In the kitchen, the bigger longshirts had swept up the glass and the little ones were fooling around with the washer drum. I looked around for the tub… two longshirts were pulling a third around in it.
Then we went through the gloom of the cellar and from the bend in the passage I saw candles flickering, which was strictly prohibited in the Home. Some shortpants sat or squatted outside the grating of the solitary-confinement cell, smoking cigarettes. Dýha was standing, leaning against the bars.
If one of the lads moved, his shadow on the wall moved as well.
‘Did you get ’em from the kitchen, the candles?’ I asked Karel.
‘Yep,’ he nodded.
We walked through the gloom, splashing in the cold cellar water, the line of boys standing and sitting there rippled as they made way for us, along with their candles. Now we were standing in front of Dýha, the bars of the cell between him and me.
Dýha pushed an arm through the bars and grabbed my ear.
‘Arsehole!’ he said. ‘You didn’t obey orders!’
I tried to duck, but I couldn’t, because of my ear.
‘I was gonna get some fags,’ I said, ‘but that lot turned up!’
‘My orders count!’ said Dýha, and tugged my ear so hard that my head banged against the bars. Then he let go.
‘Whose orders?’ said Chata, standing beside me and making my shadow a head taller. Then he said, ‘Dogshite to you, you cellar Communist arsehole!’
And the lads laughed.
‘We’re the Bandits,’ said Karel. ‘We agreed to go and join the Legion. But now some of you wanna join the Communists. So what are we gonna do?’
They all started gabbling and asking questions: ‘Where are the nuns?’ ‘Where did they take them?’ ‘Will they be coming back?’ ‘What are we going to do?’ and nobody listened to Dýha. That was okay.
Then Chata said we ought to sort ourselves out and go to the village, and some wanted to go and some didn’t… As they got up, waving their arms about, and sat down again, the shadows on the wall got all mixed up, sliding into each other. They were all out-shouted by Dýha.
‘Listen up, guys!’ he shouted. ‘Belt up, I tell you! My dad’ll be here in a couple of days and he’ll get this place organized. For now, you find the key to this cell so I can get out. My dad organized the Communist uprising.’
‘Your dad, eh? He’s always in the slammer!’ Karel cracked up. He laughed and pointed at Dýha, who was now careering round and round the cell in a rage.
‘At least he ain’t dead!’ Dýha bellowed at Karel. ‘Least he ain’t pushing up daisies, is he?’
‘You shuddup!’ shouted Karel and leaned towards the bars. ‘You’re locked up.’
‘And you’re a psycho,’ said Dýha, shoving his face up against the bars so that it was only inches away from Karel’s.
They stared at each other, then gobbed at each other, and Karel hammered at the bars with a knife, making a terrific racket. Then he stuck his arm through the bars and, stretched out on tiptoes, stabbed and slashed at Dýha with the kitchen knife, but Dýha just dodged out of the way, and now it was his turn to laugh.
‘Cut it out,’ said Chata. ‘I reckon we should go into the village.’
‘Ha, ha!’(It was Dýha again.) ‘Go to the village then, darkie. They’ll have a welcome waiting! Off you go, gippo, and grab us a chicken while you’re there!’
The lads started to laugh, and I was smiling and Chata also laughed. Karel sat down and the other lads got up, and the shadows on the wall rose and fell.
I didn’t know whether to join the Communists or the Foreign Legion. I realized that the first thing me and Monkeyface needed was the tub. Once that was sorted, we could think about which side to join.
Then I heard a vroom-vroom noise, like when the old washing machine was running. ‘They’ve started the drum!’ someone shouted, and Mikušinec said, ‘You take charge of the little brats, Dýha, they’re messing up the place!’ Then we all started laughing again, and the washing-machine drum above our heads went vroom-vroom… until the cellar ceiling shook. The youngsters must have plugged it in and didn’t know how to switch it off. ‘Washing detail at the ready… wash!’ roared Dýha and we all laughed. Then Páta bellowed, ‘Shitty shorts at the ready…’ and we all roared ‘wash!’ then fell about laughing. Vroom-vroom, the drum above us shook and rattled all its metal parts; the plaster came off the ceiling in bits, falling into our hair, then someone came running into the cellar… longshirts! They were screaming and splashing through the cellar water. Šklíba ran up to us out of breath, and covered his head when he saw me.
He was protecting his head. The moment I saw him I guessed what they’d done to Monkeyface. The dreadful noise kept making the cellar ceiling shudder… vroom-vroom… I sprinted down the passage and shot up the stairs, and the further up I went, the louder the vroom-vroom became. I burst into the kitchen and yanked the plug from the socket. It was high up, but I jumped. There was a broken chair on the floor. They hadn’t been able to reach, because it had snapped under them. The noise stopped, but the drum kept turning. Martin was standing there with blood on his hands. He’d tried to stop the drum, but the metal had cut into him. I tripped over a sheet lying on the floor. Aha! That’s what they had used to carry Monkeyface!
The drum was still turning. With Martin’s help I stopped it. I flipped the iron lid back and heaved Monkeyface out. He’d always been too heavy for me, but now I pulled him out by myself. He didn’t make a sound. I carried him upstairs without help. His head was dangling and his little face was all squashed.
The inside of the drum was covered in spit and shit. He had it all over him. I hauled him upstairs to our floor. I had to stop for a rest, propping him up against the frame of the window opposite the dining room. Now he was whimpering quietly. I held him tight.
I heard the slap of bare feet and the clump of boots. It was the boys. I pressed my face into Monkeyface’s, not caring that it was covered in sick. I’d never been bothered by his spit either. We were always together… He was heavy. I think he wanted to walk. His legs were shaking. He was kicking and fighting, and I was shaking as well, and Monkeyface flopped against the window, banging his knees at the glass, thrusting his knees out in front, fighting to get away from me, slipping… He thrust me out of the way, and now he was top-heavy and banged his head against the window. I grabbed him by his feet, but he kicked out at me and flew headfirst through the glass. He fell, turning once or twice in the air, then thumped down, landing on his back in the snow, bits of glass showering down around him.
‘Shit!’ said Páta, who was standing next to me.
‘It wasn’t Ilya!’ panted Karel. ‘Monkeyface fell out by himself. I saw it.’
‘He did it himself!’ shouted someone who had just run up from the cellar.
‘Yeah,’ said Páta. ‘I saw it too.’
Now there were lots of lads standing around. We looked down from the window at Monkeyface lying there. He wasn’t moving.
I went downstairs. In the kitchen I looked for a tablecloth or something to put over Monkeyface. But I almost didn’t care, now he was dead. I couldn’t find anything anyway.
My head started to ache from being bashed on the bars when Dýha grabbed my ear. If my head were as soft as a cucumber and if the bars were made of knife-blades, they’d have sliced my head like salami. Similar ideas filled my head. I didn’t want them, but unfortunately they kept coming. I was sitting by the washer drum. I didn’t know if the blood on it was from Martin’s fingers or from Monkeyface.