Commander Vyžlata talked and ranted at us, but we cared sod all about what he was saying. We didn’t want to hear any more about Fedotkin and we didn’t want to be listening to our commander, because our mate Šklíba had gone.
In the evening we were alone in the dormitory. Commander Vyžlata, along with Margash, had stayed at the command post. Lots of longshirts came creeping into our dormitory, but we didn’t chase them out.
The Bandits gathered around Dýha and Karel, and Chata openly took out some cigarettes. We sat there and stood about and our words flittered everywhere, and then we heard Martin saying, ‘I’m leaving too!’
We said nothing and watched Martin, and Martin said, ‘You lot know nothing. You lark about outside with airguns,’ and he slipped off his bed onto the floor and curled up in a ball. We stood round him. Now he was blubbering.
And Karel shouted, ‘Leave him be!’ as if someone were doing something to Martin. Nobody was doing anything to him.
Martin got up and said, ‘You lot know nothing. You haven’t been locked up here with the Commander.’ Then he goes on, saying that he really hates Commander Vyžlata, because Šklíba is wandering helpless among the ravening beasts of Chapman Forest and he might even be dead. ‘I’m getting out of here!’ Martin told us, though he’d already said it once, and he stood up.
And Chata said to him, ‘And how are you gonna get past Vyžlata and the new lad?’
And Martin sat down.
And Páta said, ‘Out of the window would work, with knotted sheets.’
No-one even laughed. I look at the moon, which had suddenly come out above the window, chopping the darkness into shadows. In the shadows that we cast on the walls we looked like grown-ups.
Then things went fast. Páta and Karel knotted some sheets together and Mikušinec gave Martin his sweater, and Dýha took a paper packet out from under the floorboard and Martin took it. I didn’t know if my matches were in it, but there was a knife. Its blade glinted and someone gave Martin their tracksuit. Someone else even handed him an anorak and Martin tore off his black rags and got dressed.
As he climbed down the sheets I was afraid he might start kicking or shouting, or even drop down through the rubbish chute, so I didn’t watch.
Páta told him what to do. He had already run away like this. When Martin was nearly down, Páta told him, ‘We’ll leave you some food in the cemetery. Hide in the tomb.’
‘Which one?’ Martin called back, quietly.
‘There’s only one.’
‘Right,’ we heard Martin down below.
And when Martin reached the bottom, Páta tossed him a blanket and Dýha also tossed him a blanket, because it was still very cold at night.
We got into bed and chatted for a while, and Bajza asked Chata, ‘Did you give him any salt?’ and Chata replied, ‘Bollocks, let the old cheesecake cry himself all the salt he needs.’ Only then did someone let out a ‘Ha, ha!’, and I decided to run away as well, then Margash’s dream wouldn’t come true, and I meant to run away after the others fell asleep, but I fell asleep too, and in the morning we went off with Commander Baudyš to shift rocks.
10: On the rocks and in the village
We were working away on the rocks. The sun blazed above us and jabbed at my head. It blazed above the rubbish tip on the other bank, drying out the reedbed. Water that had been locked in ice crashed into the pieces of iron and made the stinking things in the tip move about. In the winter the tip didn’t stink.
Anyone who picked up a rock or a bit of wood with leeches clinging to it out of the stream and put it down on the grass would watch a while as the leeches shrank and dropped off in the heat. That didn’t interest me. That morning we weren’t sent to track down Martin. He wasn’t on Commander Baudyš’s list of squads. That morning, like many before, we worked on the rocks. But that day everything was different.
Commander Baudyš took a trolley to the stream. It was pushed by Karel, the orderly. The trolley was piled high with technical equipment from the kitchen-workshop. Commander Baudyš never let the trolley out of his sight, or if he did it was only to look at his watch. He was waiting for something or somebody. I wasn’t really interested.
As always, we formed a chain by the stream. We heaved at the rocks and passed them one to another out of the water and onto the bank. Chata held on to me. I pulled at the rocks that poked above the surface, all wet and jumbled. I was at the end of the chain, because I’m light… Chata suddenly pulled me over to him onto one rock and pointed under the footbridge and — oh dear — there trapped in the rocks was Martin’s blanket. It was completely waterlogged.
I broke away from Chata and jumped off the rocks onto the grass, moving a little way off, then I curled up in a ball like some little kid. I suddenly felt sick. My head was full of the image of Martin lying motionless among the wet, black stones, water streaming over him. I wasn’t feeling at all good. My life was not good.
Then Chata was right there beside me. He gave me a kick and said, ‘Get up, man!’
A little way off, on the bank, stood Commander Baudyš, staring at his watch.
Now all the lads were scrambling onto the bank with the rocks. I got up and grabbed one where it was lying. We built them up into ramparts and in a low voice I told Karel about Martin’s blanket, and Chata told Mikušinec. We didn’t move our lips. The lads passed it on and before long we all knew, and the mist — chilly and clammy as it rose from the water under the footbridge where it was still cold — was like dark, choking smoke that made us cough as it swirled around, like church candles when someone snuffs them out after Mass. I had no idea I still remembered the candles. Commander Baudyš didn’t know about Martin. We wouldn’t tell him. He could kiss our arses now.
We were all lined up by the ramparts and defences and the squad commanders — me included! — were about to report, but… we could all hear it! We could hear this clattering noise, and it was the clatter of a pickup truck. The pickup was stopping! And some strange bloke hauled himself out! Hauled himself, because he had no legs! Not one! He held himself up on sticks, crutches. He held on to the pickup. None of us laughed.
Commander Baudyš went up to him and his face went from white to red and back. He went over to the stranger and he wasn’t happy. He didn’t like him.
But when he stopped in front of the stranger, he gave a smart salute, like soldiers do. Just like he’d taught us.
‘At ease!’ said the crutch man. It was interesting seeing somebody give Commander Baudyš orders.
They stood there gawping at each other.
Our ranks began to break up without Baudyš having stood us down. We broke up by ourselves.
‘It’s you!’ said Commander Baudyš, and he stopped standing to attention and threw up his arms as if totally amazed. The man with the crutches just nodded.
‘Where’s the equipment?’ he asked. Commander Baudyš waved to Karel, who went over to them, pushing the trolley full of wires and technical equipment from the kitchen-workshop. The guy on crutches bent down, holding on to the door of his pickup, and took a close look at all those wires and fittings, and the other stuff Commander Baudyš and Orderly Karel had piled on the trolley.
Then the man told us to step up. We didn’t budge. Commander Baudyš glanced at us and you could tell he was glad. He was glad and proud that we were his. He gave an order. We shifted ranks, rearranged ourselves and lined up neatly. Karel took up his position as orderly. The stranger made a couple of swishes with his crutches, and now he was sitting on the trolley and upright he was quite tall. First of all, he said, he was called Major Žinka, but we should address him as ‘Commander, sir’. He carried on talking very loudly: ‘Listen, boys! It’s said that you’re the most neglected thugs in the country. Your commanders have turned you into a fine unit…’ And so this Commander Žinka went on about all the stuff we knew, and behind me Bajza hissed, ‘More vermin from Vorkuta,’ and Commander Žinka said that the process of regeneration in Czechoslovakia was getting up the noses of the Soviet party bigwigs, and that hordes of Moskies wanted to crush Czechoslovakia under their boots.