The White King (16 page)

The blood flowed in a thick stream from the bag as I ran, which made the plastic so slick it almost slipped out of my hand, but from its weight I could tell it had to be the ball inside, and by then I also knew that the blood could only be pigeon blood. All at once I saw Puju spring up out of the wheat, and I shouted, "I have the ball here in my hands, so let's run," but Puju just stood there at the edge of the wheat field, staring at the watchtower, and when I got up to him I also turned around to look, Romulus was leaning out of the blind with a Young Pioneers bugle in his hand and Remus was climbing down the ladder lightning fast, even though he was hanging on with one hand only, because there was a lit torch in his right
hand, and then the bugle blared, Romulus was playing some march, I didn't recognize it but I knew he had to be sounding the alarm, and now I saw the other-streeters leap up out of the wheat all over the place and start running toward the watchtower, and I was sure they wanted to catch me, to knock me off my feet and get back the ball, but I looked back again and saw Remus Frunza reach the edge of the field and stop and lower the torch to the ground. And suddenly I remembered all that pitch poured between the rows of wheat, and in no time I heard it crackling into flames and I knew what would happen and why they said I should run as hard as my lungs could take it, but by then the flames were right beside me as they raced along between the rows of wheat, at first the wheat itself didn't go up in flames, only the pitch was burning in a long winding band between the stalks, and then everyone began shouting at once, the our-streeters and the other-streeters too, everyone had already sprung up out of the wheat as the band of flame split in two and then branched off in all directions, and by then the wheat was on fire too, the stalks were burning with high yellow flames, they didn't give off too much smoke, but even so there was enough smoke so you couldn't see the apartment blocks or even the city, I could hear kids start coughing all over the place, and by then even the our-streeters were getting the hell out of there, not in as orderly a way as the other-streeters but all over the place, out toward the Big Tree or the watchtower, and in the meantime I was still running straight for the flames, clutching the fertilizer bag with all my might and shouting for Prodán to come already and take the fucking ball, even though I knew the battle was over, that I should turn around and run out of the field because by now the stalks and even the grains were roasting like fat, but I still couldn't bring myself to turn around, I just kept going right toward the flames, and by then my mouth and even my lungs were full of stinging black smoke, I could feel
a coughing fit erupting in my throat, and then someone I didn't recognize ran past me shouting and beating at the air, but I went on running at the fire anyway. I knew I should stop and I also knew I wouldn't, that I'd run right through that sea of flames even though I knew I wouldn't get across, and then I saw someone flailing his arms in the smoke, and suddenly I thought of Puju and wondered where he could be and what happened to that mouse we wanted to scalp. And by now I was closer than ever to the flames, the wheat stalks were crackling exactly like machine-gun fire in the movies, and I knew I was about to fall down and the ball would go flying out of my hands straight into the middle of the blaze, the flames before me were still really high and yellow, and then all at once I heard Romulus Frunza calling out my name really loud, shouting that I was now about to die, and I looked behind my shoulder and saw Romulus sitting there on his big brother's shoulders as if he was on a horse, Remus was running straight toward me and screaming that I was done for, and Romulus was spinning a lasso above his head, I heard the swishing of the noose and then all at once I threw myself toward the flames, but as soon as I left the ground I felt the noose fall on my head and tighten around my neck, it yanked me so hard that I fell back and the fertilizer bag dropped from my hands and rolled, along with the ball, into the burning wheat. I brought my hands to my neck to grab the rope and I heard Remus screaming at the top of his lungs, "Hurrah!" and he started running back toward the watchtower, his kid brother was still there riding him, they were dragging me along behind them at the end of the rope, I turned to my side to try taking the noose off my neck or at least to stand up, but my hands hurt too much, and as they hauled me along my feet kept coming out from under me and the flames got even higher, by then the fire was crackling louder than ever, and suddenly a great big thunderous boom came from the direction of the collective farm. I remembered what Puju had said about the harvest and the gasoline, and I knew the fuel must have caught fire too, and again I saw someone moving in the flames, and I wanted to shout, "This way, run this way," and the booming was getting louder, it was like thunder only much more powerful, and as the Frunza brothers dragged me along behind them, my T-shirt slid up and the cardboard armor turned and came halfway out, and I reached a hand down to take it out, but that just made the rope tighter around my neck. I felt like I was about to faint, but right then I saw someone jump up out of the wheat to my left, it was Big Prodán, he'd tied his T-shirt over his mouth and nose, and with that machine-gun-shaped blowgun held out in front of him he ran straight for the Frunza brothers, the bayonet was fixed to the end of the longest PVC pipe, and I figured he'd use that to hit Remus on the back, but instead Prodán turned to his side and body-checked Remus really hard from behind, which made Remus fall flat on his face and sent Romulus flying off his big brother's back and tumbling into the wheat, and I reached for my neck and pulled off the rope, my right hand hurt so much it felt like the skin had come off completely. I got up on my knees and coughed, and I saw Prodán thrusting his bayonet toward Remus and then all at once I heard a loud hissing, everything was covered by thick black smoke much more bitter than even our war paint, I wanted to stand up and run back to the watchtower so I wouldn't have to breathe it in, and meanwhile the booming got louder, but by now I heard the fire crackling all around me, and I knew for sure that I wouldn't have the strength to get up, that I'd wait there on my knees for the flames to swallow me whole.

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.

B
Y 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.