Don’t worry, it won’t be long now, we’re nearly there. It’s odd how there can be no movement for years on end, then suddenly things go with a bang. I reckon it’s just that you don’t see the movement, it’s like standing water, but even that rises slowly and puts ever greater pressure on the dam until one night it ruptures and then everything goes flying, the concrete, soil and rocks, and down below creates absolute havoc.
Tango argentino, day of reckoning, D-Day, call it what you like. We woke up quite late, the people in the adjacent carriages were already well on their feet. Only Boris had failed to sleep his fill and now he was traipsing about them, paying them visits like some old gaffer, casting an approving eye on the way the flat-dwellers had fitted out their carriages. Denis was also awake, though he was still lying there and staring up at the ceiling and projecting unimaginable horrors onto it.
We had some breakfast, actually more like lunch by then. Vitya and Nikita then grabbed a blanket and sneaked into the dark tunnel to retrieve the weapons. They wrapped them up tight and added them to the other stuff we meant to take with us, rather a lot of it, as it happened. The van was already waiting in a side street, unlikely to be run up against by either Silikon or his son. There was supposed to be ten of us, the three musketeers and Nika jammed in the front and the rest in the cargo space with the tubes of silicon, rubber tubes, and caulk.
“Get moving then,” said Nikita, hounding us into the van after we’d gone over the plan one last time. The van’s back doors slammed shut behind us. It was pitch-dark inside and you know what it’s like, looking for a torch in the dark. We could hear them still discussing something in the front, boom-boom-boom, we hammered on the dividing wall and Nikita started the engine.
I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden in the back of a van, but the slightest hole in the road really makes itself felt. “My backside’s gonna be beaten tender just right for frying,” Lia declared. Sniffy laughed, but we were all rather jittery really. Only a week back and it wouldn’t have crossed our minds to take justice into our own hands, and now we were petting it, tickling it and pinching it and it was writhing at our feet all bathed in sweat.
Irina told us all how good it had felt to smash her half-brother’s cakehole in and even spit in his face after it was over, and Nikita promised that we were all going to get our turn. Only Boris remained a bit out of sorts as he continued trying to be the right man in the wrong place.
Fortunately, it wasn’t far to Polivino. After about 30 minutes, the van turned off down a rough track, along which we trundled jerkily awhile before Nikita stopped and Nika opened the back doors. You had to shade your eyes, so bright it was suddenly, but soon you could see you were surrounded by woods – it hadn’t been a track between fields, as I’d thought, but a track through a forest, the last five minutes of which had tossed us violently this way and that.
It seemed the coast was clear. We stretched our stiff legs and Nikita passed the keys to Sniffy, who was to stay put, ready to rush in and pick us up if anything went wrong. “There,” said Denis, pointing. We looked where he meant, but there was nothing but trees all around. “There, on that tree, that’s where our house was going to be.”
Nikita glanced at Denis and said it’d been meant to be in a completely different place. It was quite comical, seeing them failing to agree. Denis insisted he was in no doubt, and Nikita said it had been an oak tree and that this ’ere was a beech, while Boris left them to it because he had honestly no idea himself.
“Well, hopefully you’ll at least agree on the right warden,” said Nika with a grin. I couldn’t have got away with that, but she was now so much one of them that she could take such liberties. “It’s about ten minutes from here,” said Boris, flicking some dust from his sleeves. “Pick it up and carry it for once,” Nika told Buggy-Boy, seeing what he was about. There was no point trying to persuade him to leave his buggy behind, they were inseparable. And he also claimed it was a reconnaissance vehicle. We had four rifles between us, Nikita, Denis, Boris, and Vitya shouldered one each and off we went through the freezing cold forest. The fallen twigs and leaves beneath our feet made a terrible racket. Nikita said we should spread out a bit, but a magpie started squawking somewhere over our heads and gave notice of our presence anyway. I suddenly felt like we hadn’t really got a proper plan, and if it came to it I’d have cheerfully gone back to the metro to choose some tiles for my bathroom.
’Cept by now that was out of the question.
After less than a quarter of an hour, the forest began to thin and through the trees this pale-yellow building with two wings appeared. To me it looked like some old hunting lodge, service buildings to the left and the actual house off to the side, looking like an ordinary multi-occupancy block. On the drive there was a car and a van, but otherwise we detected no signs of life. Yelena stayed at the forest fringe, to keep watch, the rest of us ran cautiously towards the house and, bent double, scurried along by the wall like rats.
“This is where our room was,” Nikita whispered. Through the ground-floor windows you could see inside, you just had to lever yourself up a bit on the sill. The rooms were a total mess, here a backpack, there empty vodka bottles, in one bed someone asleep with their feet poking out, from another only a black mop of hair was visible. I’d not seen the inside of a children’s home before, but I never expected such anarchy. Nikita sent Danilo and Buggy-Boy inside to wake everybody up and explain that the day of reckoning was nigh. We didn’t doubt they’d have their own accounts to settle with Vasil and would be glad to join us.
Nikita remembered that the director’s office would be in the lodge proper – first we’d deal with the director, then the warden, nicely according to rank. I don’t know if you noticed, but set into the large wooden door made of green planks there’s a smaller chipboard one and that’s how we got into the driveway and from there into the courtyard.
Still not a soul in sight. Vitya stayed there on guard, Nikita went and stood to one side of the door into the corridor, Boris to the other, then together they burst in. The long shiny corridor ran round the whole courtyard and heaps of doors led off it. Those three might not have remembered the exact tree where they wanted to put their treehouse up in the branches, but they headed straight for the director’s door. They exchanged glances, then checked to see if we were all ready, Nikita gave the signal and Boris – Boris politely knocked.
At first nothing happened, then came: “It’s open.” It sounded like we’d just woken somebody up. They recognised his voice. Nikita nodded, now they were going to dance that tango together. Boris opened the door and – can you even imagine, Mishka, how confused he was by what met his eyes? The director was sitting bound to a chair, his face covered in weals. It’s been a while since I said something was ironic, right? Well, I certainly call this ironic: you’ve hated someone for 15 years and when you finally have a chance to get your own back, you find someone’s beaten you to it. Some people are just so damned unlucky that they’ll even get queue-jumped in the queue to hell.
“Thank God you’re here,” the old gaffer said with a sigh of relief. That’s how he struck me, an ordinary old gaffer. And that was another surprise, I’m inclined to say disappointment. But most of all we hadn’t a clue what he was jabbering. Like he’d been waiting all these years for us to come and get him? Had he been conscience-stricken and so impatient for justice to be meted out to him that he’d had himself bound in readiness and asked someone to go on and knock him about it while they were at it?
“Thank God,” he repeated. “Glory to Ukraine!”
“Remember me?” Nikita asked him.
The director looked at him closely.
“D’you remember us?” Nikita asked, pointing at Denis and Boris.
Suddenly, the director’s face brightened even more. “How couldn’t I remember you? But it’s been many long years, I can’t recall your names. You were good lads, though I think you tried to steal my petrol one time. But now you’re fighting for your country, we brought you up well!”
Excerpted with permission from Lilliputin: Tales from a War, Jan Němec, translated from the Czech by David Short, Seagull Books.