The White King

by Gy

  12. Gold!

  BEFORE THEN, we used to think the old clay pit was closed because its wall collapsed in the big earthquake, revealing a bunch of priceless prehistoric reliefs, but ever since Zsolt showed us a gold nugget one time, everyone knew that wasn't really why you couldn't go there, that it was actually because the quarry walls were full of gold, yes, all you had to do was swing a hammer on the slate where the veins of ore ran, and the nuggets would come flying right out of the wall. Zsolt told us he stole the gold nugget out of his dad's desk drawer, from beside his railway worker's ID and worker's medals, and he even let us take it into our hands, it was damn heavy, it was real gold, no doubt about it. Often we wanted to go to the clay pit and give it a try to see if we could really get ourselves some gold, but as long as old Mr. Vászile guarded the site with his two German shepherds it didn't work out, because he was there day and night, he lived in an old trailer and never let anyone into the clay pit or even onto the property around it, and he never kept his dogs chained, one time when Zsolt climbed over the fence on a dare, one of the dogs bit his ankle so bad that afterward Zsolt had to get thirty shots in his belly, so when we got the news that Mr. Vászile had hanged himself, none of us were sorry at all, and indeed we were glad to hear that he first shot both of the dogs. Zsolt said right away that we should take advantage of the opportunity and go get ourselves some gold before a new guard got appointed, yes, it would be best if we headed off right away, so we should go home and get hammers, besides, he was itching to see those prehistoric reliefs for himself.

  Because the quarry was far away, we went by bicycle. I sat behind Zsolt, on the rack, and on the other bike Jancsi rode in front of Csabi. The fence was pretty high and had barbed wire up top, but at least there wasn't any barbed wire above the locked gate, and Jancsi figured out that if we leaned one bike against the gate, then from the seat it wouldn't be hard to climb up to the top, and we really did get up there pretty easy, and only when all four of us were inside did Zsolt say we were complete idiots not to have pounded off the lock with a hammer because then we could have at least brought in the bicycles too, but Jancsi just waved a hand and said it didn't matter, the important thing was that we got inside and didn't have to worry about those lousy dogs.

  As for the prehistoric reliefs, I thought they would be a lot more exciting, sure, they looked nice and big, high up there on the quarry wall around twelve feet from the ground, I couldn't really imagine how the folks who made them could have climbed so high, but they sure seemed pretty worn, you could hardly tell what they were supposed to show, I could make out some sort of houses and animals and a bunch of human figures, a couple of the people were shooting with bows and arrows, and some were hunting for wild boar and for bears from a horse-drawn cart using a spear, plus there was a gigantic person lying on the ground, you couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and practically all that was left of the face was the eyes, the rest had been washed away by the snow and the rain, and even Jancsi said he didn't understand what was so priceless about these reliefs when you could hardly see a thing on them, but then Zsolt said he'd heard that they weren't prehistoric at all, no, the miners had made them out of boredom but then half plastered them over because they turned out so badly, and there really wasn't much to see on them at all.

  Mr. Vászile's shack was there at the foot of the quarry wall under the prehistoric reliefs and around ten yards from the lake, it was a trailer with wheels, like the sort construction workers live in, and when we passed by it Zsolt said we should go in and see what the old man left behind, but Csabi then made the sign of the cross and said, "God forbid we should go in there because that would stir up Mr. Vászile's ghost, and the clay pit is haunted to begin with," but Zsolt said that was just a superstition, that he didn't believe in ghosts at all, though he himself had heard the quarry lake was full of bones, but he didn't believe even that, people said things like that only because they liked scaring each other, if the water cleared up enough, maybe he'd dive in and see for himself, and as for Mr. Vászile, he couldn't have a ghost because ghosts didn't exist at all. And when Zsolt said that, he pulled his hammer from his belt and took a couple of good whacks at the side of the trailer and yelled for Mr. Vászile's ghost to come forward if it dared.

  At first nothing happened, but then all of a sudden something moved inside, we could hear snarling and scratching plus some groans, the whole trailer moved just a little, and I got so scared that my hammer almost fell right out of my hands, even Zsolt turned stone white, I saw, and I knew we should run away, but my stomach knotted up so much that I couldn't move at all, and the others didn't budge either, no, all four of us just stood there next to the trailer, and then I saw this white skeleton hand reach out from underneath, from between the trailer's big wheels, and then Csabi cried out, "God help us, now we're done for," and the skeleton hand was groping around, I wanted to cry out too, but I couldn't, not even a peep left my throat, and then another hand reached out beside the skeleton hand, but this one was a real person's hand, and by then I saw that even the skeleton hand wasn't really a skeleton hand but just the end of a crutch, and then the whole crutch came flying out from between the wheels followed by another crutch, and then we could hear all this swearing and snarling and panting, and we saw this one-legged man struggling to crawl out from under the trailer, one leg of his military trousers was tied in a knot up where his leg was almost completely gone, and he had long matted hair and a big black beard, and when he finally managed to pull himself out from under the trailer, he grabbed one of the crutches and sat up on his knees so he was leaning against the crutch with his good leg, and then he reached back into the trailer and pulled out a huge green backpack by its strap and took out a little corked bottle and stuck one of the crutches under his arm and with a groan he stood up straight, and that's when we saw that he was really thin and really tall, at least a head taller than even the trailer, and using his teeth he then pulled the cork out of the bottle, and he spit the cork on top of the trailer and took a big swig, and only then did he finally get around to asking who we were and what the motherfucking hell we were doing inside the fence.

  By then Zsolt's face was back to its usual color, he straightened himself out right away, saluted, and said, "I hereby report to Comrade Corporal that we're looking for Comrade Vászile," and he explained that we came from School No. 13 to do community service work, that our shop teacher sent us to hammer some tin plates, and Zsolt even showed his hammer, and I saw that the one-legged man really did have a corporal's epaulet on the shoulder of his fatigue jacket, but he had only one of them, only the threads showed on the other shoulder.

  At first the corporal didn't say a thing, he just looked us over, loosened the crutch under his arm, and took another swig from the bottle, and then he asked if we'd really come to see Mr. Vászile, we should tell him honestly, he said, because as far as he knew, his poor father had had no friends and no one was mourning him, why, he'd even heard that everyone was happy about his dying, folks hadn't really liked his father much, God forgive them, not even now that his father was dead and gone did they have any good words to say about him, they were talking up all this nonsense about how he threw his life away, saying he hanged himself, yes, they were out to besmirch his father's memory with lies like that, and then here we were looking for the poor old fellow with such love, why, maybe we hadn't even heard the news, and then Zsolt said, "No, when did it happen?" and the one-legged man replied that not even three days had passed, and he'd have us know it wasn't suicide, and then we all gave him our sincere sympathies and said we were really sorry and that we didn't want to bother him anymore, and I was already turning back toward the gate when the corporal told us to wait, not to hurry, because he wanted to ask us one or two things and that we shouldn't offend him by leaving him high and dry to go on mourning all alone, so all four of us then turned back, and the corporal asked how long we'd known his father, and Zsolt answered, "A pretty long time, almost three years," and the corpora
l nodded and took another swig, and he said he was asking us to answer honestly and not to besmirch his father's memory by being all prim and polite, we should tell him just what sort of person his father was, what we knew him to be like, and at first Zsolt didn't say a thing, he just stared at the ground, but then he finally did look back up at the corporal and say, "He was a good man, he was, strict and hot-tempered, but a really decent, really straight-shooting fellow." As Zsolt was saying this, I noticed him waving one of his hands behind his back, so then I spoke too, "That's right," I said, "Mr. Vászile was a good man," and then Jancsi and Csabi said the same thing, and they also said, "May God rest his soul."

  The corporal nodded and told us we were good boys. "God bless you," he said, and then he reached out his bottle to Zsolt and told him to drink up in memory of his father, and Zsolt took the bottle and drank, and the corporal took out a handkerchief and blew his nose really loud, and when Zsolt wanted to give back the bottle, the corporal told him through his handkerchief to pass it along to the others, they also deserved it, he said, they loved his father too, so Jancsi and Csabi then also took swigs, and then they handed the bottle to me, and I too had a gulp, it was plum spirits with a real bite, it was so strong I had to cough, and as I lowered the bottle I saw the trailer door open up and three really huge sheepdogs saunter out one after another, each one was at least as big as a Saint Bernard, and their heads were as big and round as a bear's, they stopped right in front of us and they didn't bark and they didn't growl, they just stood there looking at us, but even that was enough for me to feel my body get all cold and heavy right away, and I could tell that the others were at least as scared as I was. But then the corporal clicked his tongue, and the dogs all sat at once, and the corporal said he was sorry, he didn't want to scare us, the dogs had come out at the sound of coughing because these dogs, they were real man-killing machines, but we shouldn't be scared, they wouldn't bother us, the only thing we had to be careful about was to avoid running, because then the dogs would catch us for sure because it's coded into their genes that a running person has to be wrestled to the ground and mauled, so we shouldn't even think of running from them, no, we should move nice and slowly instead, and we shouldn't look directly in their eyes, and as long as we didn't do any of that we wouldn't suffer any harm, and then he took the bottle from my hand, drank down the rest of the plum spirits, and flung the bottle into the quarry lake, and he gave a big sigh and said the only thing he was ashamed about was that he arrived late, that he couldn't be there at his father's burial, he left as soon as he got word, he did, but they buried the poor old fellow really quick, it's just awful that he couldn't say a proper goodbye, and now he'd been here for half a day already, but he hadn't yet gotten up the courage to go inside his old man's shack, no, he'd sent the dogs not long ago so they could look around a little, that's all, because he could remember this trailer from when he was a kid, and he was pretty scared of memories, though we had to believe him that he wasn't a coward, he didn't even know why he was telling us all this, we were kids, we wouldn't understand anyway, but he had to tell someone all the same, and for some reason he felt he could trust us. And so he'd ask us for a big favor, we had the time as long as we came here to work anyway, so we should be so good as to help him take stock of his father's estate, he was afraid that he wouldn't have the strength to do this alone, of course sorting through things while on crutches wasn't easy to begin with, and as he said this he waved one of his crutches toward us, which made the dogs growl, and then Zsolt said that this was only natural, it was the least we could do. The corporal nodded and again blew his nose and said he really appreciated it, he saw right at the start that he could count on us, and then he pointed to the picnic chair, the folded-up metal picnic table, and the great big sun umbrella leaning against the side of the trailer, and he said we should begin by setting up the sunshade and putting the chair and the table underneath, because he wanted to just sit around here a bit like his father used to do, and then we could start emptying out the trailer so he could take stock of what his father left behind.

  Sticking the umbrella into the loamy earth was pretty hard, and then once we did and tried opening it, it closed up three whole times, the dowel didn't want to catch no matter what, and that made one of the dogs sit up and let out these belly-deep barks, but as soon as the corporal pointed one of his crutches at the dog and snapped, "Quiet, Kloska," the dog shut right up and cowered back. Meanwhile we finally managed to open the umbrella, and we put the picnic chair underneath and then set up the picnic table too, and then the one-legged corporal hobbled over and struggled to sit down in the chair, and he laid his two crutches down on the table in front of him, leaned back, wiped his face, and said he now felt ready, so it would be best if two of us climbed into the trailer and started handing out everything bit by bit, anything that could be moved, and the other two of us should put it all in a nice neat pile, and then he'd go on over and look to see what we found, so far he'd only had courage enough to peek in the door, but he saw so many familiar objects that he got really scared, so it would be best if we got started right away because we'd have a whole lot to bring out. Zsolt headed straight toward the trailer and he called for me to go along too, not that I really wanted to, but I wasn't in the mood to resist either, and as we stepped toward the trailer the dogs perked their ears and started growling again, and only then did I notice that each of them had one ear cut off, the corporal shouted at them to sit still, telling them they didn't need to guard against us, we were his father's friends, so the dogs just stared but didn't stir, and I thought I was lucky after all that Zsolt had chosen me, and not Jancsi or Csabi, because at least inside we wouldn't have to worry about the dogs.

  As soon as I stepped up on those bricks stacked vertically by the door, I remembered what Csabi had said about ghosts, and I felt like the strength was about to drain from my legs so I'd crumple up like a rag, but then I looked at the dogs and I grabbed the doorjamb, and Zsolt gave a big sigh before opening the door, and I took a deep breath of the fresh air outside, I was still really scared, but I got up the guts to step inside so fast that Zsolt and I stepped in together. Never had I been in a place like that before, a place where someone had died, both of my arms were covered with goose bumps, but I was a little curious to see what it would be like. On the inside the trailer seemed at least twice as big as on the outside, and the air was really damp and had a mildewy odor, at first I could hardly see a thing because light entered only through the door and I was blocking it completely, but once Zsolt tore off the tarp hanging over the window we could see pretty well, the trailer really was one big mess, there was a phonograph on a stool in the middle, a real antique phonograph with a horn, the floor around it was strewn with crumpled newspapers and old tin cans and empty beer bottles, I tripped on one of the bottles and almost fell, but then I grabbed hold of a winter coat on a hanger, at least fifteen other winter coats were hanging there next to it, and there was a heap of coats even on the floor underneath, and as I kicked at them, the coats gave off a gluey stink so strong I almost had to puke, and I called over to Zsolt to say he sure got us into a nice little fix, but he told me to keep my trap shut because if I had a better idea, why hadn't I said so, and anyway, maybe Mr. Vászile even dug up a little gold for himself and we might just find it, or if not, then not, but we could at least thank our lucky stars we got off so easy, and then he turned all quiet and threw the tarp out the door and grabbed the phonograph off the stool and handed that out too, so I picked up about three coats and took them over to the door and tossed them all out at once, and since that made the stink go away a little, I started throwing the other clothes out the door also, one armful after another, there was a tower of suitcases in one corner, at least eight of them, and crammed in next to them were a bunch of plastic bags, buckets, and folded blankets, Zsolt started handing out the suitcases, after the third one he hunched over and just about puked, and then he took off his T-shirt and tied it in front of his nose, so I too
k mine off and did the same thing, and starting then both of us worked like that, but even so, that musty odor was intense. At first I was careful about what I picked up, I checked whether it was a pile of books tied up with belts or a bunch of tin cans tied together with string, but then I ended up handing out everything to Csabi without picking and choosing at all, I stopped only when I tried lifting a big green five-gallon gasoline can that wouldn't budge, so I called Zsolt over to help, and the two of us lugged it over to the door, but then Zsolt said we should leave it for last as long as it was so damn heavy, so anyway, by then the trailer was almost completely empty, all that was left was a plank bed on top of a bunch of bricks by one of the walls, Zsolt gathered the dirty bed sheets and the blanket along with one of the planks and took them to the door, and I went to get the other plank, and that's when I noticed a newspaper page glued to the ceiling above the bed, which meant that whenever Mr. Vászile had laid down on his back in bed, this is exactly what he must have seen, I reached up and ripped it off the ceiling so I could read it, it was an article about the clay pit, about what amazing finds those prehistoric reliefs up there on the quarry wall were, about how they carry a historical message and are works of art of priceless value, and half the newspaper page was a picture of that ancient giant lying on the ground that we'd seen earlier on the quarry wall, and written diagonally across the picture in big letters and purple indelible ink was the word ENOUGH! and I'd already half crumpled the page to toss it on the ground with the other newspaper pages when I stuffed it into my pocket instead.