Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

By then my belly was really churning, and I felt like the whole chestnut roll was about to come right up at any moment along with the boiled potatoes I'd had for lunch, so I stood up and went out to the bathroom and clenched my teeth, I wasn't about to puke if could help it, so I stopped by the faucet and let the cold water run and then I splashed some of it on the back of my neck because I learned in school that doing that stops nausea. I even drank a little water out of my hands, and luckily that took care of my queasiness in no time, and when I went back into the kitchen, Mother was already done haggling and Mariusz was just putting the harness full of hangers back on his shoulders, and when he saw me he said that as long as it was my birthday, why then, I had a gift coming to me, and he took a wooden knife off one of the strings tied to the harness and put it in my hand, and he told me to use it in good health, but all I did was nod, I didn't want to thank him, plus I was afraid of getting queasy all over again, and then I opened the door for him to go and closed it after him too.

We could hear him clattering up a storm as he went down the stairs, and Mother looked at me and said I should be glad I didn't know what being hungry meant, and then she went back to the living room and those papers, and I hurried into my room and stood up on my bed and opened the window and just caught sight of Mariusz as he turned out onto the sidewalk from the path to our building, and I gripped that wooden knife tight and took a deep breath, but then I didn't try throwing it at his head after all, because I knew I wouldn't hit him, that he was already too far away.

THE ONLY REASON I headed off toward the grocery store was because I found this huge wheel nut and two big bolts on the dirt road leading to the construction site, and I wanted to stuff the nut with match heads because I remembered Zsolt saying that if you then screw on the bolts from both ends and tie a shredded plastic bag to one of the bolts, like feathers on an arrow, and then toss the thing out the fifth-floor window, those gigantic tractor-wheel nuts explode like the devil and blow a hole even in the pavement, and so I wanted to buy some matches, at least four or five bundles with a dozen packs in each, but the pastry shop where I used to buy them wouldn't sell me anything ever since Szabi and I put a smoke bomb under the glass display case and they had to throw out all the pastries because every one of them smelled like burnt plastic, thanks to the tractor-tire shavings and shredded Ping-Pong balls we mixed into the bomb, and because of that I had to go to the grocery store when I wanted to buy matches, but at least there I could buy as many as I wanted at one time, and that's because I knew one of the stock ladies, Miss Ani was her name, but everyone called her Fat Ani because she was as big as a pig, like a house even, not that I ever called her that, no, she was Mother's friend, one time she even stayed with us for two days when her alcoholic husband chased her out onto the street, and ever since then she'd been really grateful to Mother, and whenever I asked, she always brought me unopened bundles of matches and acetone for smoke bombs, sometimes as many as four or five bottles a time, and she never even asked what I needed the stuff for, no, all she asked was if my mother was doing okay, so it really was worth it walking all the way to the grocery store, even though it was pretty far.

When I reached Harvest Street, all of a sudden someone ran by me, and then another person and another one, and each one turned onto Ant Street where the grocery store was, and I thought right away that I should hurry up, that they must be heading to the store because they heard that something or other was in stock and being sold, but then I thought right away that that was dumb, what could they be selling that was all that special, and besides, I wasn't really in the mood to stand in line for margarine, flour, or eggs, but then someone else ran by me too, and I couldn't resist, so I called after him to ask if he knew what was being given out, but he didn't even stop, he only called back while still running, "Nothing," he said, except by then I'd picked up my pace all the same, but I really started running only when I noticed Mr. Szövérfi walking toward me with a jam-packed plastic bag in his hand, and I saw he was eating a banana.

Sure, I'd had bananas a couple of times, but I never ever saw anyone eating one in public before, my parents always got them under the table somehow or other, and most times they were still green and we had to wait a long time until they got ripe, one time I tried eating one green, sliced up with sugar on top, but it wasn't very good like that, and Father really bawled me out when he noticed. For three years already I hadn't eaten any sort of tropical fruit, and so I ran toward Ant Street as fast as my legs would take me. I could hear the shouting from far away, and as soon as I turned the corner I saw the line, it reached all the way to the middle of the road, yes, it must have been around fifty yards long and four or five people wide toward the end, but it narrowed by the store entrance because only two people at a time fit through the door, and at the front of the line an ironworker was shaking a red-faced man in a trench coat by the collar and shouting what did he think this was, did he think they'd just let him cut in line, they knew his shifty sort inside and out, well, this time he wasn't going to worm his way in among all these decent folk standing here in line. The man in the trench coat replied that he'd been standing here before, he had to run home for money, he'd asked someone to save his place, but the ironworker shouted, "Forget it, no saving places here," if he needed something he could stand in line himself and wait like every decent person, and he shoved the man in the trench coat so hard that he fell right on his behind and got all muddy, and when the man in the trench coat stood back up the worker shouted at him to get going to the back of the line, but then the man in the trench coat said he wasn't about to stand in line again and that they could all go choke on those bananas and oranges as far as he was concerned, except they wouldn't be so lucky at all, they were wasting their time standing here, in no time the store would run out of everything, and anyway they could go drop dead, and he turned around and went away, but just which way I didn't see because by then I was standing at the end of the line.

The line wasn't really moving, no, around ten minutes passed and we'd gone only about one step ahead, so I tried asking one of the ladies standing in front of me how long she'd been standing there, but she didn't want to tell me, she only hissed for me to shut up, but then another lady did speak, she said they'd been there a pretty long time, a good two and a half hours already, and she added that I could see for myself how slowly the line was moving and that the people up front by the display windows said the line inside the store wound around the shelves maybe three times, and right as she was saying this, a commotion erupted up front by the door, as if someone wanted to come out of the store even though the door up there was supposed to be only an entrance, yes, someone was trying to get out but the people in line up front didn't want to let whoever it was do that because no one wanted to step back even a little. Instead everyone tried shoving the person in front of them back toward the door, which caused a whole lot of pushing and shoving up front, but then somehow the line edged backward after all, even the woman ahead of me was shoved back, she hit me dead-on and I too almost fell back, but by then the people way at the end of the line had begun jostling their way forward, yes, someone pushed right into me from behind and I fell forward, but by then the whole line was piled up just like when people try cramming onto a bus, and now someone elbowed me in the side and I tried kicking right back and then pressing forward even more. Sure, I was still being shoved pretty hard from behind, but then the line edged backward again, so suddenly this time I almost fell flat on my back, and I would have too, if not for all the people behind me, and then the ones all the way at the end of the line also had to take a step back because way up front by the store entrance some lady was jostling really hard to get out, you could hear her shouting, "Make room, comrades, back up already, don't you understand, step aside, can't you see my arms are full?" Right away I recognized her voice, and then as she shoved the people in line out of her way, I saw that it really was Miss Ani, she was holding a bunch of stacked wooden crates and using them to clear a path, and meanwhile she was shouting for everyone to keep quiet and back up. "Quiet already," she yelled, "this is uncivilized behavior, it's completely intolerable, you people must back up at once away from the door, it's outrageous what you comrades are doing," yes, that's just how she put it, adding that she didn't understand what some people were thinking, where they thought they were, to be standing four-deep in line and yelling like animals instead of waiting in a civilized, courteous manner for their turn to come, so they'd better back up right this instant. While shouting on and on like that, she kept shoving people back with the crates, and finally she did manage to push everyone away from the entrance, and the line gave way and the people in it now gathered around Miss Ani or were pushed onto the street, and Miss Ani was standing by the entrance, and I could see that even on the inside the store really was full of people, they were at each other's heels by the shelves every bit as much as the people outside. Miss Ani then put the crates on the ground and took a big rusty lock from the pocket of her smock, slammed shut the front door, and in one nimble move slid on the bolt and clicked the lock, and then she leaned down and picked the crates back up and again started shoving people out of the way, snarling at them to let her through, to let her pass, she had work to do, and then all of a sudden the ironworker stepped right in front of Miss Ani, grabbed the crates with both hands, and asked her why she had locked the front door, couldn't she see how many people were waiting out here, and Miss Ani yelled at the worker, "Let go of the crates at once," couldn't he see for himself that the store was closed or, well, it wasn't really closed, but they weren't letting in any more customers, they were out of goods, they'd be lucky if there was enough for those comrades who were already inside, everyone should just go on home, there would be tropical fruit distribution tomorrow too, or if not tomorrow, then next week at the latest, it was worth coming early in the morning, she said, but everyone knew that anyway. Suddenly people started yelling left and right and the crowd surged forward, sweeping me along, and as I was shoved ahead I felt that big wheel nut drop out of my pocket, but by the time I reached out to catch it, it had already rolled somewhere among all those legs, and meanwhile the ironworker was yelling really loud that this wasn't fair, and he wrenched the crates right out of Miss Ani's hands and flung them on the ground so hard they broke into pieces, the boards flew all over the place and slipped every which way over the pavement. People were pressing toward the entrance and someone shoved me so hard I fell down and my palms got muddy, one of the boards from a crate happened to be right there in front of my eyes, and printed on it in big black letters was the word CUB A, but I saw that only for a moment before someone kicked the board away, and I crawled forward really fast, and when I tried standing up to keep from being trampled, suddenly my palm came down on the nut, but right then someone stepped on my calf, and as I jerked away my leg, the nut again went rolling out of my hand, but this time I didn't crawl after it, no, I was pretty scared. I remembered what Jancsi had told me about how a crowd trampled a person to death one time in the stadium, so first I struggled to my feet and only then did I try sidling in the direction the nut had rolled, toward the middle of the road away from the crowd, but then someone's knee hit my thigh so hard that I almost fell back down before I finally did squeeze out of the crowd somehow, and there in front of me was the nut, so I leaned down right away and picked it up and wiped it on my pants to get the mud off.