‘What?’ I said.
And he said, ‘Sing the national anthem!’
So I sang a bit of it, the only bit I could remember. Deep down I was thinking, ‘Now you can start blubbering, arseholes!’
Then another of the altar boys said to Holý, ‘Come off it, man, any Russian saboteur knows our national anthem. It’s the first thing they get taught, man.’
‘That’s true,’ said Holý. ‘I want Martin as our negotiator. The Russian guy can wait in the sty.’
‘Ilya ain’t no Russian,’ insisted Martin. ‘Wait here, will you?’ he said to me. I told him I didn’t care either way. He gave me what he had been munching on and it was a delicious-looking bacon and paprika sandwich, so I ate it. Then they shut me in the pigsty. There was no pig or anything, just a piggy smell and it was really hot. I was in there for a long time, but I didn’t mind. Then one of the altar boys came in and said, ‘I’m Pepper, ’cause I’m hot-headed. You Russian or not?’
‘No.’
‘So what are you?’
How was I supposed to know? ‘I’m from the Home,’ I said.
And he said, ‘Come on then.’
We left the yard and went up the hillside, where more altar boys were sitting around and messing about with something by the glowing embers of a fire.
We sat down and from the feathers and the squidgy bits of mud lying around I could tell it was a chicken packed in clay, because Chata and Páta and even Karel and anyone else who’s ever tried to do a runner had told us about it a thousand times.
‘I know what you’ve got there, guys. It’s gippo chicken! Have you got any salt?’
But they said nothing and just swapped glances, and then Holý said, ‘We ain’t no gippos.’
Suddenly we heard whistling and shouting — ‘La-a-a-ads!’ — and it’s Martin with the altar boys behind him, and the Bandits!
They reached us and sat down around the fire, and you could tell they were all on speaking terms. They chatted away like normal, and Dýha had a picture of Czechia glued to his tracksuit. The altar boys extracted the chicken. Pepper tapped the clay with a knife and it fell away from the meat. It smelt great. I munched away at the bones and meat, and it was hot and good. Martin stood up and explained — chiefly to me, as he’d told the Bandits already — how the altar boys had met him when he lost his way in the woods, and they’d taken him to their den on Fell Crag and they’d made peace… And the blanket? The altar boys had rigged it up to look as if Martin had got away by swimming!
Then Freckles stepped up and said, ‘I’m on guard and I see this ghost! And the ghost’s this here borstal boy Martin and he’s dragging blankets along! And he’s blubbering. Yeah, you was, be honest! He sees me and he says, “Excuse me, which way is it to the cemetery?” Ha, ha!’ Freckles laughed so much that he ended up on his back, kicking his legs in the air. ‘Yeah!’ and ‘Sure!’ roared the others and they laughed like mad… Then we talked about what would happen if the Russians stormed the country. There’d be a war, obviously, and the Bohemian Lion would roar! It’d be a right old ding-dong! Brilliant!
We sat in the grass and made friends with the altar boys, and talked about what fun we had when we were at war and reminisced about different events in that war, then Holý said, ‘Peace can be fun as well!’ ‘Too right!’ we all shouted. Then Pepper got up and said that they’d had their den, their defensive position, up on the crag, for a long time and that they could use a couple of extra hands. And we cheered and roared and Dýha shouted, ‘Long live Czechia! Long live Siaz!’ and everyone else joined in. I leaned across to Dýha and looked at the crumpled picture of Czechia on his tracksuit… And Dýha said it would be best to get a picture of Czechia permanently tattooed on our skin… Mikušinec explained that Czechia was depicted naked so that she could drag crying babies out of burning cottages and breastfeed them on the spot, at least that’s what the old biddies at the church used to say, and Dýha told him, ‘You’re a baby yourself, man.’ Holý said, ‘Yeah, when we join the fighting, the nuns’ll bring us food and medicine and ammunition up to Fell Crag. They could get past the patrols dressed up as crippled old women going out to collect firewood…’ Then he went on to say that he respected us guys from the Home and that it was great that the guys from the Crag and the guys from the Home would make up a joint defensive force, but there’s one thing he wanted to make clear to avoid any squabbling and arguments: ‘Nuns is nuns, guys, right? And we ain’t got no nuns.’ We muttered and said things like ‘Yeah!’, ‘Uh-huh’, and ‘Right!’ Now we were all chatting normally again, so I asked Dýha, ‘Where’s that Bajza kid and Chata… and little Silva?’ ‘Those lads, they don’t want gippos, and they preferred to go to Još’s anyway.’ ‘I see,’ I said, ‘and there’s someone else missing… Páta?’ Dýha shrugged, saying, ‘Dunno,’ and passed me a bottle, and I took a swig and it was the first time I’d felt good all day.
When I woke up I had a headache. Little stars were crashing about inside my head and I threw up. All that was left of the bonfire were some smoking twigs and there was nobody around on the trampled grass any more… They’d cleared off. It was dark. I was chilled to the bone. My bones were all aching, as if someone had been tugging at them… I reached the church and kept to the shadows by the cottages and the village pond, and there were no dogs and no people anywhere. I went down the hill towards the Home from Home and there were no lights on inside… I knew I was going to run away at last.
All I needed to do was tell Margash.
And I would tell him that I hadn’t had his dream.
I got to the bottom of the hill and there in the grass… it was the whole gang of altar boys, and the Bandits as well. They were sitting on the slope, gawping at the Home from Home, and none of its lights were on and it was dark all around us and the moon was shining.
‘Hi!’ I said, but only Dýha turned round and said quietly, ‘Ciao!’
I’m glad, because I thought they’d run away from me to Fell Crag, that they didn’t want me in their den. Martin came over and said, ‘Hi! They don’t want you,’ and I said, ‘I know, but I don’t care,’ and Martin said, ‘Liar! You do!’ and I said, ‘Wrong… I don’t!’ And then Dýha and Mikušinec and some of the altar boys came over, and Freckles said to me, ‘Come up to the crag with us, but you must bring weapons and things.’
I ignored him. I looked at Dýha.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get some knives and stuff!’
And I asked, ‘What’s with the Home? What’s going on?’
‘Look, man,’ said Dýha. ‘They’ve taken the longshirts away! All of ’em! On lorries.’
That was quite a shock, because the Home with no longshirts… well, it was weird!
‘We saw it. They took ’em away. They had their tracksuits and anoraks on, everything. The youngsters have gone!’ Dýha told me, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
‘Some blokes shoved them on the back of the truck,’ he said. ‘We’ve combed the whole place in case any of the little ’uns were hiding, but no. Not one, man.’
We kept staring and we could hardly see the Home from Home in the dark, and it was full of silence. It was our Home from Home, and it wasn’t. Something had changed. I could tell, and I didn’t like it.
‘And is Vyžlata there?’ I asked, ’cause we both knew that was what mattered most now.
Dýha shrugged, ‘We haven’t seen him. Nor that new boy!’
The boys in the grass said nothing.
‘You command the saboteurs,’ said Dýha.
So I said, ‘Yeah, but I’ve said all I want to.’ I set off. Mikušinec called after me ‘Ilya!’ and someone else called out quietly: ‘Ilya, kid, watch yourself!’