I noticed that the sun was roasting and the clammy mist from the water under the footbridge had disappeared, and we were all exposed to the strong sunlight and had to screw up our eyes, and Commander Žinka went on and on about a spirit of defiance spreading throughout Czechoslovakia like a wildfire in the steppes, and that Soviet armoured corps might be lined up on the borders of liberal Czechoslovakia and that our freedom was in jeopardy, but we would not buckle! And I imagined that if hordes of jackbooted Moskies arrived, they might kill Commander Žinka, which would be great. Me and Margash would grab Monkeyface and beat it. And Commander Žinka was saying that he knew we would give a good account of ourselves, just like the boy soldiers of the Hussites. ‘I was a boy myself once, lads!’ he said. ‘So I know that all healthy boys know how to fight and enjoy fighting.’ Commander Žinka told us all this so we knew, but we couldn’t give a shit. We were worn out from lugging rocks… and Martin! Oh dear. Without being given the order, we all sat down in the grass and started chewing stalks, perched on various rocks that had dried out in the wind and sun.
Commander Baudyš and Karel were fussing around the trolley, and Commander Žinka was still going on and on. We heard, but we didn’t listen, until he said, ‘While the representatives of a regenerated Czechoslovakia are defending socialism with a human face at the meeting in Čierna nad Tisou…,’ then Bajza got a fit of the giggles and started squirming, his lips twitching, and quietly muttered, ‘Arsehole.’ Commander Žinka leaned towards us from the trolley. ‘You boy,’ he said, ‘have you got epilepsy?’ and Páta roared, ‘Nah, he’s got syphilis!’ and that was the end of Commander Žinka’s speech. We got up, but something had changed.
Something had changed because Commander Baudyš suddenly turned to go. He looked back just once and ran an eye over our formation, which had begun to stand easy without being ordered to, and he just went… he was leaving. Just like that! Karel trotted after him and he was running, and we stared open-mouthed after our mate Karel, and when Karel caught up with Commander Baudyš he fell in two steps behind him with the easy stride of a detachment on the march, then both of them slowly disappeared from sight and we were left gawping at each other, and Dýha shouted, ‘Hey! Karel! Come back!’ and carried on like that, hopping up and down, but Karel couldn’t hear him, or if he could he pretended not to.
And crutchy Commander Žinka watched it all, with his head held high and his chin stuck out, looking sidelong after the departing Commander Baudyš, and we all clustered round the trolley. Then Chata kicked me in the leg and Bajza tugged at my sleeve. I’m commander of the saboteurs! Chata and Bajza and me, we crawled under the footbridge, looking around the rocks, and poked at the dark water with sticks. All we could find was the blanket. No Martin. We were glad. I saw Chata and Bajza smiling and chattering away in their own language, so I told them to speak normal.
Bajza flung his stick in the water. ‘He did the right thing,’ he said. ‘You have to dump stuff when you’re escaping. ’Cause of dogs and things.’
‘There ain’t no dogs to chase escapees here,’ I said, as if they didn’t know.
‘All dogs chase escapees,’ Chata said.
‘So where’d he get to?’ Bajza asked.
‘He doesn’t know where the cemetery with the tomb is,’ I said. ‘He isn’t one of us saboteurs!’
‘Only a Whitey could escape down the main road,’ said Chata.
‘Hmm,’ said Bajza, and I also said, ‘Hmm,’ though I’d never done a runner.
‘He could still be downstream, couldn’t he?’ I said. ‘Carried by the water, no?’ I looked across the water, and it was washing over the scrap iron and other stuff in the tip across the stream.
They both laughed and went on in their own language. That pissed me off.
‘The stones wouldn’t let him pass,’ Bajza explained with a grin, as if he were talking to some idiot, though he was smaller than me.
We clambered onto the bank.
The lads were now on the road by the trolley and the pickup. If our longshirts had happened along and squashed up tight, they would have all fitted on. We could all have gone somewhere. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Commander Žinka sat in the pickup’s cab. He had chucked his crutches on the floor, and we could see his stumps wrapped in great big leather patches… As he sat there, we could see that he was huge, with paws like a bear out of Chapman Forest. He was explaining stuff to the lads and doing great things with his hands among the tools: ‘And this is a loudspeaker, lads, and this is an amplifier,’ and he kept pulling stuff off the pickup and more stuff off the trolley. The lads handed him at once whatever he pointed to, and he put it all together and then he was holding the loudspeaker with wires hanging from it… He had loads of these loudspeaker things on the back of the pickup… ‘And you screw it together here, and so we’ve got a public address system and the revolution can begin any time you like, my lads.’ Commander Žinka smiled at them and the lads were laughing too, having fun, listening… But I couldn’t be bothered. I dunno what’s wrong with me.
‘Boys,’ said Commander Žinka, ‘we’ll go into the village now and hang the wires and loudspeakers up, then we can inform the villagers about what’s going on in Czechoslovakia!’
Dýha asked if we would be able to talk into a loudspeaker.
Žinka reached out a gigantic paw and smiled and patted Dýha on the shoulder, and he said, ‘I like your initiative, boy. What would you say into it?’
‘That altar boys are buggers, Commander, sir,’ said Dýha, making such a funny face that we fell about laughing.
Commander Žinka said, ‘No, that’s not a good idea. But anyway, let’s get going.’
Dýha and Páta led the procession, pushing the trolley along. The pickup followed them at a walking pace, and behind it there was us, the Bandits, and we were sorry we weren’t on field manoeuvres. It would have been better to go into the village with airguns.
*
The pickup stopped outside the first farmhouse, belonging to the Kropáčeks. Commander Žinka pulled a stepladder off the pickup, opened it and swung himself onto it straight from the cab. He jammed his stumps between the rungs until his leather patches squeaked, helping himself along with his teeth. Then he fixed the first loudspeaker to the Kropáčeks’ fence, and Mr Kropáček came out and said, ‘What’s all this, then?’
Commander Žinka handed him a sheet of paper. Mr Kropáček had to sign it and, syllable by syllable, he worked out that he was accepting material responsibility for the loudspeaker, and he gawped and said, ‘And comrade, sir… erm, Mr Comrade…’
‘Address me as “Commander”!’ ordered Commander Žinka.
‘Will you have a dram, Commander?’
‘But of course!’ said Commander Žinka. Grabbing the top rungs, he swung back a bit and launched himself into the cab. Mr Kropáček called his wife, and she brought out a bottle and a tray of glasses, and other people came along as well. We stood by the fence and were a bit surprised to see a couple of the altar boys arriving with the villagers, so Chata ripped a piece of wood from the fence, and Dýha and Mikušinec, who were behind us, picked up some stones and niftily slipped them to us in the front, but all the people from Siřem, including the altar boys, were just gawping at the pickup, and at the stranger, Commander Žinka, and at the loudspeaker.