Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

As a boy, he had no friends. He grew up in a factory settlement and as his parents were building a house, he could not have a bicycle. His contemporaries would go off on their bikes for adventures, and Freddy would awkwardly huff and puff behind them on foot. When his friends decided to go to Devín Lake, Freddy ran after them as far as he could. Once they were out of sight, he sat on the edge of the road. He was not even half way there, and the gang was on its way back. The boys whizzed past without noticing him. He was not worth stopping for. No one even offered to give him a ride on the bike’s carrier. When the dust settled, Freddy set out back, towards three high brick chimneys you could see on the horizon, towering over the greenery. When he got back to the settlement, the children had dumped their bikes in a heap and were grilling corn-cobs they’d stolen from the collective farm. When he joined them, nobody apologized to him. He was invisible to them. And yet he so much wanted to be one of them, to be a real member of the gang.

Now, an older man, he is one. The looks of admiration that his new friends give him as they discreetly observe him almost embarrass him. “That’s the one who killed a wolf with his bare hands,” they say of him. At the same time, Freddy realises that he knows nothing and is no use to them. Except for the advice he gives them. But he doesn’t think this important, though for the Slovak combatants his advice is of great help.

“Why do you kill only Junjan soldiers and mercenaries?” Telgarth asks Geľo during a dinner.

Geľo stops chomping over his mess tin and gives Telgarth a baffled look.

“You have to kill civilians, too,” says Telgarth, licks his spoon and puts it inside his boot.

“Why?” Sirovec-Molnár is also puzzled. “They don’t shoot at us.”

“We’ll have no peace until we get rid of all the Junjans,” declares Telgarth. “Every Junjan is our enemy, whether he wears a uniform, or not; it’s all the same. In Europe we have a saying: ‘one corpse in civvies is worth more than ten in uniform’.”

Geľo nods. He slowly grasps the idea. He doesn’t yet agree, but he knows that Telgarth has more experience.

Sometimes the guerrillas have a problem: mercenaries have mined the only pass that the guerrillas could use to pursue them. Two Slovaks are wounded and one cries for an hour because of a torn-off thigh, until he asks for a coup de grâce .

“What now?” the men ask Geľo, their commander. Geľo is helpless, though he does not let on. Inside he rages helplessly. He doesn’t want to retreat, but he can’t advance. These are special mines; some leap up to the height of a man and then explode, hurling steel arrows all round.

Telgarth has advice.

“How far is it to the nearest Junjan settlement?” he asks.

“Right here, just over the pass,” a man points behind. “It’s where a fur processing plant used to be.”

“How far is it?” Telgarth asks.

“It’s not far,” says the guerrilla. “You’ll work up sweat five times.”

“How many souls live there?” Telgarth wants to know.

“Three official clans live there,” the priest says. “That makes about hundred and fifty Junjans.”

“That’s enough,” says Telgarth. “Half of the unit can stay here, just in case of a counter-attack. The other half goes to the Junjan settlement and bring a hundred Junjans back here.”

“What are they for?” wonders Geľo.

“We’ll drive them ahead of us through the minefield,” says Telgarth. “All the mines will be set off by the Junjans. Nothing will happen to us.”

The men stand in silent awe.

“But they’ll all die there,” Čižmár counters.

“So?” Telgarth laughs. “Those mines were laid by their own people, so let their own people be blown up by them, not us, right? At least it stays in the family!”

This strange argument silences them all.

“As I said,” he says. “One corpse in civvies is worth more than ten in uniform. When the Junjans and mercenaries find them, they’ll realise that we know no mercy and they’ll be frightened.”

And this is what happens. The herded Junjans, whimpering with fear, clear a way for the Slovak fighters through the mined area, and thus the retreating mercenaries lose the advantage. Geľo’s unit locates them and attacks them at night.

Telgarth takes part in this action, too. He fights in the vanguard and his fellow fighters can see his contempt for death. He is now used to the sound of bullets flying past his ears and his life is taking on a new quality, although he still does not fully realise it. This time he’s not just a passive witness of bloodletting. This time he’s holding not a camera, but a weapon, a Czech 58/V submachine gun that he was given by Geľo the day they fled the labour camp together. He shoots right and left, but as he does not know how to shoot, his firing is pretty ineffective.

After the battle, a few trembling prisoners lie tied up on the ground. The fighters took them prisoner at Telgarth’s prompting.

“We need squealers,” Telgarth explains.

“What are squealers?” ask the baffled fighters.

“That’s what you call prisoners who tell you something about the enemy units’ plans,” says Telgarth.

The prisoners, who at first sight look like Russian mercenaries, are smiling arrogantly. They despise death and even more they despise the Slovaks. They have no idea that they are now Telgarth’s squealers and that, for that reason, a quick death would be the best outcome for them.

Before Telgarth joined the guerrillas, the Slovaks were mild and good-natured, almost naïve you could say. They would let prisoners go after the latter promised to be good and not to fight the Slovak people. The Junjan Slovaks had this reputation, so the Russians are arrogantly grinning. They’re sure of being released.

“Where’s Mäodna’s hiding place?” Telgarth asks them, smiling amiably. “How many soldiers are defending Űŕģüllpoļ?” The Russians have close-cropped hair, as if the hairdresser used a chamber pot on them all; their faces are black from smoke. They look at Telgarth arrogantly.

“They won’t say,” Geľo shakes his head. “I know them. They’d rather be shot.”

“Why shoot them outright?” asks Telgarth with a smile. “There are other means.”

He adopts the persona of a nonchalant SS-man, played by the elegant František Dibarbora in a Slovak film Wolf’s Lairs .

“Pain,” says Telgarth meaningfully.

He looks like a professor giving a lecture. His words are addressed not only to his fellow-fighters, who stand by bored, their weapons ready, but also to the stubborn prisoners. He has hated them from the start: those Russian turnip heads with their “chamber pot” haircuts. Hatred slowly permeates his heart. He shudders.

“Unspeakable pain,” says Telgarth, not caring whether anyone understands him, “pain that puts someone on the brink of madness. Pain that engulfs the entire mind and ousts all other ideas. It burns out the nervous system in unspeakable ecstasy.”

“Slovaks don’t do torture,” says Geľo proudly, but hesitantly.

Geľo has been unsure of his own words ever since he cleared the mined pass by using Junjans.

“That’s right,” nods Telgarth. “They don’t do torture. No need to. We won’t touch these Russians. Nothing tortures a man more than his own body. Coil them up! All of them! Let them torture themselves.”

Some guerrillas, ropes in hand, approach the Russians and, perplexed, look at Telgarth.

Telgarth realizes that these simple men have never in their life read Karl May. That is why they have no idea how to coil somebody up.

He shows them how. He has them lay the Russians prone and gag them. He forces one to stretch his tied hands out forwards. He uses the rope to tie the handcuffs and leg cuffs together as tight as he can. The Russian is now lying only on his belly. His tied arms are raised over his face, almost in a begging gesture. His bound ankles are tied to his arms. The rope connecting them is about half a metre long. The Russian has trouble breathing.