Previously, I had known only grown-ups. No boys, just Monkeyface. He grew bigger. He wouldn’t have fitted in his old soapbox any more. Sister Alberta and Mr Cimbura finally realised he was never going to change.
‘They used to stick little sods like him under the ice,’ said Mr Cimbura. Sister Alberta was working on Monkeyface over by the stove. He was yelling and the shit came flying out of him.
‘Just shut it, will you?’ said Sister Alberta.
‘Sods like him get born out of black eggs,’ said Mr Cimbura, leaning on the kitchen table, unsteady on his feet.
‘Shut it while the kid’s around,’ said Sister Alberta.
She meant me, of course, not Monkeyface.
It was cold. We were in the kitchen. I was sitting by the stove. I was waiting to see if Mr Cimbura would leave or sit down. If he sat down, he’d be with us for the evening. I wanted Sister Alberta to myself.
‘And black-egg sods always cut their mothers,’ said Mr Cimbura.
Well, if Monkeyface cut our mum, I’m not surprised she wanted rid of him, I thought.
‘And they cut themselves on the eggshell as well, on their way out. That’s why they turn out to be sods,’ added Mr Cimbura, then he sat down.
‘But he’s a baby, for goodness sake!’ said Sister Alberta. ‘There, there, my ugly little duckling,’ said Sister Alberta to Monkeyface. ‘Isn’t that right, little sausage?’ He was washed clean now. Then he fell asleep.
But why Mum got rid of me too was puzzling. Mr Cimbura said he didn’t know.
‘But I ain’t surprised, lad, I ain’t surprised at all,’ he kept nodding as went out to the woodshed with an axe. It was freezing cold and Sister Alberta sent us to the woodshed time and time again.
We used to live in the kitchen before the home became the Home. We lived in the kitchen and went outside to the woodshed. Because of Monkeyface we used to go to church.
Mr Cimbura led the way to church, trampling a path through the snow, because it had been snowing. The pond on the green was iced over. Our path linked up with other trampled paths. Till then I hadn’t a clue what a pond was or what a green was, so I stared. Mr Cimbura went first, stamping down the snow, then I came next, and I also stamped. We were followed by Sister Alberta. She had Monkeyface in her arms. Those days anybody could have lifted him. We went to church to have him made better.
Mr Cimbura didn’t come inside with us. He didn’t like Father Francis.
There were lots of people in the church. The women came and stood around Monkeyface, smiling at him. They made signs of the Cross on his forehead. Mine too. He didn’t cry. He obviously wanted to be made better. They poured water on him. Me as well. Even though he was the sod who’d cut his mother. Not me. All the way through their making him better I held on to Sister Alberta’s skirt. People were singing all the time. They were happy. So was Father Francis. He told the people what to do — kneel, get up, wave their arms — he ran the whole thing, smiling. In the church I was amazed how many things there were. I didn’t know that later a painting of Jesus Christ would be on the wall at the Home from Home as well.
Afterwards everyone came from the church to our place. They ate in our kitchen. They drank alcohol from little glasses. Every now and then, someone stuck a finger in their glass and made a Cross on Monkeyface’s forehead. He never squawked, just gaped. Everyone took care of Monkeyface. I slipped away to the woodshed.
I tried to reach Shadowland. I could stay in Shadowland from morning dark to the dark of night. I bet I could have stayed there from the first day of snow to the last. But Mr Cimbura came in. He couldn’t have me taking naps in odd corners, he said. He said my tongue was hanging out of my mouth and I was out of it. Mr Cimbura spat. ‘I ought to be on hand to help Sister Alberta,’ he said. And he also told me to be ready, because before long I was going to have lots of brothers. That’s what they’d decided at the Centre. What else was a stately home good for? The Germans had got rid of the last aristocrat. Mr Cimbura sat down on the chopping block. ‘Did I ever tell you, lad, that he left it too late to fly away and escape ’em? He was, like I say, a keen flier. Now he’s got a nice tomb in the cemetery,’ said Mr Cimbura. ‘Under the new order a tomb’s the best place for toffs, I reckon. And their house is going to be a home for poor boys. And that’s as it should be.’
‘What boys?’ I asked.
‘Right little shits, mostly,’ said Mr Cimbura. ‘You’ll see.’
He stood up and we went back to the kitchen. And now they all turned their attention to me. ‘So let’s drink to the firstborn as well, eh?’ said Mr Cimbura. And people stood up or leaned towards me from their chairs and knocked back their shots in a toast to me and me alone. They were all gawping at me. Then they started chatting among themselves. They were all being nice to each other. But Monkeyface didn’t get any better.
Then it wasn’t quite so cold. I used to go to the front door. I would stand on the steps looking out for Mr Cimbura. He always came.
Then a lorry arrived from the Centre. Men in overalls carried beds and mattresses into the hallway. The men dashed all over the first two floors upstairs with wires and hung up light bulbs, while other men from the village followed them around and made a right pigsty of the place. Mrs Kropáček, Mrs Moravčík, Mrs Holý and Mrs Kropek came in with brooms and buckets and floor cloths. Every day they washed bits of the corridors and bits of the upstairs.
The men from the village and the men in overalls brought bundles of paper and piles of mouldy old books down from the first and second floors. They threw them on the lorry. The men in overalls trampled the piles of papers on the lorry, and Mr Holasa, Mr Dašler and Mr Moravčík opened the second-floor windows and, using pitchforks, tossed even more bundles of paper down onto the back of the lorry. When it was full, the men came down and drank some hard liquor with the blokes in overalls. They slapped hands and clapped each other on the shoulders. It wasn’t that cold any more, but they made a bonfire outside the manor house. They warmed their hands at it. The lorry kept coming and going.
Sister Alberta also begged Czechia to help Monkeyface. She showed me a painting of Czechia. I liked her bare breasts. So maybe I wasn’t quite such a kid any more. Or I was. I dunno. I wanted to keep looking at Czechia, but Sister Alberta took the picture away.
Whenever Sister Alberta talked about Czechia and Mr Cimbura turned up in the kitchen late in the day, a bottle in his hand, he sat down and listened quietly. When the story got to the great feats of Czechia, he didn’t argue with Sister Alberta like he did at other times.
When he told stories, it was terrible.
The thing is, Sister Alberta sometimes needed to pop out for a chat with the girls, meaning great big Mrs Kropáček and great big Mrs Moravčík, so she didn’t spend the evening with us.
Mr Cimbura scared us. He told us about this horrible black egg and how the fair Czechia took a gulp of stinking water from it and died. Monkeyface used to scream. Mr Cimbura would sit on his chair with his hands pressed to his ears and go on with the story at the top of his voice. You couldn’t tell if Monkeyface was just making a noise or crying. I cried for real. Mr Cimbura didn’t care.
At other times, Mr Cimbura talked about Chapman Forest. It was spread all around Siřem. ‘There’s wild animals in the forest,’ he said. I believed him, because Sister Alberta had told us the same thing. I was glad to be sat in the kitchen by the stove and that I didn’t have to share the fate of wayfarers lost in the forest.
‘When a wayfarer falls asleep, he dreams of faraway places, and when he wakes up, he gets drawn to them places! The fate of them as can’t stop is terrible — horrible — so you just listen!’ Mr Cimbura would wake me if I fell asleep by the stove. If Monkeyface fell asleep, me and Mr Cimbura were glad. We stared at the wall and the creeping reflections of the flames from the stove, and we imagined faraway places. But best of all Mr Cimbura liked telling stories about Czechia.