Devil's Workshop by Jáchym Topol Page A

was happy in our hole in the hill, my hands were healing. Sometimes Kamínek slept in there too.
    And the bums brought news. Yeah, they’re lookin’ for you! Heh heh heh. They liked that I was dependent on them.
    What about Lebo?
    He split with that Swedish chick, been stickin’ it to her the whole time, said somebody in the hole. Ole Lebo, yep! Nobody puts one over on him. I bet he’s kickin’ it in the Caribbean right now, ha ha.
    Bullshit, said somebody else. The cops cracked him on the head, he was the first one they got! I saw him in the ambulance. His head was all bloody and bandaged!
    Who wouldn’t want that Swedish babe? Old Lebo took the money and ran, before the state could scoop it up! Good for him!
    Nah, he’s still back there, said somebody else. In the bunkroom. Burnt to a crisp. He put up a fight. Got conked on the head and went down. By the time they went back for him, he was toast!
    What about Rolf? Where’s he? I asked.
    They didn’t know. They didn’t care.
    But the scouts reported back that a lot of the Comenium’s students had been picked up by their parents, who descended on the town from every corner of the civilized world. The rest of them threw their packs on their backs, waved good-bye with their passports and credit cards, and went on their way.
    You can stay here a while, Kůs assured me.
    What about Lebo?
    My idea was to comb through the wreckage of the Comenium and find out for sure. I would bury what was left of him at night, if I had to. But it was impossible. The cops had a barricade up and a guard standing watch.
    Nobody was allowed to go poking around in the ruins. Everybody knew about the mental cases and their scavenging.
    The moon grew. I watched it every night.
    What about Lebo? And what about me? All I got out of these questions was sadness and the certainty that I had to get away.
    One night, after yet another session of sitting around the fire, bickering and fighting over that nasty booze of theirs, I slipped away and crept down the goat track. Where there used to be houses, now there were machines. Steamrollers, levellers, crushing debris, tearing down foundations, knocking down walls, and bulldozing it all into pits. Instead of Central Square there was a plain littered with ruins. Where the Comenium had once stood there was nothing, just machines in the dark.
    I went running back and stood above the hollow, breathing hard. I looked up: the moon was almost ripe.
    I sat down on my behind and slid into the pit, our hole. No one said a word.
    They were roasting meat, I could smell it, and then I saw, uh-huh, an old frayed collar lying in the dirt, something gleaming in the shadows behind a pile of branches: horns. It was Bojek’s head.
    No, I said.
    Listen! somebody said, practically shoving a bottle down my throat. Vojtek saw Lebo!
    The Russkies snatched him! The whites of the blind man’s eyes bulged as the others roared with laughter.
    The blind man stamped his foot, enraged.
    I wasn’t going to make a fuss. They were already eating goats when I was walking around like the big man. The only reason I was here now was because they let me stay. So I kept quiet.
    Lebo got snatched by the Russkies, the blind man yelled. He wouldn’t give up, he defended his position, so they took him off to Moscow, just like Dubček in ’68, the fuckers! the blind man said, flailing his arms.
    Ha ha, Vojtek sees Russkies everywhere, he’s nuts!
    I can tell a Russki by his smell, every time!
    Russkies were the last people he ever saw, so now he smells ’em everywhere, ha ha ha!
    It suddenly hit me. Vojtek used to be an explosives expert, a pretty bad one too, I guess. Burned his eyes out with a rocket during the fraternal fireworks to celebrate the Soviet invasion in ’68. That’s when the Soviets took over here in Terezín.
    The blind man went on ranting, rattling off his nonsense. I grabbed him, along with everyone else, and held on. Took a slap or two in the face myself. At least it