by Gy
Finally we threw the last plank from the bed out the door, and then we grabbed hold of the gasoline can and struggled past all the stuff outside the door to climb out of the trailer, Mr. Vászile's son was still sitting in the picnic chair, he was scratching the neck of one of the dogs, and Jancsi and Csabi were flinging clothes into one big pile. When the corporal saw us with that gasoline can, he shouted to us right away to take it over to him, and that's when I noticed that he had another bottle of plum spirits in his hand, it was still almost full, and when we put the gasoline can down in front of him, he wedged the bottle of spirits between his thighs, undid the clasp lock on the can, took a sniff, and took the can in his hands, and then he let out a big groan, raised the can above his head, and dribbled a little of its contents into his mouth, but he spit it out right away and flung the can to the ground, at least a cupful splashed out, and he started shouting on and on about this fucking world, about life being so unjust, and about how his poor old man had had to scrape by on hospital-issue disinfecting alcohol, which was almost undrinkable even when you filtered out the blue dye they mixed in to keep folks from drinking it, and the whole time his father had been drinking this shit, he, his son, had been guzzling top-notch plum spirits by the bottle, why, even now his knapsack was full of the stuff, but from now on, he said, things would be different, and he stood up and lifted the bottle of plum spirits and turned it upside-down and splashed it out on the ground, flailing his arm so wildly while doing so that he almost fell over twice, and when the bottle was empty he flung it into the lake, and then he hobbled over to the small heap of odds and ends, poked at it with a crutch, pried out a pickle jar from among all the clothes, picked it up, and threw it over to Jancsi, telling him to go wash it out, and Jancsi hadn't even gone two steps when the corporal also threw over a bucket and told him to clean that too and fill it with water, and then he picked up one of the plastic bags and said yes, he knew there would be charcoal here that his poor father had used to filter that nasty blue stuff out of the disinfecting alcohol, and he shook a little charcoal out of the bag to the ground, stomped a piece to bits, and said, "At least it's nice and powdery," and then he went back to rummaging about the pile, picking up one piece of clothing after another and turning it about in his hands before tossing it back on the pile, and at the same time he went on and on about his poor old man, about how he'd loved objects, about how he'd collected so many things, yes, said the corporal, his dad had been so thrifty that now he, his son, didn't have the heart to throw out a thing, he sure had argued a lot with his dad about this, God forgive him for always telling him that all this horseshit is unnecessary, but for his part he never could understand why folks need so much junk when all you really need to make you happy fits in a knapsack, it's not like we can take anything with us to the grave anyway, at most only what we drink, but his old man was the sort who saw potential in every object, in his dad's eyes every single cheap, shabby piece of clothing might as well have been new, and not even now could he quite forgive his poor old man for this, and all at once the corporal fell silent and blew his nose again before leaning down, picking up a big canvas bag, opening it, reaching inside, and cupping out a little flour and giving it a lick, and then he scattered the flour on the ground and said his poor dear father had to live for years on nothing but grits, and all the while he, his son, was able to stuff himself silly with bacon and ewe curd on the plate next to his own grits. "Life is so unfair," said the corporal, but now we would hold the old man's funeral feast just like he would have done, with nothing but grits and filtered disinfecting alcohol. "As long as we couldn't be there at his funeral," he said, "then at least there should be this much, yes, in our own way we'll pay our last respects," and he said he'd now show us how they cook real grits in the hills, one of us should go behind the trailer to get some wood while the rest of us opened up the bags and the suitcases so he could finally sort through the whole kit and caboodle, so anyway, we then started scattering the clothes and scraps of cloth from the bags onto the ground and we opened the suitcases one after another, there were clothes in them too, but sorted by type, one suitcase had only shirts, another just had rolled-up socks and underwear, a third had stylish women's shoes, at least fifteen pairs, including some with really high heels, and another suitcase was full of ties and folded pants, only two suitcases had no clothes in them, one had the records that went with the phonograph, and another had a big leather-bound book in a bunch of crumpled old bank notes, and it said on the book, in gold lettering, AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE BEGINNING OF CREATION TO THE FINAL DAYS, and when the corporal saw that, he threw aside the mud-stained winter coat whose pockets he'd been going through, he picked up the book and paged through it and told us that this had been his father's favorite book, when the corporal was a kid his father had told him lots of stories from it because history was everything to his father, but it did no good his father telling him all that stuff, he never could bring himself to love history, at most only the parts about kings. Sure, even his father had liked talking most about the rulers of bygone ages and about kings' funerals, about how the Vikings were sent on their final journey in burning boats, about the tombs the Egyptians and the Aztecs built for themselves and the priceless treasures buried inside them, and about how many servants they took with them in death so they'd have folks to serve them in the world beyond, and when he was little, for a long time he believed that his father was a king of sorts, who'd had to give up his rule in the interest of the people.
Meanwhile Jancsi got back with the water, and Csabi brought three big pieces of firewood. The corporal pulled a sooty stew pot out from under the trailer, poured around two quarts of water into it from the bucket, and splashed the rest on the ground, and then he turned the bucket upside-down, took a pocketknife from his pocket, pulled out its biggest blade, and jabbed the bottom of the bucket three times in a row. Next he filled the bucket with charcoal, set it right over the mouth of the pickle jar, and poured the blue disinfecting alcohol into the bucket up to the brim, and then little by little the filtered alcohol started dripping into the pickle jar underneath, it was black, like diluted liquid mud. The corporal wiped his hands, looked at us, kicked Mr. Vászile's old tin washtub our way, and said he'd ask us for one more favor, he wanted everyone to find themselves a rag and then to rub down the trailer on the outside a bit, not a whole lot, just enough so its original color would show, and in the meantime he'd set a fire under the grits and then we'd hold ourselves that funeral feast, a proper one at that.
The water in the quarry lake was gray and murky and its smell was pretty strange, I remembered what Zsolt had said about bones being at the bottom, so when I dipped in the washtub and it sucked in water really loud, I yanked it out almost right away, the water swirled around inside like a little eddy, but then I splashed it out on shore, and the second time I dipped the washtub more carefully, filled it up, and took it back up to the others. Csabi pressed a wrinkled necktie in my hand and I wet it, and then we all got down to rubbing the side of the trailer with crumpled rags, and Zsolt whispered over to me that we were lucky it wasn't the inside of the trailer we had to rub down, and I whispered back that I was worried that that would be next, because if it was up to those lousy dogs, we'd be here till night, but Jancsi whispered that then we could at least find the gold, and I said I thought I knew where it was, and I told the others what I found while cleaning, and Csabi said it was now for sure the gold had to be there in the quarry wall under the prehistoric reliefs, we just needed to get there somehow, yes, as long as we had to work our tails off like this, we should at least get something out of it. But Zsolt didn't say anything to that, he just threw his rag into the washtub, sighed, took out the rag, rung it out, and went on rubbing the side of the trailer.
The whole time we worked, the corporal stayed right there in that picnic chair and paged through the thick history book, but all of a sudden he stood up, flung the book to the ground, splashed a good quart of the disin
fecting alcohol onto it from the decanter, and threw a lit match on top. The alcohol burst into flames with a bluish light, and as the book's paper began to burn, the pages opened as if someone wanted to read them, and the corporal didn't even wait for the fire to die down, no, instead he packed on some charcoal from the bag right away, and then, without putting anything underneath, he put the stew pot on the charcoal, pulled up the picnic chair, sat down, waited just until the water started boiling, and began sprinkling flour into the pot and stirring the grits with a branch, and while washing the trailer I saw the dogs get up by turns and sidle over to the pot, and every time that happened the corporal would swish his stirring stick at the dog, but not a single dog even looked at him, each one just avoided being hit and slowly made its way around the corporal's chair, and nice and slowly it then went back to its place next to the other two dogs, and before long, another dog got up and circled around the corporal, and so on, just like that.
The trailer was still practically as gray as at first, even though we'd scratched a whole lot of grime off it, and by now even the water in the washtub was like liquid mud, we didn't even stick the rags into it anymore, no, I noticed that the others were also mostly just watching the corporal stir the grits. Suddenly he took the stew pot off the fire and threw the stirring stick over to the dogs before standing up and calling us over, and now he stepped to the bucket and put the stew pot on the ground next to the pickle jar, picked up the jar, took such a long swig from the now mostly grayish disinfecting alcohol that he stopped only when we got there, and that's when I noticed six little mason jars put out beside one another on the picnic table, the corporal poured the alcohol into them from high above, and since the mouth of the pickle jar was pretty wide, a lot of the liquor spilled out onto the table beside the little jars, but finally every one of them was filled to the brim, and the corporal handed each one of us a jar and he too picked one up, and he took a match and lit the disinfecting alcohol in the last jar, and then he told us to drink up, to the last drop, in memory of his father.
I didn't really want to drink, my throat was still full of the taste of the plum spirits, but as I watched that flickering blue flame I picked up the mason jar all the same and sipped the disinfecting alcohol, it tasted like liquid smoke, at first it scratched its way down my throat and then it started to burn, which made me have to cough, and the others coughed too, only the corporal drank it all down no problem, and then he put his jar on the table and said his father really loved his liquor, that that's what took him to the grave, this year he would have been seventy-six, if it hadn't been for his drinking he would have reached a hundred for sure, but at least this way his life had been a little easier because liquor makes life a bit easier, he said, not that we know this yet, no, we're kids, but we'll learn it yet, we would indeed, a while back he didn't understand it either, why, he'd even argued with his father over drink, but since then life had taught him this, it sure as hell had, and as the corporal said that he wiped a hand on his pants where the stump of his cut-off leg was, and then he refilled his mason jar and waved a hand for us to hold out our own jars, and after refilling everyone's he picked up the stew pot, poured the grits right onto the table, cupped out a big clump with his bare hands, and said with a full mouth, "Dig in, everyone, let's honor Dad's memory." After also cupping out a handful of grits, Zsolt said, "May the earth be light upon Mr. Vászile," and after chewing up the grits in his mouth he sprinkled out a bit of the filtered disinfecting alcohol from his mason jar and took a swig, and then the rest of us also scooped out some grits, which in places was black with soot, and I could feel it crackling under my teeth as I chewed, not that it was bad. Besides, it took away the bitter smoky taste of the filtered alcohol, and the others also ate, and after taking another big handful the corporal raised his mason jar and gulped down all the alcohol inside and flung the jar against the wall of the trailer so hard that it shattered, and then he called out, "All right, we've cried enough, so let's have a good time already, no more looking back, only forward," and then he pulled a record from the heap and set it on the phonograph and told us that this was his father's favorite tune, he'd have us know that there was no one in the world who could sing like this, and he called over to Jancsi to sit down by the stool and make sure the music didn't let up, and then he set the needle down on the record, this was the first time I ever heard music coming from an old phonograph, the horn made the music really loud, sure, it crackled and scraped a whole lot, but I could clearly hear the wooden flute, the violin, and the accordion, and the harsh, raspy voice of an older woman singer. The song was about some forest, about how this forest is full of shadows, shadows and darkness so thick that they smother goodness and love, I don't really remember the lyrics, all I remember is how that old lady singer made her voice quiver, like when dry branches brush up against each other in the wind, even the dogs raised their heads and began whimpering, softer or louder depending on the music, and then all at once the corporal began to dance, right there among all those scattered clothes, shoes, and odds and ends, plus he sang, but it wasn't real singing, it was more like the deep, throaty rattle crows make, and come to think of it, he really did look like a big gray crow as he jumped about raising a crutch into the air, but somehow he didn't seem ridiculous, and as I watched him the liquor got moving in me too, and not only in me but also in Zsolt and in Csabi, plus in Jancsi there by the stool, yes, all at the same time our legs began moving and our arms spread out, and before we knew it we too were dancing right there among all that junk, at first I was careful not to step on any clothes or glass jars or books or whatever, but then I accidentally kicked a gutted radio and heard something crack, and Zsolt jumped right on a straw hat, and then the music got even louder, by now the liquor was moving my arms and legs like wild, I didn't even know what I was kicking out of the way or what was cracking apart under my boots, a plastic ice cream cup or an old model airplane or a pair of sunglasses, and the others weren't paying any attention either, Jancsi kicked a book dead on, and as it flew up into the air it opened completely and all the pages tore right out of the spine, not that I saw it fall, no, the music was spinning me round and round, and the corporal now squatted down on that one leg of his before suddenly kicking himself up into the air while leaning on his crutches, objects swirled all around him like a whirlwind, ties and record jackets and pictures and sheets of paper and bank notes and handkerchiefs and stockings, and meanwhile we also kept jumping about, the loud crackle of the phonograph needle scratched away in my chest and the blaring of the accordion buzzed in my head, and then all at once the corporal flung away his crutches and picked up the gasoline can and hugged it like it was a woman and whirled his way toward the trailer on that one leg of his, almost falling at one point, but then he kept spinning upright to the rhythm of the music as he proceeded to unclasp the gasoline can and splash the disinfecting alcohol all over the trailer, the smell wafted our way along with the scent of the earth, it was really strong, and finally the gasoline can emptied out and the corporal flung it aside so hard that he flopped on his back, and at that instant the phonograph record stopped and everything got really, really quiet, Jancsi didn't put the record back on, so we stopped too. I was dizzy as could be, everything around me was spinning as if I was still dancing, the ground kept sinking and swelling under my feet so much that I could hardly keep standing, and the others were also lurching about, hunching forward and leaning back like they too were still dancing, the disinfecting alcohol let off a thick steam that looked like pale gray smoke, but I could make out the corporal lying there on his back and taking a pack of matches from his pocket, and the moment he finally managed to light one match the whole pack flared up in his hand and he flung it at the trailer, shouting on and on about how the world should be set on fire, the whole fucking world, so every last bit of it would burn to a crisp, and the flames ran along the side of the trailer, at first following the lines left by the disinfecting alcohol the corporal had just splashed there, but in no time
the paint and the wood burst into crackling big yellow flames, and although the corporal was still there lying on the ground, he managed to reach out and try like hell to pull the wedge out from under the wheel of the burning trailer, and finally it worked, the trailer began shaking violently and rolled slowly down toward the lake, and try as he did to stagger to his feet, the corporal had nothing to grab hold of, so he flopped back down on the ground and turned on his side and watched the trailer roll ablaze into the water, the flames fizzled along the bottom as it entered, but the trailer didn't sink, no, the top half was still in flames as the whole thing floated out toward the middle of the lake before coming to a standstill without sinking any more, as if it had run aground, all it did was give off flames that glistened red against the gray water as if the whole middle of the lake was on fire, and the corporal just lay there motionless on the ground, his head leaning against his arm as he watched the fire.