Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

Once we got back to the kitchen my grandfather told me to wait, and after putting the pistol on the table he pulled open the sideboard drawer and took out a safety pin, and then he stepped in front of me, took the medal out of my hand, and he leaned down and pinned the medal on my vest, on the left side above my heart, but he couldn't manage to click the pin shut, it even pricked me a little, not that it hurt, and as he went on pressing the pin I kept looking at the top of his head, he was going bald, never had I noticed that before, but I now saw clearly that a saucer-sized patch of his hair was already gone, and after finally clicking shut the safety pin he adjusted the medal on my chest and gave me a peck on each cheek and he said, "Happy name day, live long," and I said, "You too, Grandpa," and then all of a sudden my arm felt really tired from all the aiming, and I thought of the cat, and I felt like sitting down.

My grandfather looked at his watch and said the time had come for me to go, he couldn't take me home just now, he said, he was waiting for someone, but I was a big boy, I'd find my way home alone no problem, and I said, "Of course, I go to the cinema on my own too," and my grandfather picked up the decanter and poured himself the rest of the wine and said, "Take care of yourself, goodbye," and suddenly I got really thirsty, and although I didn't want to ask for water, I turned my head while opening the kitchen door to leave and asked my grandfather one more question all the same, I asked him if my grandmother was really going to die, and without even looking at me my grandfather just said I should know well enough not to believe everything I'm told and that there was nothing the least bit wrong with my grandmother except that she was old, true, that was enough of a problem as it was, and then he waved his hand at me to get going already, and while shutting the door I noticed him sniff at the empty glass of wine.

It wasn't even getting dark yet when I went out the front gate, no, I knew that if I hurried I'd get home in a half-hour, so I stopped for a second and took the Gold Veteran Star off my vest and gave it a look, it had a crooked sword and a machine gun set across each other over the star, plus my grandfather's name and a year engraved on the back, and then I took out my handkerchief and wrapped it around the medal and also the safety pin, and I stuck the little bundle in my pants pocket and I thought, no way would Mother ever find it there.

PUJU AND I were lying on our bellies in the wheat field, and it was hot, really hot, sweat was pouring from us in buckets, it flowed right down my face and washed off the black war paint we'd made from burnt corks, the sweat flowed salty and bitter into our mouths but we couldn't spit it out and we couldn't rinse our mouths, no, we didn't have any water with us, neither one of us thought of bringing a canteen along with our weapons. The sun was beating down something fierce, it had been a lot warmer ever since that atomic power plant accident we weren't allowed to talk about, even the wheat matured much sooner, it was still the middle of June when the grains wafted out of the ears, but no matter how long we chewed on those grains we couldn't make wheat gum out of them anymore, they didn't stick together at all, they were as dry as sawdust, but anyway, Puju said harvesting would soon begin, he knew that because his dad was a tractor man at the collective farm, and he said the collective had already put in a request for the necessary gasoline, and they'd be getting it too, so the harvest would begin any time now.

By now we figured we were definitely close to the little wooden watchtower that hunters used, which had a ladder leading up to a roofed blind with a waist-high wall all around it and which was where the Frunza brothers had set up their headquarters. We were exhausted from all the crawling, the wheat stalks and leaves had chafed our arms and palms, Puju was wearing leather gloves but not even that helped much, the gloves only made him sweat more, which left thin streaks of gray on the war paint on his face, and I knew I looked exactly the same, not scary at all, just ridiculous. Anyway, we crawled slowly ahead through the wheat, and Puju whispered for me to take a peek up over the stalks to see how far we actually were from the watchtower, and I said no, he should look himself because it was his turn, I'd looked up three times already, so Puju then really did stick his head up out of the wheat, he didn't stand up all the way, he just rose up on one knee, that's how he did it, and afterward he got back down on his belly right away, and even under his war paint I could tell he was white as a ghost, and I asked him what it was, what did he see, and then Puju made the sign of the cross and said that those Frunza brothers weren't kidding around, they really had gone and killed someone, he saw clear as day that a spear was stuck in the ground in front of the watchtower, and jammed on top of it was a child's head covered with blood, and then I told him I didn't believe it and that he'd better not go lying to me, but Puju said that if I didn't believe him, I should take a look for myself, so I got up on one knee and peered out, I saw pigeons flying in circles above the watchtower, and there really was a spear stuck in the ground, but just what was fixed on its point, that part I couldn't make out because a thick plastic fertilizer bag was pulled upside-down over it, and the bag was tied up so not even the shape of whatever was inside was easy to make out, but the moment I brought my head back down into the wheat I remembered seeing something else too, that down there at the bottom where the bag was tied something was flowing thick and red all the way down the spear, and by the time I got back down on my belly next to Puju I felt sick to my stomach, I looked at the wheat stalks we'd flattened while crawling and I wanted to tell Puju we hadn't seen it right, no way was that blood on the spear, but when I opened my mouth to speak I could feel my hand hurting, and that's when I noticed that I'd dug my fist into the earth and was squeezing the soil really hard, and when I yanked out my hand, a big clump of wheat roots came up along with the soil, and then I looked at Puju and saw that the edge of his mouth was quivering with fear, and I let the soil-filled roots fall from between my fingers and I thought to myself that I shouldn't have come to this battle after all, no way would I be able to climb up the watchtower to get Prodán's leather ball.

The whole thing started when it turned out that the new sewage line would pass right through the middle of our soccer field, which meant we had to go over to the soccer field used by the kids one street over whenever we wanted to play. At first their field was supposed to be dug up too, but then one day the workers left and never did come back, even though their tool shed was still there by the ditch. Anyway, the other-streeters, which is what we called those kids, let us play there until the day the Frunza brothers, orphans who moved there to their grandfather's place, beat up Zsolt, who until then was the strongest other-streeter, yes, the two Frunzas took over their gang and said we couldn't go there anymore, meaning we could go only if we paid, and when Big Prodán laughed in their faces and said, "What do you think this is, a soccer field is public property, you can't just take it over," then Romulus Frunza said, "Folks don't go talking back to my big brother," and then Remus Frunza flicked out a switchblade and stabbed Big Prodán in the shoulder so fast that Prodán didn't even have time to pull out his own pocketknife, and right when he put a hand to his shoulder, the leather ball his cousin sent him from Yugoslavia fell out of his hands, and Romulus Frunza leaned down and picked up the ball and said that from now on the ball was theirs and that Prodán could thank his lucky stars they hadn't stabbed him in the belly, because that shoulder wound was nothing, it would heal in a week, his big brother hadn't stabbed deep, no, he'd given Prodán just a little taste of his knife. Romulus Frunza then started bouncing the ball on the ground and said, "Well, that's that," and if we didn't like it, we could go to war with them, they'd send us a declaration of war with all the details written down precisely, and just so we'd know, the battle would be up on top of the hill in the wheat field behind the apartment blocks, and it would be life or death, our side would have to attack, and if we got as far as the watchtower at the edge of the woods and then escaped with this here leather ball, then we'd have to get the ball only as far back as the Big Tree, and if we did that, we'd win, and then we'd not only get back the ball but we could also use their soccer field for free whenever we wanted. But they knew that nothing would come of this, we were such scaredy-cats that even the declaration of war would make us shit our pants, no way would we be brave enough to stand up to them, said Romulus Frunza, no fucking way, that much was obvious on account of how Prodán just stood there without a word, letting them take his blood.