Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“What’s the aerosledge?” asks Freddy.

“You’ll see,” says another Czech. “The guards have in a lean-to this terrible corrugated iron monster on three wide skis. The front is a cabin and the rear is an aero engine with a propeller. It’s a Soviet-made machine from the thirties. It makes a terrific noise and uses about two hundred litres of petrol per hundred kilometres: that’s why they don’t use it much, only when someone runs away. Or for executions.”

“Executions?” Freddy is shocked. “What sort of executions?”

“By propeller,” says the Czech evasively. “For various offences.”

“There’s no point running away,” says the Pole. “After all, where would you run to? On this island, there’s only the camp and the harbour, where the Junjans work. And the moss. One day we’ll be ransomed and we’ll all get home. We’ll remember this like scouts’ camp.”

“Just do as they tell you,” the Czech advises Freddy. “Don’t stick your neck out. Don’t be clever. If the fat man, Agapp, hits you with a cable, pull your head down and don’t look him in the eye. You’ve only got one eye left, and you’d be sorry to lose it. Pushkin is fine. He’ll just ask you if you “know Pushkin”. Tell him you don’t know Pushkin. He doesn’t Pushkin, either: if you told him you did know Pushkin, he’d beat you to death with his cable. But the one you have to worry most about is Gorloy. That’s the one with the thin moustaches. He’s a swine. Don’t attract his attention when he walks around. He’ll kill a man for fun. Last week he killed a Romanian for nothing.”

“And watch out for the prisoner Fridrych, he’s a grass,” the Czech warns him.

“Which one is he?” Freddy asks.

“The one walking alone,” the Czech discreetly points, “with the bulging, watery eyes. The one always smiling like a cretin. He used to work in Prague in the Ministry of the Interior; then he became editor of Resort weekly. He came to Junja to write about the Junjans as a misunderstood minority. Now he’s an informer. They promised him double rations of marmalade. But I’ve never seen marmalade here since I came.”

“He informs on us to the guards,” the SME reporter says with hatred. “Just like Lynař used to.”

“Vladislav M. Lynař, a failed politician,” the Czech explains. “When he found that the Czechs at home didn’t like him and he wasn’t likely to have a career in the politics, he went back to journalism. He informed on us to the guards. For this he could warm himself up for an hour at the guardhouse stove. But we got back at him. He suffocated in his sleep.”

“Wasn’t he the son of that communist?” Freddy suddenly recalls.

“He was,” says the Czech. “His father was an informer, too. In secret. He only pretended to be right-wing.”

They are by now approaching the rocks, which take up an enormous space: there seems to be no end of them. They are all covered in wet bunches of green lichen. The prisoners get metal scrapers and buckets and can start gathering it.

“Just for your information,” says the Czech to Freddy and Doložil, pointing to his bucket, “ten of these buckets is the daily norm. You’ll be lucky if you manage three. But it will get better in time. It’s the way you do it. Stick with me; I’ll show you how to do it.”

Soon, women guards bring in a column of female prisoners near the journalists,

“Who are these women?” Freddy asks.

“Various,” says the Czech. “They’re hostages, foreign journalists, Slovak guerrilla wives, local Slovaks caught in raids. Women’s hands are smaller, so they can reach the best quality lichen in the cracks. That’s why they keep them here.”

For a while Freddy observes the women wrapped in quilted coats with hoods. Suddenly, someone from behind gives him such a terrible blow on his back that he almost wets himself from acute pain. With a wild and astonished yelp, he turns round.

Above him on the rocks stands Agapp, his legs spread wide.

“ Émzdrgmhh bôžźtüul gáčćmnń !!!” the guard shouts and swings his arm to strike again.

Freddy does not care any more. He only wants to die. He straightens up and fixes his single eye on the guard’s face. He grabs the guard’s raised truncheon made of an offcut of cable, rips it from his hand and throws it onto the rocks.

Agapp goggles at him in astonishment.

“ Uff! Uff!” he is nonplussed. “ Gonđcŕř! Gonđcŕř !”

The prisoners stop gathering lichen. Shouts of admiration and amazement come from all sides.

Freddy turns to his friends.

“This is how I, Telgarth, talk to these anthropoid apes,” he says solemnly.

The informer Fridrych promptly translates Freddy’s words into broken Junjan.

Freddy really has no idea how the mysterious word “Telgarth” got to his lips. Maybe a distant memory of films about World War Two Slovak partisans has drifted up from his subconscious? A biting cold march over Chabenec Mountain, Ján Šverma, frozen feet, the village of Telgarth, now called Švermovo, burned down by the Germans… Who knows?

Now, now the time has come, Freddy realises in a brief moment of true insight. The moment of death. He regrets nothing. He has enjoyed his life; life was generous to him. It showed him its bright side, too: love, success, and wealth. Sexual satisfaction. From now on, it’s downhill all the way. Why drag it out? Nobody’s eye will weep a tear when Freddy’s eye closes, etc. At least he’ll die a hero. Slovak and Czech journalists, once they’re released, will take the news of his heroic death to his motherland. None of them will forget anything like this.

Freddy would like to say more, something to rank as famous last words, but nothing occurs to him. While he reflects, a rain of blows hits him on all sides. The guards have got over their shock and hit him all over with their cables. Freddy grabs one truncheon, but a well-aimed blow then cracks his head and makes him lose consciousness.

When he comes to, he is lying on a bunk in the barracks. A prisoner, it is hard to see who in the dark, is making him drink some warm slop.

“He’s coming to!” he shouts in semi-whisper to the others.

Someone climbs to him over the bunks. Freddy hears laboured breathing.

“Well, you really caught it,” says the Czech. “We thought you were a goner. But you’re lucky. They’re behind with their plan, so they started worrying that they might be exchanged for others and sent into combat. That’s why they need every pair of hands. They’ve spared your life.”

Freddy lifts himself on his elbow, but cries out and sinks back again.

“Don’t move much,” says the SME reporter. “They broke three of your ribs and your collarbone. Rest, so you can go back to work tomorrow. If you don’t show up for work, they’ll execute you. By propeller. That’s what Gorloy said.”

Freddy quakes with horror. He doesn’t mind being shot, or beaten to death. But not killed with a propeller! Anything but that! If only because of the unbearable noise. To die in such a noise must be twice as hard.

Doložil crawls to him.

“I’ve found some mushrooms under the snow in the forest, Telgarth,” he tells Freddy in the strange, archaic Junjan Slovak dialect. “They’re for you. We’re lucky they grow here. If you chew about ten buttons tomorrow morning, you’ll get up with no problem. Nothing will hurt. You’ll feel pain, but it will be as if the pain was hurting someone else. And every time more pain comes, you chew more mushrooms. When you run out, tell me. I’ll gather some more.”

He puts a small bag of soft, white button mushroom on his chest and crawls back to his place. Freddy nods, clutches the bag in his fist and again falls unconscious.