The White King (2 page)

On my way to the door I thought it had to be the police, yes, that old man in the park had recognized me after all, he'd reported me and now the police were here, they'd come to get me and take me away for vandalizing public property and cutting tulips, and I thought that maybe I'd better not open the door after all, but the buzzer just kept buzzing really loud, and by now there was knocking too. And so I reached out a hand all the same, turned the lock, and opened the door.

It wasn't the police standing there in front of the door but Father's colleagues, the ones I saw him leave with on that day a while back, and I was so surprised I couldn't get a word out, which is when the tall silver-haired man looked at me and asked if my mother was home, and I nodded, thinking Father must have sent a gift with them for his and Mother's wedding anniversary, and I was just about to tell them to come on in, I wanted to say, "My mother will be really glad to see you." But before I could get a word out, the silver-haired man snapped at me, "Didn't you hear me, I asked you something," and I said, "Yes, she is home," and then the other man, the shorter one, snarled at me too. "Well then," he said, "we'll just come on in," and he pushed me away from the doorway and both of them did come right in, they stopped in the hall and then the shorter one asked which room was my mother's, and I said, "Mother is in the kitchen," but by now I was leading the way, and I called out to Mother that Father's colleagues were here, that they must have brought a letter from him or maybe he'd sent some gift.

And right then Mother was drinking water from the long-eared mug we usually used to fill the coffeemaker, but her hand stopped in midmotion, she looked at me but her eyes then fixed on Father's colleagues, and I saw her turn pale behind
the mug, which she then lowered, and I saw her mouth turn to stone like it did whenever she got really angry, and then, in a really loud voice, she asked Father's colleagues, "What are you doing here?" and she slammed the mug on the counter so hard that all the water splashed right out, and she said to them, "Get out of here," but by then both of them had followed me into the kitchen. The tall silver-haired man didn't even say hello, but instead he said to Mother, "What is this, you haven't even told the kid?" And then my mother shook her head and said, "That's none of your business," but the tall silver-haired man said, "Well, that was a mistake because he'll find out sooner or later, anyway, best to get this sort of thing over with from the start, because lies breed only lies," and then Mother gave a laugh and said, "Yes, of course, you two gentlemen are the guardian angels of truth," and then the shorter one told Mother to shut her trap, and Mother really did turn all quiet, and the silver-haired man stepped in front of me and asked, "Hey, son, do you still believe that we're your father's colleagues?" I didn't say a thing, but I felt my body turn cold like in gym class after a timed run when you have to lean forward because there's no other way to catch your breath, and then the silver-haired man said, "Why then, I'll have you know that we're not your father's colleagues, we're from the state security service, and your father's been arrested for conspiring against the state, so it'll be a while until you see him again, a good long while at that, because your father is shoveling away clear across the country at the Danube Canal, which they're digging to shorten the winding Danube. Do you know what that means?" he asked. "It means he's in a labor camp, and as scrawny as he is, he won't be able to take it for long, and he'll never come back from there ever again, maybe he's not even alive anymore, who knows," and as he said this Mother took up the mug from the counter and flung it on the floor so hard that it broke into pieces, and the officer then got all quiet, and for a moment you couldn't hear a thing, but Mother then said, "Enough of this, stop it right now, if you want to take me too, then take me, but leave him alone because he's a child, understand, leave him alone, and tell me what you want, tell me what you're doing here."

The shorter man said they'd just been passing by and as long as they were here anyway, they figured they'd look around a bit, maybe they'd find something interesting in the doctor's room.

Mother asked if they had a search warrant, and the tall silver-haired man smiled at her and said they didn't need a warrant for every little detail, that there was nothing wrong with their looking around a bit, besides, he didn't think we had anything to hide.

Mother now said really loud, "You have no right to do this, get out of here, go. If you don't leave right this instant, why then I'll go to city hall and stage a sit-down strike, yes, I'll publicly demand my husband's release, what is this, keeping him locked up for half a year already without a trial and without a sentence? Be this country what it may," she said, "we have a constitution all the same, we have laws all the same, searches still require a warrant, so you'd better show one or get out of here, now."

The silver-haired man then smiled at Mother and said that this scrappiness really looked good on her, and no doubt my father down there on the Danube Canal must really miss her, for she was truly a beautiful woman, too bad they'd never meet again.

Mother's face turned all red and her whole body tensed up, I thought she'd go right on over there and slap that silver-haired officer, I couldn't remember seeing her that angry ever before, and then Mother really did move, but not toward the officer, no, instead she went straight to the apartment door, opened it, and said, "Enough is enough, out, get out of this building at once, because if you don't," she said, "I'll call my father-in-law." She told them they knew full well that he was a Party secretary, and although he'd been sent into retirement he still had enough friends in high places so he could arrange, on account of what they'd done here, to have the two of them transferred to the traffic division, so if they knew what was best for them, they'd better get out right this instant. Mother said this so firmly I almost believed it, even though I knew full well she would never call my grandfather's home of her own free will because ever since my grandmother said to her face that she was a screwed-up Jewish slut, yes, ever since then Mother wouldn't give her or my grandfather the time of day, but from the way Mother spoke now, you couldn't tell that at all.

The shorter officer now said that if she thought the old man had any clout left, especially now that his son had been taken away, well, she was quite mistaken, my grandfather could thank his lucky stars he himself hadn't been interned, but if my mother wanted to pick up the phone and complain, why then, she could go right ahead, and he stepped over to the counter, took the silverware drawer by the handle, and yanked it right out with such force that although the drawer itself stayed in his hand, the knives, forks, tablespoons, and teaspoons flew all over the kitchen, and the officer then slammed that empty drawer back down onto the counter so hard that its back edge tore right off, and he said, "There you are, now you have something to complain about, but this is just the beginning, that's right, just the beginning," and he bared his teeth, and I knew he was about to knock over the table. But then the silver-haired man put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Take it easy, Gyurka my boy, take it easy, let it be, it seems we misjudged the lady, we thought this was a missus with brains, we did, we thought she knew when and with whom she has to be polite, but it seems she doesn't have the sense to recognize her well-wishers, it seems she's dead set on getting herself all mixed up in trouble too. Fine, then, let it be, just like she wants." The officer called Gyurka now flung the broken drawer to the floor where the silverware was all scattered about and he said, "Fine then, Comrade Major, let's do as you wish, let's go."

The officer called Gyurka now looked at Mother and nodded, and then he turned and looked me square in the eye and said fine then, they'd leave, but only because he saw that we liked flowers, and anyone who liked flowers couldn't be bad, and as he said that, he stepped over to the table, and I thought for sure that he was about to fling that pickle jar to the floor, but all he did was pluck out a single tulip, he held that flower to his nose, gave it a sniff, and said, "The only problem with tulips is that they have no smell, otherwise they are really lovely flowers," and then he left the kitchen. "Let's go, Comrade Major," he said, to which the silver-haired man didn't say a thing but only waved his hand for him to go, and the officer called Gyurka began heading out, and on reaching Mother he stretched that tulip out to her and Mother took it from him without a word, and the officer called Gyurka said, "A flower for a flower," and he turned toward me again and looked me square in the eye and gave a wink, and he went out the door and right down the stairs.

The major then also stepped out into the hall, and Mother was just about to slam the door on him when he suddenly stepped back over the threshold, put his foot in front of the door so Mother couldn't shut it, and said, nice and calm, "You'll come to regret this, lady, because when we return we'll yank the floor right up, we'll scratch the putty right out of the window frames, we'll look under the bathtub too, and into the gas pipes, we'll take apart the whole place bit by bit, and you can be sure we'll find what we're looking for, you can be certain of that," he said before falling silent, turning, and heading down the stairs.

Mother slammed the door, but before it closed all the way I heard the major say, "See ya around," and then Mother turned and fell against the door, she just stood with that red tulip in her hand, looking at the pieces of the broken mug, the silverware thrown all about, the drawer broken in two, and her mouth winced before slowly hardening, she now squeezed her lips tight and looked at me and said, quiet as could be, "Go get the dustpan and the broom, let's pick up the pieces of the mug." And I then looked at the tulips on the table in that pickle jar and I wanted to say to her, "It wasn't true what those officers said about Father, was it, he'll come home, right?" but then I turned toward Mother and saw that she was sniffing at that single tulip, and her eyes were glistening so much that I knew she could hardly hold back her tears, so instead I asked her not a thing.

S
ZABI AND I
figured out pretty fast that chalk doesn't give you a fever at all, that it's just a legend, because we each ate one and a half pieces of chalk and nothing happened to us, we even tried the colored chalk, Szabi ate a green piece and I ate a red one, but it did us no good waiting under the bridge by the school for an hour and a half, nothing happened to us except we peed in color, my pee was on the reddish side and Szabi's was greenish. And as for the thermometer trick, we didn't dare try that either, because Mother caught me red-handed the other day sticking the end of the thermometer on the cast-iron radiator, and two weeks earlier, before our math exam, Szabi had even worse luck, he held a thermometer up against the bulb of his little lamp and the mercury got so hot so fast that it exploded right out of the end of the thermometer, and his father gave him a whipping with the buckle end of a belt, so the thermometer trick was out of the question, but we had to come up with something all the same.

If we didn't manage to get sick by the next day, we knew that it would be the end of us, the other kids at school would knock our brains out because that's when they would find out that we'd accidentally let those slot machines wolf down all our class money, the cash we were supposed to use to buy materials for a flag and for the placards we had to make to carry in the May Day parade. Yes, it would turn out we'd spent all of that money on those machines in the cellar game room off the side of the Puppet Theater building because Feri lied that every third player wins on those new automatic machines. "That's why they're automatic, after all," he said, and the first time we tried, we really did win, we won a ten, but from there on in we only lost, and in the end we only wanted to win back the money, we broke the third hundred bank note only so we could win back what we'd lost. It almost worked too, but then we couldn't get the proper rhythm, right when we pressed the button, the flash switched from
EXTRA SUPER BONUS
to nothing, and so we lost all the money, and then it didn't do any good telling the cashier it wasn't our money and that he should give it back, he just laughed. "That's a game of chance for you," he said, and if we went on shooting off our traps, then he'd see to shutting them up for us, and if we didn't want to play anymore, why then we should get the hell out of there because we were only taking space away from paying customers.

Anyway, when we got out to the Street of the Martyrs of the Revolution, Szabi and I looked at each other, and both of us knew we were in for it, and then Szabi said it would be best if we went to the station and stowed away on a freight train and rode it to coal country and became miners, because kids could work there too, so he'd heard, you didn't get asked a thing when you went to sign up for work because the coal mines always need workers. And I said he should go if he wanted, but I was staying put because I wasn't in the mood to die of silicosis. "Let's get sick instead," I said, because if we went about it properly then we could get out from under the May Day mess altogether, and then Szabi said, "All right, eating chalk gives you a fever," and so we tried it right away, but it wasn't worth shit, and even pissing that reddish pee did me no good, it didn't look bloody at all, and even its smell was all wrong, so we knew we had to think up something else. And then Szabi said it would be best if we went to the waterspout and tried to drink as much as we could stand, because if we gulped down that ice-cold spring water fast enough we'd be guaranteed a decent case of pneumonia, and that would mean at least three weeks in the hospital, not to mention that everyone would feel sorry for us, so the money would be the last thing on their minds, that's for sure.

There was hardly anyone at the spout, only four people were standing there, and while they filled up their jugs one after another, Szabi and I took turns climbing the pedestal of the statue that was missing on account of its being stolen, pretending we were the Torchbearer of the Revolution, the main thing was to stretch out your right arm in front of you as far as possible like you were really holding a torch, and you weren't supposed to move at all, while the other person was allowed to throw only one speck of gravel at a time at the one playing the statue, but not at the face, and the statue who could take it longer would win, and I happened to be up there being the statue when the last person in line filled up her jug, and Szabi then scraped up a whole handful of gravel and flung it all at me, and he said, "Let's get going, we still have to go catch ourselves a little pneumonia," and I said okay, but he should go first, seeing how it was his idea and because he cheated at playing statue, and he said he knew I was chicken, all right, but he'd show me how to go about it.