Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

Big Prodán looked up and asked, "Where? Here, on the soccer field?" The laborer called Feri spit on the ground and said, "You bet, and in a sec we'll measure out exactly where."

After looking at the shovel and not saying a thing for a while, Big Prodán finally did speak after all. "But this is our field," he said. Trajan stepped over to him. "Sure," he said, stopping in front of him, "that's exactly why you all want to help do the digging, you're the ones who asked for it, your school, we got shovels just because of you, so enough gabbing, everyone take a shovel, the sooner you start the sooner you'll finish, you're kids, you don't need to earn your bread, so you got the time." Right then Big Prodán took a step back and said, "I don't go to school, I work at a construction site, today's Sunday, so sure as hell today I'm not taking no shovel into my hands." Trajan then swung back his arm, but he wasn't able to hit Prodán because the other laborer, the one called Feri, stepped up next to him and grabbed his arm. "Wait," said Feri, "this here's a smart boy, no sense being rough with him," and then he reached out that bag of caramels toward Prodán and said, "You didn't get any candy, go ahead, take some."

At first Big Prodán didn't want to take any, but then he stuck in his hand anyway, and when he pulled it out I saw clearly that it was packed full of caramels, and as he stuffed all that candy into his pocket he almost dropped one, and meanwhile the laborer called Feri was still holding the bag toward him. "Don't be shy," he said, so Prodán stuck his hand in one more time and again put the candy into his pocket, and then the laborer called Feri folded the bag shut. "All right, then," he said, "you'll get more later, now help hand out the shovels, meantime Trajan will measure out where the ditch will go," but Prodán didn't move, he looked at the excavators and then back again at the laborer called Feri and asked, "Can I sit up on the excavator too?"

The laborer called Feri shrugged and said, "All right, if the work goes well then I don't care, you can sit up there, you can even start it up if you want, but now go ahead and hand out those shovels, it's time to start digging, don'tcha worry, your school principal knows all about this, he okayed all of you working here every afternoon, all of you attend School No. 12, right? Tell the others that as long as they're working here, they don't have to do their homework, you'll see, they'll even be glad."

Big Prodán nodded and said, "Okay," and he picked a shovel up off the ground and gave it to Aronka, and then he handed one to each of us, one at a time, to me too. "Here you are, Djata, use it in good health." Of course he didn't give his little brother a shovel, only a caramel, and he looked at the laborers and said, "That's my brother, he's gonna help me," to which the laborer called Trajan gave a grunt, but the one called Feri just nodded. "All right," he said, "you two will be the brigade leaders, but if the work isn't going well, we'll find others to take your places, you'll see just how nice voluntary community service work can be, what a good feeling it is to build the country, you can all be proud of yourselves that even being kids you're able to take part in this, besides, if you do decent work you'll finish the whole thing in a week, and that's nothing, you should just see the Danube Canal, now that's real digging for you."

A fiery heat came over me when he said that, I reached into my pocket and touched my father's picture, I'd never met anyone who'd worked at the Danube Canal, and I looked at that laborer called Trajan and saw him pull a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, unfold it, and look at it a bit before picking a shovel up off the ground, walking to the end of the field, and thrusting the shovel into the ground by one of the goalposts. "I've done it," he shouted to the laborer called Feri, "I've measured it out, it goes straight exactly from here." Then Big Prodán and the laborer called Feri lined us up, we didn't have to stand according to height like we did at school, the point was only to stand in a nice neat line not too far from each other, and then, once everyone had stood up, the laborer called Trajan gave Prodán a shovel too. "All right, you don't have to work, but show the others how to use the tool, so get to it, drive it into the ground."

At first Prodán didn't want to do it, no, I could tell from the way he was holding the shovel that what he really wanted was to knock their brains out, but then he started digging all the same, flinging the dirt behind him, and then the others also got down to work and so did I, the shovel's handle had a really bad grip, it broke into the skin of my palms, and the dirt was so hard that I had to push the shovel into the ground with my feet, but the shovel was so short that I had to stoop over, and in no time my back was hurting. Anyway, the work wasn't going too well, not just for me but also for the others, and while digging I kept thinking of the Danube Canal, of how hard it must be to divert an entire river, and of just what my father was really doing there, because he'd written only a couple of times, and even then all he said was that he was doing fine and he didn't really say anything else, so that's what I tried thinking of, and meanwhile my back was hurting even more, along with my palms, but I didn't dare stop working.

Of course by then Big Prodán hadn't been working for a while, no, he was walking back and forth behind us, telling us to keep it up, he even gave Aronka a good kick on the ass, but then one of the laborers yelled at him not to do such a thing again or else he'd knock his brains out, it was enough to keep an eye out for anyone not putting his all into the shoveling, they'd take care of the rest, so from that point on Prodán didn't bother anyone, he just walked back and forth behind us and kept an eye on how we worked.

At one point I turned my head and noticed that the laborers had meanwhile spread a blanket on the ground by one of the excavators and laid down on it, the one called Trajan was puffing a cigarette and the one called Feri began to eat something, and then Prodán sat down there too, and by then only his little brother was walking back and forth behind us, and when I looked back again, I saw that those guys were playing cards.

Áronka was just about to try driving his shovel into the ground when his foot suddenly slipped off the blade and came out from under him, and he flopped on his side and just lay there with one foot in the ditch as if he didn't want to get back up at all, and when that happened all of us stopped working and wiped our foreheads and gathered around Aronka, and Prodán's kid brother asked what the problem was, but Aronka didn't say a thing, he just shook his head.

One of the laborers, the one called Feri, stood up and came over and looked at Aronka and said, "You weaklings wouldn't last even a day at the Danube Canal," and then he said, "All right, time for a break," and he said we could take fifteen minutes and try to pull ourselves together, but he was otherwise satisfied with us, we'd been doing decent work, and we shouldn't worry, we could go home for lunch, but everyone had to come back for the afternoon, the work would last till dark, and he added that they'd written down everyone's name and address on a sheet of paper, so they'd go after anyone who didn't come back, no one was allowed to sabotage community service work.

The laborer then turned away and went over to one of the excavators while the rest of us sat down on the ground by Aronka, everyone was resting, Janika was the only one still moving, he was juggling the soccer ball with one of his feet, yes, he had such a feel for soccer balls that he could have kept that up all day long. I just sat on the ground like everyone else, looking at the ditch I'd been digging, it wasn't deep at all, and at all those tiny pebbles and white roots of grass along the sides, and then I pulled out my father's picture and also looked at that, it was smudged on account of my touching it all the time, but his face was still clear as day. Everyone used to say how much I looked like my father, one time I looked at myself a long time in a pocket mirror while holding his picture up to it, and I really could tell that my chin and my mouth were just like his.