Republic Of Whores

by Josef Skvorecky

  Our heartfelt thanks

  To Lady Luck.

  We’ll soon be home

  So who gives a fuck?

  This quatrain, in the motors classroom, was written on the drum of the left clutch of a motor, painted silver, that was used for classroom demonstrations. The classroom itself was a sunny place filled with beautifully constructed teaching aids that recruits had spent many days making. They were so well made, in fact, that they were never used, but stored away carefully for special occasions like the annual reviews, inspections by generals, or visits by Soviet advisers.

  On a chrome-plated cylinder head that stood under a picture of a terrible battle, these words were gouged into the metal for eternity:

  I’m warning you right now, sarge,

  Though I may be just a recruit to you,

  If you don’t get out of my way, sarge,

  I’m going to put the boot to you.

  I’ll turn your balls into bookends

  And tie your guts in a noose;

  So you’d better get out of my way, sarge —

  I warn you, you better vamoose.

  When they had eradicated what they could, and had left the classrooms bereft of anything aesthetic, the squad went out to the latrine to complete their work of demolition.

  * * *

  The latrine was a breezy structure with no doors, a row of round holes in a slanted board, and a sloping gutter that reeked of tar, urine, and dehydrated lime. The enormous wall above the gutter, bearing the words YES, SIR! drawn in large, bold strokes in whitewash, provided unlimited opportunities to the muses of military life. Among the gallery of drawings rendering a wide variety of male and female sex organs were clusters of slogans and verses displaying a remarkable range of expression, from the poetic to the political and pornographic. There was even a special corner, scribbled with incomprehensible verse, reserved for soldiers of Hungarian nationality.

  Beside some notices that were essentially want-ads, such as Big dick seeks slick chick, a die-hard ideologist had written: Exploitation must be eliminated! Beneath the traditional assertion that Nothing beats a good shit, especially with the wind blowing up your ass (the truth of this observation was confirmed by the sound of the wind constantly wheezing through the holes in the seats, sounding like an old, worm-eaten pump organ), some reactionary hand had inscribed: Death to bloody Bolshevism!, but the last word had been struck out by a progressive hand and replaced with the word capitalism. And right below the slogan Screw orders! Give us women! a lascivious poet had carved the following lines on the wall, enclosing them inside an enormous, hairy female pudendum:

  Annie, Annie, what you doin?

  They told me you was only foolin.

  Never mind, I make you a big one

  Out of a giant wienie bun.

  I don’t want your stale old bun.

  I use it once and then its done.

  Make me one of ermine skin;

  Feels so nice when I slip it in.

  The soldiers went to work more slowly here. The wealth of graffiti gave them the idea — essentially a cultural idea — that they should preserve at least part of this treasury for posterity. And so they pulled out notebooks and slowly, in halting letters, copied the best of them onto smudgy, dog-eared pages. Danny sat on one of the empty holes and stared at a strip of wall illuminated by the sun, which had just broken through the clouds. A Slovak soldier had written here a brief ode to joy:

  Get ready, my dear, to open your sweet honeycomb

  Cause tomorrow, girl, this boy is comin home.

  And the tank commander began thinking, and then daydreaming. People — or rather the People — are poets without knowing it, some realistically inclined cultural worker had once told him, and he thought about this, or rather rolled his usual vague ideas around in his head, mixed with thoughts of Janinka’s curly garden of delights and questions of ideology which he cynically ridiculed yet secretly wasn’t so sure about, and these became mingled with the round face of his blonde future colleague in the big publishing house, and the green eyes of the unconquerable Lizetka. His thoughts were complicated by the terrible burden of life, which he only really escaped when he played sarcastic syncopations on a slavering alto sax in the regimental show band, satirizing the joyous tone of the awful tunes they had to play for members of the local collective farms around the Kobylec base.

  Finally he got up and ordered his squad back to the classrooms, where they arranged the furniture as comfortably as they could and spent the rest of the day, until lights-out, sleeping.

  * * *

  Meanwhile the other members of the Seventh Tank Battalion had swept the roadways and rooftops and cleaned the oil stains away with brushes and hot water. Next, the Pygmy Devil had herded them all into the Park of Relaxation, and there, until late at night, they had spread fresh yellow sand on the walks and picked up scrap paper and pine-cones. Then they scrubbed the barracks and tidied up the store-rooms until two in the morning, and there was still time left over to polish the copper kettles in the battalion kitchens. They also brushed down their walking-out uniforms and carried them up to the freshly tidied attics, lest the uniforms become dusty when they refilled their straw mattresses (the next task on the list). Until the dust settled and the barracks could be used once more, they repaired a picket fence around battalion headquarters and painted it green. When they finally went to bed at five in the morning, the rooms were well aired and they (like the tank commander, who was just returning from Zephyr Hill) still had a whole hour to sleep before reveille.

  * * *

  The autumn inspection of the Seventh Tank Battalion began with a test in the theory of gunnery. The anxious officers and phlegmatic men were assembled in a classroom equipped with a model of a battlefield, with little wooden tanks that could be pushed about with pointers. A rather portly one-eyed man with gigantic epaulettes of undeniable Soviet taste and czarist provenance stood with Captain Matka on one side and Lieutenant Vrabec on the other.

  The first to be tested, Sergeant Žloudek, came into the room with a dumb look on his face and was asked to respond to a question that, for pedagogical reasons, was formulated in highly graphic terms:

  “Your tank is speeding through burning streets, with the smoking ruins of walls tumbling all about you. The city is under heavy fire from enemy artillery. Your machine-gunner has just taken out an American soldier armed with a bazooka, but others may be lurking behind any window or pile of rubble. You look through your sights and suddenly you see a Sherman tank enter the square and swing its cannon round to bear on you. Your response?”

  Sergeant Žloudek opened his mouth but nothing came out. The lieutenant raised his voice a half-tone and continued, with the aid of vague gestures: “The Sherman is coming nearer. You can make out the white star on its plating. An enemy marine leaps out of the tank and the first shots ricochet off your armour-plating. The church tower collapses in flames. Your response?”

  “I open fire,” replied the gunner.

  “But how, Comrade Sergeant?”

  Sergeant Žloudek didn’t specify. It seemed that fear had taken possession of him.

  “The American tank is coming at you full speed,” the lieutenant continued dramatically, glancing around nervously at the Soviet general, who was sitting on a chair beneath a slogan promising eternal loyalty to General Čepička. “From a street behind it a heavy self-propelled gun emerges. How do you respond?”

  The desperate gunner looked at his loader, the frowning Private Bamza, beside him. First Lieutenant Vrabec noticed this, and instead of calling on Sergeant Maňas, who was waving his hand ostentatiously, he turned to Bamza.

  “You, Comrade Private. How would you proceed?”

  Bamza turned his gloomy eyes on the officer as if Vrabec were laying a trap especially for him, and replied rebelliously: “With the cannon. The machine-guns aren’t worth sh — I mean, they can’t knock out armour,” he quickly corrected himself.

  “Correct,” said First L
ieutenant Vrabec, casting an anxious glance at the Soviet general. He, however, appeared to have fallen asleep. Perhaps this was a consequence of the breakfast served to him in the officers’ mess, which had consisted mainly of vodka. “But how are you going to fire? I mean how?” insisted Vrabec. At last he noticed Sergeant Maňas, who was longing to show off his knowledge. “Suppose you tell us, Comrade Sergeant. Shrapnel bombs are bursting all around you. The characteristic barrel of an anti-tank bazooka emerges from a bombed-out doorway. The self-propelled gun stops and aims its 250mm navy gun straight at you. Your response?”

  “Using the sector method, I estimate the range of the enemy vehicle,” said Maňas. “From the known height of the Sherman tank, and from the assumed velocity of the shell in a straight line, I apply the formula

  where ‘D’ is the distance within the limits of the gun’s range, ‘s’ the estimated speed, 0.75 the formulaic constant, and ‘v’ the velocity of the anti-tank shot. Then, making the necessary adjustments to the sights, I set up on the third scale on the left, which is for armour-piercing projectiles, the distance that has already been calculated, give the appropriate order to the loader and the driver, and fire.”

  First Lieutenant Vrabec looked around proudly at the general, but he was still sound asleep. It didn’t matter anyway, for he didn’t understand a word of Czech, and Captain Matka — acting on the politically correct but linguistically dubious assumption that these two fraternal armies spoke practically the same language — hadn’t provided him with an interpreter.

  * * *

  About an hour later, the men of the Seventh Tank Battalion sat in their war chariots on Zephyr Hill to demonstrate in practice what they had learned in theory. On the opposite slope there was a group of green mockups ranging from small mounds meant to indicate an enemy soldier wielding a bazooka, to an enormous piece of stretched canvas painted with a picture of a camouflaged bunker. The committee again included the one-eyed Soviet general, but thanks to the cold autumnal wind he was now fully awake. They all stood on a wooden reviewing stand near the married officers’ quarters, holding onto their caps. The bitter wind was blowing with such force that it seemed to drive the tracer bullets spewing out of the advancing tanks right off their course.

  Sergeant Žloudek consistently scored bull’s eyes, perhaps because here he was not subjected to horrific battle scenarios. Every soldier perks up the moment he gets his hands on live ammunition, but those instincts were particularly strong in his case. Tank Commander Smiřický sat in the turret, holding the handgrips tightly, and left the commands to the gunner. Private Bamza, whose instincts were similarly aroused, flawlessly loaded the copper-headed ammunition into the breech. “Driver, halt!” came Žloudek’s voice in the tank commander’s earphones. Corporal Střevlíček’s foot hit the brakes; the tank stopped abruptly, rocked, and came to a halt, and with a satisfying thump the round flew out of the barrel. Through the gunsight in the turret the tank commander saw the enemy anti-tank gun on the yellowing slope opposite fly into pieces. When they advanced again and turned to look at the observation post, a red flag was flying above it, indicating a direct hit.

  They attacked five times in all, destroying five targets. Then they drove back to the observation post and got out of the tank. As Danny was sliding down the armour-plating to the ground, he almost knocked over a tubby gunner covered by an enormous helmet who was just getting ready to climb aboard. From under the padding of his helmet a pair of panicky eyes appeared, and the gunner’s face was chalk-white. The order came, and the helmeted gunner scrambled up on the turret and slipped inside.

  “It’s Maňas!” came Bamza’s voice. He was standing behind Danny. “Let’s hide in the bunker. Come on!”

  It was indeed Tank Commander Maňas, who had done so well in the theory of gunnery, but Bamza’s urgent suggestion was not illogical. To one side of the observation platform, where the general’s epaulettes were sparkling in the red rays of the sun, stood an abandoned bunker built for reasons that had long since been forgotten. Bamza, who was not known for speed, practically ran towards it. Danny hesitated; Střevlíček and Žloudek were leaning defiantly against the observation platform. But caution triumphed, and the tank commander followed Bamza into the bunker. There, over a fire fed by wood acquired by chopping up a newly constructed latrine, soldiers were playing cards and drinking something from a filthy bottle. Danny stepped up to the gun-slot and looked out at the range.

  The tank was just setting off. On the far hillside, which was covered with mangy patches of rusty autumn grass, a thin line of flame was advancing; one of the tracer bullets had set the grass on fire. Beautiful white puffy clouds crept slowly along the crest of the hill as the rattling tank lurched forward.

  A pleasant sense of peace prevailed, awakened by the natural beauty of the place, the approaching end of army service, and Danny’s knowledge that somewhere close behind him, in one of those pre-fab apartments, Janinka might be looking out the window — Janinka, who hated tanks but not the men who ran them. A raven circled above the growling tank, clearly seeing it as an enormous animal that would leave large amounts of nourishing waste behind. At that moment the steel machine stopped, rocked slightly on its springs, and settled.

  Danny was now completely alert. What should have followed was a burst of flame from the cannon’s barrel and the dry thump of an explosion — and indeed that was what happened. The barrel obediently released its invisible projectile and, on the crest of the hill opposite, a lone spruce tree was sliced in two. But what came next was completely unexpected. The tank roared forward and the turret began to rotate slowly, flashing intermittent fire. The familiar chatter of a machinegun echoed across the valley. Steel fragments ricocheted off the concrete sides of the bunker, and the hand of Private Kobliha, which was just about to slap down the ace of spades, stopped in mid-air. The barking of the machine-gun continued and Danny, crouching by the gun-slot, stared in amazement as the tank began a slow turn back towards the observation platform. The turret was still rotating rapidly and tracer shells were flying in all directions. He looked at the observation platform. The one-eyed general was just jumping off it, followed by his cap with its red and gold band. Under the platform, Střevlíček and Žloudek were flattening themselves to the ground in textbook fashion, and behind them a window on the third floor of the officers’ quarters suddenly exploded into a geyser of glass and smoke. Shards scattered in all directions, glittering in the autumn sun like a fistful of diamonds tossed into the air.

  At last the ammunition magazine was empty and the raging monster fell silent. The tank came to a halt directly below the observation platform, and the limp form of Tank Commander Maňas was extracted and carried off. Blood was flowing down his face and he was sobbing hysterically.

  * * *

  That evening the intellectuals among the non-commissioned officers found out what had happened, at a seance held by Lieutenant Dr. Sadař, who had tended Tank Commander Maňas’s wounds. When Danny arrived much later (he had remained on the hill to make sure the wild salvo hadn’t injured the first lieutenant’s wife and, having so determined, had stayed on to comfort her) they had also received a report from divisional staff. That afternoon, Maňas, the most active cultural worker in the battalion, had found himself in a T-34 tank for the first time in his life. Up until then, he had mastered all the military arts purely by theory. He was the bravest sloganeer, organizer of voluntary brigades to harvest potatoes, speaker for all occasions, and contributor to the divisional newspaper, The People’s Army. He had also written a sonnet to General Čepička, which had got him an audience with General Helebrant, who had appointed him to the divisional committee of the Czechoslovak Union of Youth, where he had been put in charge of creating model billboards. He might have completed his compulsory military service without ever seeing the inside of a tank, had not his excellent results in gunnery theory so impressed a general who’d been seconded to Kobylec from another base to chair the autumn inspection that he insi
sted that Maňas, although a tank commander, take part in the practical gunnery test. No one, not even Maňas himself, could come up with a plausible excuse to get him out of it. So he took his place in the gunner’s seat and grabbed hold of the cannon lever, and they set off. When the tank stopped — not on his orders, but because the driver was used to the routine — Maňas lost his balance and grabbed the trigger by mistake. The cannon went off, the noise made Maňas jump, and he slipped off his seat. Falling with his arms outstretched, he grabbed the machine-gun trigger with his right hand and the lever to rotate the turret with his left, setting off both mechanisms. Deafened by the explosions and dizzy from the rotation of the turret, he kept a firm grip on both levers until he finally fainted away.

  The non-coms seated around the stove in the doctor’s infirmary lifted their cups of tea and drank to the memory of the gallant brown-noser. Then Sergeant Krajta pulled out a brand-new number of the divisional magazine, which, as it turned out, contained an article by the newly fallen hero of theory. It was called “Farewell, Faithful Friend”.

  The wood crackled in the stove and an aroma wafted up from the cups — an aroma from the liquid in the filthy bottle, which had managed to find its way from the bunker to the infirmary, though no one could say how. Sergeant Krajta read aloud from the article in a cracked voice:

  So today is the last time. What a pity! I’ve become so accustomed to you. Though at first I didn’t want to know you, though I was even afraid of you, I have fallen in love with you over these two years, so warm and close to me, like my best friend. I have learned to know you and understand you, and I recognize your foibles. Often I have devoted all my free time to you, and often part of my nights as well. And the wonderful times we have spent together! Do you remember that marvellous, warm, quiet evening during manoeuvres when I lay beside you in the bushes, guarding the security of our beloved country? A spirited buck and his mate leapt by us, and I so much wanted to feel someone’s caress — so I caressed you, my faithful companion, my lovely T-34!