The White King

by Gy

  Mother didn't move, she just kept standing there before the platform, but then the secretary waved his folder toward the coffin and told us to hurry because Comrade Bherekméri would arrive soon to give his farewell speech in person, and as the secretary said this he pointed to the side, to a microphone-equipped pulpit by the red-draped wall in front of the platform, so we then started off, first Mother stepped onto the platform and then so did I, and the secretary came with us too.

  Up on the platform the lighting was even stronger, what with a row of white neon lights above the rear wall of the mortuary, which was covered with a big ornamental tapestry depicting a machine-gun-toting partisan in the middle of a wheat field, symbolically forging a wedge from several swords broken in two, and in the background of this brightly lit tapestry, behind approaching tractors, were mountains plus our homeland's treasures, its pine forests and its oil wells, so anyway, Mother and I then went over next to my grandmother, but to the left of the coffin, and I said as usual, "I kiss your hand," but as if my grandmother hadn't even heard me, she just looked at Mother and said under her breath that she should be ashamed of herself, what was she thinking, how dare she show her face here, and my grandmother added that she'd like nothing more than to spit in Mother's face, yes, she said, she'd chase her out of here but good.

  Mother smiled at my grandmother and said how very glad she was to see that she was feeling better, and that if she wanted, she should feel free to make a big scene right here in front of the whole city, no doubt my grandfather would be happier with a proper fight than with this awful circus, and I could see that this was turning Grandmother even paler under her mascara, she licked her lips and then took a big breath, and I knew she was about to say something really nasty to Mother, but then all at once a double door opened in the tapestried wall, the only reason I hadn't noticed that door until now was that it too was covered with tapestry, and in came this man in worker's clothes, he came straight over to my grandmother and said, "Ma'am, we'll begin bringing in the wreaths now because the chief comrade will be here shortly," and then he asked my grandmother if they could light the torches, at which my grandmother took a handkerchief from her purse, pressed it to her eyes for a moment, and then said that as long as the time had come, then they should go right ahead, at which the man in worker's clothes said, "Yes, ma'am," and no sooner had he left than he was back, but this time with one great big wreath in each hand, and five more workers entered after him, each of them carrying wreaths and flowers that they packed high up by the coffin in no time, and then they left and brought even more wreaths and flowers, and as they walked back and forth in front of me the smell of sweat was strong, and I thought that these must not be any old workers, no, these were the gravediggers, and they must have gotten so sweaty digging my grandfather's grave, and on looking down I noticed that the pant leg of one of them was all muddy at the knee, and I knew I was right, so I took a step back because I didn't want them accidentally brushing up against me. Meanwhile the gravediggers went about skillfully arranging the ribbons of the wreaths so the messages and the names of the people who bought each wreath could be seen clearly, and I read a couple of the names but not one was familiar, and meanwhile the first gravedigger brought in a little three-rung ladder and a decanter, and he took the ladder from one torch to another, climbing up fast and pouring a bit of oil into each one's black spherical top, and then he lit the torches with a long match.

  After flickering wildly at first, the tall orange-red flames soon formed nice sharp tips, and as the funeral march got louder my nose was filled with the piney fragrance of the wreaths and the smell of petroleum, and I thought of Christmas, when they cut the power, and Mother and I had to celebrate by an oil lamp, and I looked at the coffin's glistening varnish and knew that if I went close enough to the black-painted wood I'd be able to see my own face in the reflection, and thinking that gave me such a lump in the throat that I could feel myself about to cry, so I reached into the pocket of my school jacket to remove the freshly ironed handkerchief Mother had put in there. It was one of Father's formal handkerchiefs, and while holding it I remembered what the cabbie had said to Mother, that Father would be brought home for the funeral, and I swallowed, figuring that this was reason enough to hold back my crying, just like a real man.

  All at once, right in the middle of a measure, the funeral march stopped, the speakers buzzed for a couple more seconds, but then everything got all quiet, and again that double door in the tapestry opened up, and in hurried a tall bald man in a black suit who didn't say hello to anyone but went straight to the pulpit, and the secretary stepped away from us and raced over to the pulpit and put down that red leather folder, so I knew that this had to be Comrade Bherekméri.

  Stopping right behind the pulpit, Comrade Bherekméri tapped the microphone with an index finger and extended a warm welcome to all the comrades mourning here today, and asked that he be allowed to say a few words about my grandfather, Comrade Secretary, whom the city regarded as its own departed and whose distinctions were indisputable. Comrade Bherekméri turned suddenly quiet, cast his eyes about meaningfully, and reached into the upper pocket of his suit for his glasses, which he then put on before opening the red leather folder, removing a bunch of paper-clipped sheets, clearing his throat, and beginning to read his speech.

  After giving those gathered here today another warm welcome, he said he'd begin by telling us how he got to know my grandfather, who was still a university student back then and who earned enough to cover his tuition by making his way each and every evening from one bar or restaurant to another peddling perfumes, colognes, facial washes, hair ointments, antiwrinkle creams, rejuvenating lotions, and scented soaps, yes, my grandfather lugged the samples with him in two big suitcases, and although those suitcases were terribly, terribly heavy, my grandfather carried this burden without a word of complaint, not whining even once, and he even put up with tipsy guests teasing him, and one time in The Elephant Restaurant, whose reputation was not so very good, the owner gave my grandfather a wager, saying that if he spread hair ointment all over ... but right as Comrade Bherekméri said these words the crowd murmured and stirred, and I could hear someone shouting in a high voice, "Let me through, stand aside, let me go forward!" so Comrade Bherekméri fell silent midsentence, lowered his sheets of paper, and looked over to the source of the commotion, and when I also glanced in that direction I saw that old lady, Miss Yvonne, brandishing a big bouquet of red roses to cut herself a path through the crowd, shouting the whole time that she would not allow her poor darling to be buried without a proper farewell and that she would indeed go right up to the coffin because she was the one who should be standing there by my poor grandfather's desecrated body, because she, not my grandmother, had been his true love all the time, no, not that evil old hag. As Miss Yvonne kept jostling her way through the crowd ever closer to the front, I heard my grandmother flare up and say, "Take her out of here at once, this is intolerable, this is outrageous, why, I'll go and kill her, I'll go scratch her eyes out," but by the time my grandmother said this, Miss Yvonne was standing right there in front of the platform only two steps from the wreaths, but then all of a sudden someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her back, and I recognized who did it, it was the cabbie we'd met, yes, he picked that old lady right up with a wrestling hold while hauling her away, one of Miss Yvonne's shoes fell off and she dropped her bouquet of roses and she screamed, but the cabbie was already taking her out of there, with Miss Yvonne meanwhile shrieking at the top of her lungs that everyone should know the truth, that my grandfather had killed himself and that my grandmother had destroyed his farewell letter because that would have revealed the truth, which was that all his life my grandfather had loved her and only her, and the only reason my grandmother insisted on a closed coffin was so the truth wouldn't emerge, but by then the cabbie had carried Miss Yvonne out of the mortuary and it was impossible to tell exactly what she was shouting, and then all of a sudden she got all quiet, and
then the tapestried door opened up and in came one of the gravediggers, he went really fast over to the front of the podium, where he picked up that one black shoe and bent down again and picked up the bouquet of roses too and put it among the other flowers, and with the shoe in his hand he went back out.

  That's when my grandmother began crying out really loud, and she staggered and almost fell, so Comrade Bherekméri's secretary had to grab hold of her, and through her tears my grandmother told him something, all I understood was "coffin," and then the secretary took a blue handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to my grandmother, and he went over to the pulpit and whispered something into Comrade Bherekméri's ear, at which Comrade Bherekméri knit his brow and shook his head hard and cleared his throat, and meanwhile he gathered the pages of his speech, which had slipped all over, rolled them cylindrically lengthwise, and tapped the bottom edge against the pulpit until the pages formed a nice neat stack, and then he began reading again, but he picked up not where he'd left off, with that hair ointment and the wager, no, instead he began this really long sentence about how when he and my grandfather had begun their struggle, they knew full well that they themselves would not be able to enjoy its fruits, that they would not live to see their dream fulfilled, but they'd struggled bravely all the same because the future was much, much more important than their own happiness, it was much more important than ... but I never did hear what was more important to my grandfather than his own happiness because that's right when my grandmother shook herself free of Comrade Bherekméri's secretary's hand and took a step toward the podium, and she shouted right at Comrade Bherekméri, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Pista, for lying in my face, what do you mean the coffin can't be opened, you know full well it can be opened, why are you doing this?" And then she stepped over to the coffin and slammed her fist down on it, and she shouted that they should open it up at once because after all this she wanted to see my grandfather one more time, one last time, it was her right to say farewell to him, and besides, she'd heard that all sorts of gossip was being spread about my grandfather having shot his head to smithereens, which was supposedly why the coffin was closed, so she wanted to put an end to every shred of such malicious hearsay once and for all, every last doubt about him having died by his own hand had to be done away with, every shadow of a doubt, she was sure my grandfather would also want this, yes, he too would insist on it by all means. "So open it up," she shrieked, because if they didn't, why then she would do it herself, it was her right, did they understand, her right.

  Comrade Bherekméri's face was almost as red as his leather folder as he now slammed his sheets of paper down on the pulpit, I could tell it was all he could do to keep hold of himself, but then he let out a big puff of air and said, "Naturally, no problem," but the edges of his mouth were twitching as he nodded to his secretary, who then went over to the tapestried door, opened it, and went out, and Comrade Bherekméri said that for his part he'd go on with the speech, with paying our respects to our dear departed, and for a while he went back to putting his sheets of paper in order, and then he began reading his speech once again, but I wasn't paying attention anymore because I noticed the little door open again and two of the gravediggers come in, one of them had a monkey wrench and the other had a crowbar, so anyway, they went over to the coffin and got down to removing the screws from the black-painted varnished wood one after another, they worked really fast, not even thirty seconds had gone by and they'd already removed all three screws from the left side of the coffin, and then they went over to the other side, where the last screw took them some doing, but then that screw came out too, and they put their tools on the floor next to the coffin, and one of them stepped over to one end of the coffin and the other to the other end, and they grabbed the top of the coffin and in one swift move they lifted it right off, except that I couldn't see the inside of the coffin because they'd turned the top lengthwise and put it up against our end of the coffin, blocking the inside from my view, so all I could see was the red velvet lining in swollen pleats on the bottom half, and although the lavender smell of my grandfather's face cream then hit my nose, I knew I was just imagining this because no doubt they'd spread some sort of embalming fluid over his face. Then I heard the crowd in the mortuary let out loud gasps, much louder than when Miss Yvonne had come in, at first I thought it was only because the coffin had opened up and they could see my grandfather, but then Mother grabbed my arm and turned toward the door, and the crowd by the door began to part, and everyone looked in that direction, and by then Mother was squeezing my arm really tight and I heard her say, "It's your father, they're bringing your father," and then everyone began saying all sorts of things really loud, I heard them say my father's name and that he'd supposedly been at the Danube Canal, but someone else said he'd heard that my father had been in a reeducation camp, and then I too looked in the direction everyone else was facing, and I could see five people coming in through the crowd and one of them really was Father, yes, I recognized him right away even though I couldn't see his face, he was taking little steps with his head bent down, and he was in the same gray suit he had on when they took him away, and he was surrounded by five men in black uniforms of a sort I'd never seen, and even though everyone in the crowd had stepped aside to let them by, they were coming in pretty slowly, the uniformed men were now up front and Father was staring at the floor the whole time, and even though lots of people were saying his name, Father didn't raise his head, no, he didn't look at anyone at all, and I noticed that he was handcuffed in front and that a long chain was attached to the cuffs in the middle and that one of the guards was holding the other end of the chain, and even though Father's feet weren't shackled, he was taking such small steps that his ankles seemed to be chained together, and I knew I should run right over and give him a hug, and then Mother, who was still standing there beside me, said, "Holy Christ," and she had to lean up against me, and I felt the strength leaving my legs also, but I pulled myself together and told Mother not to be scared, Father was now here, now there wouldn't be any more trouble, but all Mother could say this time was "My God," and I heard her take gasping breaths, and meanwhile the guards had led Father slowly over to the platform, not to our side but across from us, to the other side of the coffin, and they stopped around six feet from the coffin. The guard holding the chain yanked at it and then Father gradually looked up, and that is when I saw his face and felt my belly bunch up, his face was gray with stubble and he'd lost a lot of weight, but that's not what scared me, no, it was his eyes, his completely blank stare, I knew he had to see us by now, he had to see Mother and Grandmother and me too, but his blank stare just wouldn't go away, as if he didn't know at all where he was, his eyes were glittering like glass and it occurred to me that it wasn't Father I was seeing, no, it was no longer him, he didn't remember me or Mother anymore, he didn't remember a thing, and he didn't even know himself anymore, and then I heard Mother give a sniffle, I was still looking at Father and hoping he'd say something, that he'd come to, that he'd notice me and say something, that he'd yank his hand out of that chain and come over to us and give us a hug, give me a hug and give Mother a hug, that he wouldn't just stand there, that he'd come to right away, and then I heard Mother give one more sniffle and gulp air, and I knew she was trying to keep from crying, to swallow her tears because she didn't want Father to see them, and I knew I was about to give a shout, to call out to Father, and right then Father's nostrils flared, he took two wheezing sniffs of air, but the third time he inhaled he did so deeply, and then all at once he batted his eyelashes, winced, and looked down at the open coffin, and that's when I peered down there for the first time, the pleated red-velvet lining practically swallowed up my grandfather, yes, he looked a lot smaller and thinner lying there in the coffin, I looked at his face but couldn't see any injury, his skin glistened in the same oily way it had in life and his mouth was a bit open, almost all his medals were pinned to him, covering practically his whole chest, and then I thoug
ht I saw blood soaked completely through the gray fabric between the medals right above his heart, but I knew I was just imagining it, that all I really saw was the coffin's pleated red velvet reflecting off his burnished medals, and I was also imagining the smell of clotted blood, and then I thought to myself that this whole thing couldn't be true, I was just imagining that they'd brought Father back, that he was standing there on the other side of the coffin, but then I looked up and saw that Father was still there, he really was there, still standing as motionless as a statue, staring at the coffin, the coffin and my grandfather inside it.

  The mortuary was dead silent, yes, Father hadn't stirred for at least a minute already, and I thought that maybe he didn't even really see the coffin either, just like he hadn't seen us, but all of a sudden his shoulders twitched and he stepped forward and put his two cuffed hands on the edge of the coffin, and then I knew that he was conscious of what was going on after all, that what he was seeing was sinking in, yes, for a moment I even thought he would take my grandfather's hand, but he grabbed only the edge of the coffin, and then he slowly turned his head and passed his eyes over the length of his father, and his stare fixed itself on the face, and then I looked at my grandfather's face along with him, at the contours of my grandfather's mouth, at how the stubble glistened bluish in one or two spots on the skin sunken under the cheekbones as if he'd just done a clumsy job of shaving, and I knew that Father would look up right away, that he would look again at us, at Mother and me, and I also knew that this time he would recognize us, yes, even if he wouldn't be able to smile he'd recognize us for sure, and he'd know that we were here for him, that we'd been waiting for him and that we would wait until one day they would let him come home forever, and then all of a sudden Father let go of the coffin and took a step back, and he really did look up, right at me, right into my eyes, and I could tell from the sparkle of his eyes that he recognized me, and then his lips parted, and it was obvious he wanted to say something, but he only winced, he couldn't get a word out, and then Mother said through her tears, "My God, what have they done to him? What have they done to the poor thing?" and she let go of my hand and stepped away from my grandmother and headed really fast toward Father, and she was already halfway around the coffin when one of the guards stepped in front of her and snarled, "Approaching a prisoner is not allowed," but then Mother cried out that she wouldn't have them giving her orders, she'd go over to my father, she sure as hell would, they could all go drop dead as far as she was concerned, and she shoved the guard so hard that he reeled back, but then the other guard gave Mother a backhanded slap, at which Father began crying out in a really loud wordless groan and stepped toward Mother before the guard with the chain yanked him back, and then Mother lunged at one of the guards, pounding his chest with her fists, and she shouted for people to help, to not let this happen, and that's when Comrade Bherekméri shouted into the microphone for everyone to stay in their places, to keep calm, and then my grandmother began wailing through her tears, "My son, my little boy, I want to go over to my little boy," and she too headed toward Father, but the guards had already begun wresting Father toward the tapestried door as he pulled with all his might against the chain, snarling and groaning while trying to free himself, but then one of the guards tripped his feet right out from under him, and they went on wrenching him toward the door, two of them were holding Mother by now, and my grandmother shrieked something loud while trying to pull one of the guards off Mother from behind, and then the tapestried door opened up and in stormed the police and the gravediggers, the police were armed with rubber truncheons and the gravediggers with the handles of their spades, and then I looked at all those folks in the mortuary just standing there and staring like they were at some kind of circus, and I shouted at them to do something already, to help, to keep these people from taking Father away, but no one moved, no, they just stood there looking on, and then Comrade Bherekméri's secretary told me to shut up and stop moving this instant, but I turned around and headed for the tapestried door, with Comrade Bherekméri's secretary shouting, "Didn't you hear what I said, stay right where you are!" and he shoved me from behind so hard I almost fell on the coffin, but what did I care, all I wanted was to see what was happening to Mother and Father, and although Comrade Bherekméri's secretary pushed me again, I just kept looking, I didn't see Mother anywhere but I did see Father, the guards were dragging him out the tapestried door, and after leaning down and snatching up the crowbar the gravediggers had left by the coffin, I took off after Father, except that by then the tapestried door had closed and the police were blocking it, so I knew I'd never get out that way even if I tried, and when Comrade Bherekméri's secretary now stepped in front of me I swung the crowbar at his thigh and he doubled up, swearing away, and then I turned around and jumped off the platform, and while swinging the crowbar high I cried out for everyone to make way, to stand aside, and I began clearing a path for myself toward the exit, like in school when we used to fight with the older students in the old air-raid shelter during the main recess. I didn't watch to see where the crowbar was going, no, I kept my eyes fixed only on the crowbar itself to be sure to swing it just right, jabbing and hitting as I went on ahead, with my eyes now also on the main door, and by then everyone was shouting like mad, but I didn't pay them any attention, not even when someone gave me a kick from behind, no, because by then I was already by the exit, in front of the closed double door, which opened just a crack when I gave it a kick, allowing me to slip out and kick the door shut behind me, and although I knew they'd open the door in no time and come after me, what did I care, I could hear everyone inside yelling and screaming away, and then I stepped forward and stopped on top of the steps, I turned completely around but couldn't see Father anywhere, not him and not the guards either, the whole cemetery was empty except for all those cars lined up one behind the other on both sides of the main promenade, and then for a moment I again thought that maybe I was just imagining the whole thing, that they hadn't brought Father home after all, but then a gray prison van turned out from behind the mortuary and began snaking its way down the main promenade, and I cried out for them to stop, to wait, and I started running after the van, and I knew it was about to speed up, but when I then glimpsed Father's bone-white face behind the bars of the rear window, I also knew that the prison van could go as fast as it wanted, I'd catch up anyway, and raising the crowbar above my head, I took off after the van, faster and faster, faster and faster and faster I ran.