Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

The shorter man said they'd just been passing by and as long as they were here anyway, they figured they'd look around a bit, maybe they'd find something interesting in the doctor's room.

Mother asked if they had a search warrant, and the tall silver-haired man smiled at her and said they didn't need a warrant for every little detail, that there was nothing wrong with their looking around a bit, besides, he didn't think we had anything to hide.

Mother now said really loud, "You have no right to do this, get out of here, go. If you don't leave right this instant, why then I'll go to city hall and stage a sit-down strike, yes, I'll publicly demand my husband's release, what is this, keeping him locked up for half a year already without a trial and without a sentence? Be this country what it may," she said, "we have a constitution all the same, we have laws all the same, searches still require a warrant, so you'd better show one or get out of here, now."

The silver-haired man then smiled at Mother and said that this scrappiness really looked good on her, and no doubt my father down there on the Danube Canal must really miss her, for she was truly a beautiful woman, too bad they'd never meet again.

Mother's face turned all red and her whole body tensed up, I thought she'd go right on over there and slap that silver-haired officer, I couldn't remember seeing her that angry ever before, and then Mother really did move, but not toward the officer, no, instead she went straight to the apartment door, opened it, and said, "Enough is enough, out, get out of this building at once, because if you don't," she said, "I'll call my father-in-law." She told them they knew full well that he was a Party secretary, and although he'd been sent into retirement he still had enough friends in high places so he could arrange, on account of what they'd done here, to have the two of them transferred to the traffic division, so if they knew what was best for them, they'd better get out right this instant. Mother said this so firmly I almost believed it, even though I knew full well she would never call my grandfather's home of her own free will because ever since my grandmother said to her face that she was a screwed-up Jewish slut, yes, ever since then Mother wouldn't give her or my grandfather the time of day, but from the way Mother spoke now, you couldn't tell that at all.

The shorter officer now said that if she thought the old man had any clout left, especially now that his son had been taken away, well, she was quite mistaken, my grandfather could thank his lucky stars he himself hadn't been interned, but if my mother wanted to pick up the phone and complain, why then, she could go right ahead, and he stepped over to the counter, took the silverware drawer by the handle, and yanked it right out with such force that although the drawer itself stayed in his hand, the knives, forks, tablespoons, and teaspoons flew all over the kitchen, and the officer then slammed that empty drawer back down onto the counter so hard that its back edge tore right off, and he said, "There you are, now you have something to complain about, but this is just the beginning, that's right, just the beginning," and he bared his teeth, and I knew he was about to knock over the table. But then the silver-haired man put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Take it easy, Gyurka my boy, take it easy, let it be, it seems we misjudged the lady, we thought this was a missus with brains, we did, we thought she knew when and with whom she has to be polite, but it seems she doesn't have the sense to recognize her well-wishers, it seems she's dead set on getting herself all mixed up in trouble too. Fine, then, let it be, just like she wants." The officer called Gyurka now flung the broken drawer to the floor where the silverware was all scattered about and he said, "Fine then, Comrade Major, let's do as you wish, let's go."

The officer called Gyurka now looked at Mother and nodded, and then he turned and looked me square in the eye and said fine then, they'd leave, but only because he saw that we liked flowers, and anyone who liked flowers couldn't be bad, and as he said that, he stepped over to the table, and I thought for sure that he was about to fling that pickle jar to the floor, but all he did was pluck out a single tulip, he held that flower to his nose, gave it a sniff, and said, "The only problem with tulips is that they have no smell, otherwise they are really lovely flowers," and then he left the kitchen. "Let's go, Comrade Major," he said, to which the silver-haired man didn't say a thing but only waved his hand for him to go, and the officer called Gyurka began heading out, and on reaching Mother he stretched that tulip out to her and Mother took it from him without a word, and the officer called Gyurka said, "A flower for a flower," and he turned toward me again and looked me square in the eye and gave a wink, and he went out the door and right down the stairs.

The major then also stepped out into the hall, and Mother was just about to slam the door on him when he suddenly stepped back over the threshold, put his foot in front of the door so Mother couldn't shut it, and said, nice and calm, "You'll come to regret this, lady, because when we return we'll yank the floor right up, we'll scratch the putty right out of the window frames, we'll look under the bathtub too, and into the gas pipes, we'll take apart the whole place bit by bit, and you can be sure we'll find what we're looking for, you can be certain of that," he said before falling silent, turning, and heading down the stairs.

Mother slammed the door, but before it closed all the way I heard the major say, "See ya around," and then Mother turned and fell against the door, she just stood with that red tulip in her hand, looking at the pieces of the broken mug, the silverware thrown all about, the drawer broken in two, and her mouth winced before slowly hardening, she now squeezed her lips tight and looked at me and said, quiet as could be, "Go get the dustpan and the broom, let's pick up the pieces of the mug." And I then looked at the tulips on the table in that pickle jar and I wanted to say to her, "It wasn't true what those officers said about Father, was it, he'll come home, right?" but then I turned toward Mother and saw that she was sniffing at that single tulip, and her eyes were glistening so much that I knew she could hardly hold back her tears, so instead I asked her not a thing.

SZABI AND I figured out pretty fast that chalk doesn't give you a fever at all, that it's just a legend, because we each ate one and a half pieces of chalk and nothing happened to us, we even tried the colored chalk, Szabi ate a green piece and I ate a red one, but it did us no good waiting under the bridge by the school for an hour and a half, nothing happened to us except we peed in color, my pee was on the reddish side and Szabi's was greenish. And as for the thermometer trick, we didn't dare try that either, because Mother caught me red-handed the other day sticking the end of the thermometer on the cast-iron radiator, and two weeks earlier, before our math exam, Szabi had even worse luck, he held a thermometer up against the bulb of his little lamp and the mercury got so hot so fast that it exploded right out of the end of the thermometer, and his father gave him a whipping with the buckle end of a belt, so the thermometer trick was out of the question, but we had to come up with something all the same.

If we didn't manage to get sick by the next day, we knew that it would be the end of us, the other kids at school would knock our brains out because that's when they would find out that we'd accidentally let those slot machines wolf down all our class money, the cash we were supposed to use to buy materials for a flag and for the placards we had to make to carry in the May Day parade. Yes, it would turn out we'd spent all of that money on those machines in the cellar game room off the side of the Puppet Theater building because Feri lied that every third player wins on those new automatic machines. "That's why they're automatic, after all," he said, and the first time we tried, we really did win, we won a ten, but from there on in we only lost, and in the end we only wanted to win back the money, we broke the third hundred bank note only so we could win back what we'd lost. It almost worked too, but then we couldn't get the proper rhythm, right when we pressed the button, the flash switched from EXTRA SUPER BONUS to nothing, and so we lost all the money, and then it didn't do any good telling the cashier it wasn't our money and that he should give it back, he just laughed. "That's a game of chance for you," he said, and if we went on shooting off our traps, then he'd see to shutting them up for us, and if we didn't want to play anymore, why then we should get the hell out of there because we were only taking space away from paying customers.