Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

I raised the glass to my mouth, the water was ice-cold but I drank it anyway, and then I stood and left the hut. As I climbed back up the ditch wall on the fenders, the change rattled in my jacket and I heard the birds down below start singing once again. Then I thought of Mother, and I thought that somehow I really should tell her I'd seen Father and that he would return, but then I felt the pinprick on the tip of my thumb start bleeding, and I knew I wouldn't say anything to her after all. I wiped my hands on my pants, reached into my pocket, and held Pickax's ID, but instead of taking it out I just went on home without a word.

WHEN I STEPPED OUT of the restaurant that used to be The Lion and was now The Hunter, with the two ice-cold bottles of Czechoslovak beer in my hands, I saw the gray van right away, parked on the other side of the street, so I knew I didn't have a choice, I had to run right by it, and I knew the van would follow me as I went running back to school with the two bottles of beer in my hands, but I also knew I couldn't do anything about it, that I'd have to keep running because Comrade Sándor, our gym teacher, said that at the end of the term he'd flunk anyone who didn't get back with the two bottles of beer by the time the class bell rang because this was more important than any timed run, he won those four cases of beer on Sunday while arm wrestling the head waiter at The Hunter, and he knew that he if didn't have them picked up quickly, the regulars would drink them all up. "So get going," he said, "run like hell, everyone, and as for those who get back fastest, I might just offer them a bit, a little glass of beer never hurt anyone, you sure will see how good it feels after a run, pure medicine."

By then the gray van had been tailing me for two days already, but I didn't dare tell anyone because I knew they wouldn't believe me anyway, and if they did believe me, that would be even worse, because no doubt they knew full well what usually happens to people whom state security tails in a car, so if I told them, no one would dare speak to me ever again. Luckily the van wasn't following me all the time, I usually saw it on my way to and from school, and a couple times when I went to the waterspout or the soccer field, but its license plate had only three numbers on it, so I knew it could only be state security, who else would have a gray van with mirror windows after all, but I couldn't imagine what they could want from me, maybe they somehow found out that I was there when the ironworkers set fire to the grocery store or that not so long ago during a power cut Feri and I climbed into the cinema's secret screening room, anyway, I didn't want to think about it, and I always pretended I didn't even notice them.

The two beer bottles were so cold that they practically froze to my hands, after a minute my fingers got so numb I could barely hold the bottles any longer, all I could feel was the icy cold, and that made me just stand there for a moment outside the tavern after noticing the van, besides, with my limp, I'd been the last one to reach the place, my ankle was still hurting because the day before I had tried a penalty kick with a punctured leather ball the guys had stuffed full of stones as a prank, so now I didn't head off right away from in front of The Hunter, there was no one else on the street except me, the others had headed back a while ago already, so I wondered what would happen if I went the other way instead of toward the van, but I knew that would mean going toward the main square, which would be at least a mile longer, and with my foot hurting like it was, there was no way I'd make it back that way before the class bell, and so I took a deep breath and started running toward the gray van after all, and meanwhile I thought that maybe it wasn't the same van at all, but just another one parked here by chance, that it wasn't here on account of me at all.

As I ran I could feel the beer swishing inside the bottles, and from far away I could see myself in the mirror window of the van's rear door, there I was, running in my white T-shirt and black shorts, but the mirror made me look distorted, sometimes I was really tall and sometimes really short, and when I got up beside the van I knew the engine would rev up right away and the van would start following me, but then nothing happened. I was so scared I could hardly even feel my feet hurting as I ran by it fast, the van still hadn't started up and I was already past it, five yards, ten yards, yes, I was halfway down the street at least twenty-five yards past the van, thinking I was home free, when it gave out a loud beep, and that startled me so much I almost stopped dead in my tracks and just about dropped the beer bottles, and then the engine roared and I could hear the van starting off, and before I knew it, it was right there beside me, and again it beeped loudly, but I didn't stop even then, no, I just ran on, but then the van headed me off and parked up ahead of me with its two right wheels up on the sidewalk, and I knew that this was it, they'd caught me at last, up until now they'd waited for some reason, but this was it, I was captured, they'd take me away. I looked back toward the restaurant and thought that if I ran back there, maybe they wouldn't come in after me, but I knew that was a dumb idea, they'd come in for sure, but I just had to turn around all the same, I couldn't give up, and I'd already done so when the van door began slowly opening up and I heard someone blurt out my name and tell me to stop moving this instant, it was my grandfather's voice, and once the door was wide open I looked and saw that indeed it was my grandfather, but I figured I was just imagining this on account of being so scared and that I'd better not look again, I'd better run, but then I did look, and I saw clear as day that it really was him, and he shouted at me not to even think of running because he swore he'd drive right through me, I should climb right in the car beside him, he just wanted to talk to me. All at once a sense of relief flowed through me, it was like being worn out after running except somehow hotter, but it lasted for a moment only before my belly knotted right back up because I couldn't imagine what my grandfather could want from me, we met only twice a year, and this was neither my name day nor my birthday, and so I took a step back and said, "I can't climb in, Comrade Secretary, I'm on a timed run and I don't want to fail, I don't want to give Mother another thing to be sad about," and my grandfather now told me not to bother myself about this run, he'd take me the distance and we'd get there before those other poor buggers, and he didn't want to repeat himself, I should get in at once, so I climbed in and sat down on the imitation leather seat and put the two bottles of beer down by my feet on the ribbed rubber floor mat, and I started rubbing my hands together to warm them up.

My grandfather slammed the door shut, pressed on the gas, turned off the sidewalk, and drove away. For a while he didn't say a word, but then all of a sudden he said he always did hate running, and he hoped I couldn't stand it either, and I said, "You bet I can't," and my grandfather nodded. "Very good," he said, it seemed that I was indeed his grandson, and I didn't say anything to that, I just looked at my grandfather, and I wanted to ask him where he'd got the van from, and if it was he who'd been tailing me for three days already, and if so, then why, and as I was thinking all this, I suddenly noticed that my grandfather's shirt was buttoned up unevenly and that he didn't even have a tie on, and that his shirt collar hung completely out of one side of his suit, and I was so shocked to see him looking like that that I didn't ask a thing, I just kept looking ahead and out the window, which was easy because the seat was a lot higher than in a regular car, and I could see farther too, no, I had never sat in a van like this before.