Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

Old Miki grabbed his jug and crawled on all fours toward the path, and when he found it he stood up and headed off toward the apartment blocks so fast that he was just about running, and Prodán was gasping as he then sat down on the ground and rubbed his wounded hand on his shirtsleeve, he looked at me and said he'd beat my brains out if he got wind of my telling anyone what I'd seen, and I said all right, I wouldn't tell anyone, and that's when Prodán took the accordion off his shoulder and he too noticed the knife stuck in it, and he said a swear word and pulled out the knife and stood up. Old Miki's white cane was still there by the bench, and Prodán leaned down and picked it up before sitting back down beside me, looking in the direction old Miki had gone. "I'll never play a decent cocksucking note," he said, and then he broke the cane in two on his knee and threw the pieces on the ground behind the bench.

ACCORDING TO the roll book, Szabi and I were supposed to be the monitors that week, but Szabi fell into the ditch at the construction site back in May and his ankle broke so bad that it had to be operated on three whole times, so anyway, he was in the hospital, and every day another one of us had to take the lesson in to him, and on account of that, Iza and I were the weekly monitors, because her name came next after Szabi's on the roster.

Before then I never spoke to Iza, who wound up in our class only in fourth grade and became the best student in no time, but since playing with her was impossible, no one liked her, and she didn't really have any girlfriends either, the teachers always told us to follow her example. "She's such a diligent orphan and always winning academic competitions," that's exactly what the teachers said. Iza's parents died in a car accident when she was little, and she was raised by her uncle, everyone in town knew he was a brute, he was even kicked out of the fire department because he got so angry one time that he almost beat someone's brains out, but it did no good asking Iza about it, she never said a thing about her stepparents or about being tortured by her stepfather even though the girls in class said her back was always covered with black and blue spots and streaks. But Iza never ever said a thing about it, so these days we never really asked her about this, and I was pretty down about being a weekly monitor with her because with Szabi I'd play tag and throw chalk, and I knew that with Iza I could thank my lucky stars if she didn't go tell the head teacher that I wasn't cleaning up.

The two weekly monitors had to stand up front at the start of each class, right beside the raised platform with the teacher's desk on it, and wait for the teacher so they could report out loud who was absent. Anyway, Iza and I were waiting there for the math teacher when the class bell rang, and then all of a sudden some kind of sweet smell hit my nose, it was like a flower smell but not completely, at first I didn't know what it was, but then I looked at Iza, and Iza just happened to be adjusting her skirt and tucking her white Young Pioneer shirt back under her belt because it had come loose, and as she did so a little sliver of her waist showed clear as day, and I could have sworn I saw a blue spot, but maybe it was just where the elastic of her tights squeezed against her, and in the meantime I could still smell that smell, and then I thought to myself that it must be a big-girl smell because Feri said girls grow up when they get to sixth grade, their boobs get bigger and their smell changes on account of becoming big girls, and indeed Iza's boobs really were pretty big already, almost as big as little peaches, and then I thought to myself that Iza had become a big girl and that was what I was smelling, her being a big girl, and right when I realized this, that's when our math teacher came in. We called him Sir Uclid, and the whole class stood up, and Sir Uclid went to his desk and slammed down the roll book with all his might, as usual, and then he looked at us and waited for our report, and although it was my turn, I couldn't think of what to say, I just stood there all tongue-tied, but luckily Iza then stepped forward, she saluted and then she spoke, just like we were supposed to, "I report to Comrade Teacher that class attendance today is…" But somehow I wasn't even paying attention, no, I was just staring at Iza's neck from behind her, at how her long black hair hung loose and only her headband held it in place, never before had I even noticed that she had earrings, but now I saw that she had a tiny little stone set in one of her earlobes. So anyway, Iza then read out the absences and said the usual closing words, and Sir Uclid told us he accepted our report and said we could go sit down.

As we went back to our seats I smelled that big-girl smell again, it wasn't as strong anymore, but when I sat down and opened my notebook I still smelled it a little, and then I thought of Iza, and I looked up front to where she was sitting on the model students' bench, and it occurred to me that ever since Father had been taken away I was half an orphan too, and then all of a sudden I wondered what Iza looked like naked, whether she really had black and blue streaks and what her thighs were like, because the other day Feri said, "Naked girls are really interesting," but I said, "No, they're not, I don't see it that way at all, they're all the same," and Feri told me I was full of it, he gave a big laugh and said I didn't know a thing, I was dumb, it was obvious I'd never had a lover, why, he'd seen naked girls three times already, and one of his cousins even let him look between her legs, and that cousin was already all hairy down there.

And I was still looking at Iza, at how she held her head a bit to the side as she wrote, but I couldn't imagine that thing between her legs, under her panties, even though when Feri and I had talked about it he asked if I ever saw a pussy, and I said, "Sure I have, of course, and not just one," though really I had never seen a pussy at all, only the illustration in the seventh-grade anatomy book, which the older students would show us younger ones for money, and when Feri asked, "Whose pussy?" I said, "One time when I was eight years old I went with my dad to the swimming pool, and I noticed that you could crawl under the wall of the changing cubicle to the ladies' side, a regular grown-up man wouldn't have fit, but I just barely squeezed through, and then I hid behind a curtain in the ladies' shower room, and there I saw at least fifty ladies, and then when I crawled back they almost caught me, but luckily I was soaped up good and so I slipped out of their hands," and then Feri asked me if I saw blond women and redheads too, and I said, "You bet I did," and he asked if their pussy hair is the same color as their head hair, and I said, "Sure it is, it's exactly the same," but Feri didn't believe that.

But even as I thought about this I kept looking at Iza the whole time, and meanwhile Sir Uclid had started explaining something, some example, he even drew a triangle on the blackboard, an isosceles triangle, he wanted to prove that the bisector divides the sides into equal parts, but when I tried imagining that isosceles triangle, all I could think of was a pussy because I knew that pussies are triangle shaped and that drawing a pussy is exactly like drawing an isosceles triangle, and then I carefully turned my notebook because the triangle was pointed the wrong way, and now that I'd turned it, there was just enough room above it for two semicircles, which I drew as boobs, because Feri said that anyone who can draw a pussy can draw a whole naked woman too, and then I tried drawing the curves of the body, the way the waist thins out toward the middle, but the drawing didn't turn out too well, no, it wasn't at all nice, so then I began shading in the triangle a bit, and meanwhile I kept looking at Iza, the way she was copying down what Sir Uclid was writing on the blackboard, but from the middle of the bench where I was sitting I couldn't see her boobs at all, only her back and her arms and the side of her face, and as I sat there looking at her she almost turned around one time, she must have sensed that I was watching, and then I thought for sure that she'd turn around and look at me, and I felt myself blushing, and I turned my head right away and noticed that Sir Uclid was approaching from behind.