Then the NCOs went into the classroom, one by one, and they were inside, then they came out… They were in there a long time, so it was no surprise that the simple sub-machine-gunners and tank crewmen and pickup drivers were mad with curiosity and excitement, and they formed a queue and waited, and there were a lot of them. Despite our losses it struck me that there were still plenty of us in our tank column… but that was possibly because I was the very last in line.
Dusk was falling. It was gloomy inside the classroom. The cabin on wheels was open and all around it there was a lot of trampled mud from army boots. I peeked inside. I could see a girl in a bath full of foam. Her hair was all over her face. She was mumbling and groaning, apparently not at all happy to be there. I wasn’t surprised… I got this idea that the girl in the filthy foam was a whore, and the lads at the Home from Home used to say that whores were the best thing for cuddling with, and I was astonished to find my cock inside my trousers was suddenly as big as that time by the barn… But when it dawned on me that my first time with a woman I’d be shooting my seed into a bath full of the seed of Soviet tankmen and sub-machine-gunners, my cock shrank back again. I looked at the girl in the gloom of the damp, filthy hut and she stared back at me, and suddenly my blood froze… If she had had a tracksuit on, and a scarf and cap!.. and was running towards me across a yard in gumboots!.. She wasn’t wearing any clothes — not yellow, red, green — nothing at all. Only the cabin was a gaudy mess. She lay in the bath naked. I could see her shoulders and I tried to make out her hands, but they were tied… her arms were spread out and she was tied down in the bath, so she had to lie in the water…
What should I say? I didn’t know. So I said, ‘Hi, how are you?’ In Czech, obviously.
She moved her head, which sent a ripple through the bath full of foam. I could see her lips moving. She was trying to say something, and at last a single word escaped her mouth, ‘Siaz.’ And straight away I said, ‘Czechia!’ and I dived at the bath and started dragging her away, but she was tied up. I scampered all around the classroom looking for something, but couldn’t find anything, so I flew back to the girl and gnawed at the rope and bit it, and it worked! It was done! I undid the other one with my fingers. It worked! She could hardly stand. She was dripping wet and naked. I was embarrassed. There was no time… I grabbed the flags from the corner — there was nothing else! — and she wrapped one around her, and then we were headed across the classroom and down the corridor to the back, and there was the little window. I helped her. In the window she bent down and briefly rested her face against mine, and I blushed under the axle grease… I reckoned she would make it safely into the forest.
I went back to the classroom and the cabin, and Scarface was there. He was examining the ropes and looked depressed. He had just fetched a bucket of hot water to add to the bath. He poured it on the floor, turned the bucket upside down and sat on it, saying, ‘You’ve gone and spoilt it!’
‘I’ll tell the Captain you’re not Bulgarians, and you’re for the firing squad!’ I told him.
‘You’ve gone and spoilt it, kiddo,’ Scarface said again.
And something occurred to me, so I asked him, ‘Do you know Još?’
‘Of course we know Još,’ said Scarface. ‘We was on the way from his place when we got caught up in the war between all them idiots, so we invented a circus, because circus folk can go anywhere, and we’re Bulgarian so we don’t have to speak Russian or Czech. But what was that big-shot soldier guy saying about some great circus he’s looking for? That’d be a godsend!’
I couldn’t decide whether to mention the girl.
‘We picked her up on the road,’ Scarface said, without being asked. ‘Some soldiers found some girls hiding, but this one escaped. So we saved her.’
‘Saved, eh?’ I said.
‘Think what you like, kiddo. Now we’ve got to stay with this column. We’ll say she’s asleep, or sick like, we just won’t let anyone in, see.’
So we were agreed.
And in the morning our column headed for Siřem.
16: A fantastic battle. Attack by demons. The egg. Third World War and last television
If Captain Yegorov thought — having integrated the Bulgarians into the ‘Happy Song’ tank column — that his luck had changed for the better, I knew mine had changed for the worse. And then I had my work cut out with Dago, who kept shouting ‘Bastards!’ at them in Russian. He absolutely hated them. For him they were a disgrace to all circuses, while he was a credit to them. Perhaps he was remembering those glorious moments when the soldiers of the column had gaped in wonder at his somersaults, because now they ignored his protests at the Bulgarian circus folk. And Dago shrivelled up. He retreated deep down inside himself again and ceased to care what was going on, though we still chatted together.
The soldiers of the column were very happy with our Bulgarians, and most of all with the mermaid, that’s for sure.
They attached the painted cabin to a tank at the safest position in the column, namely in the mid-rear, because they wanted to spare the mermaid as many of the consequences of any sudden attack as possible. They believed the girl was sleeping inside.
The two scruffs guided the column towards Siřem. They looked after the donkey nicely, it has to be said.
‘I’ve already been through one war. I originally trained as a musician, see,’ Dago told me during the easy ride of our lead tank along the tarmac road. ‘This wasteland we’re driving through’ — his free hand swept the Czech horizon — ‘is once more a battleground between East and West. I changed my name and profession in order to live again — too bad!’
I wanted to ask him what instrument he played in that other war, and who he was fighting and stuff, but he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways.
‘You might be little, Ilya, but you know lots of things. How old are you? You don’t know? You understand, though, Eastern man holds his little hammer in high regard, but he’s only got the one, its handle all shiny from use… And Western man has a whole cupboard full of stuff, all sorts of radios he’s got, rockets and ballpoint pens, all those twentieth-century playthings and it’s affected his brain.’
Now I had to laugh. I kept a few pencil stubs with my maps, and the odd Western ballpoint would have done me very nicely.
‘You know it all, Ilya. I’ve been watching you. When Eastern people lose a million loved ones in the war, they tell themselves, “Oh well, can’t be helped.” They hold each other by the hand and they make a kurgan of packed earth… With Western man, one of his nearest and dearest kicks up a fuss and straight away it’s on television, and there’s a great hoo-ha and tears all round… so who will come out on top?’
‘Well, who?’ I asked him, just to see if he knew.
‘Listen… You’re a saboteur. I’m a spy, an animal spy, see? We circus folk are close to the animals. We get these strange vibes from them… Something’s afoot. I think the Soviets, with things getting a bit tricky, are going to try out some new secret weapon, and that’ll really be something!’