The White King (13 page)

Once we got back to the kitchen my grandfather told me to wait, and after putting the pistol on the table he pulled open the sideboard drawer and took out a safety pin, and then he stepped in front of me, took the medal out of my hand, and he leaned down and pinned the medal on my vest, on the left side above my heart, but he couldn't manage to click the pin shut, it even pricked me a little, not that it hurt, and as he went on pressing the pin I kept looking at the top of his head, he was going bald, never had I noticed that before, but I now saw clearly that a saucer-sized patch of his hair was already gone, and after finally clicking shut the safety pin he adjusted the medal on my chest and gave me a peck on each cheek and he said, "Happy name day, live long," and I said, "You too, Grandpa," and then all of a sudden my arm felt really tired from all the aiming, and I thought of the cat, and I felt like sitting down.

My grandfather looked at his watch and said the time had come for me to go, he couldn't take me home just now, he said, he was waiting for someone, but I was a big boy, I'd find my way home alone no problem, and I said, "Of course, I go to the cinema on my own too," and my grandfather picked up the decanter and poured himself the rest of the wine and said, "Take care of yourself, goodbye," and suddenly I got really thirsty, and although I didn't want to ask for water, I turned my head while opening the kitchen door to leave and asked my grandfather one more question all the same, I asked him if my grandmother was really going to die, and without even looking at me my grandfather just said I should know well enough not to believe everything I'm told and that there was nothing the least bit wrong with my grandmother except that she was old, true, that was enough of a problem as it was, and then he waved his hand at me to get going already, and while shutting the door I noticed him sniff at the empty glass of wine.

It wasn't even getting dark yet when I went out the front gate, no, I knew that if I hurried I'd get home in a half-hour, so I stopped for a second and took the Gold Veteran Star off my vest and gave it a look, it had a crooked sword and a machine gun set across each other over the star, plus my grandfather's name and a year engraved on the back, and then I took out my handkerchief and wrapped it around the medal and also the safety pin, and I stuck the little bundle in my pants pocket and I thought, no way would Mother ever find it there.

P
UJU AND I
were lying on our bellies in the wheat field, and it was hot, really hot, sweat was pouring from us in buckets, it flowed right down my face and washed off the black war paint we'd made from burnt corks, the sweat flowed salty and bitter into our mouths but we couldn't spit it out and we couldn't rinse our mouths, no, we didn't have any water with us, neither one of us thought of bringing a canteen along with our weapons. The sun was beating down something fierce, it had been a lot warmer ever since that atomic power plant accident we weren't allowed to talk about, even the wheat matured much sooner, it was still the middle of June when the grains wafted out of the ears, but no matter how long we chewed on those grains we couldn't make wheat gum out of them anymore, they didn't stick together at all, they were as dry as sawdust, but anyway, Puju said harvesting would soon begin, he knew that because his dad was a tractor man at the collective farm, and he said the collective had already put in a request for the necessary gasoline, and they'd be getting it too, so the harvest would begin any time now.

By now we figured we were definitely close to the little wooden watchtower that hunters used, which had a ladder leading up to a roofed blind with a waist-high wall all around it and which was where the Frunza brothers had set up their headquarters. We were exhausted from all the crawling, the wheat stalks and leaves had chafed our arms and palms, Puju was wearing leather gloves but not even that helped much, the gloves only made him sweat more, which left thin streaks of gray on the war paint on his face, and I knew I looked exactly the same, not scary at all, just ridiculous. Anyway, we crawled slowly ahead through the wheat, and Puju whispered for me to take a peek up over the stalks to see how far we actually were from the watchtower, and I said no, he should look himself because it was his turn, I'd looked up three times already, so Puju then really did stick his head up out of the wheat, he didn't stand up all the way, he just rose up on one knee, that's how he did it, and afterward he got back down on his belly right away, and even under his war paint I could tell he was white as a ghost, and I asked him what it was, what did he see, and then Puju made the sign of the cross and said that those Frunza brothers weren't kidding around, they really had gone and killed someone, he saw clear as day that a spear was stuck in the ground in front of the watchtower, and jammed on top of it was a child's head covered with blood, and then I told him I didn't believe it and that he'd better not go lying to me, but Puju said that if I didn't believe him, I should take a look for myself, so I got up on one knee and peered out, I saw pigeons flying in circles above the watchtower, and there really was a spear stuck in the ground, but just what was fixed on its point, that part I couldn't make out because a thick plastic fertilizer bag was pulled upside-down over it, and the bag was tied up so not even the shape of whatever was inside was easy to make out, but the moment I brought my head back down into the wheat I remembered seeing something else too, that down there at the bottom where the bag was tied something was flowing thick and red all the way down the spear, and by the time I got back down on my belly next to Puju I felt sick to my stomach, I looked at the wheat stalks we'd flattened while crawling and I wanted to tell Puju we hadn't seen it right, no way was that blood on the spear, but when I opened my mouth to speak I could feel my hand hurting, and that's when I noticed that I'd dug my fist into the earth and was squeezing the soil really hard, and when I yanked out my hand, a big clump of wheat roots came up along with the soil, and then I looked at Puju and saw that the edge of his mouth was quivering with fear, and I let the soil-filled roots fall from between my fingers and I thought to myself that I shouldn't have come to this battle after all, no way would I be able to climb up the watchtower to get Prodán's leather ball.

The whole thing started when it turned out that the new sewage line would pass right through the middle of our soccer field, which meant we had to go over to the soccer field used by the kids one street over whenever we wanted to play. At first their field was supposed to be dug up too, but then one day the workers left and never did come back, even though their tool shed was still there by the ditch. Anyway, the other-streeters, which is what we called those kids, let us play there until the day the Frunza brothers, orphans who moved there to their grandfather's place, beat up Zsolt, who until then was the strongest other-streeter, yes, the two Frunzas took over their gang and said we couldn't go there anymore, meaning we could go only if we paid, and when Big Prodán laughed in their faces and said, "What do you think this is, a soccer field is public property, you can't just take it over," then Romulus Frunza said, "Folks don't go talking back to my big brother," and then Remus Frunza flicked out a switchblade and stabbed Big Prodán in the shoulder so fast that Prodán didn't even have time to pull out his own pocketknife, and right when he put a hand to his shoulder, the leather ball his cousin sent him from Yugoslavia fell out of his hands, and Romulus Frunza leaned down and picked up the ball and said that from now on the ball was theirs and that Prodán could thank his lucky stars they hadn't stabbed him in the belly, because that shoulder wound was nothing, it would heal in a week, his big brother hadn't stabbed deep, no, he'd given Prodán just a little taste of his knife. Romulus Frunza then started bouncing the ball on the ground and said, "Well, that's that," and if we didn't like it, we could go to war with them, they'd send us a declaration of war with all the details written down precisely, and just so we'd know, the battle would be up on top of the hill in the wheat field behind the apartment blocks, and it would be life or death, our side would have to attack, and if we got as far as the watchtower at the edge of the woods and then escaped with this here leather ball, then we'd have to get the ball only as far back as the Big Tree, and if we did that, we'd win, and then we'd not only get back the ball but we could also use their soccer field for free whenever we wanted. But they knew that nothing would come of this, we were such scaredy-cats that even the declaration of war would make us shit our pants, no way would we be brave enough to stand up to them, said Romulus Frunza, no fucking way, that much was obvious on account of how Prodán just stood there without a word, letting them take his blood.

At first Big Prodán didn't say a thing back, he just took his palm off his shoulder, his whole hand was drenched with blood, I saw, and not only his palms but every one of his fingers, and then he looked at his palm as if he was seeing it for the first time, and suddenly he said, "Blood can be washed off only with blood," and he took one step forward and he gave Romulus Frunza a helluva slap on the face, so hard that Romulus staggered back against his big brother, and Prodán's bloody palm print stayed right there on Romulus's face, and then we all turned around at once and started running back toward our street, we were scared they'd come after us, but the other-streeters just threw some big rocks our way and luckily they didn't hit anyone, and meanwhile we could hear Romulus Frunza yelling really loud about how we were good-for-nothing sons of bitches and half-blooded sissies.

The next morning the declaration of war did arrive, a bloody beheaded pigeon was stuck in the mailbox at Prodán's place along with a sheet of notebook paper that had a declaration of war supposedly written in pigeon's blood. Prodán asked Jancsi to read it out loud, it said the battle would be on Sunday in the wheat field, and they'd have us know that what everyone was whispering about them really was true, the two of them, Romulus Frunza and Remus Frunza, had both fought in the civil war, so it would be best if we all got ready for certain annihilation because anyone they got their hands on wouldn't be getting any mercy and they wouldn't even have a goddamn rock around here to crawl under and call home, and besides, we were fucking losers, every last one of us, and we were motherfucking assholes too. When Prodán heard this, his face got all red with rage and he tore the declaration of war right out of Jancsi's hand, crumpled it up, threw it on the ground, and stepped on it good, and he said that those Frunza brothers wrote stuff like that because they didn't even have a mother, their father raised them until the old man hanged himself out of despair on account of having sons like that, everyone knew that's why they ended up here with their grandfather, because they didn't have anyone else in the whole world, and besides, their saying that they fought in the civil war was a bunch of crap, the civil war was seven years ago, they couldn't have been past eight years old back then, and not to worry, come Sunday we'd show them, and until then every one of us should go make blowgun pellets, bend lots of nails, collect stones for slingshots, and put feathers on arrows, so we'd be properly armed, and we shouldn't be scared of the Frunzas, no, we'd show them they can't go fucking with us.

No one said a thing, we all just stood there tongue-tied, looking at Prodán and the bloody pigeon and the crumpled declaration of war by his feet, and then Prodán made a fist and punched an arm toward the sky three times and cried out, "Hurrah!" The nails rattled on his wide leather wrist-guard, and all of a sudden everyone else started shouting "Hurrah!" and I joined in too, but when I looked at Prodán's face I could tell that flailing his arms like that made his shoulder hurt.

Starting then, the whole week we went all out getting ready for the battle, everyone knew it would be a hard struggle because even if the Frunza brothers hadn't fought in the civil war, they were really dangerous all the same, before ending up here they lived in a village somewhere up in the snowcapped mountains to the west, and supposedly they lived there like Indians, hunting and snaring birds until their father died, and no one knew exactly how old the two Frunza brothers were, both of them were in sixth grade but Remus looked even bigger than the ninth graders, while his kid brother, Romulus, was so short he would have counted as little even among the fourth graders, but both of them were really strong and equally good at fighting, plus they knew a thing or two about weapons, their slingshots weren't made of cut-up bicycle tubes but of real upholstery rubber, for example, and we heard that the other-streeters had made themselves all sorts of secret weapons, which is why all of us made sharp pellets for our blowguns, the sort with a pin on the end. I made myself armor out of cardboard and tinfoil to protect my back, I even tested it to see if it would fit under my T-shirt and I asked Puju to shoot me in the back so we could see if it worked, but he didn't want to, he told me to remember the time we wanted to test if I could catch an arrow like the Indians do in the movies, but I told him I was younger then, a nine-year-old little runt, so it was no wonder my reflexes weren't as good, and luckily the nail on the end of the arrow wasn't too sharp so it went less than an inch into my arm, all it did was pierce my skin, the bone in my forearm stopped it no problem, sure, the tetanus shots afterward hurt a lot, but this wasn't going to be like that because we were bigger now, almost twelve years old, and besides, this armor didn't depend at all on reflexes. But not even after I said all that did Puju want to, no, I had to give him four caramels before he finally agreed to shoot me in the back three times, and of course the armor really did do the trick, it stopped the pellets just like it was supposed to, the shots felt only like mosquito bites, and I decided to make armor for the front of me too, I'd already cut out the pieces of cardboard, the only things left to do were the sewing and the gluing, around half a day's work in all, but then I just ran out of glue, so I couldn't make that extra armor after all.