‘Ah well,’ said Mr Cimbura, ‘I’d give you some more, but that’s all he had. Wanted to die, he did, mouldy old monk, and you can bet it hurt him. We stamped all over him… punishment detail. Red specialists come all the way from Prague to interrogate the counter-revolutionary Vatican maggot,’ said Mr Cimbura. ‘He wanted to die, sonny. You’re right there. Then he did. And you know what, sonny? He got such a doing-over, that bastard of a priest, they had to toss him up onto the lorry. Then they threw some straw over him and the nuns sat on top of him, and how the stupid cows must’ve started squawking when they found their arses resting on their very own vicar… So towards the end I reckon he did want to die…’
‘Like I said!’ I said, moving my shoulder out from under the little horse’s mouth. The horse breathed hot on me, then I went inside the Home from Home with Mr Cimbura calling after me. But I didn’t stop.
Not in the kitchen, but in the dining room there were bits of paper everywhere, old yellow bits and blackened bits. They crackled when you touched them and fell apart, lying around the floor and even floating in the air.
Then from the shortpants’ floor came a crashing noise — bang-bang! Longshirts were running around everywhere, gathering handfuls of documents and throwing them down the stairs, enjoying seeing them flutter. The large, studded door on the second floor, the door with the big black padlocks, had probably been broken open by Mr Holasa and Mr Kropek, busting them with iron bars. For the first time ever I saw the forbidden stairs leading to the upper storeys. We weren’t allowed there, and the nuns didn’t go there either… Now the longshirts with sweaters and anoraks over their long white nightshirts were chasing one another up and down these stairs and causing havoc, and in all the racket they were making the banging went on and on.
The men were smashing in all of the doors on the first forbidden floor. That was the noise I’d heard.
Piles of paper lay in and on the cupboards, some on top of each other in bundles, others any old how, and in places the stacks reached up to the ceiling.
Mr Holasa and Mr Kropek split another door in two, knocking it flat on the ground, then went inside in a cloud of dust, and we followed them, we Bandits… We stood in a huge room, the walls plastered white and in many places it was flaking off, and against one wall there were piles of linen baskets and suitcases with rusty padlocks, and Mr Holasa shouted, ‘This is it!’
They started dragging the linen baskets away from the wall, then smashed them open straight away.
Mr Holasa and Mr Kropek turned the baskets upside down, and it was all just more paper. They covered the floor with it, waded through it, then kicked at the cases and swore.
Páta and Bajza climbed onto the mountain of linen baskets and started throwing them down onto the floor, and me and Chata were almost buried. They did it on purpose! They made the plaster dust swirl, and the dust from the masses of crumbling paper. Then Mr Holasa bellowed, ‘That’ll do now! Bloody kids!’
The men smashed their way to another floor, and Mr Dašler called, ‘Come here!’ and Mr Holasa and Mr Kropek went. Shortly after, we heard heavy footsteps above us.
I went over to the toppled linen baskets and saw a huge picture. It was leaning against the wall. It wasn’t a religious picture. I wanted to call the lads over, but they were still having fun. Plaster and swirling dust were falling all around the picture. I waited for it to settle.
‘Guys!’ I called. We huddled around the picture. It showed a big man and a little woman and an aeroplane. The plane was quite small. I think the big man was the flying toff Mr Cimbura used to talk about. The woman was slitty-eyed with long black hair and a fat belly.
Looking at it, Páta spluttered with laughter. We kept pointing at the funny-looking woman with the belly and sniggering.
‘It can’t be from round here,’ someone said. ‘There’s no forest. They’re in some sandy, flat place.’
‘That’s a desert, idiot,’ said someone else.
There was something about deserts in The Catholic Book of Knowledge.
We looked to see what a desert was like.
Then Chata started sniggering at the picture again, and laughing a squeaky laugh. Then he said, ‘Idiots! That’s Dýha’s dad, the airman!’ We all started laughing. Then we made to leave, but Páta stopped me. We stayed behind in the big room.
‘We put him in the cellar,’ he told me in a low voice. ‘When you was pissed.’
‘What?’
‘We put Monkeyface in the cellar, so these buggers won’t see him. We took him down in a sheet.’
‘Aha,’ I said.
‘He’s next to Šklíba and Martin, since they’re the ones as did it to him. We was gonna put ’em on trial, but now we can’t.’
‘So what can we do?’
‘Dunno.’ Páta shrugged. ‘Nobody knows.’
A little kid came up. He’d been wandering about the floor on his own. Now he stopped and stared at us.
‘Are these people gonna take us away?’ he asked.
‘Where to?’ said Páta.
‘I wouldn’t mind the village,’ said the boy. ‘I could live with some people and herd their goats and feed the chickens. I’ve done it before.’
‘Don’t be daft. The altar boys would eat you for breakfast!’
‘But I never fought ’em. I never threw anything at ’em. And I’d fetch water and firewood.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Páta. ‘They’ve got kids of their own to do that for ’em.’
‘Us Bandits are off to join the Foreign Legion,’ I told the kid. I stretched out full length on the paper. I lay on one of the heaps of paper and stared at the ceiling.
‘I wanna get away as well,’ said the boy. ‘I keep dreaming about my mum and dad.’
We don’t say anything. He’s one of the youngsters.
‘My parents were executed, see,’ he added.
‘You don’t say!’ said Páta.
‘Honest!’
‘By the Germans, right?’ I wanted to know.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ said Páta. ‘That was ages ago. The Communists did it, didn’t they?’
‘I’m frightened of ’em,’ said the lad.
‘They can frighten the Germans or the… them others, but they don’t frighten me!’
I was lying on the paper as if it were a gigantic bed. The ceiling was high up above me. Páta and the other kid were still chattering. I was thinking about the picture we had found, and other stuff. It was nice. I could even have fallen asleep on the paper.
I did fall asleep, and dreamed of Mr Holasa and the others putting the wire-cutters and the iron bars and the axes and the hammers onto the little horse’s sleigh, and leaving only Mr Cimbura in the blankets, because he was old and his legs were wobbly, and the little horse heaved, straining every sinew, but only a little bit… the sleigh was light! — and it pulled the sleigh out through the gates of the Home from Home and trotted daintily up the hill, and the men followed the sleigh and they were arguing and cursing and swearing, because they hadn’t found anything, no expensive goblets or cups, no vestments or gold candles, no precious ornaments… That’s why the sleigh was so light! It wasn’t weighed down with any treasure, so the little horse was carrying just Mr Cimbura and the blankets and axes and wire-cutters — but what’s that to a little horse? Nothing. It’s not heavy… It couldn’t have coped with all the men and a huge treasure trove — that would have put its back out, they would have hurt him, and no-one wanted that… crippling a little horse with a heavy load. They wouldn’t do that. It was a nice dream.
And then I woke up, because Karel gave me a kind of gentle kick… and handed me some bread and a frankfurter.