Sister Alberta would tell us about the wolves in Chapman Forest that gobbled up runaway orphans. And about the wicked fairies who lay in wait for boys on the run and would bite them between the legs. And the elves on Fell Crag, who would catch a boy and make him dig a tunnel into the mountain. Most of all, Sister Alberta liked telling us about Czechia.
I used to lie in my bed made from empty soapboxes, all fed and bathed, and Monkeyface, who in those days fitted nicely inside a single soapbox, would belch and fart, and Sister Alberta would read us to sleep with a fairy story about Czechia, who protected this wonderful Bohemian land from its enemies. Mr Cimbura used to come in quietly and sometimes cover the kitchen table with little parcels of goodies for us and for Sister Alberta, and he would listen attentively as Sister Alberta told us stories of how Czechia vanquished the devil’s warlocks with their yellow, vulpine eyes, or some such tale. He often brought a little flask with him, and he and Sister Alberta would take sips from it, and they carried on talking until we were asleep. All of which I saw and heard before I dropped off.
Because she cared for Monkeyface, the nuns let us stay with Sister Alberta, even after the home became the Home and Mr Cimbura had to climb into the kitchen through the window. But not for long. It happened right in the middle of the tale about Czechia… Sister Leontina flung open the door and interrupted the story just as the virgin Czechia had closed the eyes of the last heroic defenders of Bohemia, and was riding out against its enemies, brandishing aloft her blazing sword… Seeing Mr Cimbura, Sister Leontina shouted ‘A man!’ and, as he left shuffling on his unsteady legs, she grabbed the flask from the table, sniffed at it and shouted ‘Alcohol!’, then immediately ordered Sister Alberta to tidy up the kitchen. That was the first night I slept in the longshirts’ dormitory. Monkeyface too. Not in his box. He slept on a bunk, as if he were the same as the other lads. Then they fixed the net over him. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked.
Our nuns brought us up and cared for us day and night, and told us we were the children of savage or motley races, carried to Siřem on a whirlwind of bad times, when the world was a vale of thorns, but that none of this mattered because God had us safe in the palm of His hand, as did our guardian angels. But we were not to be naughty or act crazy or lose our tempers or fight or steal, or we would be consumed by hellfire. And we had to speak Czech.
At Siřem, the boys who were best at speaking Czech were the Czechs, who were scattered among both the shortpants and the longshirts. They were here because they had done something wrong, like Karel, or for stealing or running away. Even Dýha had run away from his parents or whoever he’d been with before.
It would be our last winter with the nuns, although we didn’t know it.
The days passed and clearest of all I remember that last winter, when the nuns’ nerves began to shatter; when some of them began wandering around on both floors of the Home and in the kitchen-cum-classroom in tears; and when they were on night duty they would fall down on their knees in the corridors, next to the holy pictures; and Sister Alberta would smoke a sneaky cigarette out of sight of the others, though we could see her and afterwards some of us would fight over her dog-ends.
That last winter, the youngest nuns, especially sisters Eulalia and Dolores, had tears in their eyes and stopped punishing us, even for pushing and shoving on the way to church, and laughing and deliberately falling down in the snow. And one morning Sister Dolores said to Sister Leontina, ‘Five kilos! Oh God! They’ll only let us take five kilos! What an awful place that re-education centre must be! Oh dear! What’s five kilos of books and underwear?’
Sister Leontina frowned and told Sister Dolores, ‘And how much underwear and how many books did the sweet young Mary take with her to Bethlehem?’
And Sister Dolores blushed, as we could easily tell, because she was standing against the pure-white snow. She nodded and we walked on.
Just like any other morning on the way to church we sang hymns as we went. I only really remember the frosty mornings and this was one of them. But Monkeyface never had to go to church, because he couldn’t, and sometimes I didn’t have to because the nuns allowed me to keep him company; so me and Monkeyface, we’d often be left all alone in the longshirts’ lower dorm, all alone, and everything was silent.
I would go iya, iya! and tell him, ‘Say something, you ugly mug, you bugger!’ That’s what I called him, but he didn’t care and he went gru, gru! and laughed back at me, and poked his hands through the holes of his net. He wanted one of the nuns to come and walk with him. They wouldn’t let me, because I couldn’t hold him up. He would also have liked Hanka to come. Sometimes Sister Alberta or Leontina, Eulalia or Dolores, Emiliana or Zdislava would look in on us, whichever nun was on kitchen duty, and she would bring us some bread and butter and milk, and to me she’d say, ‘It’s so sweet how you look after your baby brother…,’ and she’d pat me on the head and think I was a long-suffering little donkey.
After the nun had gone, Monkeyface would gobble up all the bread and drink all the milk, then loll back in his cot and start farting. Sometimes I lay next to him, and before falling asleep I would think about Shadowland. The nuns didn’t know about Shadowland. It was just for me and Monkeyface. I thought about Shadowland, where the shadows would hold me up high and stroke my head, coo over me and feed me something deliciously gooey, and they would laugh with me… I thought about these shadows and remembered them. The first people I saw were at Siřem, but by then I knew enough not to give a shit about this earth, because this earth is the earth of those bastards, my parents.
Cuddling was better. If we cuddled for a long time, Hanka smelt more. We put our arms around each other. ‘Do you like this?’ she would ask. I liked it a lot. Hanka didn’t mind what I was like. I told her once it might be nice to do cuddling with Sister Dolores as well. Hanka gave me such a smack that I saw stars. She didn’t want me cuddling anyone else. Her breasts were much smaller than Sister Dolores’s. When Hanka was in bed with me, Monkeyface was usually calm and quiet. Maybe he was thinking that she was in bed with him as well, which she almost was. Because of the way she cared for Monkeyface the nuns wanted Hanka to be a nun one day. So did I. Then we’d always be together. But it didn’t happen. It wasn’t possible.
The church services were taken by Father Francis, and because his altar boys were lads from the village, the shortpants, led by Dýha, Páta and Karel, always made for the front pews. While Father Francis and the nuns were praying or telling stories about the saints and not watching us, the shortpants and altar boys would wave their clenched fists and make faces at each other.
The altar boys stuck close to Father Francis, because left alone among us somewhere in the church, they would have got a good thumping. Father Francis went on about love being the sweetness of the world and that those who have no love have nothing. The nuns kept an eye on us while blowing on their frozen fingers, and we listened to Father Francis because we had to, and whenever he talked about love and loving, the boys would giggle, but after a while we stopped nudging each other and pulling faces, and a chill came over us, because we had had a snowball fight outside the church and our wet clothes made us cold. Among the locals only the old women from Siřem went to morning mass. They loved Šklíba’s singing and the other choirboys from the Home, and they would book Šklíba’s choir for their funerals. I remembered some of the old women from the olden days, before the home became the Home, and before the nuns were in charge, and I thought the old women didn’t remember me. But I was wrong.