Jachim Topol - Gargling With Tar

‘I could go and join the Legion as well, you know,’ I told him. ‘The lads want me to go. So watch yourself!’

And I went and found the others.

Mayhem had broken out on both floors and in the dining room. I’d hardly left the dormitory and in the middle of all the hullaballoo — with all the lads whooping and shouting and laughing and running up and down the stairs — I heard bang! bang! coming from downstairs. And when I got there, I saw that the shortpants had grabbed a big bench and were hammering away at the kitchen door — bang! bang! — and the door flew open and they broke in, laughing and shouting. Pushing in behind them went the little longshirts, clambering over the bench, and I jumped over it too, and landed in the kitchen and got a shock to see it was snowing… The shortpants were hurling bags of flour at each other, and their faces were all white, and they’d also opened all the cupboards, big and small, that weren’t under lock and key. First we ate the fudge. Anyone who could get hold of it crammed it in his mouth and chewed away. No-one cared about ruining their teeth. There wasn’t all that much fudge, so in the hurly-burly we stuffed ourselves with gherkins too. There were huge jars of them and one fell out of a cupboard and smashed. So, laughing and shouting, we hunted the gherkins all over the floor. They slipped out of our hands. And if anyone had felt like it he could have stuffed his mouth with butter. There was a great pile of it in little cubes. Then Karel announced, ‘And who wants some bread?’ and with a huge kitchen knife he hacked at the loaves and handed out bread to anyone who put up his hand. In a cupboard we found jars and jars of jam and plum curd, and everybody’s face was sticky with the goodies, and we swapped bread and gherkins and jam among ourselves. Then Karel called out, ‘Pick up the glass, dammit!’ because some of the little ones had dropped their jam jars, which smashed on the floor, and the sticky sweet glass lay among the glass from the gherkin jars, and the little ones were wading up to their ankles in flour and laughing, playing tag and smearing butter over each other’s faces. Then finally someone kicked or smashed open the door to the pantry, but inside were only boring things: scrubbing brushes, buckets and floor-cloths and boxes full of coal-tar soap… And the noise! The lads kicked the bars of soap all over the kitchen and the corridor, aiming them into the corners… There was a huge washer drum in the kitchen for doing the dirty linen, and one little boy climbed inside and the others set it turning, laughing as they stood round the drum. They all wanted a spin inside. They got hold of the tub we used to bathe in too. Someone climbed into it and the others dragged it around. Then some of the older boys found some salamis. They cut them into little cubes and anyone who wanted some got some. The longshirts left the drum and the tub and begged for salami… Then no-one could eat any more, so we started throwing it at each other.

I put some bread and salami in my pocket.

I went out into the corridor and there was just one longshirt there, sitting on the overturned bench, gripping his belly and snivelling.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘Ow!’ He just crumpled up on the bench.

‘You mustn’t eat glass!’ I said, but by then I was standing by the front door of the Home and I took hold of the handle and the door opened.

It had been snowing. I could see the footprints of the nuns and the Communists, and the deep tracks of the lorry.

The snow was still falling, so the tracks looked as if someone had sprinkled flour into them.

I watched. The slope went off into the distance. Towards the village. I took a step, then another — and I was outside.

It was quiet. The noise and mayhem had calmed down. I turned and saw the others standing in the doorway.

First to come out was Karel, then Páta, and in a moment even the little ones were outside, plastered with jam and with flour in their hair; and some of them didn’t have shoes on, having crawled out of bed barefoot or in their socks. Now they were standing in the snow, and suddenly Páta roared ‘Yippee!’ and jumped in the air. They all started shouting and hopping up and down, and the snow outside the Home was suddenly full of footprints and tracks as we ran around, snowballing and chasing each other round and round in the snow… Then we stopped and suddenly the silence was massive outside, like a great blanket. In the Home you could always hear someone talking, shouting, stomping around or at least coughing… but here it was silent and no one was laughing. We turned back, one by one, and went inside, and the last one closed the door.

I went to see Monkeyface.

I walked up the staircase. The lads had knocked the holy pictures off the walls and the dining room was a mass of overturned tables, but it was still quiet. The door to Sister Leontina’s office was ajar, as was the door to the longshirts’ dorm. And Monkeyface wasn’t in bed.

That had never happened before.

The net had been torn down. He couldn’t have done that by himself.

During the riot downstairs I hadn’t spotted Martin or Šklíba.

The silence upstairs was filled with my breathing. I came out into the corridor. I pushed at the door to Sister Leontina’s office and said, ‘Where are you, you buggers?’

Papers were scattered about the office and the kneeler lay on its side. The only light came in through a chink in the blind. The nuns stood there in the gloom. And the nicest, most beautiful of them, Sister Dolores, came towards me, raising her arms… So I raised mine… Then a great rumpus broke out, and shrieks and high-spirited laughter, and suddenly I saw the lads from the Home leaping around me and shouting, ‘Iya! Iya! Stupid Ilya!’

They had dressed up in the clothes they had found, putting on the nuns’ bonnets and even their black capes. Amid the shouting I heard crying and whimpering. It was Monkeyface calling to me for help. They had tied him to a bed and jammed a bonnet on his head. He was trying to get it off, but was making himself choke. He was crying and snot was streaming from his nose. I wiped his tears and saliva away with my sleeve, and Monkeyface let out a big puff and a huge glob of snot landed on my face. Now the lads were laughing their heads off. I tried to untie Monkeyface. My fingers were shaking. Then someone bashed me on the head. It was Šklíba and he was shouting, ‘Watch the dummy yourself, dummy!’ Then someone else thumped me, and they kept pounding away at me. It didn’t hurt much. I just wanted it to stop.

The door flew open and Karel and Mikušinec came in. ‘Is Ilya here?’ said Karel, and the longshirts fell silent and grabbed at me from different sides, and Karel said, ‘Get out of that clobber now, you faggots!’

The longshirts started stripping. They felt silly now. Karel stamped his foot. ‘Beat it, scram!’ and they fled.

I untied Monkeyface at last. He grabbed me around the neck and wouldn’t let go. He was overjoyed that I’d found him.

Karel stood over us and said, ‘When you’re done with him, come down to the cellar, okay? We’re having a meeting, okay?’ Then he left with Mikušinec.

I knew I couldn’t carry Monkeyface by myself, and I didn’t want to ask Karel and Mikušinec. Monkeyface made all the boys feel sick.

I picked up a sheet and tied him to the bed by one leg. He couldn’t undo it.

And I had a bright idea: I would get the tub from downstairs. I could push him around in it. And when Dýha and the others invited me to join the Foreign Legion with them, I would tell them we could easily push Monkeyface along in the tub. He would be able to come with us. But then I realized there was snow all around the Home. I wouldn’t be able to get the tub through it. We would have to stay behind. The lads could go and join the Legion. But how were we going to live at the Home?