Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

We unloaded the trophies from the pickup, dragging the few sacks that were left. We had driven into some hangar, and Captain Yegorov stopped shouting and singing, and he wasn’t crying either. He was making out that he was strict and tough, as a commanding officer should be… From under the limp tarpaulin I dragged out his pictures of stags and his statuettes of stags, big ones and small ones, and a hip bath and those carpets, lots of carpets, and I took it all away and stacked it up and crammed it into this small plane! So we must have been at our airfield at Louny.

Captain Yegorov was cramming even the cracked mirror with the washstand into the plane, but it just didn’t want to fit! So, following the Captain’s orders, I rearranged the sacks of money and watches and the carpets — but the mirror still refused to fit! We would have to leave it behind. Captain Yegorov kicked it to pieces.

He ordered me to climb into the plane’s cargo space on top of the pile of carpets and other trophies, then he passed me the wolf pelt, ever so carefully. It was on my lap and the wolf hairs tickled my throat, but I held on tight to the egg… The Captain put on his pilot’s helmet with lots of attachments sticking out, then he strapped me to his belongings! He must have lost the ropes that he used to tie me up with at night during some battle somewhere, or maybe he’d forgotten where he put them… There were these straps hanging from the sides of the cargo space inside the tiny plane, and it was these my captain tied me up with… I was already half-choked by the pile of carpets around me, and with the dragon’s egg on my knees I was coughing up wolf hairs… and he still had to tie me up! A fine start to my new life, I thought to myself… The little plane set off at a crazy speed, and with the engines roaring we rose up and then hit the ground with the wheels again. We did a hop. My captain couldn’t hear me, though I was shouting and hitting my head on the steel walls. The wolf pelt slipped off me, the egg rolled out and it was bashing against the walls of the plane, bouncing like a ball. My brain had almost turned to porridge when the egg came flying past me. With my free hand I dipped into the sack of watches to throw handfuls of them at the Captain’s cabin to get him to stop — to get him to tame the egg! The other trophies also put my life at risk, the biggest stag with its massive antlers shattering against the walls of the cargo space. I kept dodging the bits and pieces flying everywhere like exploding shrapnel. I spotted the pistol that had slipped out from under the carpets somewhere: now it lay at my feet. I couldn’t cut through the strap with a broken piece of the stag, but I did manage to snap it bare-handed, such was my strength born of sheer terror at the way the plane and the flying egg kept leaping about. I wanted to warn the Captain, the confusion being the same as if we were in a battle… Over all the noise the egg made as it banged into the walls — destroying a trophy here and there — the Captain couldn’t hear me shouting… only after a deafening gunshot did Captain Yegorov look back… and just then the little plane left the ground and we were flying straight into the sun… Captain Yegorov shouted something, leaning back towards me into the cargo area. The egg ricocheted off the wall and bopped me on the head, and then there was another shot… Regrettably, I had shot my Captain Yegorov right between the eyes. He must have fallen backwards onto the plane’s control stick, though I didn’t see that, because soon afterwards we crashed.

When I came to, it was night. My captain and the entire cargo lay in the wreckage of the little plane. It was easy to yank off a bit of twisted metal. Then I started digging.

I spent three days and three nights making a kurgan for the Captain and the plane. I had some provisions from the wartime shelter. Once they had gone I stopped eating.

After I had trampled down the earth all around the kurgan, disguising it with turf and young saplings, I lived there for a while. I might have been guarding my captain. I might have been on the lookout for some new army to join. Then I realized I had to go. I consulted my maps. I began writing.

When it comes to the writing, it is me and it isn’t. I’ve written over the maps and pages torn from books. I’ve written down the truth about everything I’ve been through. I’ve written about the war of the Czechs and Slovaks with the armies of the five states, and it’s all true. There isn’t enough tar water in the world for me to gargle if I told a single lie. I covered every bit of paper with my truth, and then I set off for Siřem.

Only I know where the kurgan — my captain’s grave — is. And where the egg is. I haven’t marked it on any map. I’ll put these pages I’ve written inside my parents’ tomb. Maybe someone will find them one day. Maybe someone will still be able to read Czech.

I’ll also take a look at the wartime shelter, to see whether the last Siřem family is still living there. I’m just about to set off.

I’m going home.

JÁCHYM TOPOL is one of the best-known Czech writers of today. Famous in his youth as an underground activist, poet and songwriter, he was an early signatory of Charter 77, and published a samizdat literary magazine Revolver Revue . After the1989 Velvet Revolution he co-founded the weekly newspaper Respekt . his first novel, City Sister Silver , was a huge success both in the Czech Republic and internationally. Gargling with Tar is his fourth novel. All his novels have been translated into many languages. Jáchym Topol lives in Prague.

DAVID SHORT has taught Czech in London since 1973. his translations include Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp by Bohumil Hrabal, Notebooks from New Guinea by Vojtech Novotny and Dad Takes Goal Kicks by Jiří Pokorný. he is currently working on a new translation of RUR by Karel Čapek.