I decided to find the gypsy shack and become a gypsy. I guess anyone who had spent part of their life on the front of a Soviet tank with his face blackened with axle grease would think that was a good idea.
I knew that Još’s valley was not far from Siřem, where the old buzzard often went in search of work.
When the lads were working on the rocks by the footbridge they would disappear to his shack. And Dýha had told me which way to go. So I followed the stream. It would bring me to the bridge, as I believed, but I mustn’t turn off into Siřem.
The stream led me to some forest ground covered in dark green, dense tussocks of grass, and the forest moss became springy underfoot. At the Home from Home we used to while away our childhood telling spooky tales about various villains who’d met their end by wandering off the poachers’ paths and getting swallowed up by the mire, so I took extra care. It was good to know that wherever I could wade through, any army vehicles, or even a pursuit platoon of giant paras, would nosedive into a deep squelching hollow of ooze. The forest was a safe place to be.
Then I saw the women trees. The frog zone had come to an end, but I was still hungry, and I had this idea that since I was so small it would also be all right to eat the smallest animals, but those ants were evil. They stung the inside of my mouth and throat real bad. Gargling with tar was nothing compared to that onslaught. I was at the spot Mr Cimbura had once told me about, or maybe I was just dreaming it, because of the ants’ poison, and this spot had no mercy on me. Mostly I’d seen the face of Czechia, whether in pictures or my mind’s eye, as lovely, but those masks of a woman’s face carved into the hard wood of the trees were meant to scare the pants off you, and they did.
The Czechia war masks were cut into the trees at about my height. Perhaps the old people that carved them weren’t very tall either. When I saw the first mask, I screamed and fell over, and felt a painful prick in my bottom. It wasn’t another ant, but an ancient arrowhead, the sort of weapon foreign armies used to use. There was something about that in The Catholic Book of Knowledge, in the chapter about the boy Sebastian. If I stamped my feet in the nettles and thick undergrowth, I’d probably hear the crunch of the rotten shields of ancient marauders, driven mad by Czechia here in her grove. I looked back at the evil face of she who was supposed to bring comfort, and headed out of Czechia’s grove, guarded by its tiny warriors. I was afraid I wouldn’t get out of there, and I’d end up going round and round in circles, and then I’d drop down and die, but I managed. Czechia had recognized me as one of her fighting men. But I lost track of the waterway I’d found. Which is how I arrived at the villages.
The cottages in the captured territory looked like they were dying. Pockmarked by bullets, burnt. An isolated shot-up cottage at the edge of the forest resembled an injured cow. I’d forgotten if the signs with the names of the villages had been shot through by the insurgents to put the fear of God into us, or if we’d fired at them for the same reason.
A village always means noise. It’s a living confusion of honking geese and waddling ducks, squabbling hens and ganders. But there was no sound. Not a hoof clip-clopped. There were no cats or dogs either.
The Bandits had talked about checkpoints, where Nato and the Russians inspected anyone left alive. I hadn’t run into any such checkpoint, so I didn’t know if the lads were talking rubbish or not.
I entered these villages by roundabout ways, across a field or through the forest.
The first one was a shock. I was following the route Skryje-Bataj-Tomašín-Luka-Ctiradův Důl. I didn’t need to consult my maps. Our chain of tanks had rolled through this way. Someone had to have survived the passing of our column. There must be people somewhere in cellars, woodsheds, or the underground passages beneath the cottages. If I got collared now by someone who’d seen our attack or even spotted me scuttling off to report or something, that wouldn’t be good. But there was nobody anywhere. I was on my guard. My nose sniffed the air, even while I was asleep. I couldn’t smell either food or smoke anywhere.
The ruins had burnt out long ago. Things lay around here, there and everywhere, but only broken pots, smashed settees, general mess, rubble, rags, refuse. It looked as if someone had picked over things. The women with Hanka hadn’t been carrying anything when we saw them in the field.
I picked up various rags and tatters, and made myself a snug for the night at the edge of the forest. I carried my rag bed on my back. The nights were cold. I wanted to get to Još’s. And I don’t mind admitting, I wasn’t feeling my best. Which is why I drank that strong liquor one night. I was talking to the gippos. Later on, I heard about the women and saw some guys eating a guy. That was on captured territory. Oh dear!
In the evening I reached a school. It was the one where we’d met the Bulgarians with the mermaid. They’d guided us direct from there to Siřem. Somewhere in a classroom there must still be the pages that Captain Yegorov had torn out.
I sat down in the school entrance under the graffiti that got up Captain Yegorov’s nose. I started crying when dusk veiled the statue of Wenceslas, the patron saint of the land of the Czechs, along with its inscription.
I was wondering when my shitty childhood would come to an end, and what things would be like afterwards. I was disgusted with my own genes. I uncorked Dýha’s canteen, saying, ‘I reckon you’re already with the Legion, guys!’ and started drinking. I thought long and hard about the boys from the Home from Home, and then realized I was sitting bawling my eyes out on a war road, where there was no traffic and Chapman Forest all around me, and that I’d have to become a lone bandit in a region of Death. Death, who I’d tried my very best to keep fed with people. I tried to empty the canteen at the same rate as the twilight changed into darkness, and I cursed into the dark, and because I was trying to find the darkies, I spouted all the gypsy words I knew, and my swear words and foul curses were like the noise from the longshirts’ dormitory when they were scared. But somewhere amid all the dylinos! and degeshas! I must have garbled some gypsy fairy-tale magic spell, because I was suddenly inside a gypsy shack!
It was Još’s shack. A big place, full of rags and smashed crockery all over the floor, broken things, half-rotted straw. There was nobody there.
‘So I’ve found Još’s valley, and they’re gone!’ I said to myself, and I reached into the vast hearth, where there were a few scorched cans and masses of little bones, as well as a big pile of white embers, and it was completely cold. I leapt to my feet and started jumping up and groping behind the beams as well and sure enough they did have her there! But she’d been painted over. She had black hair and she was all swarthy, this Czechia of theirs. So I left her where she was behind the beam; I couldn’t go around with one like this. I went outside and I saw Chata coming out of the forest towards me, and my hair stood on end, because it was Chata and it wasn’t Chata.
And Chata said, ‘What d’you want?’
‘I’ve found you!’ I said, and I wanted to go with him, but I couldn’t.
‘Listen Chata,’ I said, ‘I’d like to stay with your lot. Can I go with you?’
‘Tricky!’ said Chata.
‘Dýha says you wanted to liberate the darkies… er… your brothers, who’d been taken prisoner!’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but that’s the thing, we didn’t manage to.’
‘Listen, Chata,’ I told him. ‘I’m lost round here. Can’t I stay with your lot?’