Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

Near the fire, on reindeer pelts sat a wizened old man, Geľo’s father. He had the same braids as Geľo, but they were grey. He had an extra pair of eyes tattooed on his forehead, which made his face look pensive.

“You’ve got us into trouble, again, Geľo,” he said. “As if we hadn’t enough already! Why are you always quarrelling with those Junjans?”

“Father,” Geľo said patiently, “those swine robbed all our traps south of Stormy Tooth. Should I have put up with it?”

“We must bow our heads,” said the old man. “They’re the masters here.”

“How long do the Slovaks have to submit, for God’s sake?” Geľo raged. “They nearly killed my boy.”

“You stuff your head with all these mad new harmful ideas,” shouted the old man. “Before you young men started to rebel, the Junjans left us in peace. If anything happens to Jurko, it will be your fault.”

“I will always rage against unfairness and injustice,” said Geľo. “Why do Junjans, with all their privileges, need to steal from us, too?”

“Because it was ordained by God,” said Geľo’s father.

“Strange that the priest has never mentioned that,” remarked Geľo.

“Because he’s infected by worldly ideas, too,” his father retorted.

“Nothing’s ordained by God,” Geľo interrupted his father. “Everything’s ordained by people. And if people won’t change it, nobody will.”

“Well, you certainly won’t change it,” the toothless old man cackled contemptuously. “Dolt!”

“If you handed the leadership of the clan to me, many things would have changed long ago,” said Geľo. “We’d certainly not be so helpless against the clans of officials.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait for that to happen, my son,” said the old man. “I’m still in charge here. I give the orders.”

“You ought to hand over power to me,” said Geľo. “People laugh at me. You’re sixty-five years old; I should’ve been head of clan long ago.”

“You’re not grown up enough,” said the old man. “Your body is mature, but you have the brains of a ten-year-old. You’re short-tempered and full of hate. You’d lead the family to disaster. I don’t want war with the officials’ clans. I’ve always yielded to the Junjans, and always will, if you want know. For our clan’s peace and prosperity; for your good, too.”

“But you can’t go on yielding for ever,” Geľo said angrily. “You know what the Junjans are like: give them an inch and they take a yard. You’re old and weak; you don’t hunt any more. But if you did, you’d know what is going on at the coast and you’d think differently.”

“Who’s old and weak?” shouted his father. “How dare you talk to your father like this?”

Geľo’s father got up and made a few clumsy warm-up moves with his arms. He worked up a sweat and his face went all red. He was breathing heavy. He quickly started to put on his furs.

“Where are you going?” Geľo asked.

“None of your business,” snapped the father.

“Only there’s a strong wind blowing off the mainland,” remarked Geľo. “It could blow you away.”

“Don’t worry about me,” retorted the old man. “I’m going where you won’t be allowed to go for a long time yet: to the men’s house.”

The old man put on a hood and climbed out into the cold.

Geľo clenched his fist. He was the general laughing stock. Other old men in the settlement had long since handed leadership of their clans to their sons: Čižmár, Sirovec-Molnár, as well as Sirovec-Adamčiak, even Bartoščík-Horný and Chalupa-Hluchý. Only Geľo was still a youth with no rights. And he was a family man. How shaming!

Every Saturday evening the elders of the individual clans met in the men’s house. The tradition was that, as soon as a man became a clan head, all the other men of his generation in his clan would be admitted, too: brothers, cousins, and so on — but not until then. Otherwise, they had to make do with the status of youths and meet in the youth corner.

It was good in the men’s house. The clan heads sat there and talked about the week’s events, deciding a common approach and, with the help of moonshine, which they distilled from flour and sugar, adding special fungi and herbs, they set off on long trips in time and space. Geľo’s father was the oldest hunter in the men’s house. So Geľo and his brothers would have been the oldest youths in the youth corner, had they not been too abashed to visit it and mix with fifteen- to nineteen-year-old lads.

Geľo preferred instead to spend time on long hunting trips, on exploratory treks to find new hunting grounds and trade outlets. So he was well travelled and knew many settlements on the coast and in the tundra.

He was, for example, a welcome guest of nomadic herders, Slovaks who lived deep in the tundra. They bred reindeer and skilfully rode sail sledges, moving from place to place at lightning speed. Like the coastal Slovaks, they avoided the Junjans. They, too, had been forced for long years to stay in herders’ collectives. On their long travels they had to drag along numerous parasitic families of Junjans who had enslaved them. But when the Bolsheviks withdrew to Russia, the tables were turned.

Overnight, the capricious absolute masters became slaves of their former slaves. But the Junjans were a dead loss as slaves. They were useless. For a time the nomads used them for rifle target practice, but even then they proved useless: they couldn’t or wouldn’t run fast. There was no fun or thrill in shooting them. Not even on night target practice, when the Junjans ran clumsily to and fro with lamps hung round their necks. Soon the nomads ran out of Junjans. The survivors were finally left in the tundra to the mercy of the cold and the wild wolves, as big as calves.

It was much the same in the fishing settlements scattered over the various islets. The fishermen got rid of Junjan officials and their families very simply: they took them out to the sea and threw them into the water.

After Hüğottynünđ Űrģüll’s coronation, Junjan oppression worsened again, but only in the towns. In the open tundra, on the coast or the islands, among Slovak fishermen, there was really no one to poison their lives or avenge the murdered officials. Relative freedom reigned. Except for Junjan tax collectors, of course.

Geľo had three brothers: he was the oldest. Then came Martin, married into the Kresan reindeer herder family and now living with the nomads somewhere in pastures far off in the tundra that took up the entire centre of the island.

Brother Samuel was now married but still lived in the yurt with his parents and Geľo’s family. The youngest, Adam, still single, was living with them. He had an eye for Zuzka Chalupová, daughter of the local blacksmith. She was quite willing. They could marry when the ice broke.

“Something has to be done,” said Geľo to his brothers after his father had gone. “We’re the laughing stock of the whole settlement.”

“Not just the settlement!” Samo shouted. “The whole coast! Nobody has seen a man that old going to a men’s house. A man of that age should be sitting in the yurt chewing skins.”

“Everyone our age meets in the men’s house,” Geľo said. “Their fathers handed power over to them long ago. And what about me? Do I or don’t I inherit the clan rights?”

“Our father was given power when he was sixteen years old,” noted Adam. “At least that’s what old Čižmár said.”

“And what about you?” Samo prodded Geľo. “You’re thirty already and you’re still considered a youngster just like us.”

“Something must be done,” Geľo said and his anger surged up to his brow. “Something must be done, for God’s sake,” he added darkly.