Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

I WAS SITTING on a bench behind our apartment block, up by the path on the hill, hammering away with a brick at my new pocketknife, it was a classic, with a fish-shaped metal handle, except the blade had come loose, it snapped shut nearly every time I stuck it into a tree or something, and I was scared it would cut my fingers. So that's what I was trying to fix, except the brick wasn't hard enough, it did no good slamming it down really hard on the rivet, it wasn't worth a damn except to get my school pants and my hands covered with brick dust.

Not too many people took that path in the afternoons, I'd been sitting there a half-hour already and only old Miki went by on his way to the waterspout, and I said hello, I wasn't scared of him even though others told stories about the things he did during the war before he went blind, but what did I care, he was always nice to me. Even now, when I said hello, he stopped and waved his white cane toward me and said, "Hey there, Djata." He recognized everyone right away from their voices, he may have been blind but he sure did know which way he was going better than lots of other folks. Anyway, he had a huge three-quart jug with him that he was holding by the handle, and I knew he was taking it to the spout because someone once lied to him that if he drank three quarts of water from the King's Well every day, he'd see again.

Except for him I didn't meet anyone at all, no, I just sat there hammering away at my pocketknife, thinking how bad it must be, being blind, living in darkness forever, seeing only with a cane, and right when I thought this, all of a sudden someone put his hands over my eyes from behind me.

I was waiting for whoever it was to ask me who I thought it was, and I even tried figuring it out, but he held my eyes shut really tight so I couldn't see a thing, he had pretty big hands, I felt that right away, and also the fingers smelled of cigarette smoke. It couldn't be Janika, he never smoked, and it couldn't be Feri either, he'd gone away to his grandmother's for a week. "All right, Lad," I said, "let me go. I figured out right away who you are, huh," but the two palms were still stuck to my eyes, it seemed like he was pressing his hands harder and harder. "All right," I said, "you're not Laci, but don't go cheating, because if you don't ask me who you are, how am I supposed to figure it out?"

But he still didn't say a thing, all he did was start pulling my head back nice and slow until my neck was really strained and my back was pressed tight against the wood board of the bench. "Go to hell," I said, "go to hell, fuckit, don't cheat or I'll knock your brains out," but not even then did he let me go. I tried pulling my head out of his grip, but he held it tight, and I told him to watch out because I had a knife with me, and then all of a sudden I felt his breath against my neck as he leaned really close to my ears and whispered, "That's right, Djata, you got a knife with you, that's just the problem, because it's not your knife, you cheated my kid brother out of that knife," and by then I knew who it was, yes, I'd heard his voice, so I knew it had to be Big Prodán.

"Okay, Prodán," I said, "I'll give it back, I'll give it back right away, but let me go already," and by now I was really scared because Big Prodán was the strongest kid in the neighborhood, after he was kicked out of school his dad sent him to do construction work, and he got even stronger doing that, he could beat up anyone and he wasn't scared of a soul, so anyway, Prodán then took his palms off my eyes, but as he did so he hooked one of his arms under my neck and pulled my head back, so I got hardly any air, and meanwhile with his other hand he reached down and took the pocketknife out of my hand. "I should beat you up good," he said, and then he let go of my neck, went around the bench, and stopped in front of me. This big boxlike knapsack hung from his shoulders, it looked like our school knapsacks only it was bigger, he took it off and put it on the edge of the bench next to my knapsack and meanwhile he wiped the knife on his pants to get the brick dust off. "Look what you did with it," he said, shaking his head. "I should beat the shit out of you," he said, but he didn't hit me, he just sat down beside me on the bench and said, "Okay, maybe I won't touch you this time, but if I find out again that you played cards with my kid brother, why then I'll knock your brains out, got that, this time I only want your money, so go ahead and empty your pockets," and I didn't say a thing back, no, I only shook my head because I knew full well I didn't have any money on me. Sure, I poked around in my pockets anyway, but I really didn't turn up a thing, and then I said to Big Prodán that I didn't have any money on me, but if I did, I'd give it to him, cross my heart, and if he waited a day, then maybe I could get my hands on some, even though I really didn't have any right now, but Prodán shook his head. "Don't go lying to me, Djata," and then he waved the pocketknife, signaling for me to get up from the bench, and he even showed me where to stand, there, in the middle of the path, and he said, "Now we'll see if you got a jingle and a jangle to you or not, so get to it, hop around a bit in one place," and he waved his hand for me to start, and he kept waving, up, down, up, down, but I really didn't have any money on me, so I could keep jumping up and down as much as I wanted, yes, I knew that nothing was about to jingle or jangle in my pockets, and Prodán must have known too, but he made me keep hopping for at least two more minutes, I was all hot and sweaty by the time he finally waved for me to stop, and he said, "All right, I can see you weren't lying, you can come sit down now."

"I can't stay," I said, shaking my head, "I've got to go home," but Prodán just gave another wave of his hand. "Fuckit, Djata, I said you can come sit down," and then he slammed his fist down on the bench, and so I sat down, but I didn't look at Prodán, no, instead I kept my eyes lowered, staring at the rips in my sneakers, waiting to see what would happen, and for a while Prodán didn't say a thing, but then he spoke after all. "Djata," he asked, "is it true you spent two years learning how to play the piano?" I thought I heard wrong, but I didn't ask him to repeat what he said, I just nodded, and I thought of my piano teacher and her reed cane, and how she sometimes hit my shoulders or my hands when I didn't hold myself like I was supposed to. I looked at Big Prodán and said, "It wasn't even a year, we had to sell our upright piano when they took my father away because we needed the money," but Prodán just slapped me on the back and said, "Fuckin hell, Djata, you studied piano playing for a year, so you gotta know it really well, so you'll teach me too, because the good summer weather will be here in a month, the weddings will be starting up, and by then I gotta learn, I really gotta know how."

"Impossible," I said, shaking my head, "one month is nothing, and anyway, it's not like I know anything anymore, even back then all I knew was 'The Flea Waltz,' but I didn't even know that properly," and right when I said that, I almost broke out laughing, I mean, Big Prodán had big, shovel-like hands, and his fists were all scratched up from laying bricks and fighting all the time, anyway, I tried sucking in my gut to keep from laughing. "Your hands are too big for piano playing," I said, but meanwhile the corners of my mouth kept wanting like hell to curl up, but I didn't want Prodán to sock me in the gut, and so I didn't laugh after all, no, I just said, "You need at least three years for the piano." Prodán smirked and said, "Stop kidding around, Djata, a guy can learn to ride a bike in three days, and anyway, it's not piano playing I'm after, where am I supposed to get a piano, hell no, I want you to teach me with this thing here" — and he hit his elbow hard against that big black bag he'd put down beside him on the bench just before—"with this fucking accordion," and again he hit his elbow against the bag, and then he took that bag by the strap and put it on his knees, he opened it up and removed an accordion that was all scrunched up. "Here it is," he said, "my father got it from somewhere, and now he wants to take me off construction work and send me to play music at weddings because he says there's a shitload of dough in that, and it's not like playing music is work anyway, so we can get rich real easy."