Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

The track meanders like a snake through picturesque hills. The locomotives, climbing uphill, hiss with fatigue. Geľo is silent, looking out of the window. One day all this country will be free.

Telgarth lies down on one of the benches. He rolls his coat, makes a pillow out of it, wraps himself in furs and lies down. The exhaustion of the last days has left its mark. Soon he falls into a restless, intermittent sleep.

The guerrillas drink rough moonshine and clean their weapons.

The train puts the mountain ridge behind it: now it flies at maximum speed across the endless taiga. Suddenly the brakes squeal and the bottle of moonshine falls off the table. They all have to hold on to their seats.

Geľo looks out of the window.

“There’s a fire on the track ahead of us,” he says and turns to Telgarth. “We were talking about traps; it may be a trap for us there.”

But Telgarth does not even wake up. His hands and face twitch inconspicuously, as he tries to get over his horrible experiences.

Geľo reaches for a submachine gun and gets ready to shoot. The burning fire has already caught the attention of the guerrillas. The train stops, its brakes squealing, forty or fifty metres before the burning twigs.

“Careful,” shouts Geľo; he get out, aims his weapon and, using the hot and hissing locomotives for cover, stealthily approaches the fire. The others follow.

The fire turns out to have been lit by a ragged, hairy man in dirty European clothes. He is lying by the track with matches in his hands. He is shivering with cold; his cracked lips and burning forehead suggest high fever. The stranger has a backpack and a bag with fishing tackle sticking out. The guerrillas reconnoitre the surroundings, but can’t see anyone else.

The man can’t talk. They put him in the HQ carriage and search his luggage.

“Telgarth,” says Sirovec-Molnár and shakes Telgarth’s shoulder.

Telgarth opens his eye with an effort. His entire body is aching.

“Look what he had in his backpack,” says Sirovec-Molnár. “This could be of interest to you.”

He gives Telgarth a dirty Slovak Republic passport and a crumpled and much folded piece of shiny paper. It is the article from Stern about Telgarth with photographs and an interview.

“Who had what in a backpack?” Telgarth is bewildered.

“There was a fire on the track and a man lying next to it,” explains Sirovec-Molnár. “So we put him on the train. And he had this in his backpack.”

“He’s sure to be a Junjan spy,” says Telgarth without thinking and still half-asleep. “Shoot him and throw him off the train.”

He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

“I think you should take a look at it anyway,” says Geľo obstinately.

Telgarth sighs. He starts casually going through the things that Sirovec-Molnár gave him. The green Slovak passport attracts his attention.

“Look at that, a fellow-countryman,” he thinks.

For a moment he thinks about the fate of his own passport. He must have lost it when the Junjans imprisoned him as a reporter. He didn’t have it in the labour camp.

Telgarth opens the passport and he thinks he must be dreaming. He fixes his eye on it and then leaps off the bench.

“URBAN!” he shouts.

Grimacing painfully, he hobbles to the man. He looks at his face.

The man uncomprehendingly looks into the one eye.

“URBAN!” he shouts and shakes his shoulders. “It’s me, Freddy! How the hell did you get here?”

Urban lifts himself up on the bench. A mixture of astonishment, recognition and relief runs over his face.

“Freddy…” he breathes out. “I… was looking for you…”

He closes his eyes and again loses consciousness.

Telgarth turns around with a burning look.

“This man is my best friend,” he says. “I don’t know how he got here, but he’s come to see me.”

He looks at the medic Stano Čierny-Orkiš-Horniak.

“Take good care of him!” he tells him. “Your own life is at stake.”

Then he stumbles towards his own bench and again falls asleep.

Soon not just the whole carriage, but the entire train is asleep. Only the men in the two locomotives are up, stoking their engines and trying to penetrate the thick fog with their sharp eyes.

* * *

A host slices reindeer meat in thin slices; a guest puts four in his mouth at a time.

Junjan Slovak proverb

The moon appears between the hills. It climbs higher and higher up the sky. At times the fog veils it and then the stars shine brightly.

Silence reigns all round. Only occasionally can reindeer herds on the tundra be heard. They run fast. The stomping of hooves drowns out the herders’ shouts. The herds are moving south, deeper into the tundra; the silence returns, interrupted only by the monotonous and distant murmur of the sea behind the ribbon of the ice field.

“They were that close?” Urban is astonished.

“They are and they aren’t,” says Telgarth. “In the tundra sounds carry a long way. Anything can be ten kilometres away and yet you can hear it as if it were just here, round the hill.”

Geľo impatiently waits for Freddy to finish.

“Let’s go faster!” he orders. “We can’t waste time!”

The guerrillas’ dog sledges turn sharp right, into the snowy tundra.

Further from the coast, deeper in the tundra, a wild wind blows. It knocks the dogs off their feet.

Telgarth takes a shiny bottle from under his fur jacket. He takes a long swig and then gives it to Urban. Urban takes a sip. A pleasantly sharp heat invades his body. Freddy takes another sip and then puts the bottle back in the furs.

“It’s not Martell, but it warms you up just as well,” he laughs.

Video Urban nods.

“What’s going on back home?” Freddy asks. His voice suggests that he’s not that interested.

“No change,” says Urban. “There is no point doing anything over there. That’s why I’ve decided… to move to the Czech…”

“You know,” Telgarth starts talking, “at first, I felt differently about it. I took pictures, made films, and filed reports. But I felt I didn’t belong here, that I was a foreigner. I felt I’d come to Mars. Junjan Slovaks? They were as interesting as guinea pigs. Like meeting a distant relative, so distant that you feel nothing for him. But then the Junjans captured me. They didn’t care that I was a reporter. They put me in a camp. And Junjan Slovaks helped me escape. So I’ve stayed with them. I taught them how to fight and rob goods wagons. And now I’m one of them.”

“YOU taught them how to rob goods wagons?” exclaims Urban. “And who taught YOU?”

“It’s a long story,” says Freddy evasively. “You don’t know much about me.”

For a moment, Urban feels a special kind of respect for his old friend and business partner, a kind of remote admiration. The dizzy transformation of the clumsy, stingy, perverse, stupid fat slob in one year in Junja has taken his breath away.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time…” says Urban. “Where did you lose an eye?”

“This war is cruel,” says Freddy, thoughtfully scanning the white horizon indistinctly outlined far off in the dark. “It spares no one. And sometime you have bad luck. I’ve been in a labour camp, too, but I got away from them. And just a few days ago, I was a prisoner of Tökörnn Mäodna himself and escaped!”

Urban nods with understanding. Freddy fixes a burning gaze on him.

“But a few Junjans have paid for that eye now,” he says, his mouth wildly contorted. “They’ll pay for everything! I won’t be coming home. You can keep the whole company. Sell it, strip it, do what you like with it. I’m giving you my share. I’m not a businessman; I’m a fighter. If you like, I’ll put it in writing. The main thing, that whoring bitch, you know the one I mean, is not to get any of it. Considering she let me down so terribly, she’s doing fine. She cleaned out my accounts, kept the house, so she has somewhere to live. And the child? Who knows if it’s mine, anyway? In any case, I belong here now. This country needs me.”