Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

BEFORE THEN, we used to think the old clay pit was closed because its wall collapsed in the big earthquake, revealing a bunch of priceless prehistoric reliefs, but ever since Zsolt showed us a gold nugget one time, everyone knew that wasn't really why you couldn't go there, that it was actually because the quarry walls were full of gold, yes, all you had to do was swing a hammer on the slate where the veins of ore ran, and the nuggets would come flying right out of the wall. Zsolt told us he stole the gold nugget out of his dad's desk drawer, from beside his railway worker's ID and worker's medals, and he even let us take it into our hands, it was damn heavy, it was real gold, no doubt about it. Often we wanted to go to the clay pit and give it a try to see if we could really get ourselves some gold, but as long as old Mr. Vászile guarded the site with his two German shepherds it didn't work out, because he was there day and night, he lived in an old trailer and never let anyone into the clay pit or even onto the property around it, and he never kept his dogs chained, one time when Zsolt climbed over the fence on a dare, one of the dogs bit his ankle so bad that afterward Zsolt had to get thirty shots in his belly, so when we got the news that Mr. Vászile had hanged himself, none of us were sorry at all, and indeed we were glad to hear that he first shot both of the dogs. Zsolt said right away that we should take advantage of the opportunity and go get ourselves some gold before a new guard got appointed, yes, it would be best if we headed off right away, so we should go home and get hammers, besides, he was itching to see those prehistoric reliefs for himself.

Because the quarry was far away, we went by bicycle. I sat behind Zsolt, on the rack, and on the other bike Jancsi rode in front of Csabi. The fence was pretty high and had barbed wire up top, but at least there wasn't any barbed wire above the locked gate, and Jancsi figured out that if we leaned one bike against the gate, then from the seat it wouldn't be hard to climb up to the top, and we really did get up there pretty easy, and only when all four of us were inside did Zsolt say we were complete idiots not to have pounded off the lock with a hammer because then we could have at least brought in the bicycles too, but Jancsi just waved a hand and said it didn't matter, the important thing was that we got inside and didn't have to worry about those lousy dogs.

As for the prehistoric reliefs, I thought they would be a lot more exciting, sure, they looked nice and big, high up there on the quarry wall around twelve feet from the ground, I couldn't really imagine how the folks who made them could have climbed so high, but they sure seemed pretty worn, you could hardly tell what they were supposed to show, I could make out some sort of houses and animals and a bunch of human figures, a couple of the people were shooting with bows and arrows, and some were hunting for wild boar and for bears from a horse-drawn cart using a spear, plus there was a gigantic person lying on the ground, you couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and practically all that was left of the face was the eyes, the rest had been washed away by the snow and the rain, and even Jancsi said he didn't understand what was so priceless about these reliefs when you could hardly see a thing on them, but then Zsolt said he'd heard that they weren't prehistoric at all, no, the miners had made them out of boredom but then half plastered them over because they turned out so badly, and there really wasn't much to see on them at all.

Mr. Vászile's shack was there at the foot of the quarry wall under the prehistoric reliefs and around ten yards from the lake, it was a trailer with wheels, like the sort construction workers live in, and when we passed by it Zsolt said we should go in and see what the old man left behind, but Csabi then made the sign of the cross and said, "God forbid we should go in there because that would stir up Mr. Vászile's ghost, and the clay pit is haunted to begin with," but Zsolt said that was just a superstition, that he didn't believe in ghosts at all, though he himself had heard the quarry lake was full of bones, but he didn't believe even that, people said things like that only because they liked scaring each other, if the water cleared up enough, maybe he'd dive in and see for himself, and as for Mr. Vászile, he couldn't have a ghost because ghosts didn't exist at all. And when Zsolt said that, he pulled his hammer from his belt and took a couple of good whacks at the side of the trailer and yelled for Mr. Vászile's ghost to come forward if it dared.

At first nothing happened, but then all of a sudden something moved inside, we could hear snarling and scratching plus some groans, the whole trailer moved just a little, and I got so scared that my hammer almost fell right out of my hands, even Zsolt turned stone white, I saw, and I knew we should run away, but my stomach knotted up so much that I couldn't move at all, and the others didn't budge either, no, all four of us just stood there next to the trailer, and then I saw this white skeleton hand reach out from underneath, from between the trailer's big wheels, and then Csabi cried out, "God help us, now we're done for," and the skeleton hand was groping around, I wanted to cry out too, but I couldn't, not even a peep left my throat, and then another hand reached out beside the skeleton hand, but this one was a real person's hand, and by then I saw that even the skeleton hand wasn't really a skeleton hand but just the end of a crutch, and then the whole crutch came flying out from between the wheels followed by another crutch, and then we could hear all this swearing and snarling and panting, and we saw this one-legged man struggling to crawl out from under the trailer, one leg of his military trousers was tied in a knot up where his leg was almost completely gone, and he had long matted hair and a big black beard, and when he finally managed to pull himself out from under the trailer, he grabbed one of the crutches and sat up on his knees so he was leaning against the crutch with his good leg, and then he reached back into the trailer and pulled out a huge green backpack by its strap and took out a little corked bottle and stuck one of the crutches under his arm and with a groan he stood up straight, and that's when we saw that he was really thin and really tall, at least a head taller than even the trailer, and using his teeth he then pulled the cork out of the bottle, and he spit the cork on top of the trailer and took a big swig, and only then did he finally get around to asking who we were and what the motherfucking hell we were doing inside the fence.

By then Zsolt's face was back to its usual color, he straightened himself out right away, saluted, and said, "I hereby report to Comrade Corporal that we're looking for Comrade Vászile," and he explained that we came from School No. 13 to do community service work, that our shop teacher sent us to hammer some tin plates, and Zsolt even showed his hammer, and I saw that the one-legged man really did have a corporal's epaulet on the shoulder of his fatigue jacket, but he had only one of them, only the threads showed on the other shoulder.

At first the corporal didn't say a thing, he just looked us over, loosened the crutch under his arm, and took another swig from the bottle, and then he asked if we'd really come to see Mr. Vászile, we should tell him honestly, he said, because as far as he knew, his poor father had had no friends and no one was mourning him, why, he'd even heard that everyone was happy about his dying, folks hadn't really liked his father much, God forgive them, not even now that his father was dead and gone did they have any good words to say about him, they were talking up all this nonsense about how he threw his life away, saying he hanged himself, yes, they were out to besmirch his father's memory with lies like that, and then here we were looking for the poor old fellow with such love, why, maybe we hadn't even heard the news, and then Zsolt said, "No, when did it happen?" and the one-legged man replied that not even three days had passed, and he'd have us know it wasn't suicide, and then we all gave him our sincere sympathies and said we were really sorry and that we didn't want to bother him anymore, and I was already turning back toward the gate when the corporal told us to wait, not to hurry, because he wanted to ask us one or two things and that we shouldn't offend him by leaving him high and dry to go on mourning all alone, so all four of us then turned back, and the corporal asked how long we'd known his father, and Zsolt answered, "A pretty long time, almost three years," and the corporal nodded and took another swig, and he said he was asking us to answer honestly and not to besmirch his father's memory by being all prim and polite, we should tell him just what sort of person his father was, what we knew him to be like, and at first Zsolt didn't say a thing, he just stared at the ground, but then he finally did look back up at the corporal and say, "He was a good man, he was, strict and hot-tempered, but a really decent, really straight-shooting fellow." As Zsolt was saying this, I noticed him waving one of his hands behind his back, so then I spoke too, "That's right," I said, "Mr. Vászile was a good man," and then Jancsi and Csabi said the same thing, and they also said, "May God rest his soul."