‘Till the daystar appears,’ Šklíba added. ‘Now we’ll help you,’ he told Dýha.
To the bars he tied a washing line nicked from the kitchen. The little choristers grabbed hold of it. Me and Martin tried to work the grille loose.
We were tugging at the bars and the plaster started coming away. The Virgin’s little songsters pulled on the line. Šklíba tried to prise off the grille from below with a plank. Dýha was also levering away with a plank. Just as I was about to say, ‘I’ll go and wake the Bandits,’ the choristers got a grip and Dýha got a grip and I clenched my teeth and got a grip, and Šklíba yelped and dropped his plank, the grille came loose and fell out of the wall. A shower of plaster landed on Dýha and clouds of dust on the rest of us, but we were all chuffed… and Dýha came out and said, ‘Now I’m gonna grab some of them frankfurters… if there’s any left!’
‘There is!’ I cried, and off we tramped through the cellar water, and the choirboys called out, ‘Wait for us!’ and pushed the kneeler and crucifix on top of the pile of paper… Then we set off along the passage and up the stairs, and when we came up from the cellar and snuffed out all the candles, we went outside and one of the little lads said, ‘Hey, it’s light!’
And so it was! The sky was blue, but full of light. We looked up at it and high above us shone one pinprick of light, and Šklíba said, ‘Lo, brethren, the daystar.’
But Dýha said, ‘That’s Sputnik, idiot!’
We stood outdoors and breathed the air, dusting ourselves off… and suddenly we heard, ‘Well, my lads, that’s what I like to see. Bright and early and already hard at it! Or are you exercising? That’s fabulous! We’re going to get on well together.’ Outside the Home from Home stood Mr Vyžlata, our caretaker and carer and commander, though we didn’t know that at the time. Behind him stood a boy pulling a cart, a kind of trolley thing, and when I glanced at him, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
5: I swear! Work began. You can’t do a runner in winter
The next day the first morning of our new life began, and Mr Vyžlata was everywhere.
And we set about clearing up.
And the Commander kept checking our home.
The youngsters even decided there had to be more than one of him, because Mr Vyžlata was in the dining room when we thought he was checking the first floor, then he showed up in the kitchen when we thought he was investigating the cellar, and when we sneaked off for a fag by the aeroplane picture on the third floor, suddenly he was there, as if he had been waiting for us among the piles of paper. He snatched Páta’s fag end from him and threw it on the floor, but didn’t squish it.
‘What do you want to be, lad?’ he asked.
Páta pulled a funny face and several of us sniggered, because whenever the nuns asked that question, everyone replied, ‘An orphan’, so they gave up asking.
‘Most of all I want to be a cowboy on a cowboy ranch, sir.’
‘No sirs now. Call me Commander. Understood?’
‘I’d like to be a cowboy, Commander.’
Along with the rest of us Commander Vyžlata watched the wisp of smoke rising from the fag end in the pile of paper, but he didn’t squish it, and he said, ‘Ha, ha! Have any of you ever seen a gippo cowboy? You’re a teeny bit of a gipsy, aren’t you, lad?’
Páta was pissed off, you could tell.
‘Attention!’ Commander Vyžlata bellowed, so loudly we all froze, not just Páta. ‘Just to clear up a few things here! You are the most neglected boys in the whole of Czechoslovakia. Understood? You’re the sons of syphilitics, alcoholics and murderers, whores and foreigners. On top of that you’ve been ruined by an obscurantist education. But that’s all going to change. Do you see that fire, lads?’ And you can bet we were wide-eyed, because a little flame had shot up from the smoke. ‘Do you suppose I’m afraid of this fire? Certainly not. I’ve come through worse fires. Have you read these documents?’ Commander Vyžlata kicked more stacks of paper into the bonfire. ‘’Course not. They’re written in languages dead to the future, and that’s why they must go. But then you and I will get this place cleaned up, won’t we?’ the Commander suddenly roared, making us jump, and tossed another fistful of papers onto the fire. The crackling flames snaffled them up… They began to nip at his fingers.
‘You boys, everybody else has thrown in the towel where you are concerned, but I picked the towel up! I used to be like you… abandoned, a hard nut, a wretched street kid, but I was found by soldiers from Stalin’s Flying Brigade, who offered me friendship and made me a son of the regiment — syn palka — and I was saved, and you too shall be saved… You there, don’t move until you’re told!’ and Dýha, who had meant to stamp out the fire, jumped back. The smoke was getting up my nose, so I let out an almighty sneeze.
‘Boys,’ shouted Commander Vyžlata, ‘this fire between us is going to carry on burning until you give me your oath… You’ll be given airguns, tracksuits, mess tins, compasses, provided you swear that we’ll be friends… But if you don’t, may we all burn to death!’
We stood there… Dýha, Páta and me… and there were others too, but it was hard to see, hard to see even the Commander, standing by the door, but the fire was between him and the door and it had begun to spread. Then I saw Commander Vyžlata’s face right in front of my own. He had leaned across the fire and he said, ‘Do you swear?’
‘Yes!’ I gasped, then I heard Dýha shout, ‘I swear!’ and Páta shrieked, ‘Yeah!’ and others called out ‘I swear! I swear!’ Then Commander Vyžlata’s voice broke in and said, ‘All right, lads, you can put it out.’
We jumped onto the papers, trampling them down, putting out the flames as best we could, then suddenly — hisssssss! — we were all splattered by a stream of something white. The whole of the third floor was full of smoke, and as we coughed our guts out and tried to flap the smoke away with our arms we saw Commander Vyžlata holding this small red drum thing, and out of it he was squirting a stream of white stuff to extinguish the spreading fire, and the Commander was laughing, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen the latest fire-fighting technology, lads, but that’s something else that’s going to change… run along and get outside.’
Half-choking, we staggered to our own floor and on down the stairs. Outside the Home from Home stood the longshirts, the choristers and the rest of the Bandits, goggle-eyed and staring at us. I was the last out, and I heard Bajza say, ‘Hell, you look like ghosts,’ and someone else said, ‘We thought you was dead!’
‘Yes,’ said Commander Vyžlata, who was suddenly standing there in the doorway. ‘They were dead, but they’ve given me their oath, so now they’re boys with a new life ahead of them. And the same goes for all of you.’
And so our work began. Before we could set about clearing dead languages from the upper floors, we had to line up and be counted, so that Commander Vyžlata knew how many of us there were. We didn’t mind.
Now we, the shortpants, had to catch all the stray, lost and hiding youngsters, and they were everywhere… Some were blubbering and calling out for the nuns, some had shat themselves and others were screaming with hunger.
We older ones got the kitchen stove going and washed the youngsters and ourselves, and Commander Vyžlata unlocked a cupboard with a key on a metal ring, and in it were heaped sackfuls of clothes donated by Czech children. So we chased all over the upper floors, catching the littlest boys and hauling them down to the kitchen… We dragged every weepy, shit-arsed, struggling longshirt over to the stove and washed their bottoms and faces, and then they got some clothes. Karel sliced some bread and Páta poured tea into mugs. ‘Well done, lads!’ Commander Vyžlata praised us, and perhaps because I was the smallest of the shortpants, and maybe also because I had the experience, I got the arse-washing job and I stank. We found a nest of three longshirts sleeping among piles of paper and shouted to wake them up, sending them down to get washed and eat, chasing them downstairs, where Commander Vyžlata was standing. ‘There we are, lads,’ he said. ‘I picked up the towel others had thrown in, and I was right!’ Then me and the older longshirts pottered about the first and second floors, picking up the papers and bits of books that had fallen or been thrown down from higher up and making them into little stacks. And we had a good view of Commander Vyžlata in the dining room with the new boy, and of what the new boy was up to. ‘He’s going all over Christ with a damp cloth,’ said Dýha, and Mikušinec said, ‘Ilya, the new boy looks like you!’ ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Have you got more brothers somewhere?’ Mikušinec asked. I shrugged to show I didn’t care, but there was a tingling in my shoulders. We looked at the new boy, who had hair like mine and a nose like mine and eyes like mine.