Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

While gazing at those flames I imagined that maybe they were lighting up the whole lake, meaning that if I went down next to the water and looked in, I'd be able to see what's on the bottom, and I was just about to do so when Zsolt said it would be best if we got going because the corporal would wake up in no time and think up some other festivity in memory of his father, and I looked at the corporal lying there on the ground with his arms spread out and his mouth open wide and snoring away, and I said I agreed that we really should leave because we'd pass out in no time too, but then Jancsi said that as long as we'd held out so far we should definitely see if there really was gold in the quarry wall, besides, the dogs wouldn't let us leave the property anyway, the corporal said they were man-killers, and then Zsolt nodded and said Jancsi was right, we really should do something about those dogs, and I said I knew just what we should do. I went over to the picnic table and swept all the leftover grits to the ground and poured on top the remaining disinfecting alcohol from the pickle jar, at least two quarts, and when I then threw the empty jar on the ground, the dogs looked up at the noise and I called out, "Come, come, get the yummy mush," and sure enough, they came right over and dug their snouts into the liquor-soaked grits.

Even though I was still pretty dizzy, I went along with the other guys to the quarry wall and the dogs didn't come after us, we went straight to below the worn prehistoric reliefs and stopped next to the wall, which looked scaly from close up, like dragon skin, as if that was also part of the reliefs, at first I didn't even want to touch the wall, but then I swung my hammer after all, as the others also started pounding, the wall was so crumbly that we hardly had to drive the hammers in before fist-sized clumps of clay came tearing out, and although the earth had this greasy sparkle to it that made me queasy, I took one swing of the hammer after another all the same, and suddenly I heard a hollow clang, and then I looked straight ahead and saw a flat, glistening metal nugget drop out from under the head of the hammer, and I leaned down and picked it up. It was just like the nugget Zsolt had shown us, and I stood up fast and again swung the hammer into the quarry wall, and by now glistening gold nuggets were popping out one after another from under the blows of the others' hammers too, two or three at a time, more with each blow, a whole lot of nuggets were sparkling by our feet, and after a while we hardly even needed to hammer anymore, the nuggets showered from the wall practically on their own. We threw the hammers down and Jancsi said he wouldn't have thought so, but he now saw that it was true, there really was gold here, and he crouched and began stuffing his pockets, and then the rest of us also began filling our pockets with those nuggets exactly the way they were, full of dirt, and just when I was about to say "Enough, let's go already because there'll be trouble," all of a sudden we heard the corporal yelling, "What the motherfucking hell are you kids up to?" He was standing right behind us, leaning on his crutches, and we all turned and stood up straight, and he asked again what we were up to, and as he spoke, the stench of booze was so intense that I felt sick to my stomach and couldn't get a word out, but Zsolt replied, "Can't you see we're mining gold? We know full well that this was why your dad had guarded the clay pit like he did, it wasn't because of those shoddy prehistoric reliefs." But the corporal shook his head and said, "There's no kind of gold here at all, damn it," and Zsolt then held out his gold-heaped hands to the corporal and asked, "Well then, what's this?" but the corporal just shook his head and said we were plain crazy, how could we even have thought we'd find gold in a clay pit, couldn't we see that these were just spent machine-gun bullets? He raised a crutch into the air and swung it down on Zsolt's cupped hands so hard that all the metal nuggets went flying, and he yelled at us to get out, to scram as fast as our legs would take us because if he saw us inside those gates one more time he'd knock our brains out and pour gasoline all over our corpses and set us on fire and throw us into the lake, he would, there'd be nothing left of us except a bunch of charred bones, and maybe not even that, so we'd better run and keep running, and not look back.

I WAS DOING my homework and Mother was correcting papers, ever since not being allowed to teach she spent a lot more time doing this, the ladies she used to work with would give her papers in secret, papers to correct, because they knew there was no way we could make ends meet from the money Mother got for cleaning, so that's how they wanted to help her out.

Anyway, I really wanted to finish my homework already, and that's because I couldn't wait to get some of that chestnut roll Mother made specially for me for my birthday, she had a really tough time getting the cream and the chestnuts for it, but then we made the chestnut purée together by cutting the boiled chestnuts in half and scraping the meat out using small spoons, yes, chestnut roll was my favorite dessert, the last time we had one was back when Father was still at home, before they took him away to the Danube Canal, chestnut roll was also his favorite dessert, and this was the first time since then that we managed to get chestnuts at all, and I knew that as soon as I finished my homework we'd take that chestnut roll out of the fridge and put the candles on it and celebrate my birthday together, so I really wanted to be done with my homework already, and then all of a sudden the doorbell rang.

Mother winced, of course, because ever since the time our flat was searched she got scared whenever the bell rang, and it's not like we were expecting anyone either, and no one ever really visited us, even the neighbors dropped by more at night to ask for something or bring something, but just about never did anyone ever come by like this in the afternoon, so it's no wonder I now saw Mother turn pale. I told her to wait, I'd go see who it was, and if I didn't recognize the people I wouldn't let them in, I went out to the hall and looked out through the peephole but didn't see anyone, the stairwell was empty, so I figured it must only be the guys fooling around even though I told them not to do that sort of thing with our doorbell, and I was just about to go in and tell Mother there was no one there when the bell rang one more time, and I looked out again, and again I didn't see anything, so I reached to open the door, but only because I wanted to see if anyone had taped the doorbell down, and then the door swung open.

Standing there right in front of me was this kid, he couldn't have been more than six years old, which was why I hadn't seen him before, he must have just barely reached the bell, and he was in school clothes, except that his school jacket was at least six sizes too big for him, it reached down almost to his knees and its sleeves were cut off around where the elbows originally were, and this kid was loaded with clothes hangers and wooden knives and wooden spoons, he had at least a hundred hangers on him and rolling pins too, and a whole string of clothespins was tied around his waist, a whole lot of them, at least five hundred, I swear. Anyway, as soon as he saw me he asked if my mom was home, but I told him to get lost, we weren't buying anything, but he said that he didn't ask if I wanted to buy something but if my mom was home, and I told him to beat it because if he didn't, I'd kick him right down the stairs, but first I'd stuff at least a couple of those hangers down his throat, but not even that seemed to scare him, no, he just pressed the doorbell again and then Mother called out from the inside room, "Who is it?" and I shouted back, "No one," but then that little shrimp took to shouting that he had dirt-cheap hangers and that the good lady of the house really should come take a look because she'd never seen such high-quality wood in her life, and then I gave the kid a shove, but he didn't fall over, he just stepped back and grabbed the railing, and I said, "Scram, hit the road," but by then Mother was there, she looked at me and her lips stiffened as she said, "Go straight to your room," but of course I didn't go all the way, I went only as far as the back hallway and watched from there to see what would happen.