I reckoned that was where we were headed, and I thought of Dýha and that I was also seeing this part of the world from a truck, and like him I was sort of under escort, though not with some Czech coppers! I was with a Soviet captain, not going to some sort of young offenders’ dump, but to a real home, if Captain Yegorov was really going to take me as his son.

But I couldn’t ask the Captain about anything. I clutched the shaggy wolf pelt tight around my knees, doing my best not to get covered in blood, which had already clotted in parts and was flaking off under my fingers; and because the skin was so very shaggy, I couldn’t feel the rough, crinkly egg through it. The Captain said we were going to fly like eagles to a faraway and glorious country to the east, a country so glorious and vast that I couldn’t begin to imagine it… but then I got pissed off with the Captain going on and on! It sounded like yet another fairy tale and I was too old for fairy tales. But I couldn’t tell the Captain that, could I?

Then the Captain started singing, tooting his horn and generally carrying on. He stamped his feet — all to show how happy he was! His singing grated on my ears, deafened by countless battles, and on my guts, which were empty except for hunger. Then he was chattering on about some Katyusha bird, most likely some cuddly whore, creeping about somewhere on a river bank. Then in his deep voice the Captain started singing about a glorious, faraway land, a homeland full of dense forests and stuff. Next he was cursing Chapman Forest, this murderer of his own men, who sold them down the river so that that other murdering bastard, Kozhanov, would let him keep his trophies — stolen, regrettably, with my help, from ordinary village folk… I was just thinking his face was dripping with sweat, when I realized my captain was crying — and laughing at the same time. It crossed my mind to jump off the pickup, but that wasn’t a good idea, because we were moving fast on a tarmac road. I’d never travelled so fast! Riding on a tank was nothing compared to this!

It could actually have been the speed that made faces in the landscape flash past the cab window. They kept surfacing in my mind. I was getting all of the people in my mind mixed up with real people. Soon we were passing just the odd, isolated traffic controller, which meant the fighting was over! Otherwise they wouldn’t be standing there on their own! The bandits would have liquidated them! We flashed through some village where there was a herd of pigs rootling around in the puddle on the green and all the windows were curtained. I was beginning to see that my Czech homeland was truly massive! Much bigger than the piddling area shown on my maps! We passed other traffic, military vehicles with red stars and tiny private cars full of Czechs gawping, and they gave us some real dirty looks, I can tell you! But they didn’t say anything, didn’t even sound their horns when they got a sight of Yegorov’s tattered, battled-soiled uniform, and mine too perhaps! They were frightened, these civilians… Then the Czech countryside was flashing past again, in various degrees of sludginess and batteredness. So I shut my eyes tight and over the Russian chit-chat and Captain Yegorov’s singing and shouting I saw the faces of the people from the village… and I could see the men of the Home Guard, and the faces of the nuns, who were probably all dead. And I could see other people from the village. Some of them waved to me as if I were leaving for ever and running away, and they were happy! I could go, for all they cared, and they made it obvious they would never ever forgive me for what I’d done… I saw the faces of the people of Siřem that I used to know — who are probably all in Hell by now, or on their way there — being evacuated. They were lurking behind every tiny little stone in this Czech land that we were passing at a fiendish speed, and they were shouting at me, angry and spiteful… Everywhere I saw the faces of those people who were cowering in the barn, anywhere in that sector Tomašín, Luka, Skryje, Bataj and the rest… They shouted out how much they hated me and that they would never forgive me. Then we started down an avenue of trees, but there weren’t any heavy branches flapping about laden with this summer’s sweet cherries — no, they were women trees and here were the frozen masks of Czechia that ancient savages had carved in the trees in the days when Chapman Forest was everywhere. They were the battle colours of hate… The women trees vanished and suddenly I saw Hanka. Her lips were moving and she wanted to tell me something, so I leant across to her and bashed my face on the glass, because the pickup had stopped and I woke up, and Captain Yegorov tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘ Bystro! ’ We had been in some hurry to get away from Hanka’s country.