Island Operation (Part VI)

I walked home. 

In my bathrobe, Bronco was already lounging and relaxing after his journey. Everything so far was going according to plan. 

At the latest at twelve fifteen I wanted to be at Vania’s, and so I still had quite a bit of time, even taking into account that before going there I had to instruct Bronco and leave him under the bridge. 

He was supposed to pretend to be fishing, but mainly he’d be fishing out and hiding the sheets of cork. 

I had to foresee any possible circumstances and be ready for various surprises. Fortunately the time of year and the weather were not too attractive and so no one really loitered around here aimlessly. 

Of course, maybe once every half hour someone took advantage of the stairs from the bridge, but at the bottom they turned right away and went the other direction. There at the distance of some eighty meters stood three homes that could house even a dozen families each. 

The way using the stairs was rarely used, because to these three homes from at least two other directions there were much shorter and more convenient routes and approaches. The bridge itself had the shape of classic arches. 

The whole construction was cemented, so that from afar its shape and look was reminiscent of a Medieval or even Roman bridge. During sieges from the direction of the island there had to be serious artillery fire, because in many places the side walls of the bridge had enormous gaps and holes. 

Most likely, the constructed foundation was left unshaken, because across the bridge normally and blithely the blue streetcars streaked by. 

There were no traffic signs even, or restrictions on load-bearing trucks, even though, truthfully speaking, all these laws at this time functioned rather on an honor system. The gaps and holes in the bridge’s walls were for us very useful as hiding places. 

In light of yesterday’s invigilation Bronco and I had to coordinate a certain tactic. For now we did not appear anywhere together. If we were going somewhere, Bronco would go at a long distance from me, and I would keep an eye to make sure he did not get lost. 

The whole time I used the secret exit, unless I wanted again to disinform the person following me. The technical details of the most important part of the program, meaning the rafting, we worked out as follows. I would be in the barracks demounting the boxes and taking out the sheets of cork. Bronco in the meantime, in the vicinity of the bridge would use the rod to pretend that he is fishing. 

We arranged that I would throw the attained cork into the channel exactly on the half hour. In the event of some threat, Bronco was from the other side to get to the height of the barrack windows and with an agreed upon signal give me a sign to pause momentarily my operation. 

This was not at all that simple. He had to go some distance in the other direction, then go across one of the legs of the river by bridge and then through two more small islands, the second of which already, at the next leg of the river, found itself close enough to the barracks. 

The entire terrain there was overgrown with more bush than any other place. There had to have been some sort of power station there before. Giant slabs of wrecked cement, mixed with the rusted pieces of some gigantic machine—everything intertwined together with the unnatural dimensions of the wild brush. 

Through many nice years it grew here with impunity and no trouble. This area had a bad reputation and people avoided it like the devil, because from time to time, the drunken Red Army kids stationed in the palace practiced intense shooting. 

Once even, very long ago, they killed someone; several times they injured people. Of course everything was carefully covered up by the town powers. Another matter was that the shootings most often took place at night, and with the hours between twelve and four in the afternoon perhaps even from the time of the war no bullets flew here. 

Our work was most aided by the mean, rainy fall weather, during which time no one had the appetite to loaf about in this wild and even dangerous place. 

Finally, Bronco, precisely instructed, placed himself appropriately. 

I made my way with the half liter bottle to the guard. It was exactly nine minutes after twelve. I told Vania that today I would be there until almost four, because I was interested in books, thousands of which were abandoned there, and I wanted to take a few of them. 

Vania could not believe how someone could be interested in German books. He asked suspiciously if maybe I was a German. When I objected, he calmed down a bit, and with some reservation remaining, let me on the path to the barracks. 

Right away I got to work, such that at one thirty a good amount of cork had floated down the channel in Bronco’s direction. 

On the first day of exploit I managed to demount twelve boxes, appreciably overshooting our plan, and on the way out, I took of course three books—one N-P tome from a twelve tome nineteenth century encyclopedia with beautiful engravings, a historical atlas published already under Josef Goebbels, with the opening words EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FUHRER, and one tome from Bremms’s four tome zoological atlas, this one with very colorful rotogravure panels. 

Vania was clearly disappointed; he could not understand my eccentric liking, but we arranged again for the next day. 

When I found myself under the bridge, I took out the last of the cork myself. Bronco performed superbly. He recounted that while he was pretending to be a fisherman, at a certain moment three children began to assist him, living most likely in one of the three nearby houses. 

He had to get rid of them in some delicate manner, more so because soon the cork would begin to float by. The kids were even rather talkative. Bronco asked them about different things, and when he suddenly asked them to tell him now where their parents hid their money, they immediately tempered and quickly washed off. 

All the sheets of cork were cleverly hidden in the breaches on the side of the bridge. When half of them I had again with the help of the gray paper and string made into two large, elegant packages, I asked Bronco to take them to the station, but not to the main station, but to the platform where I left the train when I was making my way to the capital with STORMY WEATHER Zula. 

It was relatively close from our bridge. Bronco was to deposit these two packages in the so called hand baggage and package storage. This relatively short trip between our bridge and this second station I simply hated. 

I abhorred it even more than the post office, where the previous year they robbed me of my famous Italian panoramic sunglasses. 

This road at a certain section passed a small park square, occupied primarily by mothers with their children, drunks, and old people. 

In this park square, some fourteen, fifteen weeks earlier I lived through the greatest embarrassment of my life.