During the theory part we read the booklets and revised from them. I took the cover off the booklet I was reading. I put it with The Catholic Book of Knowledge and my roll of maps and kept it under my tracksuit top.
One time Mr Kropáček needed us for a job in his barn. Páta kept saying dirty words, so we laughed a lot. Then Páta showed me how to wank, but I wasn’t interested, and then Páta said that babies are made by a bloke peeing inside a woman, and we both laughed even more. But I didn’t believe him. I thought it disgusting. I resolved never to do anything of the kind.
Mr Kropáček banged on the barn door and shouted, ‘Shut your filthy mouths!’ so we fell silent. It stopped raining. Mr Kropáček slung us out. Páta stole a cup with little apples painted on it and I took a cup with goslings painted on it. Unfortunately mine dropped out of my pocket in the yard and got broken. Mr Kropáček said, ‘You of all people!’ and he grabbed Páta and found the other cup. He whacked Páta across the face and said, ‘Ungrateful little shit!’ He didn’t hit me.
Mr Kropáček reported the theft to Commander Baudyš, who came to pick us up with the others, and he wanted the cup paid for, but Commander Baudyš bawled him out: ‘You must be joking! They work their hides off for you in exchange for dog food!’ Mr Kropáček said nothing. Commander Baudyš was good at that sort of thing. He always took the part of us boys from the Fedotkin squads.
Whenever we ran up against the altar boys we would have a slanging match. We would throw sticks, stones, anything at each other. The worst thing that happened was when Dýha and Chata nabbed one of them on his own and stabbed him through the hand.
That time, Commander Baudyš lined us up on the village green and lots of the villagers gathered round and the stabbed altar boy’s actual mother, Mrs Holý, gave Chata and Dýha a real good slapping, and in return Dýha kicked her in the ankle, and when the people saw that, they really started screaming at us, but Commander Baudyš restored order and promised to put things right.
He made Dýha and Chata step forward and so all the villagers could hear it said that they’d be going to jail, without further ado! And the lads had to say sorry to Mrs Holý, but not to the altar boy — he’d been taken off somewhere by his dad to be stitched up. But Commander Baudyš had only been pretending to bawl out Dýha and Chata.
Outside the front of the Home from Home he had us fall in again, and when he liked our lines he shouted, ‘Karel!’ then he made Karel an orderly. Then Commander Baudyš shouted ‘Dýha, Chata, Ilya!’ He appointed Dýha commander of the Fedotkin attack squads and Chata commander of the Fedotkin defence squads, and he made me commander of the Fedotkin sabotage squad! Margash heard it, because he was there with Commander Vyžlata and all the longshirts.
That was a ceremonial line-up.
Afterwards, they all surrounded us and congratulated us and Margash congratulated me as well, and he winked at me and shouted cheerily, ‘It’ll be a doddle now!’ and I was the only one who knew what he meant.
We stood around in little huddles and were happy, because after the ceremony a special dinner had been announced. Our little group of saboteurs was joined by Commander Vyžlata. He was tottering a bit. He handed a bottle of booze to Commander Baudyš, then said to me, ‘Well, my lad, how about I reassign you to the command post? You and Margash would have uniforms and you’d be a special unit. Guards!’
The boys were silent and so was I.
‘Though in uniform or stark naked, few could tell you two apart, could they?’ said Commander Vyžlata.
Commander Baudyš clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Now, now, me old warhorse!’ he said. ‘You know what it takes to train up a saboteur and this one here’s a natural. Off you go!’ Commander Baudyš gave me a shove and our group broke up and mixed in with the other boys, and I fell in behind Orderly Karel, who was the tallest, and I had the Bandits around me.
In the dining room the tables were laid for dinner: huge quantities of frankfurters and bread and gherkins and jam for the longshirts, and not even the longshirts had to go straight to bed.
Commander Vyžlata started the dinner by getting up and saying, ‘You can do all the fighting and bruising you want, my lads, but that ain’t nothing compared to what the son of the regiment lived through.’ Then Commander Vyžlata mopped his face clean of the tears that had gushed from his eyes and, before our hungry gathering, he spoke about Private Fedotkin, saying that not even in forty degrees of frost in the huts of the Vorkuta camp had he abandoned the son of the regiment, nor had the son of the regiment abandoned him. Not once!
Then Commander Vyžlata placed his face in his hands and peeked at us through his hands to check whether we were listening closely to his story… The Commander’s tears dripped between the fingers of his clasped hands, then with his head bowed he kept on talking about Fedotkin and the son of the regiment, and me and the others couldn’t help wondering how the story of Fedotkin and the son of the regiment ended. Would we ever know? But we were hungry and Commander Vyžlata was sobbing so much that between sobs you could hardly make out a word of the story.
Commander Baudyš slapped Commander Vyžlata on the back and said again, ‘Now, now, me old warhorse!’ Then Bajza punched me, saying, ‘Me old warhorse!’ so I punched him back. Commander Vyžlata fell silent and picked up a paintbrush. He turned to our squads as we stood to attention, then sketched in a new face next to Private Fedotkin’s in the portrait. He glanced back over his shoulder and shouted, ‘For your exemplary actions, I shall now paint a memorial to friendship, and to go with Private Fedotkin I shall paint in one of you, a Czech boy! At ease!’
We pounced on the food. Commander Vyžlata worked on painting the boy until the very end of the celebration, which came soon enough. In the dormitory I felt sick because I’d eaten lots and lots of jam, which I’d taken off the longshirts. I thought about being made squad leader. I couldn’t get to sleep for sheer joy. But then I did drop off and slept until morning.
8: Work. Još. In the workshop
The days passed. Every morning we left the Home from Home and trudged off to the village, rather like when we used to go to church with the nuns.
Now it was Commander Baudyš leading us, assigning us jobs to do.
In the morning we walked through mist, then later the sun came out. During the day there was lots of light everywhere. The wind swept the snow, whined and skittered across it. The edges of the frozen snow crumbled away. The wind wooshed at the last snow frozen in tufts of grass. There was no snow left on the rooftops. There was snow left only here and there.
It was not a good time for burning papers! It was not a good time for training in the forest! It was wet everywhere.
The sleet froze us to the bone, even down by the footbridge. There was deep water under the bridge and some huge rocks.
‘Right, lads, on this bank we’re going to learn how to build levees and defensive ramparts,’ said Commander Baudyš, pointing. ‘Stay clear of the other bank,’ he ordered.
All among the reeds on the bank opposite was the village rubbish dump. ‘You get all sorts of stuff in rubbish dumps,’ said Páta. ‘But not in this one.’
In the frozen reeds there was a rotten door, a tyre, some rusting oil drums and scrap iron. There was lots of iron, its black outlines washed by the black water and overgrown by reeds. Páta said that where there were reeds there was mud. And leeches. We won’t be going there, we told ourselves.
The longshirts stayed at the home. Studying and working. Šklíba and Martin were aides to the Commander. Margash too. Ah well.