The White King (24 page)

T
HREE OF THE FOUR SCREWS
came out no problem, but the fourth wouldn't move no matter what, it did no good tightening the monkey wrench that Feri took from his dad. I sucked in a deep breath and then yanked that wrench again, but one more time the screw didn't even budge, all that happened was that the wrench slipped off the screw head, and then I heard Feri whisper, "What in your pop's prick are you shitting around for when the light might come back on anytime and then we're done for," and he said this as if I didn't also know that this vent we were in under the movie screen went into the wall no more than two feet deep, and lying there on our bellies, both of us were hanging out up to the waist, meaning that if the room lit up all of a sudden the whole school would see our asses sticking out of the vent, so I whispered over to Feri, "Leave my pop out of this, go give my ass a kiss," and even lying there like that I gave a kick his way, I think I caught him right in the side with my knee, I heard him swearing under his breath as I
gave the monkey wrench another hard turn, and with my other hand I even yanked the grating with all my might. But it didn't move, the screw seemed to give a creak but still held its ground, and meanwhile you could hear everyone behind us in the theater shouting like crazy and stomping their feet and whistling even as Comrade Principal screamed his lungs out, he was standing there somewhere in front of the rows of seats, we could hear him really close to us shouting for everyone to stay in their places because we were going to sing patriotic songs in the dark, that's how we'd pass the time waiting for the power cut to end, and no one should dare to throw anything unless they wanted big trouble, he'd have us know that the electricity would be back on within minutes and the film would then go on, and he'd see to it that anyone not in their seat when the lights came back on would be impaled and hung in the schoolyard, and he'd personally tear out their heart, he would, because the time had come for the lousy bunch of good-for-nothing slackers that we were to learn once and for all what discipline was, and I knew that even while shouting, Comrade Principal was walking back and forth and panning the theater with his super-duper eight-battery flashlight, so I tried hard not to think what would happen if by chance he passed that light under the screen toward the air vent or if he tripped on our outstretched legs, and again I gave the monkey wrench a yank, but again the screw only stayed right where it was, and then I whispered to Feri that our crawling in here was stupid, we should go back to our seats instead, this vent didn't lead anywhere, there was no secret screening room here, we should just forget it, damn it, but then Feri elbowed me in the side and said I should go back if I wanted, but he for one wasn't about to give up, he'd stay right here because he wanted to see those banned film reels, and I should cut the shitting around and give that wrench a good yank already because the lights really might come back on any second. "So don't screw around," he said, and I wanted to say that I wasn't screwing around and that he could go to hell, but instead of saying it I decided to set the monkey wrench even tighter around the screw head, and after wedging my elbow against the wall of the shaft I yanked again at the wrench, and this time the screw head broke right off, all in one piece, so fast that the monkey wrench almost dropped out of my hand, and Feri whispered, "Okay, now we can take the grating off, but careful, there's hardly any room," and I whispered back that he should say something I didn't know already, and I kept pulling hard at the grating until it finally came off the iron frame around it, and Feri and I held it from both sides, but there was just no way of turning it, it was too big for that, and so we had to back out of the vent almost completely, that was the only way we could lay the grating flat, and meanwhile the voice teacher joined the principal, but luckily he stood a bit farther over, not right beside the vent, so he couldn't tell we'd crawled out, and then we set down the grating really carefully and slid it into the vent, and that's when I overheard the voice teacher say under his breath to Comrade Principal that if he really wanted there to be singing, then he should be so kind as to light him up so the children could see him conducting, but the principal didn't say anything back, he kept swearing away because someone had just hit him on the head with a piece of chalk, so anyway, we climbed back into the vent, slipped through where the grating had been, and began crawling through the narrow shaft toward the secret screening room.

Feri was up ahead, and although at first I could hear him gasping and sometimes hitting his knee or the tip of his shoe against the wall of the shaft, he must have crawled really far ahead because before long I couldn't hear him anymore, all I could hear was the drumming and shouting from out in the main theater.

Meanwhile the shaft got so narrow that I could feel its wall brushing against my shoulder on both sides, which made me worried I'd get stuck any second, like the time I crawled into that concrete drainpipe to get the Prodán brothers' leather ball, and as I now crept ahead on all fours my back started rubbing against the top of the shaft, and I knew that even if I wanted to, I couldn't turn around anymore, and so I thrust myself forward as hard as I could, and I wished like hell I hadn't won the bet that morning.

Feri and I had made our bet right after Comrade Principal came to our classroom and announced that the first three periods were canceled so the whole school could go to the cinema and watch the documentary
A Nation Being Built
, about the five-year plan, which is when Feri said to me, "Let's make a bet about whether or not they'll cut the power during the screening," and Feri said they wouldn't because that would be sabotage, cutting the electricity during a film like that is sabotage against the state, but I said it would be sabotage
not
to cut the power because managing the nation's electric power supply was a big responsibility, and industrial production was much more important than even patriotic films, so Feri then said, "Okay, let's bet on it," and we did bet, and I promised that if he won, I'd give him my rock-shooting slingshot, which I had made by using strips of genuine upholsterer's rubber I'd got my hands on, and he promised that if he lost he'd show me where the entrance was to that secret projectionist's room in the cinema, the room his grandfather told him about, where they stored the reels of banned movies that never got into cinemas, the room that had every movie we'd only heard about but could never see, all six parts of
Spider-Man
and all the Tarzan and Zorro films and a whole bunch of cowboy and Indian movies.

Feri and I asked Janika to seal our bet by chopping down his hand on our clasped hands as we shook on it, though we weren't about to tell Janika what we were betting on, and Feri then told me that if they really did cut the power, we could even try crawling right into the projectionist's room, it was pure luck that he happened to have one of his dad's monkey wrenches with him, he'd brought it to school for fighting, but it would be just right for this too, we could use it to take the screws off the grating. I asked him right away, "What grating?" but Feri didn't tell me, all he said was that I'd find out if they cut the lights, but I'd do better to say goodbye to my slingshot because he had a feeling that by afternoon it would be his slingshot.

The Flame of the Revolution Cinema was the biggest one in town, and I used to go there all the time a while back, but by the day we went there with our school I hadn't been in more than a year, seeing as how the people's economy was in trouble and the energy industry was in special trouble, and you never knew in advance when they'd cut the power, and when that happened you had to sit there in the dark because the generators weren't working in a single cinema anymore, no, at most places even the reserve diesel oil had been stolen long before, and during power cuts you had to wait a long time in the pitch-black theater either until they didn't turn the power back on or until the security people or firefighters didn't get there to let you out, and I didn't really like it when that happened, so instead I didn't go to the movies at all. True, since they took Father away I didn't exactly have money either, but I could have sneaked in without money, it wasn't hard slipping in, you just had to know how to kick and shove a bit and also where to stand in the crowd, yes, back then I sneaked in a bunch of times when I couldn't get tickets for
The Colossus of Rhodes, Spider-Man, The Sheriff and the Space Kid,
and
Hercules Conquers Atlantis,
but the movies they were playing these days weren't even worth stealing in for, they were nothing but rehashed war movies and cheap films about partisans, like
The Seventh Comrade, Shod in Iron,
and
Long Winter in the City of Tears.

Other times we used to sit more toward the back, in the last row or the second to last, but this time Feri said we should sit up front and by the aisle so we wouldn't have to go crawling around for long in the dark if by chance I was right and they did cut the lights, and so we sat in the fourth row, really low in our seats to keep from getting hit on the head from behind with chalk or spitballs.

Before the film began, Comrade Principal stepped out in front of the screen and waved an arm for everyone to stand up and sing the national anthem, but not even when it was over could we sit down, no, we had to wait for Comrade Principal to give his speech about what a great thing motion picture presentations were, how they were one of the biggest technological achievements of our progressive age, and then he called upon us to display disciplined and devoted attention, and he wished us all a good time.

At first the film was mainly about integrated industrial works and wheat fields, it showed tractors plowing and combines harvesting and then the great railroad being built, the one that would cut right across the mountains, and next the film showed the subway being built in the capital city, at first this four-eyed comrade showed the viewer a map of where all the stations would be, and then you saw the tunnel being built right there under the ground, with this huge revolving disc boring into the earth and workers already laying concrete in its wake, and then the camera zoomed in on the revolving disc, right up to its middle, and then all of a sudden the theater went dark and everyone began whistling and shouting, and from his seat next to mine Feri said, "You won, goddamn it, let's get going fast," and he told me to hold his ankle because in the dark I wouldn't see which way he was going, and I said, "Let's wait, maybe the film just ripped," but Feri replied that if that was so, at least the exit sign would be lit, it wouldn't be so dark, and I knew he was right, but by then we were already crawling, edging forward down the aisle and then up front right across the wood floor, which smelled of the petroleum they cleaned it with, and we crept right behind Comrade Principal to the middle of the screen, and then Feri went straight into the vent between the floor and the screen, and he hissed at me not to shit around but to climb in too, and once I was lying there beside him, he whispered that he'd get out his monkey wrench right away, that all we had to do was unscrew the rat-proof security grating, and we'd be in the shaft in no time.

By now the shaft was so tight around me that I couldn't even move, I wanted to shout to Feri to come back and help except that the pitch-black was squeezing my lungs, I couldn't get any air, but then I remembered what Mother had said after the firefighters took me out of the concrete pipe and then every night afterward I was afraid of suffocating under my blanket, she told me not to think about being smothered but instead imagine I was on top of a mountain and that fresh alpine air was streaming into my nose and mouth, so there in the shaft I tried imagining that, but it did no good shutting my eyes, even then I saw nothing but darkness, and it crossed my mind that if I stayed here stuck in this shaft, no one would ever find me, I'd die right here, yes, I'd stay here forever, and that scared me so much that somehow I managed to edge forward again. As I turned to my side the wall chafed my shoulders even through my school uniform, but what did I care, I just kept crawling on, it was slow going but I could tell I'd gotten a little bit ahead, and then all of a sudden I heard Feri say from somewhere in front of me to come on already because there was another grating up ahead to detach, and not to worry, the shaft was about to widen, and he was right, after slithering just a little more I was able to get up on all fours, and I didn't even have to crawl much farther before I was right there next to Feri, and Feri said that this was where the shaft ended and that the grating was right above our heads, and he told me to reach up, I'd feel it right away, he'd already tapped it all around and figured it wasn't screwed on, and although it was pretty heavy, the two of us could handle it, so we should try lifting it up nice and easy, and then we grabbed it on both sides and pushed it up at the same time, and while at first the grating didn't budge, then it did lift up after all, and I told Feri we shouldn't knock it down because it would make a loud bang, instead we should slide it to the side nice and easy, and Feri said okay, and he said that we didn't even have to move it all the way, but just enough so we could squeeze out.

I was the first to climb out, it was dark, all I could see was this really faint red light, and as I headed in its direction I accidentally kicked the grating, and from the echo it was obvious we were in a pretty big room. By now Feri had also climbed out, I could hear him approaching, and when he got up next to me he whispered that he really didn't think we'd get this far, he hadn't even believed that this secret screening room existed, he'd figured it was just a legend like that tunnel that supposedly leads from the old fortress completely under the city all the way to the forest and the clay pit, and I then told him to shut up, or if he wanted to say something, then to whisper and not shout, and Feri whispered that he wasn't even shouting, and meanwhile we reached the red light, it was a rectangular red button lit up in the middle of this big control panel that had buttons all over it, and on the middle of the red button it said, in black letters,
EMERGENCY GENERATOR TO BE USED ONLY IN JUSTIFIED CIRCUMSTANCES,
and Feri said that as he saw it, this was a justified circumstance, and before I could grab his hand, he'd reached up and pressed the button.