There was a time when I was chosen to join the funeral processions as well, but then it was decided that only Czech boys should accompany the dead as it looked better that way. In exchange for crying a lot they got heaps of extra sweets and soup and other goodies, but they always had to surrender some to the shortpants, who refused to cry at the villagers’ funerals and called the boys who profited from funerals crybabies… But that’s not how it was! No-one wanted the shortpants at funerals, because they were wilful and cheeky and stole anything that wasn’t nailed down, and nobody ever wanted me at funerals either and I never sang… but I didn’t care!
The singers called themselves the Circle. They were led by Sister Eulalia, and Šklíba was the head choirboy. But the choirboys’ voices hardly ever rang out in winter. Even Father Francis’s teeth chattered in the cold, like ours, and so he would ‘storm through the service’, as the old women put it, the ones who came to early mass with us, and outside the church gave us the apples and walnuts that the older longshirts lost their milk teeth on, and if anyone lost a milk tooth it meant he was big enough to join the shortpants… So I was very careful when eating nuts, because the last thing I wanted was to join Dýha in the upper dormitory, where the lads kept wanking and going on about it, which didn’t interest me at all.
When we walked to church in the morning, we always had to line up, us longshirts going first because we were slower and wouldn’t be able to keep up with the shortpants. But in the frost and snow the shortpants went ahead to tread a path for us. The only thing I remember is those freezing mornings as our column of God’s children passed the village pond on the way to church, and the village was empty except for the dogs that barked at us… The villagers didn’t know us then, because Commander Vyžlata, who would hire us out to do odd jobs for them, hadn’t arrived yet. The dogs didn’t know us at all and they barked at us, a procession of children, wrapped up in the scarves and caps and clothes donated to us by Czech children.
The walk back was different, because by then the village had come alive, no matter how fast Father Francis had stormed through the service. And on the way from the church to the pond snowballs and chunks of ice whizzed through the air… Not on the village green, though. There we fell into lines with the nuns at each end, and we all sang ‘Closer My God to Thee’, so the village could hear us. But further on, where no houses lined the path, we formed a huddle. The village boys would be waiting for us, and they’d pelt us with lumps of ice and stones, and the shortpants would form a wall around the tiniest longshirts, cursing and swearing, and catching the ice and stones and hurling them back. They made sure the lumps of ice didn’t hit the heads of the smallest boys, throwing them back into the faces of the village louts. And the nuns were powerless to prevent it.
‘You’re all delinquents and syphilitics! Darkies and gippos! Losers and scumbags!’ the village lads would taunt us. ‘And you’re bog-trotters and yokels! Peasants and churls and clodhoppers!’ the shortpants shouted back. And Dýha, Chata and Karel and the other shortpants took no notice of the nuns’ pleading and drew out of their trouser legs the sticks that they had got ready for the village dogs, which the locals sometimes set on us. It was all a scream and great fun, despite the bruises and the nosebleeds and the odd torn ear. And although the journey to church on those freezing-cold mornings seemed endless, on the way back, with all the mayhem of fighting and trying to dodge the whizzing ice and rocks we were inside the Home in no time.
Then the nuns would put iodine on our bumps and dress our wounds, and that day the youngest one, Sister Eulalia, was sobbing because a dog had frightened her and torn her habit. And that day Sister Leontina railed against the locals, calling them Philistines and comparing us to the holy infants of the Crusades, and that day the hero was Dýha, because his forehead had been cracked open by a stone, and all the boys who were limping or had their hands bandaged were heroes too, and they bragged about their injuries, and those who didn’t have any pretended they did, and we began thinking up all sorts of traps and tricks to play on the village lads, and we shouted and cursed and swore. And that day in the dining room-cum-classroom Sister Alberta roared, ‘Shut up, the lot of you!’ and hurled a ladle to the floor.
Straightaway, one of the darkies grabbed it and licked it clean. Dýha kicked the darkie, but the darkie’s brothers weren’t going to stand for that, not even from Dýha, so Dýha received a gash on his thigh from a piece of broken plate to add to the cut on his forehead. The older boys started a fight, and the longshirts ran in and out among them, knocking each other down, and before long everyone was fighting, and those who had their own languages shouted and swore in their own languages, though they swore in Czech as well.
Sister Alberta sat on her chair, plates and cutlery flying over her head, and in the fracas someone overturned the milk jug and knocked a tray full of sandwiches to the floor, and Sister Alberta lit a cigarette and, in the middle of all the mayhem of fighting, crying and the sobbing of longshirts who’d got trampled on, flicked her ash on the dirty, greasy floor.
I got to the sandwiches and shoved one under my shirt, sticking the buttered side to my belly. I just had time to wolf down a couple more before Sister Leontina bounded into the room with a broom, followed by sisters Zdislava and Dolores with buckets of water. Sister Leontina bashed the brawlers over the head, while the other nuns sloshed water over them. Then Sister Leontina stood in front of Sister Alberta and gave her such a slap that the cigarette shot out of her mouth. ‘Forgive me, sister,’ said Sister Leontina. ‘Our nerves are beginning to crack.’
And Sister Alberta said, ‘Why won’t the parish council send us a policeman for walking through the village?’
‘Because they’re godless,’ said Sister Leontina. ‘It’s an ignorant Communist village!’
We all heard her, for silence reigned in the dining room, aside from the odd snivel.
The shortpants squeezed round the overturned tables and desks, and some of the longshirts were still rolling about on the floor in a state of disarray.
Sister Dolores, who was almost resting her back against a painting of Christ, cried out, ‘What is to become of us? Oh God! What is to become of us?’ Sister Zdislava put her arm around Sister Dolores and said, ‘Calm yourself, sister, and consider what is to become of them, the little ones.’ And when Sister Dolores heard her, she shrieked and fell back against the wall, banging her head, which made us all gasp.
Then Dýha stepped forward from one of the groups and stood opposite Sister Leontina, and although he was almost as tall as her, he stuck out his chin and said, ‘I’m a Communist too!’ And Sister Leontina said, ‘So, you can spend the night in the cellar! And anyway, because of the fighting, I’m sending you all to bed without lessons, and there’s an end of it!’
‘Now, now, sisters!’ Sister Leontina clapped her hands and the nuns lined us up in the direction of the door. They also clapped and sang to the longshirts to set the pace: ‘One, two, three… “There was a little mouse, stealing grain about the house, but He understood her need and let her hold on to the seed!”’ But it wasn’t like that after teatime on other days. That day we were all battered and wretched, and nobody was showing off any more, and nobody said much either. Dýha stayed where he was, in a rage. Sister Alberta approached him, jangling some keys on a ring. It was her job to drag wayward boys down to the cellar, because she was the strongest. Sister Dolores was leaning against Christ on the wall and mumbling. Sister Leontina went up to her and grabbed her by the arm. Then they both joined Sister Zdislava to kneel before Christ and pray, all of which I saw and heard, as I was the last to shuffle out of the room.