Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

With these words, Sosna clicks his heels and marches out of the room, followed by his aide holding the contracts.

After this, nobody can reign in the brand-new submariners with money in their wallets. In a short operational meeting they agree where they’ll drink to the sudden change in their lives.

“ On the Watch opens only after three in the afternoon,” Skopšík shouts louder than anyone: he used to live in Dejvice and knows his way about here. “And it’s a dump. Let’s go to the Riga . It’s been open since one.”

And that’s where they go. The élite of the Czech Navy noisily leaves the ministry building.

“Man, I’d like to know how I’m going to explain this to my wife!” Skopšík laughs, though it is now no longer a joke.

“Well, I’d like to know how, too,” says Kylar. “In the morning I left as an administrator of the Water Supply Board and in the evening I come back as a navy submarine officer. There’s an enigma for you.”

* * *

We were six brothers. We kept dying and perishing: only seven of us remained.

Junjan Slovak proverb

For Geľo Todor-Lačný-Dolniak it all began long ago, early one morning two years ago. First, an unbearable blizzard raged for about three weeks.

As soon as the blizzard abated for a few days, the hunters from the Slovak settlement of Habovka set out for the bay. They put the sealskin cases with their guns over their shoulders and set off for the ice floes where the wind and sea currents formed pools of water. Experienced hunters could tell by the reflections in the sky how big these pools were and how far away. Huge pools looking like giant lakes with icy shores were no good for hunting: it was hard to pull a dead walrus out of them.

The hunters, camouflaged in white polar-bear fur coats, sat somewhere by the edge of the pool, smoked their pipes, drank their alcohol, watching for prey, never taking their eyes off the water. A walrus only rarely appeared. But the moment he poked his hairy snout out of the water, a shot would ring out. The prey would start to paddle its fins, hide for a while under water and then surface, dyeing the water with its blood.

For three days, the hunters returned almost empty-handed. On the fourth day a strong freezing wind blew offshore again. It was dangerous to stay on the floes. The hunters hurried back. The wind blew in violent gusts and the reindeer yurts almost vanished in the blizzard. You could hear cracking floes moving in from the sea. The walruses were far away.

Famine struck the coast. In the men’s house they talked only about hunting walrus. Nobody was interested in foxes any more. It’s pleasant to hunt for fox fur on a full stomach. You can buy a lot of goods for the fur. Nobody dies for want of goods. But you can’t live without food.

As soon as the blizzard died down for good and the winter set in, the ice field closed up. The edge of the open sea moved further from the shore. Stars came out at night. In the morning the impatient hunters grabbed their leather kayaks and set out to the sea to hunt.

Fragile vessels with sails made of plastic sacks sailed off to the horizon. Experienced hunters navigated flawlessly. Soon they found walruses. The hunt went on till noon. People waiting on shore could hear the gunshots echo: the sea surface carried sound an unbelievable distance.

It was afternoon when one of the children yelled. The kayaks were nearing the shore. One of them was so low in the water that it nearly sank. Six sealskins filled with air were bobbing in the water, keeping it afloat. Hunters dressed in furs were bailing it out. Others sat up to their waists in water. They calmly paddled and wouldn’t let the kayak come onto the ice until their friends threw them a leather rope. Only when they were on the shore you could see why the kayak had almost sunk. It had three walruses in it. All the other kayaks had one or two walruses. The hunt was a success.

Not only people, but dogs from all over the settlement rushed to the ice field. They sat in a motionless semicircle, their heads facing the meat, licking their chops. They showed their impatience with an occasional long howl and a snap of their teeth. The least patient ones dashed at clumps of snow formed by blood and hungrily ate them.

Since the blizzard started, no one had fed the dogs. They ran round the settlements, freezing and mangy. Snatches of hair stuck out only on their sides. They fought viciously over discarded bones. Others ran deep into the tundra. They turned feral and hunted for marmots and shore mice. Now they sensed that the fast was over and showed their joy in their own way. When the hunter is sated, his dogs do well, too. When the hunter starves, they starve, too.

The men dragged the walruses to the reindeer-skin yurts. The dogs followed in their tracks. Knives appeared in the hunters’ hands. With skilful movements they began to skin their prey and joint the meat.

The women came eagerly out into the street. They took the walrus skins and started working them: a thick layer of fat had to be scraped off.

A huge fire was lit in the clearing in front of the yurts. Pieces of meat roasted. With a loud spray, the fat burst out and dripped down. Old and young Habovkans ran round with greasy faces. They couldn’t get enough of the meat. The dogs were resting with full bellies. They panted, and their squinting slant eyes watched their masters singing merry songs.

In the evening, a thanksgiving Mass was celebrated in the priest’s yurt. The priest’s wife had to boil a big cauldron of tea: they had probably never had so many believers here before. Many could not even fit inside the yurt. They stood outside.

The parish accordionist Trefuľa was aware that this was no ordinary event and added to his music all sorts of extras, so the priest was sometimes thrown and lost his thread in his sermon. He talked of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fishermen. He compared them to today’s exploits.

The believers sang with feeling and sincere thanks in their souls. Their voice rose from the snowbound coast through the fragmented clouds, up to the stars freezing in infinity.

When Geľo Todor-Lačný-Dolniak woke up next morning, he did not realise that today his carefree journey through life as a simple hunter and fur trapper would end and he would begin the life of a fighter for the freedom of the Junjan Slovak ethnic minority.

The day before, after Mass, he decided to set out to Stormy Tooth, to check his traps and take a barrel of mineral grease from the hot asphalt lake that never froze. The Todors’ yurt had run out of it, and he had also promised a barrel to the priest.

Geľo got up early: the battered old Russian alarm clock showed two-thirty in the morning. His head ached a bit after the feast that had gone on late into the night, but when he had a sip of brandy, the pain in his forehead went away.

Over his thin underpants made of reindeer-calf skin with the fur inside, Geľo put on sealskin trousers and comfortable and ornamental boots. He couldn’t remember if he put on a warm jacket and the sealskin vest over it, or the sealskin first and the jacket on top. It was a long time ago. Over everything else he wore a thick ankle-length fur coat.

He put a huge fur hat on his head. In the yurt it was semi-dark. Of three lamps only one, the smallest, was still burning. The moss steeped in walrus fat burned with a stench and quiet sputtering. The winter was long. The mineral grease had run out a few days ago.

They were all still asleep. Geľo went to the children’s corner, screened off by a leather curtain the height of a man. He grabbed his eldest son, thirteen-year-old Jurko, by the shoulder and shook him.

“Get up,” he said. “It’s time.”

The youngster quickly opened his eyes.