Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

By now the wind had really picked up, and I'd begun getting seriously cold, and I knew I'd start shivering soon, but I also knew that until my grandfather finished that second bottle of beer we wouldn't be going anywhere, and then I remembered what I'd read in a yoga book that Szabi lent me one time, that if you concentrate on your bellybutton then you won't be as cold, so I tried my best to concentrate on that part of me, but nothing happened, I was just as freezing as before, and I thought to myself that I should just stand up, I should get going, I wouldn't get back for the class bell anyway and maybe not even by the end of the main recess, I'd be in a heap of trouble for sure, they'd send me down to the principal and Mother would be called in, and I tried figuring out what excuse I could cook up, but nothing came to mind, and then I looked at my grandfather, figuring maybe I could see the time on his wristwatch, except that he was holding the bottle of beer in his left hand so I couldn't see his watch, but he must have noticed me looking because he turned toward me and said he'd heard that I always had my father's picture on me, and I nodded, and then my grandfather asked if it was with me now, and I said it wasn't, because I was in my gym clothes, which didn't have normal pockets, so I'd left it hidden in my school jacket, not in the pocket but on the side, in the lining, and my grandfather then gave a big sigh and said too bad, he would gladly have looked at it, because unfortunately he didn't have a single picture of my father, but no matter, if it wasn't here, well then, it wasn't, he still remembered my father's face pretty clearly, fortunately things like that were impossible to forget, and then he fell silent and took a sip of beer, the bottle was still almost half full, but my grandfather leaned up with one hand against the ground and said, "All right, let's go, we've been here long enough," and then he began struggling slowly to his feet, and I stood up quickly and grabbed his elbow and helped him up, and my grandfather leaned against me and stood, and he said thanks, and then he let me go, and with one hand he smoothed out the wrinkles on his pants, and he told me to hand him his sport coat, and I leaned down and picked up the coat by the collar and gave it to him, but my grandfather didn't put it on, no, he just lay it over his arm and picked up the bottle of beer, which was still a third full, and he said he wasn't going to finish it up, and all of a sudden he turned the bottle upside-down and poured the remaining beer out on the grass, and as the beer spilled out, he stretched out his arm and started lifting the bottle up high, the stream of beer thinned and the wind caught the drops and the smell of beer hit my nose, and the beer foamed white on the grass, and my grandfather lowered the bottle, and I thought he was about to fling it away, but he just dropped it on the ground, and he said, "Let's go," and he swung his sport coat to his shoulder and stuck in one arm, and he headed back toward the van, with the other arm of his sport coat swinging about as he tried to stick in his other arm too.

The ground had completely soaked up the beer by now, so all I could see was the black earth among the clumps of grass where we'd been sitting and the flattened grass where my grandfather's sport coat had been, and on noticing the two gold-colored bottle caps I leaned down and picked them up and closed my fist around them, and then I too headed back toward the van, after my grandfather.

NEVER HAD I SEEN SO many cars at one time as on that day, on the road to the cemetery. Traffic was really down since gasoline rationing began, but cars and taxis kept going by us one after another as Mother and I went to the cemetery on foot, yes, there were even people riding bicycles in black suits, and by the time we reached the stations of the cross there were a whole lot more people walking, and everyone who went by us said to Mother, "I kiss your hand," and some even said, "My sincere sympathies," and whenever that happened Mother always nodded and gave the same reply, "Thank you, thank you very much." Sometimes people on bicycles turned their heads when passing by us, giving a wave of the hand or a tip of the hat, so anyway, it sure was something, I had no idea that so many people knew who we were, that so many folks in town knew Mother and knew me too.

The cemetery was much farther than I remembered, even though every winter my friends and I would walk up there pretty often to go sledding, but somehow the road now seemed a whole lot longer, my patent leather shoes chafed my feet like hell, and my black tie, which Mother cut from out of Father's tie, was so tight around my neck that once or twice it felt like I was hardly getting any air at all, and the only reason I didn't reach up a hand to loosen the knot was that I didn't want Mother getting mad, because before we left home she had spent at least ten minutes fixing that tie around my neck so it would be just right, exactly like Father would have tied it, so now I really wished we would get to the cemetery at last.

At one point along the way a white taxi stopped beside us, the driver opened his door, thumped his peaked leather cap, and said to Mother, "My sincere sympathies, ma'am, would you allow me to take you a bit?" But Mother only gave a wave of her hand and said that was out of the question, we'd already managed to walk up this far, so this last couple hundred yards really didn't count, and then the man in the leather cap said that was too bad because he really would have been glad to take us, and then he leaned down a bit and asked in a whisper if there was any news about my father, and Mother shook her head and said there was none, at which the cabbie knit his brows and said, "Well, well," he thought they'd let him come home for the funeral at least, to which Mother said, "Oh come now, don't go talking nonsense," and then, as the cabbie shut his door, she said, to herself this time, "Stinking rotten informer."

The day before, Mother washed and ironed my school uniform for the occasion so I'd at least look somewhat presentable, but I told her that doing so wouldn't turn my uniform black, no, it would stay dark blue, and besides, the dark blue had already faded a lot from all the washing it got anyway, so we should dye it instead somehow because I heard you were supposed to wear black at funerals, but Mother said she didn't think my grandfather would mind I wasn't in black, yes, seeing as how he'd shot his head to smithereens, everything was all the same to him, to which I said that in school I heard that my grandfather didn't really shoot his head to smithereens, that the words "sudden tragic passing" in the obituary didn't mean at all that he'd killed himself, only that he'd had a stroke, but while standing there in my room the day before, Mother just laughed and said that was just the version that idiot grandmother of mine was spreading all about town simply because she didn't want to live in shame, but everyone knew the truth, which was that somehow my grandfather got hold of a pistol and stuck it in his mouth, and he'd shot his head apart so good that there wasn't even much to pick up, I'd see for myself that the coffin would be closed, it was just disgusting what my grandmother was cooking up, somewhere or other she'd found herself a black-veiled hat she'd practically glued to her head and was parading about town in, playing the part of the grief-stricken widow, crying like crazy about what a heavy hand fate dealt her, what a tragedy this was, about what would become of her now that her poor darling was gone. But she sure never called him my poor darling while he was alive, no, she just nagged him all the time with her never-ending jealousy and a slew of imagined illnesses, no wonder my grandfather couldn't stand it any longer, no wonder he'd put the barrel of that pistol into his mouth, and when Mother said that she suddenly started crying, I'd hardly ever seen her sob so hysterically, she had to brace herself against my desk, her shoulders were shaking so much, and then she sat down on the edge of my bed and she tried wiping her face with the corner of my blanket, but she was crying so hard I knew it wasn't about Grandpa, no, she couldn't have been weeping like that on account of him but only because of Father, who'd been at the Danube Canal for almost two years already, we hadn't heard a thing about him in a long time, and then I almost started crying too, except it wasn't my father I thought of but my grandfather, and not even his face but only his hand, the way he'd moved his hand when opening the door of his Renault to let me in, the way he'd nudged the window with his fingers so the door would open all the way, yes, at such times I always saw him through the glass, how the pads of his fingertips flattened and turned all white, and now I saw this so clearly that it was like he was right there in front of me, for a moment I even shut my eyes, thinking that maybe then the image would go away, but even then I saw my grandfather's hand, except that this time I saw his fingers curling tight around the neck of a beer bottle until turning all white. I shook my head and let out a sigh, and I stroked Mother's shoulder and told her what Iron Fist, my geography teacher, had told me in school when he took me into the science supply room during the main recess to fill me in on the bad news about my grandfather and tell me I didn't have to stay for the rest of the classes that day but could go home, and so I told Mother not to cry, to calm down, life goes on.