The village appeared to be deserted.
The NCOs appointed patrols and anyone who could and wanted to found themselves a spot to sit down in the cool and shade of the school building.
I must have nodded off, because when I opened my eyes I was alone in the classroom with the collapsed ceiling, except for Captain Yegorov, who was hunched down on the dais in front of the board.
Lying all over the floor were books, torn exercise books, and in the corner a bundle of rags: red, white and blue Czechoslovak flags. It was like a den where someone’s dossed down for a night.
The Captain picked a thick book out of the pile on the floor, flicked through it, then carefully and with interest studied every page in turn. His scowling and grease-blackened face began to bear the signs of a sad smile. Captain Yegorov tore out individual pages, crumpled them and threw them on the floor. He stood up and, although usually so swift, walked slowly out of the classroom.
The book was Brehm’s Animal Life and each of those torn and tossed pages was a portrait of an animal.
I remembered what Dago had told me about what would happen if Captain Yegorov failed in his circus mission. I crossed the classroom and went down the corridor to the back, and through a little window I could see Chapman Forest. I could escape that way. I was only a stone’s throw from the forest.
Dago had spoken about a military tribunal, and I recalled the old fairy tale about Fedotkin that our commander used to tell us, the commander that Margash and I had killed, and I told myself, ‘Oh no! I’m not going to any fucking gulag with my captain, no way! When fathers fight, their kids have to join in, sure, but I’ve heard too much about the penal colony in freezing Vorkuta. I’m not going there for all the tea in China. I’ve got to get away!’
But if I did a bad job of running away from Captain Yegorov and we met again somehow, he wouldn’t be kind to me any more, that was for sure. And once I was on the run I’d have to keep my eyes peeled for insurgents too. Yet I knew I had to get away. The problem was that I only knew the world of my maps. And I had no idea how to get out of it.
The rest break was suddenly shattered by the stifled shouting of the sub-machine-gunners and a weird grinding noise echoing through the previously calm summer afternoon. I dashed out of the classroom.
Our sub-machine-gunners were pushing two scruffy-looking guys at gunpoint before them. And a cabin on wheels pulled by a little donkey. One of the scruffs sat astride the donkey, which plodded happily along, despite all the noise around it. The other scruff was dragging the beast by its reins towards Captain Yegorov and a knot of NCOs.
The cabin looked a bit like a rustic outdoor toilet, except for being gaily painted. The NCOs, packed defensively around Captain Yegorov, lowered their side arms. We all stared. I could tell that the colourful scrawls covering the cabin were supposed to depict a seaside scene. I knew the sea and the seaside — sandy beaches and palm trees and monsters that peeked out above the surface of the water — from The Catholic Book of Knowledge. The cabin was covered in similar scenes, except that next to the palm trees on the beach was a naked woman. It was definitely not Czechia.
The donkey stopped short. The guy who was sitting on it jumped down, and the pair of them dropped to their knees before the erect figure of our captain, then raised their arms and started jabbering.
None of us would have been at all surprised if the Captain had suspected it was all a Czech subterfuge and had had the men and their donkey shot on the spot.
But Captain Yegorov smiled and asked, ‘Are you circus folk? Is this a circus?’
And Captain Yegorov marched straight towards the slatted door of the painted cabin.
But the impertinence of the scruffs knew no bounds. They both kept waving their arms, babbling away, and politely, but firmly prevented the Captain from going inside.
‘Ilya!’ he shouted and I went to interpret.
But I couldn’t understand a word! And they wouldn’t talk to me anyway. They looked at me and I think they understood Czech, but they wouldn’t speak it. So by snatches I tried this and that from what I remembered of the foreign languages the other kids would cry all night in at Siřem. And Captain Yegorov grew impatient and started tapping his feet. And it had all been going on for too long and I was about to throw up my arms and tell the Captain I didn’t know their language, when the one who had arrived on the donkey, the one with a scar across his swarthy features, poked the other scruff and said, ‘We can tell this one,’ and to me he said, ‘You from Siřem, kiddo? From the reformatory?’
I nearly fainted. That was how Siřem kids talked.
‘You’re from Siřem, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah!’
‘So tell ’em we’re Bulgarian. Go on, and in this cabin here we’ve got the Mermaid of the Seven Seas. For gentlemen, geddit?’
‘Sure,’ I said, and found a way to translate for Yegorov.
‘Ah, my Bulgarian brothers!’ The Captain was happy, and so were the NCOs, and they started demanding to see the mermaid, obviously.
And the Captain asked where the rest of the circus was.
And the two scruffs were grinning… They were no longer being held by the soldiers in camouflage dress, who had lowered their Kalashnikovs. The NCOs were tittering and sticking their side arms back in their holsters and sleeves and belts and boots, depending on where each one carried his. And the scruffs realized that things had taken a turn for the better, so they were happy. Scarface winked at me and started talking, and I translated and explained that the Bulgarian circus folk had fled in the face of an offensive by Czech bandits, and that they were now fighting their way across the heartland under their own steam. As to the whereabouts of their Balkan circus, unfortunately they didn’t know and couldn’t guess, but they were happy to be able to be of service to the heroic Soviet Army. Then Captain Yegorov stiffened ever so slightly, because the two scruffs began to explain that there was a charge to see the mermaid, and that they accepted marks, leva, zlotys, forints, roubles… any of the currencies of the five armies, they didn’t mind which, and as for the mermaid, she didn’t care about anything at all.
Captain Yegorov’s blackened face went rigid, but only me and the NCOs could tell, not the scruffs, because of the axle grease he’d put on to stop the midges. Captain Yegorov had one more question.
He asked whether ‘you, my Bulgarian brothers’ knew the way to Siřem.
And the two scruffs started happily outshouting each other that ‘yes’, and ‘sure’, and that ‘you’re there in next to no time’! And would the officers, sirs, like to see their show now?
And I interpreted.
And Captain Yegorov was smiling again.
And I knew I’d had it, because I didn’t want to go back to Siřem.
Now the scruffs, helped by the gunners, moved the cabin on wheels into the classroom, leaving the donkey outside, and the school classroom was apparently now the scene of some important preparations, and there, alongside the silent Captain Yegorov, the excited gunners kept nudging one another, overjoyed at having found another bit of the Socialist Circus. After all, around every corner of this Czech land our column had so far been met by warfare and more warfare, and suddenly there were the leaps and somersaults of Dago the dwarf, and now they even had a mermaid all the way from Bulgaria.
They were all looking forward to the show.
Captain Yegorov went into the classroom first. And he was there for some time. The gunners nudged each other, then one gave his army belt a polish, while another dragged a comb through his hair; one or two of the others even washed the axle grease and crust of dead mosquitoes from their faces, which, pink and smiling, they raised towards the sun… The ordinary servicemen were also full of anticipation. They knew that after the sub-machine-gunners it would be their turn… And the ones whose turn to mount guard had just come were making fun of those ahead of them… and in all the argy-bargy there was plenty of the sort of good-natured pushing and banter that were the norm in our tank column during those moments of relief when ordinary life briefly reasserted itself… And Captain Yegorov came out of the classroom, smiling broadly, and over his shoulder he barked an order to the gunners to find the Bulgarian comrades a place in the column once the show was over.