Illuminated by all those lights the riders dismounted from the camels, of which you could now tell there were two. They were young boys, no bigger than me, and as I saw them, one by one, surrounded by brightness, I remembered that vision of long ago, that night when Dýha and I and the little choirboys came out of the basement and stood face to face with Commander Vyžlata, and I first saw Margash.
The camel boys formed a circle around their snorting animals and tried to calm them down, since they evidently didn’t like our silent wall of tanks.
And then I saw Captain Yegorov come striding along with the two gunners by his side. He had left the safety of the tanks and was heading straight for the lads swarming around their camels. Not bothering about Dago, I ran off after Yegorov. Exploiting my position of interpreter, I offered my services. Kantariya and Timosha seemed impressed by my bravery, but in truth I was dying to find out who these people were, and all about their camels.
Some of the boys gathered around the animals held bows and arrows, others had knives at the ready, and they all spoke Russian.
Yes, they were part of a broader contingent of the Socialist Circus Project, they replied to my first question. Asked why they had attacked us, they said that they attacked anyone and everyone.
Then Captain Yegorov barked out a command, and the camel boys fell sheepishly silent. He left them in no doubt as to his rank as commander-in-chief of the Socialist Circus Project.
The boys briefly discussed the matter in an unintelligible language, but they seemed to be convinced when they saw the pips on Yegorov’s tank-brigade jacket, and also, more likely, by the fire power of his sub-machine-gunners. Their knives abruptly disappeared.
Then they unloaded a huge steel cage covered in skins from the back of one of the camels, and with the cage safely set on the ground they tore off the skins and we could see, inside the cage, an animal blinded by the blazing lights: a massive wolf with white fur.
Captain Yegorov snatched a riding crop from one of the boys and lashed the wolf across its snout. It gave a whine and pressed back against the mesh of the cage. Captain Yegorov inspected the straw the wolf had been lying on, then pushed both hands into it, while gunners Kantariya and Timosha aimed their Kalashnikovs at the wolf. Captain Yegorov held his hands aloft in the glare of all the tank column’s lights, and we all saw that he was holding an egg.
It was a huge egg with a grey shell that looked leathery and was covered in cracks.
Captain Yegorov’s face, his dust-covered face, gaunt and haggard with lack of sleep, his face on which fatigue and responsibility and privation had etched their maps, now glinted with a trickle of tears. I preferred not to look.
Another sunny day found me full of cares, sitting on the forward armour plate of the tank’s hull.
We had added yet another circus contingent to our column, and all the signs were that Captain Yegorov’s mood had improved again, and that we could take the shattered remnants of the Socialist Circus Project and at least make a half-decent variety show out of it, as the dwarf Dago put it.
However, Captain Yegorov failed to put in an appearance. That day I didn’t even perform my duties as radio interpreter. Dago and I bounced along on the armour plating. He was still under my orders. The pseudo-Bulgarians and their donkey kept to their position in the mid-rear of the column, their happy dispositions making them well liked among the privates. They dutifully kept the secret of the sea cabin, and surreptitiously took payments from the privates for first place in the queue. The camel boys spoke better Russian than me and before long they were larking about and discussing stuff with the soldiers up and down the length of the column.
When I saw them, it was just like the time I met Margash. Suddenly here was somebody who was like me. But they weren’t like me.
It was my fault, and mine alone, that I had been through so much.
The more attention I paid to the camel boys, the more acutely I sensed the difference between us. I had almost grown into my torn and dusty tankman’s uniform. At least at the points where it was pinned together. I couldn’t mix with their happy band. Somewhere inside me I seemed to have stopped thinking about Margash’s land. Inside me there were still all those things that had happened at Siřem.
That day I was summoned to a short conference of commanders.
Captain Yegorov remained in the bowels of the lead tank, nursing the giant egg on his lap. Gunner Kantariya told us that since the egg had been found Captain Yegorov hadn’t stopped smiling at it. He hadn’t been giving any orders either. The NCOs were of the view that we should press on against Siřem.
As the interpreter and an expert on the methods of saboteurs, I was invited along to a meeting about the Czech bandit gangs. The contingents of the Czechoslovak People’s Army had apparently been re-deployed away from the area of the Siřem Autonomous Zone, so we were being ambushed less often. Apart from Captain Yegorov’s sacks our pickups were empty. We’d had next to no further contact with the enemy since executing those two vandals. The inflammatory radio transmitter appeared to have fallen silent. During our encounter with the camel team we had encountered sniper fire, but nothing had come of it.
So was it conceivable that the resistance of the Czech bandit gangs had been quashed? Or were they laying a trap? Such were the questions raised.
So it was decided that after a short rest, chiefly for the sake of the animals, which were now fully-fledged members of our column, we would carry on towards Siřem. Captain Yegorov would re-assume command as and when he saw fit.
A cheerful mood reigned among the soldiers now. They were all of the view that the capture of Siřem would not be difficult. And once the conditions were right for the Socialist Circus Project, we could all have a proper rest. Dago explained that the soldiers were relieved, because they no longer faced the more or less certain prospect of being sent to a Siberian gulag for failing in their mission. A question mark still hung over their commitment to a life of continual hardship in uniform, but they were used to that.
‘Damn column!’ Dago shouted down from the tank. ‘Drifting column!’ he muttered, yet he was happy at the rise in our numbers.
‘The Mongolian camel riders,’ he began explaining, ‘could give the mess we’re in a turn for the better. They’re the real elite of the socialist circus. Ilya?’
I opened my eyes. I remembered how Mr Cimbura would also keep me awake with his endless cock and bull stories. But you can’t really sleep on a moving tank anyway.
‘It looks as if we’ve got it, Ilya!’
‘What?’
‘The secret weapon… the dinosaur egg from the Gobi Desert, hidden in the hot sand under which the mountains of the East are buried. Listen to me, Ilya! In the desert, nature cast a dragon, steeled by the fires of millennia. In its bowels the desert forged the dragon egg on the anvils of the ages in the farthermost wildernesses of the East… Ilya, look!’
I barely glanced up. We were passing a few bullet-riddled, burnt hovels. They might have been destroyed by us or by some other company, I couldn’t remember. Dago poked me in the shoulder, and said, ‘What the insurgents call the Siřem Autonomous Zone was meant to be the setting for the Socialist Circus Project, a joyous window display for the five nations… all our socialist animals and the men-in-arms of the five nations would have breathed in peace on the dragon’s egg… but the Czechs shattered the alliance of the Eastern Empire and must pay the price.’