I cried out loud.
He now went quiet, as though he didn’t understand me, mutely he looked into my crying face. With real pain in his voice he said:
“Poor Lem, poor Lem!”
“All the birds went mad, Kejtin,” I rambled.
“Cursed birds,” he said, and after that, as attentively as he could he took me by the hand and like a little child he took me down to the bedroom. He put me in my bed to sleep. Curse me, so that I could sleep.
Many of the children thought that that was the end, the last hour. They didn’t defend themselves any more, they let the fleas eat them through. In that overwhelming heaviness we at last got something that, until then each child could only dream of. The administration resolved to take us to the water’s edge so that we could be cleaned of the fleas. No fear existed any more that one of the children would turn into a bird and fly away. All of the children looked like captured birds that had had their wings cut off. Curse me, if any one of them could walk properly let alone fly. Children like old men, curse me. Their decision wasn’t at all risky now, it turned out that it was the only possible decision.
It was ordered that everyone’s hair was to be totally cut off. That was the most humiliating hair cutting that could be imagined. They lined us up, one grade after another, and like that, in a line, two by two, they took us to the bank. In line, curse me, in line to have your hair cut. Once there, comrade Mijanche Deloski, our hygiene instructor, would grab us. He was a self taught barber, and no-one was mad enough to joke with him after you had put your head in his enormous hands. Curse me, like lambs, submissively we gave in to the shears.
When they first opened the little gate, when we found ourselves eye to eye with the Big Water, I thought that at least one child would gather a little strength and would fly away, that nothing could hold him down. I thought we would grow new wings, that they would take us over there, the place our hearts beat for, day and night. Cursedness, that fire was real, the water was burnt, drawn back. I swear, the water was running away, it was being lost. Curse me, it had all been calculated, immediately after shearing, with huge tears, bewildered we returned to the Home. While that was happening the instructors, a bit taken themselves, at the tops of their voices called:
“Come on, fly you little bastards! Go fly! Wherever you go, you will always return to this little Home, like dogs you will come slinking back!”
Curse me, that was the truth.
We could hardly wait for the hair cutting to end. We ran back to the Home as if we’d lost our minds.
In the yard, the others were waiting, the unshorn ones, the upper grades. We, the ones who’d been shorn, were put in the laundry to leave our clothes and while there, the man from the hygiene institution covered our heads with a white powder. Because there wasn’t enough clothing, we had to stay half naked those few days, in underpants. Such a frightening scene had not been seen in the yard of the Home before then. Thin, undernourished bodies of children, barely kept together, as though stunned we were turning around our own small, mutilated shadows. We didn’t know what to do with our broken hands, as if we were meeting in that cursed place for the first time. Curse me, centuries had to pass before we would recognise each other again.
It must have taken Kejtin a long time to find me amongst all of the shaven mice. Obviously, not even he could hide the emotion and pain, not to tremble at seeing me for the first time. Dear God, I was crawling along the wall like some lizard, black and small. Without command, he left his grade and flew to me. Curse me, he flew. I ran away, I hid, I was pressing into the wall so that he couldn’t see me, so I couldn’t see him. Dear mother, how horrible it was to see. When at last he unstuck me from the wall, curse me, if I could have, I would have completely entered the wall, I would have bricked myself in, when he saw me like that, he released that happy generous smile and said:
“Be a man, little Leme. Be a man, comrade. Hair grows back quickly, you’ll see, your hair will grow back straight away, my dear one,” and then gently, very carefully, he took my head to him with his bony hands and most gently, most dearly, he kissed me on the forehead. He pricked me with his protruding upper teeth. Curse me, I was shaken. My dear friend, I swear, as if scorched quickly withdrew. He looked long at me, oh his look! Curse me, he didn’t believe, I saw a tear in his eyes. The first time that the son of Kejtin cried, he just couldn’t believe at all, no! no! no! At that moment, it was as if someone had pierced his heart, he let out the strongest, most horrible cry.
“Oh Mother! My dear Mother! I’m scorched. I’m dead,” he said and mindlessly started to run, up, down, all over the Home.
The boys, like hungry, wild electric current, hounded him, they chased him, they called out cheerfully:
“Hooray! Hooray!”
From then on, many centuries passed; at the end we even left the Home, we lived through happier and more bitter moments, but those few incomprehensible moments, in my young and inexperienced heart always remained like the worst dream. Whenever I see crazed birds, bloodied people, scorched water, fires, devastated fields, dead people, abandoned villages, deserted mute roads, white short lightning, a sign of drought, queues of people, assemblies, curse me, I think someone is being separated in that moment, one person from another. Curse me, I can hear that cry.
“Kejtin,” I jump from the deepest sleep, I go mindlessly, I look for him. “Kejtin.” That’s my cry. Curse me, mindlessly, madly, we separate and lose each other. I go and only one question strikes me like lightning in my soul. “How and where will I find him now?”
The Senterlev Mountain showed white on the other side of the Big Water. It came with a luminous shine from the same side of the water as the wind. That must be where the sun is born. To get to the Senterlev Mountain, you had to pass over all the water. Many of the children were already passionately preparing for such an expedition, through the water. Even if it was stupid, the whole thing was very appealing and we prepared for such a trip. Curse me, we believed in such a possibility. Of course, that was just one possible plan to reach the mountain we loved. The plans ended up in waste. The whole thing ended up in wasted plans, it was a total disappointment. The same Spring, some children from “Progress”, a similar home, who’d managed to escape, reached the town and heard about our Home. Without a second thought they took off and went back to where they had come from. Now, that gang was something to cry over, you felt shame and disgust for those poor unfortunates. None of them had eaten for days, they hadn’t slept, they’d been hiding in barns and gardens, dirty from weariness and hunger, they looked like thoroughly beaten farm beasts. They could no longer think oh see, they were lost because they had no place to go, they were blinded. It showed it was best in the Home. Could you survive a bigger disappointment, a greater misfortune than one you see and hear from the mouth of your brothers who for days and nights, for centuries had also prepared for escape. I was so afraid the alluring mountain did not exist.
Father Lentenoski or the hermit of the seasons
At least three times a month, official comrades came into the Home, do-gooders, noble people, citizens, fathers and mothers in search of their children, busy activists, teachers, artistic troupes, poets, sailors, all sorts of shits. Some comrade Lazhoski and his wife, or was she his sister, monsters, health and hygiene inspectors, some eternally hungry people. Curse me, they had to put loads of food in front of them when they came for lunch. Okay, let them eat, I wasn’t concerned about the food; everyone stole. The instructors and the teachers, each took turns. I began to hate them, more than anything else in the Home, because of their insensitivity, hypocrisy, being without a conscience. Curse me, it was as if only one thing was important to them — a plate to stuff themselves with food, to endlessly stuff themselves. We started to hate them. In the most natural way, curse me, such hate. However smart or educated they were, however many thousands of times better they knew the new laws and followed those laws most correctly but they couldn’t be justified by any law. Curse me, in what law could you see such a dark clause, instructors stealing the poor entitlements, little by little, the meagre provisions of children in the most audacious, the most heartless manner? Openly and without shame they short-changed us on bread; they took it away in their bags. Curse me, did they have any books or science in their big bags? Isn’t that what villains do? Who dares to withhold food from hungry children, to pull it from their mouths? What sort of people could they be, how could you describe their conduct? Curse me, conduct. How could someone like that instil something good in your soul, to pour in such learning with a funnel — nothing stays in your head, part of one thing comes into your head, part of another goes out. Your mind is not focused on his teacherly words, you don’t even hear him, you simply see how he’s stealing from you, how greedily he is enjoying himself. Your mind is totally focused on that — he says to you, sun, ray or angel, devil, and you think to yourself, hell, darkness, army, villain, thief, I’m not going to learn from you, that’s not right, even if I remain ignorant and blind for the rest of my life. Curse me, that was in our thoughts. We looked at how they ate; it happened that when their mouths gaped wide we’d say to them “Your health! May the food you’ve eaten turn to blood,” or “Enjoy,” “Best wishes for success,” “May the good wishes multiply!” However stupid or ignorant you were, you could feel something was wrong, oppressive. They’ve stolen your soul, it seemed they’d sunk their insatiable mouths into your soul. Oh those dreadful hygiene people. I swear, each report had the same content, one after the other. The situation excellent, improved in the third semester, one hundred percent. The Lazhovski family acted like manufacturers, they threw reports around which were as full of details as hollow macaroni. Curse me, lies blossomed at every level. I swear a one hundred per cent lie. Later, many with that fortune won excellent character appraisals for themselves. Curse me, they acted as if they were something special.