‘Where did you get it?’ I asked him. The dream and the food made me feel happy.
Karel flopped down on the paper heap next to me.
‘They brought it on the sleigh — frankfurters and bread! They’re afraid we might go knocking out their windows and scavenging around the village. I’ve come to wake you. It’s your watch.’
‘What?’
‘The committee decided we have to take turns on watch, ’cos of the altar boys and Communists.’
‘I see,’ I said and got up.
‘Look, the thing with Monkeyface was a bit off, I know, but at least you can come with us now,’ said Karel.
‘I know.’
‘I saw it happen, little Monkeyface falling out of the window by himself, and Páta saw it too. We was there!’
At that moment we spotted a little light moving through the dark. It was Chata with a torch in his hand. He reached us and said to me, ‘You’re on guard duty, twat,’ then sat down where I’d been and tucked into the bread and sausage. So I went.
Outside the moon was shining, the light flowed across the snowy slope up through the windows and was reflected off the white papers I was tramping over.
The piles of paper everywhere were spooky, there were so many. I almost tripped over two longshirts asleep in a heap of documents as if in a big mouse nest.
There were more longshirts up the staircase.
One was setting fire to the papers with a match. I stamped on the flame and told him to scram. He turned on the waterworks, as did the other longshirts squatting there on the stairs. The boy gave me his matches, and said, ‘We’re really scared!’
‘Did you nick ’em from the kitchen, the matches?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘We could’ve burnt to death. You mustn’t set fire to paper.’
He started crying even more.
‘Come with me, all of you.’
‘Sure, we’re coming,’ said one of the ones sitting on the staircase, and he got up and grabbed me by the hand.
I led the longshirts down the stairs. As I did so I wasn’t afraid. On the second floor one lone youngster was sitting on the ground, and when he saw us he started screaming… Then other feeble little voices piped up, more like those of giant mice than boys, and, just like mice, little longshirts came crawling out of all the nooks and crannies where they’d been sitting or lying, some possibly sleeping, others perhaps chatting together… Another two appeared at the top of the stairs and came running down towards us, and one of them had no shoes on and he called out ‘Wait!’
So we waited. I took all the ones I found into the dormitory, and there, in Monkeyface’s bed, someone was asleep, a youngster, and I let him be. I didn’t care… The longshirts kept snivelling, and they crawled into the beds and one asked, ‘Is Sister Eulalia going to come and sing about angels?’ and I said, ‘No.’ And another asked, ‘And we don’t have to wash?’ and I said, ‘No.’ Then the one who’d asked about Sister Eulalia said, ‘Couldn’t you sing it instead, Ilya?’ and I said, ‘Get into bed!’ and he said, ‘Okay,’ and went straight to sleep. I was still on guard duty.
There was a pile of frankfurters on the dining-room table, so I had one more and went to stand guard in the kitchen. There was water sloshed about everywhere. I looked towards the washer drum and couldn’t believe that so much could have happened in one day.
Then I heard the choirboys. From the cellar they sounded just like when Sister Eulalia used to practise hymns with them.
So I went down to the cellar to take my turn at guard duty.
Standing at the bend in the passage I could see the flames of candles, and the little songsters had stopped singing. The cubicle where Šklíba and Martin had been locked up had had its bars forced outwards, and the choirboys had chucked out bundles of papers and made room… I saw they had brought the kneeler down from Sister Leontina’s office. They had also stolen her Christ on the Cross, and Sister Eulalia’s six little songsters were kneeling on the ground, not at all bothered by the slimy cellar water. Šklíba was standing and Martin too, and both were wearing the nuns’ quite badly torn and dirty gowns, which they had drawn tight at the waist with string somehow — of course, they were quite small… Šklíba was prancing around and waving his arms like he had seen Father Francis do, and Martin now handed him a fat book, and Šklíba said, ‘Let us pray.’ The heads of the ones who were kneeling dropped as they prayed… and then I heard a great roar: ‘Let me out!’
I moved away from the wall and saw Dýha leaning against the bars under the light bulb, which was swinging like mad, probably because he had been hopping all over the place. I went closer… and what did I see? Monkeyface was lying on some papers in front of Šklíba, wrapped in a sheet. They had put lots of paper under him, so he wasn’t lying in the cellar water. I went over to them.
Dýha saw me first. ‘Ilya,’ he said, ‘tell ’em to stop!’ Šklíba came stumbling towards me, tripping over his black gown, and raised his arms in a pious way. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’ve washed him and got him ready. Now we have to bury him. We’ve said all the right prayers, but we can say ’em again: “Our Father”, “Hail Mary” and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” and all that… that’s if you want us to.’
I wanted to say something to them, but I couldn’t make my mouth work, and I was shaking. I didn’t want to look at Monkeyface, but I did.
‘We searched everywhere for you, but we couldn’t find you,’ said Martin. ‘It was bloody dark upstairs.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But now the moon’s shining everywhere.’
Suddenly I went very cold, as if the chill of the cellar had gone straight to my bones. Monkeyface lay on the papers, through which the cellar water was starting to seep.
‘Come on,’ said Šklíba, and he took me inside the cubicle and past Monkeyface and past the kneeler, and there at the very back behind mountains of paper Martin bent down and lifted a half-rotten board from the floor, and underneath it was some rusty metal, a cover… Martin lifted it to reveal a drain, and from below came a droning noise, probably the wind.
I had stopped shaking, and I wasn’t crying.
‘Catacombs,’ said Martin.
‘Do you want to put him in yourself?’ Šklíba asked.
‘No.’
‘Do you want to see him one last time?’
‘No.’
‘We’re the Virgin’s choirboys. Do you want to join us?’ Martin asked me.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘You don’t have to sing.’
‘I don’t want to.’
So those six little boys picked up Monkeyface, carried him, sagging, in the sheet, and Šklíba made the sign of the Cross at the spot where his hidden head was dangling. Then they dropped him into the drain. There was no splash, so the loud droning noise must have been the wind.
Šklíba dropped the cover back and Martin replaced the board, and the little choirboys who had carried the sheet now joined forces to shove a heap of paper over the drain. I went up to Dýha.
‘This is stupid,’ he said. ‘He’s buried and any detectives are gonna find out sod all, and now we can’t hold a trial for ’em killing him in the washer drum.’
‘But it ain’t clear who killed him,’ Martin chimed in. He was standing behind me. Outside he would have looked ridiculous in his black smock. Anyone would have laughed at him. Not in the cellar though.
‘We’ll pray for him here and consecrate it,’ Martin went on. ‘Now we’ve made it a cemetery. The first saints and Christians also held requiems in the cemetery. Nobody wanted them. The nuns told us.’
‘He fell out of the window,’ I told them. ‘Karel saw it happen, and Páta.’
‘Some of us’ll stay up all night to pray,’ said Martin.