But Šklíba did a bunk. He shouldn’t have. After that things got a whole lot worse.
The alarm went off. First we gathered round to study the maps that I pulled from under my tracksuit top. I set out the parameters of the search. Commander Baudyš listened closely and sometimes gave a curt nod.
Then we quickly availed ourselves of the requisite arms and equipment, and Commander Baudyš read us our orders.
After Commander Baudyš had given us our orders, our squads began to fear the worst. I feared it too.
But it wasn’t that Commander Baudyš didn’t like Šklíba. He didn’t actually know him! He was just doing what Commander Vyžlata wanted. That was the only reason why he commanded us to ‘liquidate Šklíba with cold steel’. He didn’t really mean it.
After the order had been given, our squads spread out in assault formation.
Šklíba was soon spotted. He hadn’t even got as far as Chapman Forest, where he could have disappeared. But he hadn’t made it. He was stumbling. Going slow. He couldn’t go very fast in the muddy field full of slush. He didn’t even try to avoid the wet stones. All shoes will slip on those.
‘You, you and you! You will make the interception!’ Commander Baudyš pointed at Mikušinec, Chata and me, and again he gave the order to carry out liquidation by cold steel without waiting for any signal. We set down our knapsacks and airguns and ran ahead.
Chata pretended to trip and twist his ankle painfully.
We ran on. As saboteurs we knew which way the wind was blowing, and that Šklíba could hear us and Commander Baudyš couldn’t. Cautiously we called out to Šklíba. He didn’t hear.
The shots from the Commander’s gun close to his ears had burst his eardrums and he still had some dried blood in his ears even now. I saw it as I knocked him to the ground and pretended to pull my cold steel out of him. He gurgled, but he didn’t spray snot all around him like Monkeyface, but dirty tears, yeah, he had those.
We raised him to his feet and took him to Commander Baudyš. We hadn’t followed orders, but Commander Baudyš didn’t say anything.
At the Home from Home Šklíba went straight into the solitary cell in the cellar, which they say is commonly the case with people who do a bunk at other Homes from Home for ne’er-do-wells like us.
Because we’d tracked down Šklíba so quickly, there was plenty of time left for jobs in the village.
*
Me and Páta were assigned to Mr Cimbura, who sometimes called me ‘sonny’, sometimes ‘Avar’ and sometimes ‘goggle-eyed sprog’, but I didn’t care. If he called me ‘shitbag’ I only pretended not to care. I thought Mr Cimbura didn’t remember who I was. I was wrong about that.
Even with me joining them, Chata was still the smallest Bandit. If anybody shouted or swore at him, he hated it.
Mr Cimbura’s house was just beyond the village. By the cemetery. I didn’t know if Sister Alberta sometimes lived here with him as man and wife. I wasn’t bothered.
We wondered: ‘Does the old boy keep gherkins in his cellar?’ ‘No, sweetcorn!’ ‘Could he have salamis?’
And we went to his cellar window and gawped inside: ‘What’s he got down there?’ There were girls inside!
It was gloomy in the cellar and there were some girls there. All we could see of Mr Cimbura were his feet. He was sitting on something. The sun was blazing down on us, but the girls in the cellar were all wrapped up. They were wearing tracksuits or skirts and they had headscarves on, so I couldn’t tell if Hanka was there. How was I supposed to recognize her in the gloom? Now the girls were singing, so we listened to the song. It went something like this:
We’re the girls of the village
and we’re bringing you some flowers,
forget-me-nots
and everlastings
from that sweetheart of yours!
And then one girl started dancing in the middle of the others. It wasn’t Hanka. And they had a portrait of Czechia in a big golden frame. They were taking the flowers to her. Bunches of flowers lay all around the painting. It looked as if they had painted over some Virgin Mary from the church and turned her into Czechia. The girls weren’t topless, which made sense as it was so cold. Pity, I thought to myself, and I reckon Páta thought so too. Mr Cimbura was sitting down and his knees were shaking, though I couldn’t tell if it was because of the song or old age. I looked at him and thought, ‘It must be ages since I lived in the manor house. In those days Mr Cimbura’s legs just wobbled a bit. I don’t know how long ago that was.’
Then a different girl started dancing in the middle of the crowd in the cellar, wrapped up warm in her headscarf and fully dressed all over, no doubt because it was so awfully cold in the cellar.
The other girls were clapping. I could see pickaxes and shovels leaning against the wall and a pile of freshly dug soil. The girls were working in the cellar. And then someone suddenly gave me a shove. Páta was shoved too, making him yelp. Some big girls stood over us, swearing and chasing us away from the cellar window. There were two of them and they were a good match for us. They must have been in the cellar. They wore caps and scarves over their long hair, and aprons over their tracksuits and they were in wellies. I badly wanted to see what they were up to in the cellar and what they were singing, but I couldn’t. The big girls were pushing at us and trying to chase us away from the window. I was glad nobody could see. If Dýha and Chata and Karel and the rest had seen those unarmed girls shoving me across that muddy yard, it would have been so, so embarrassing — a fate worse than death!
So we waited for Mr Cimbura by the fence. We fooled about, climbing on the fence and joking that it was nothing really, being chased by big girls, though actually we did mind. It was afternoon, the feeble sun had gone down. Páta pointed and said, ‘Hey, Ilya. Those things I thought were thistles or something, they’re crosses.’ The sky was full of dark clouds and the snow that still lay here and there reflected no light, so the crosses in the cemetery on the other side of the fence weren’t very clear.
Then we heard: ‘That’s right, young men, I’ve a fine view, no doubt about it. If you get up on your tiptoes, you can even see the tomb!’ Mr Cimbura had toddled out to find us and was leaning on the fence. ‘I often stand here doing nothing, keeping a lookout,’ he said. ‘But you quit snooping and get down to work. Go on, hop it!’
So we didn’t even check in and set about our jobs straight away, and that day it looked as if things were going to be just like old times. But I was wrong.
First Páta spilt the grain for the chickens and Mr Cimbura gave him one hell of a whack across the face and yelled, ‘You little brown shit! Who do you take me for? Some Cimbura Rockefeller, you brainless brat!’ Then Mr Cimbura settled down in his chair and told us to light a fire with some green pine branches, which we broke down into small bits, and anyone who does that usually gets splinters all over their hands, but never mind that, and Mr Cimbura was drinking water from a big ladle, and he said to Páta, ‘I know I can be a bit harsh sometimes. The hens would’ve pecked it all up, but you have to learn, even if it’s the hard way, my lad… Just take it easy, no need to rush things… slurp-slurp!… and what’s your dad do, by the way?’
And Páta said, ‘My old man’s a pilot.’
‘Don’t be stupid, lad,’ said Mr Cimbura. ‘No pilot would leave you in a rogues’ orphanage. No, not a pilot… slurp-slurp!… I might even adopt you, but I know shit all about what you really are. You could have some bastard genes or something…’ Then Páta suddenly yelped as if he’d pricked himself on the twigs, and he turned and was all white in the face (though he really is a bit on the sunburnt side) and he grabbed the ladle from Mr Cimbura and began laying into him with it, and Mr Cimbura tried to duck, but he couldn’t get up on his feet, because Páta wouldn’t let him use his arms to lever himself up. And Páta delved into the pile of greenwood by the stove with both hands and lashed at Mr Cimbura with some branches and bloody scratch marks zigzagged all over Mr Cimbura’s old face, and Páta danced round and round him and kept on hitting him, and I said, ‘Páta! Knock it off!’ but Páta had gone crazy.