I soon realized that Peter knew absolutely nothing about waging war, and for the first time I recalled with regret my snug on the lead tank, and also the soundless interplay of battlefield gestures as used by gunners Kantariya and Timosha, who, although they were practised killers, also excelled at saving their own skin. And mine too.
Unfortunately, we made frequent stops in the villages. Peter claimed to be looking for any trace of those mysterious women. I hated these stops in the shot-up villages and always volunteered to guard the meat. The Ukrainians searched the houses, even the lofts and sheds, and although they smiled at first and obviously looked forward to looting, and boasted about turning our armed jeep into a supply truck, they began coming back more and more downcast and showing their empty hands in disbelief, and saying they couldn’t find so much as a snail… Then Vasil, the older of the two, said, ‘It’s not all that bad. There’s plenty of grass and bark on the trees in these Czech villages of yours — the Soviets haven’t taken that.’ And Grisha, the younger one, said that the earth around the fruit trees wasn’t that bad either, and that the people round here had been doing very nicely, because they could live like kings off the nettles, ferns and all the other weeds… We were having a longish break, eating Ted, when Vasil told me I hadn’t been very bright, telling them that I wasn’t a very tasty boy, because when a chap’s starving he’ll eat anybody. And then I knew for sure that those yellow wolf eyes came from more than the flashing of the fire.
Except… the longer they went on about the terrible famine that led to their villages being incorporated into the Eastern Empire, and the more horrors they described, the less I felt like listening to them. They talked about how troops had surrounded the starving villages, where eventually people even from the same family would eat each other… There is no way of shutting your ears to such things, and yet again somebody was telling me ghastly fairy stories… I tried to hide from those yellow eyes behind the pile of bear meat, and I stopped watching the road, which was a big mistake… And I made up my mind not to stay with them any more. That came about anyway. I would never have guessed that by evening we would be as far apart as it is possible to be.
Then we drove through Ctiradův Důl and in a flash I knew that Peter not only knew nothing at all about waging war, but that he couldn’t even drive: he was accidentally going back on himself… The whole time I had been thinking we were going away from Siřem, but I was wrong… I raised my head, saw what was around the corner and shouted.
* ‘Cannibal comrades, I’m not a tasty boy.’
18: Scrap iron. Squire of Siřem. The wayfarer.’ Margash’s dream. It is me, it isn’t me
I spotted the tank guns the second we hurtled around the sharp bend towards the little bridge, and they weren’t the guns of the ‘Happy Song’ column. They had to belong to Major General Kozhanov’s 1st Tank Brigade of Guards. Peter, as was his habit, had been firing into the bend, so it came as no surprise that the tanks gave us a welcome of hot iron, as if they’d been expecting us.
The explosive shells hurled Peter backwards, away from the steering wheel. He landed right on top of me. Sadly, I could hear the bullets ripping him to shreds, but if he hadn’t been there it would have been me who caught it. I rolled up in a ball under Ted.
The jeep smashed into some rocks — probably the very rocks I’d once carried this way, in and out of the water. It hit the dark surface under the bridge, bounced off the bottom, and, while the shouting sub-machine-gunners blazed away at the bear meat, and quite likely at the men who had called the animal Uncle Ted, I knew nothing about it, because I had got into deep water and was being carried away by the fast current. I tried to float and only just made it through the big rocks. Then I remembered that I couldn’t swim, so I began catching my belly against more stones. It all happened so fast.
I was in a reedbed. Something gripped my leg. It wasn’t alive. I was caught up in the scrap iron in the tip. I banged my head against some metal sheeting, then fell back into the water. When I prised myself up again I was stuck there, held fast by the scrap metal, water up to my chin. I heaved my shoulders and arms into a space surrounded by metal walls with just enough room to breathe. I was just starting to fight for my life when I found myself among rotten branches and reeds that cut like arrows.
I could hear shouting and calling coming from the bank of the stream… It was probably the sub-machine-gunners leapfrogging from their posts behind the tanks to find out who it was they’d shot to bits. They were running up in an assault line to comb the bank… The reeds pricked at my belly from below. This was a shallow bit. From my waist up I was clamped in iron sheeting. I groped around among the reeds and branches, making myself some space. I could smell a lot and see a bit, so I quickly got used to being in that metal air-pocket in the water and reeds. I was scared of the men on the bank.
The moon shone through chinks in the twisted metal and was reflected on the water in which I quietly fidgeted. It occurred to me that I could be in the cab of some sunken truck. But trucks don’t have wings. The wings were twisted metal overgrown by reeds. Wherever the reeds moved under the joint forces of wind and water, the metal surface gleamed. I’d never been in a plane before, I thought. This small, battered plane was the biggest piece of scrap metal in the tip. I’d sometimes seen its iron skeleton from across the dark winter water.
Now in the summer the reedbed was shallow. No doubt all the shelling and numerous fires all over Bohemia had boiled away the water of the rivers and streams.
The seat was stuck fast on its side, crisscrossed by perished straps. Sunk in the mud and washed by the water, the plane was completely overgrown with reeds.
So I had plenty of fun fighting with the reeds as I waded through the cold water to the bank. I have no idea how long I stayed in that air-pocket. I waited for the sub-machine-gunners to finish their work before leaving to clear another sector. Then I made a move. I can always tell when a forward patrol has finished its task.
I scrambled onto the bank, slithering through the darkness. The cottages I could see didn’t look battered. I heard a dog barking. A rooster swore at his hens, even though it was night-time.
In Siřem I wanted first of all to find an ally, so I set off for the cemetery using footpaths and detours.
I found Páta easily. I had just pushed through the large rusty gates, heading straight for the toff’s tomb, which stood out white amid a field of crosses, when Páta jumped me and floored me right there among the graves, and we rolled about on the ground and neither of us had the smell of the Home from Home in our hair or on our clothes. So for a moment I worried that it wasn’t him but a stranger. Wrestling in silence, one on one, we fell through the earth and I got a bash on the head. Only then did Páta recognize me by the light of some burning candles, crying out ‘Ilya!’ and that brought me round from my sudden descent into the bowels of the cemetery. Páta was glad to see me there.