Every child of God — any new arrival, whether a longshirt or a boy already old enough for shorts — always got a bit of a working-over from the older boys, so that he knew for certain he had arrived at the Home from Home.
Above the two floors with the dormitories were the old upper storeys, which were always under lock and key. Below us was the cellar and on the cellar floor, water.
I was never once put in solitary confinement in the cellar. That was where boys were sent as a punishment or to ‘cool off’, as Sister Leontina used to say, because now and again one of the shortpants would go mad and throw a tantrum and have a fit as we were all psychopaths.
It was a Czech home for foreign kids, neglected kids, bad kids — boys, the sons of foreigners who couldn’t give a fuck for them or had died on them or were in prison or had disappeared. That’s why there were so many half-castes, darkies and Chinks among us. I wasn’t a darkie, but I wasn’t a Chink either, nor was Monkeyface.
Some boys spoke their own unintelligible language, though the nuns didn’t allow it. You had to gargle tar for that. Any foreign words were washed away from their throats with bubbles of pain, then the boys were topped up with Czech. Baby longshirts arriving at the home spoke many different languages, the languages of savage races. What a mountain of textbooks that would make, I thought to myself. Yet even the tiniest longshirt spoke Czech in a few weeks, in just a few weeks of godly, church-going Sundays, because he had to.
After they turned up, in between crying, they would still babble a few foreign words. They were only little. Then they learned to recite a prayer and how to say good morning and thank you, and it went on from there.
Now and then, after lights-out, when the boys were asleep and there was a strict no-talking rule, you could hear lots of different languages in the dorm. The little ones talked in their sleep and shouted out in their sleep and cried in their sleep. Then a nun had to come running in, the nun on night duty, because as soon as one longshirt started talking or whining in his sleep another would strike up. They were afraid of the dark, and once they were awake and they were all screaming there was nothing you could do to silence them. So the nun who happened to be on duty would run in at the first sign of trouble, the first scream or sob, and she would try to calm them, saying, ‘Come, come,’ or ‘Shhh, sleep now…’ and Sister Eulalia would sometimes sing a low, soothing lullaby: ‘Sleep, little angel…’ In the night the nuns didn’t punish anyone for speaking in foreign languages. They waited until morning. Mostly they had to punish the darkies, because they had their own language and used it so that no one could understand them. The nuns would punish us for saying certain words: ‘shit’, ‘arse’, ‘crap’ and the like. Anyone heard using words like that would be dragged off by Sister Alberta to the punishment cell in the cellar to sleep with the rats. I once got ‘dickhead’ and ‘thickhead’ mixed up and received such a caning from Sister Leontina — but I was still very small then. I only ever spoke Czech, and the nuns never ever punished Monkeyface. There was no point.
Monkeyface’s bed was in one corner with a net over it, and I made sure that his nearest neighbours were gentle longshirts. I also chose two choirboys, Šklíba and Martin, to take care of him. They had to put up with Monkeyface’s whimpering and they had to empty his potty and keep him clean, wiping his bottom and the saliva and snot from his face. I soon put a stop to all the jibes at Monkeyface’s expense, and trained Šklíba and Martin to be on their guard. I was small, but in the longshirts’ dormitory I was the biggest, though I didn’t have to move upstairs yet. The boys upstairs would jerk themselves off, but that meant nothing to me. I didn’t want to go upstairs, because I’d be away from Monkeyface, and who would have looked after him then?
I also taught the longshirts how to comfort Monkeyface when he was afraid, when he cried. The choirboys made a good team, having practised singing together. Because I sometimes didn’t have the time to see to him myself, like when Sister Leontina’s ordered me to dust her office… and I was the only one allowed to do that! After tidying her office I would sometimes stay behind and drop onto the kneeler under the Cross. It hurt my knees, but it was a good, strange pain. And I would stay rocking backwards and forwards on the kneeler so long that I’d be overwhelmed by the place I called Shadowland and I never got anywhere else when I was on the kneeler. Then I would go back downstairs and crawl into bed beside Monkeyface. None of the longshirts disturbed us. They wouldn’t dare. And shortpants weren’t allowed in our dormitory. That’s what the nuns had decided. Only the nuns, me and Hanka were supposed to go anywhere near Monkeyface. Though Hanka spent a lot of time at her mother’s in the village. Everyone else found Monkeyface disgusting.
I think it was because of Hanka that I abandoned Shadowland. The nuns themselves were amazed at how long I could remain there. I wasn’t even aware how many boys — or what boys — passed by me in the Home from Home, following their own path in life. When I was in Shadowland the nuns would feed me, and I would open my mouth. Sometimes Shadowland gave me a headache and I would hear a rumbling and a buzzing sound long after I came out of it.
Cuddling with Hanka was better than Shadowland. Cuddling with Hanka was the most beautiful thing in the world. The boys might be busy studying, but I would stay with Monkeyface waiting for Hanka to come. She crept into bed beside me, and while Monkeyface was quiet we lay there, cuddling, each listening to what the other was saying. Monkeyface liked us being together. Czechia couldn’t have been more beautiful than Hanka. One time Hanka grabbed me down below and said, ‘This thing isn’t just for peeing with, you know.’ But she was laughing, happy. Or she would say, ‘You don’t go too far, so I’ll let you do… this. And this!’ More than anything I’d like to have lived with Hanka. But that proved impossible.
Sister Alberta was a nun like the rest, but she was also a local Siřem girl. Before the home became the Home, when it was just the kitchens of the manor house, she had been saddled with me in the kitchen, and also had her hands full caring for Monkeyface.
Before the home became the Home from Home, the Centre sent Sister Alberta lorryloads of beds and brooms and cutlery in boxes, and endless boys’ tracksuits and tracksuit tops, and dinner-trays and sheets and mountains of soap in crates. It was only then that the nuns arrived in Siřem, with their hymns and their holy crosses. They came under the command of Sister Leontina, who had the entire Home from Home obeying her orders. The nuns had been driven out of their convent by the Communists. They were snatched away from their prayers and ordered to take care of us orphaned thugs, bastards, retards and juvenile delinquents. The nuns did look after us, until the Communists put a stop to it.
I don’t know when I came to Siřem. I have memories of hearing squeaking snow. I know: it was Mr Cimbura carrying me into Sister Alberta’s kitchen. Before that I was in Shadowland, where there was lots of noise and my mum and dad.
Sister Alberta and Mr Cimbura lived together as man and wife, until Sister Leontina put a stop to it. Sister Alberta wasn’t repulsed by Monkeyface. Towards the end of the war, her own children got lost in a concentration camp somewhere. It seemed to me that if they looked anything like Monkeyface, she should count herself lucky. The truth is, she didn’t mind Monkeyface at all, even if he yelled and crapped himself all the time. Mr Cimbura did mind. He minded me, too. I would listen to the fairy stories they told to get Monkeyface to sleep, even before I got stuck into The Catholic Book of Knowledge under the guidance of the nuns. Even before I attended Father Francis’s homilies on a Sunday. Mr Cimbura didn’t like Father Francis.