SIX MONTHS, IN ULNA
Jaroslav Veis
All the lonely people,where do they all come from?
All the lonely people,where do they all belong?
Eleanor Rigby,J.Lennon and P.McCartney
I.
However tight I squeezed my eyelids shut,till I felt I would crush my eyes
to a slush that would flow to the middle of my head,I still saw those three
dazzling white circles.They hung over me in the black night and burnt so brightly
that there was no sense in shutting my eyes or covering them with my hands.The
light cut me out of the darkness of the park and followed me like a marksman
through the sights of a rifle.I could be a hundred percent sure that I wouldn’t
escape them now.I couldn’t crawl in anywhere,this was my one-man show.I was
alone and wriggling in the net,gasping for water,waiting for the fisherman’s
hand to free me and break me with a single smash of my head and I didn’t want
to know what would happen after that.
The police ornithopter quietly fanned the
hot stagnant air above me with its wings,stirring the damp,still warm,tinned
noon heat.Actually it might have been quite pleasant,but it was probably the
last pleasant thing I could expect.The ornithopter came down slowly,looking
for a place to settle,and all the time its three lights flared at me,and I knew
that not only was I in the sights of the lamps,but right in the middle of the
cross on the range-finder of the machine-gun linked to them.If I moved and the
gunner didn’t like it,his finger would slip a little and I would get a scorching
charge probably in the stomach.I didn’t care for that idea at all, because I
couldn’t even imagine it.
I was kneeling stiffly on my left knee,squeezing
my eyes shut with all my might,and resting on my ight leg was the head of the
old woman I had taken out just before.
I had struck her on the throat with the
side of my hand,and before she fell to the ground I’d caught her with my left
hand and laid her on my right leg,so she wouldn’t bump on the asphalt.Not that
it wouldn’t have been all the same to me if she’d fallen,say,from the sixteenth
floor on to a concrete yard full of broken glass,but lately people had taken
to carrying those little gadgets that start a bell ringing in the police station
on any sudden change of position or blow,and even show them on a map wherea-
bouts it happened.And this old hag looked as if she might have had just such
a thing hidden in her bag.
But I had no intention of checking up on
that.I laid the bag lightly on the ground and reached behind me to the right
where I had my little caddy ready.It had looked like an easy job,the old hag
was plodding along slowly, and I could hear her loud breathing from a distance,so
I had plenty of time to prepare in the blackest shadow next to the tree-trunk.Then
a step towards the bench and a quick swish of the hand and there she was falling.
There was a smell of ethanol from her mouth and I only hoped she hadn’t drunk
much,because ethanol decreases the value of goods.And at that moment the light
of the ornithopter shone on me it must have been cruising at slow speed over
the trees for quite a while.I felt as if someone had suddenly poured liquid
nitrogen over me.It scorched me and yet at the same time I was turned to stone.And
I knew that no-one,not even John Lennon of Liverpool,could help me now.Just
my bad luck.
Like all through my life.
The old woman lay on my knee.I’d just pricked
the needle into her carotid a tery,the caddy was standing ready behind me and
maybe the first drop of paint had dripped into the flask.Its true I could have
said I’d found her like that and was just going to help her,but
“Don’t move!”a roar came down to me from
the artificial voice of the loud-hailer,and to prove the bawler meant it seriously
there was a cor- rosive short burst just at the tip of my sneaker,the kind that
bites a hole in your stomach as big as a fist in one minute.I had no intention
of finding out how resistant my guts were to acids.The only thing I could do
was wait.
The ornithopter settled among the trees
in the middle of an asphalt oval.On the edge of it stood the metal bench with
me kneeling beside it. The side doors opened.For a moment I wondered whether
the best thing wouldn’t be to t y to kick the caddy further into the bushes.But
it wouldn’t have been any good,the flask was slowly filling and the paint would
be sure to splash far and wide.So I knelt and waited to see what those two trained
dicks,who looked as if they hadn’t had a good kick at anyone for a long time,would
do when they came up to me.
They grabbed my shoulder and stood me on
my feet with a single heave.The old woman’s head fell on the asphalt path with
a dull thud.I just had time to notice that the needle still held in the artery
and the flask was still filling with goods,but eally I couldn’t have cared less,because
the dicks drove me to the open back doors of the ornithopter with kicks and
blows of their short steel,rubberbound truncheons.Just in front of the doors
one of them gave me a swift kick on the crupper.I felt it all the way up to
where my skull rests on the top vertebra.Of course the blow was..........