The White King

by Gy

  By now the noise was so loud that I thought maybe I was just imagining it, that my head was buzzing from all the smoke I'd swallowed, but suddenly I thought I heard Puju's voice, Puju shouting my name, and as I again tried standing up, the smoke lifted all at once and I saw these huge machines slowly approaching, combines with flatbed trailers hooked up behind them, the collective farm's fire truck was coming too, one of the collectivists was standing on its edge and hosing the wheat with water, and then came two pickup trucks with their loading platforms full of barrels, the collectivists were up there bucketing water from the barrels and splashing it onto the burning stalks, Puju's dad was driving one of the combines, as he passed by me I could hear him swearing like crazy, and suddenly I had another coughing fit and my eyes got all watery, and only now did I see that the trailers hooked up to the combines were full of kids, Puju was up on one of them and shouting my name, and when they got up to me I saw that Prodán's dad was also up there, and when he saw me he leaned out and yanked me right up onto the trailer, and I could hear him saying that he'd give me a war if that's what I wanted, and I was still busy coughing when he gave me two full slaps on the face and said that if I was his son, he'd beat my brains out, and that's when I noticed Little Prodán sitting next to a barrel, his face all swollen and red, and then Mr. Prodán asked if I knew where his Niku was, and I told him where I saw him last, but I didn't think Mr. Prodán understood what I was saying because I was still busy coughing, and I felt my mouth bleeding a little on the inside from the slaps, and by then we'd almost reached the edge of the wheat field, and Prodán's dad was shouting left and right for his son, calling out, "Niku, Nikusor," but we didn't see Prodán anywhere at all, by then the fire wasn't burning anywhere, at least a third of that big field was history, all you could see was scorched wheat and black puddles and stomped-down, petrified grains of wheat, in a couple of places the wheat was standing just like normal, and in some places the blackened stalks were still giving off smoke.

  The combine stopped when we reached the watchtower, and I heard Puju's dad say it was lucky the woods didn't catch fire, Puju handed me a tin cup full of water and told me to drink and to wash off my face, and I said, "Thanks," of course the water was bitter because of the soot, but I drank it anyway, and I thought to myself that it was good after all that Puju had told his dad we were having a war, and then I was just wiping my face with my T-shirt turned inside-out when I heard Prodán's father again start shouting really loud, and right away the others began shouting too, everyone was calling Prodán's name, I looked where they were pointing and saw Prodán climbing slowly up out of the wheat around fifty yards away from us, and then Prodán looked back and saw the combine and the trailer at its back, and he must have seen his dad too because he stood up and started running with a limp toward the woods, and his dad started yelling even louder, telling him to stop, because if he didn't, he'd beat his brains out, he'd skin him alive and turn his back into boot leather, he'd cut his fucking balls right out, and meanwhile Puju's dad started up the combine, and that's how we went after Prodán, it was obvious we'd catch up to him in no time, Prodán looked back while running and finally he stopped and turned toward us and just waited there with his arms hanging down, and you could tell he knew what was going to happen next, and sure enough, his dad then leaped off the trailer and took off after his son, and when he reached him it was like he didn't even stop, no, Mr. Prodán still seemed to be running at full tilt as he gave his son a helluva slap so hard that Prodán fell practically under the combine, but he stood back up right away and stepped back next to his dad, and that's when I noticed that he still had the bayonet with him, he was holding it in his right hand, and his dad told him to apologize, and he socked Prodán with all his might right in the pit of the stomach, and Prodán lurched forward and started heaving, black spit drooled from the edge of his mouth, and his dad again raised his hand, and Prodán stepped back and said, "I apologize," and you could tell he was about to faint, and that is when the bayonet dropped right out of his hand and stuck in the ground with its tip down by his feet, the blade was thick with blood, I saw, and Prodán's dad must have noticed too because he leaned down, pulled the bayonet out of the ground, wiped both sides on his shirtsleeve, and asked, "Where are those goddamn brats, those Frunzas?" Prodán pointed toward the woods and said they ran away, and after wiping the bayonet on his shirtsleeve some more, Prodán's dad looked back at his son and swore that if Prodán ever again laid his hands on those military keepsakes, he'd beat his son till he was bloody, he'd keep pounding away as long as Prodán was still moving. Prodán didn't say a thing back, he just nodded and looked out over his dad's shoulder and stared at the woods as his dad turned away and, I saw, broke into a grin.

  10. Africa

  BY THEN almost a year had passed since they took Father away, and for more than four months we hadn't heard a thing about him at all, we didn't get any more letters or even those prewritten postcards from the camp letting us know that he was fine and proud of overachieving the benchmark every day, so we didn't know anything about him, and it did no good when I asked Mother why Father wasn't writing to us, she didn't even reply, but then on Saturday, when the mailbox turned up empty once again, her face turned all tense, and as we trudged up the stairwell she broke out in a sudden fit of coughing so violent that she had to grab the railing, and from the way her shoulders shook and how she leaned forward out of my view, I knew she wasn't really coughing but crying, that she was pretending to cough only because she didn't want me to notice the tears, because she didn't want to get me scared, and that is when I knew for sure what she was thinking, that Father had died down there by the Danube Canal, but I also knew that this wasn't true because if something had happened to Father I would have sensed it for sure, if at no other time, then in the morning on my way to school as I looked at the picture I'd taken out of his soldier's ID holder, because in looking at his image I always felt sure that Father was thinking of me by the Danube Canal, and also because when they took him away, he promised that one day he'd return and take me with him to the sea.

  Even though I could tell that Mother was crying, I pretended not to notice, I even slapped her on the back a couple of times, as if I really believed that she was only coughing, and by the time we reached the fifth floor she wasn't sobbing anymore, no, she took out a handkerchief and wiped her face and said something had gone down her throat the wrong way but now she was okay, and I said, "All right, but be careful, because your eyes got really watery from all that coughing, plus your mascara smudged, so you should wipe your face," and she nodded and said, "Be a good boy now and go on into your room, do a bit of reading or look at your homework, go on now, don't you try weaseling out of it," not that I had the slightest intention of resisting, because there was a lead soldier in my pocket that I got from someone at school, and I wanted to see if it would really fit the armor I'd hammered out of the tin sheet I found in the garbage dump a week earlier, I really wanted them to be a good match, for I was the only one of the boys who had no genuine commander for the war game we played in the stairwell, Feri's commander had been cast from lead specially by his father, who even helped him paint it, and I had no one to help me. Mother didn't know a thing about this stairwell war game, when the wheat field behind our apartment block burned down on account of the real war game we had out there, she told me I couldn't play any violent games at all, which is why I went into my room without a word just like she said, and I even put my math notebook and my math textbook on my desk, so in case she opened the door she'd see that I was studying hard.

  But the door stayed open a notch, just enough so I could hear Mother go into her room, come out again, and then open the door to the kitchen, the cupboard door now creaked just so, I figured she must have removed a glass, and sure enough, I heard Mother turn the faucet and let the water run so it would be nice and cold, she drank it down in no big hurry and finished by splashing what was left into the sink, and then she pulled a kitchen chair o
ut from under the table and sat down, meanwhile I crouched carefully by the desk and, quiet as could be, I pulled out the bottom drawer and put it on the rug, because it was under that drawer where I kept things I didn't want Mother knowing about, the medal I got from Grandfather, my carbide-packed exploding tin can, my slingshot, my tomahawk, all my lead soldiers, my spent bullets that still really smelled of gunpowder, and last but not least, the armor, which I took out of the drawer in a hurry together with the rag it was wrapped in, and meanwhile not a sound came from the kitchen, which really made me wonder what Mother was up to, not that she ever came spying on me, but I didn't want her to discover this secret hiding place either, so I slid the drawer back in just as carefully as I'd pulled it out, and then I stood up, sat down by the desk, and put my color pencil and my ruler by the notebook to look like I was really doing my homework, and only then did I take the lead soldier out of my pocket and begin to unwrap the armor, but suddenly the kitchen chair gave a creak, which made me think that Mother must have stood up and would come in right away to see what I was up to, so I quickly slipped the lead soldier between my thighs, picked up the pencil, and began writing HOMEWORK at the top of the page in my notebook, and that's when I heard Mother burst out sobbing, I heard it for a moment only, she must have put a hand over her mouth because then everything went quiet again, but even through the silence it was like I could hear Mother crying, I gripped the pencil so tight my fingers hurt, and try as I did not to think about Mother, I saw her before me all the same, I saw her sitting there at the kitchen table leaning on an elbow and pressing both hands tight against her mouth as the tears streamed down her face, and I knew that shutting my eyes would do no good because I'd see her even then, and it wouldn't help going out there to the kitchen and telling her not to cry, that would only make her yell at me, and besides, at night she would cry again for sure, so the best thing would be if she didn't even realize I'd heard her, but I knew she wouldn't be able to stand it for long, she'd burst out sobbing again, and then she'd be angry with me for hearing her, even though I couldn't help it she'd bawl me out anyway, and so I figured I'd better put the lead soldiers back in the drawer or else I'd get into trouble for sure. But I couldn't help being really curious to know if the armor would fit this new soldier, and so I began peeling away the rag from around it, carefully, with my left hand only, and without even taking the soldier out from between my thighs, and with the pencil there in my right hand the whole time as if I was just doing my homework, I went on removing the oily rag, and then all of a sudden I heard Mother this time really burst out sobbing louder than ever before, which scared me so much that my hand jerked, pressing the pencil so hard against the paper that the tip broke, which is when I heard Mother shove the chair back, stand up, and start cursing. "Goddamn it," she said, "goddamn this whole goddamn life," and then there was this loud clatter, and I knew Mother had flung her glass to the floor, and then I did get really frightened because I knew it meant big trouble if Mother threw something on the floor, she had never broken anything even back before they took Father away, she had never so much as slammed a door, not even when she and Father had had their biggest fights, so anyway, all of a sudden Mother slammed the kitchen door so hard I could hear the ornamental plates rattle against the wall, and then she stepped into the hall and stopped by the little telephone stand, and I heard her take deep breaths before snatching up the receiver and starting to dial so fast that before the spring had a chance to pull back the dial, she was already wrenching the dial back the other way with her finger, which made the whole telephone click over and over again, and then everything got all quiet, Mother didn't let out even a sniffle, and I could almost hear the telephone ringing a bunch of times at the other end before someone must have finally answered, because Mother shouted hello into the receiver three times, "Hello, hello, hello," and then she said, "If you've picked up already then at least say something, what is this, not saying a word when I can hear you wheezing at the other end, so what's it going to be, say something already, don't you recognize the voice of your own daughter-in-law," and then Mother's voice got louder and louder and I could hear the telephone stand begin creaking as she nudged it with a knee, and then I knew for sure that she really was worried about Father because otherwise she would never have called my grandparents, no, they never ever said a word to her especially since Father had been taken away, and that's because they blamed Mother for the whole mess, saying that Father would never have signed that open letter of protest on his own, that he'd done it only because she'd goaded him into it, and then Mother got all quiet, even the telephone stand stopped creaking, and when she did speak again she did so quietly, but in that sharp, dry tone she always used when she was really mad. "All right, Comrade Secretary," she said, and she told him that she too had good reason to feel insulted and that he would do well to be less concerned about his own honor and more about his son's life, and as soon as she said this Mother hushed up, and for a moment everything got completely quiet again, and then I finally opened up the suit of armor and tried slipping it onto the lead soldier, which was an unpainted Swiss guardsman without even a halberd, but the armor was too big, there was just no way to clasp it on, and that is when Mother spoke again, yes, she said that's why she called, what did my grandfather think she called for, what the hell else could they still talk about, of course it was about that, and meanwhile I was examining the lead soldier, which Feri sold to me because its upper part was flattened on account of botched casting, but I'd figured that wouldn't be noticeable under the armor, and so it seemed like a good buy except now I knew that it would be of no use to me either. And meanwhile the telephone stand began to creak again, Mother must have leaned against it, and she now told my grandfather not to go lying to her, she knew full well he still had contacts, he'd been a Party secretary for long enough so more than a few folks owed him a couple favors, come on, she said, he could at least tell her the name of someone who could help, and then for a while she didn't say a thing, but all at once she took a deep breath, gulping down air like water, and she spoke really loud into the phone, she told my grandfather that she wasn't about to wait, was that understood, she said, she wasn't about to wait, let it be now or never, was that understood, now or never, and by the time Mother said all this she was shouting, and I knew she was about to slam down the phone, and sure enough, at that very moment she did hurl it down so hard that the phone gave a loud clang before everything turned quiet, and then she yelled, "Enough is enough, I don't give a damn, the time has come for the old prick to do something for his son already," and then I heard her start off for my room only to stop after two steps, and quickly I covered the soldier and the armor with my math book, Mother now flung something soft to the floor, at first I couldn't figure out what it was, but then I heard her pulling the zipper down on her skirt and giving a curse under her breath, she must have tried sliding off her skirt so fast that it got caught on her foot, and by now I knew it was her blouse she'd thrown on the floor, and then I heard Mother hopping toward my room, on one leg, it seemed, and she was shouting for me to go help, her pantyhose was about to rip, and when I opened the door I saw Mother standing there in her bra, she really was on one leg, her skirt and pantyhose were pulled halfway down the leg she was holding in the air, and so I went over, and Mother told me to hold her side to keep her from falling, and then I stood right up beside her and put an arm around her waist, her face was streaked with tears, I saw, and then Mother bent down her head and began carefully pulling down her pantyhose, and while holding her I could feel her heart beating really fast. I thought of my grandfather and wanted to know what he'd said to Mother, but I didn't want to ask, and then Mother stepped out of her skirt and pantyhose with her other leg too, and I let her go, and there she stood beside me in nothing but her panties and bra, the only other time I'd seen her like that was when we went to the beach, but right now I didn't want to look all over her as she stood there like that except I didn't have a choice, Mother turned away and
picked up her skirt and wiped her face with it, and then she told me to go to my room and put on my Sunday best like a good boy because we were going somewhere, and I was all ready to say I wasn't about to wear my disgusting knit vest, but then Mother lowered her skirt from her face and gave me this stare that kept my mouth shut, so I turned around and went to the closet to fetch my Sunday best, and I didn't even ask her where we were going.