Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

“Ice-cream for sale, my boy, ice-cream!” Eržika calls to the child from a distance, as Feri has told her. “Delicious Italian ice-cream! Lots of different flavours!”

The little boy stops by Eržika. He takes out a small purse.

“One strawberry cornet, please,” he says.

Eržika nervously looks at the bushes behind the child.

The bushes part; Feri, Freddy and Fraňo run out. Fraňo’s powerful hands pick the child off his bicycle. Feri grabs the handlebars and hops onto the saddle. For a few seconds he pedals furiously and speeds off. Eržika and her Algida box also vanish and Freddy is left alone with the child. His job is to make sure the child they’ve robbed stays quiet.

“Shut your face!” he bursts out when he sees that the child has now taken in what has happened, is taking a breath and is about to howl.

The child is shocked into silence and submits.

“If you don’t stay quiet,” says Freddy in a horrid graveyard voice, “I’ll poke your eyes out and bury you alive. Nobody will find you here. Give me your purse!”

The child obediently gives the fat man his little purse. Freddy takes a look inside and, disappointed, puts it in his back trouser pocket. His hatred for the child is growing. That snotty little kid already has a mountain bike. When Freddy Piggybank was five or six years older he didn’t have a bicycle! No bicycle! Not a town bike, or a mountain bike. That was why he never had any friends. Yes, now Freddy can see the reason why. Nobody had any truck with him, because he was holding them all back. He wasn’t mobile. Nobody would give up the pleasure of a swift ride and mobility all around Nová Ves just to keep him company. Only now has Freddy finally found real friends. But first he had to become a criminal. An outcast. Where’s the justice?

Tears pour from the child’s eyes. He stifles his weeping: fear of this evil and obviously dangerous fat man stops him from crying aloud.

“Now face this tree,” Freddy orders him. “Close your eyes and count slowly to two hundred.”

The child is too scared to disobey.

“And don’t turn round until you get to a hundred!” threatens Piggybank. “Or else I’ll torture you to death! Nobody will hear your horrible howling. I’ve got a cave near here that nobody will ever find. That’s where I torture snotty kids like you. Well, start counting!”

The child does as he’s told and counts; slowly, on tiptoe, Freddy leaves. Once he’s at a safe distance, he turns and runs after his companions.

It’s gloomy in the woods under the thick crowns of the old trees. Freddy stops in a clearing. Without thinking, he lifts his head. The trees are beginning to colour up; summer is on the wane. The damp smell of black earth, fungus, and rotting bark and foliage excites his nostrils. The counting child is far away and Freddy feels that he is alone deep in the woods. He can hear voices filtering through the green thicket. His innards are gripped by a pleasant tension. A delightfully arousing feeling of déjà vu brushes against his trembling eyelids: he has felt this before. At Devín Lake. Before Freddy can grasp and analyse this sensation, it disperses among the trees.

His former friends didn’t give a shit about him. But Bartaloš and Fčilek care. Freddy spots them in the trees and steps up his pace.

“Everything all right?” asks proud Feri, holding the new mountain bike.

“Everything’s okay,” Freddy confirms: he is overcome by a delirious feeling of rough male comradeship and togetherness.

“Good bicycle, wight?” says Fraňo Fčilek. “In the Wooden Village we can sell it for thwee thousand.”

“What? Three?” Bartaloš protests. “We’ll get four. That’ll make it easy to share it four ways.”

“Four?” Fraňo Fčilek is baffled. “Thwee, don’t you mean?”

“What do you mean?” Bartaloš laughs and counts on his fingers. Feri Bartaloš makes one. Fraňo Fčilek makes two. Freddy Piggybank makes three. And Eržika makes four.

“Eržika is with you,” Fčilek disagrees. “She doesn’t count.”

Freddy would also like to split the loot three ways, but he is careful to say nothing.

“Eržika takes the same risk as us,” Bartaloš says. “Why shouldn’t she get her share?”

“Just admit that you want half the takings,” says Fraňo Fčilek.

“Suppose I do,” proud Feri retorts. “Who came up with the idea? Feri Bartaloš! Stupid Fraňo Fčilek could never think of anything like that.”

“Stop bragging,” Fčilek responds.

If stupid Fraňo Fčilek, says Feri hadn’t murdered Lady, Feri Bartaloš wouldn’t have to let his wife Eržika take such a risk.

“You bastard!” Fčilek shouts and throws himself at Feri.

Eržika comes out of the trees with her Algida box. As an experienced lavatory attendant, she instinctively sizes up the situation at once. She starts to scream so loudly that the two roosters immediately let go of each other.

Eržika is upset. Just as she thought: the moment they get their loot they start to argue and fight. This isn’t going to work. They either stick together, or she will bloody well leave.

Her well chosen words of wisdom fall on fertile ground. Each companion takes a role, according to the tried and tested model, and waits for another prey.

This time there are two boys on BMX bikes. As soon as they stop by the false ice-cream vendor, Feri and Fčilek run out of the thicket, take the bikes from the stunned children, clumsily get on them, and ride away.

Freddy Piggybank holds both boys by their necks. Eržika and her Algida disappear in the woods.

“I’ll give you a triple scoop!” Freddy shouts angrily and shakes the little gourmands. “I’ll give you a triple scoop! Snotty kids with bikes at your age! What if I tied you to a tree and burned you alive? Have you heard of the martyr Jan Hus? Have you?”

The children start to cry. Freddy pushes them towards a gigantic tree and repeats his old trick of making them count to two hundred.

“I’ll stay behind you and if you turn round, I’ll poke your eyes out with these keys,” says Freddy and shows them the keys to his trailer.

The terrified children count in tearful little voices. Freddy listens for a while and then vanishes into the bushes.

The group again meets where they had agreed to.

Proud Feri Bartaloš is pleased. His calm, rich, masterful voice echoes through the woods. His confidence has grown. That was a good idea he came up with.

“We must get one more bicycle, and then we can go home,” says Bartaloš. “Everybody take up position! Everybody knows what to do.”

In less than an hour, they manage to hijack a fourth bicycle, a racing bike in good condition. Its owner, a youth of twenty, wasn’t trapped by the Algida box: he passed Eržika without noticing her. That was too much for the killer Fraňo Fčilek; he ran out from the bushes and hit him from behind. The young man collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

“Did you see?” Fčilek points to his fist. “Every blow’s a winner,” he adds proudly.

“Is he breathing?” Eržika worries, and looks anxiously at the cyclist lying on the ground, his eyes closed.

“Of course he is,” says Fčilek. “By the time he comes round we’ll be over the hills and far away.”

They hide the stunned sports-biker in the bushes. Then they get on their bicycles and head for the city.

Freddy Piggybank is the heaviest of them and gets the mountain bicycle with thick tyres and strong frame. Feri and Eržika are slender and small: they’re happy with the BMX bikes. Fraňo Fčilek proudly mounts the racing bike: it’s his booty.

They leave the wooded park behind and ride down a steep road into the city. It is a beautiful warm Indian summer’s day.