The White King (27 page)

After rummaging about a little in the table's drawer, Pickax took out a spool of thread, pulled a long sewing needle from his jacket collar, and told me to give him my jacket, so we could do something useful in the meantime. He broke off a length of thread with his teeth, passed it through the eye of the needle, and began sewing up my jacket with nimble little stitches. From the way the skin on his face stretched tight, it was obvious he was concentrating really hard, the pockmarks looked deeper, and his thick, milk-blond eyebrows twitched as he leaned really close to the jacket, his hand working rapidly, and it was so quiet that I could hear the swishing of the thread between his fingers, as if the birds, which I couldn't hear at all, weren't even there. When I then asked Pickax where he'd learned to sew this well, all he said was that a long time ago he'd been training to become a taxidermist. "But better to forget about that, yes," he sighed, "that was a different life," and Pickax looked up at me, bit his lips, and asked me to tell him about my dad. My belly knotted up and I knew I should say, "No, I won't say a thing, it's none of your business," but then somehow this old memory hit me from when I was in nursery school, and I started telling Pickax about how back then my father hardly ever came to get me after school, he was so busy that I usually saw him only at night, but one winter afternoon for some reason he did come get me, he wanted to help me tie my shoes even though I'd been tying them by myself for years. I was big already, just six
months away from starting school, so I didn't even want to hold his hand, but the fog was thicker than I'd ever seen, cottony thick and white as snow, my father said it was like sour cream, you could see hardly two feet ahead, even the yellow headlights of cars got lost in that fog, which sucked up light like a sponge, I remembered looking down and barely seeing even my own legs. Anyway, then my father took my hand just so we wouldn't lose each other, and he began telling me about Roald Amundsen, the famous Norwegian polar explorer, about how Amundsen once crossed all of Greenland on skis, except that by the end he got so lost in the fog that he didn't find his destination, his friend's hut, and figuring that his compass was shot, he turned around and with superhuman strength he struggled his way back to where he began, and a couple of months later he got a letter from his friend, and in it, his friend told him he found ski tracks on that day two yards from his hut, yes, that's how deceptive and dangerous fog can be. Back then my father's voice was all raspy from night work and cigarettes, but the fog really softened it up, it hardly seemed to be my father's voice at all, and I held his hand as we walked along, and I was thinking we were lost for sure, just like Amundsen, that we'd long passed by our apartment block and were on the far side of town by now, only that my father didn't dare admit it, he didn't want to be ashamed in front of me, but I felt as if we'd been going for a long time already, and my father was still telling me about Amundsen, about how he found the Northwest Passage, but by then it was obvious from his voice that he was nervous, and then, right when I was sure that we were lost forever, suddenly I tripped on something, and I looked down and saw that it was the step leading up to the entrance to our building, and I was so relieved and happy that I cried out, "Wow, we got home, we really got home!" and it was like my father didn't even notice how happy and relieved I was, no, he just went on telling me about how Amundsen's boat, the
Gjoa,
met up with a San Francisco whaling ship in the Bering Strait after three years, and how happy they were to have found the Northwest Passage, to succeed in accomplishing a mission that so many before them had undertaken in vain, that so many courageous polar explorers had paid for with their lives, and even though the Northwest Passage didn't fulfill the hopes people had for it from a commercial point of view, its discovery was really important all the same. And as we went up the stairs I realized that my father knew full well I'd been thinking we were lost, but because he didn't want me to feel ashamed about it afterward, he didn't want to be obvious about having noticed it. When I realized this, I got so ashamed that by the time we reached the fifth floor I was almost crying, that's how sorry I was about doubting my father even for a moment. That story hadn't popped into my mind since then, even though I once had to answer quiz questions out loud in class about Amundsen, but not even then did I remember the story, no, it was like I didn't want to remember at all that I might ever have doubted my father. Anyway, after telling Pickax about this I fell silent and shook my head and looked at him, and I said that I didn't even know why I'd thought of this story just now, and I especially didn't understand why I was telling a complete stranger, but Pickax told me not to be sorry, it was a really nice story, and then he gave back my jacket and told me to just try finding even a trace of a rip on it. After putting the thread back in the drawer he raised a finger and whispered, "Listen up, now, quietly, quietly," and he himself began listening so attentively that he didn't even take a single breath, so I also held back my breathing, and it got completely quiet around us, and then all of a sudden a titmouse started twittering, and from the opposite wall another one answered, and then a third bird called out, I couldn't tell what kind it was, but by then a fourth was singing, and a fifth, and then all of them, but not at the same time, and not helter-skelter either, like when we came in, but according to some really complicated order, as if one great big song had formed from all those little ones, it was like a real concert only a lot louder, and there we sat, Pickax and I, right in the middle of it. It lasted for a few minutes, maybe even fifteen, and meanwhile Pickax shut his eyes and just sat there listening, smiling all the time and swaying back and forth in his chair, and my legs began moving and a couple of times I too rocked in my chair as the air around us became completely saturated with a strange, vibrating birdsong, as if we were sitting in steam or thick warm fog, and my head was on the verge of throbbing again. But then the birds must have gotten tired because their singing started slowly unraveling, and once more you could hear this bird or that bird apart from the crowd.

Pickax then gave a big sigh, wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, looked at me, waved a hand toward the birds, and whispered that they couldn't stand being so close to each other, that's why they were singing, and what we heard as such heartwarmingly beautiful music was really just shouting, swearing, and threatening, because songbirds actually hate one another's guts, a person couldn't even think how much. Golden orioles are the most savage, they're even feistier than the skylarks, lots of times they just die on account of being locked up, but until then at least we could enjoy their voices because to our ears this was singing, beautiful singing. Pickax said I couldn't even imagine how much work it took to make this concert, how much he had to experiment with where to put each bird, how one particular bird reacted to another one, no, this was the product of many years of work, and when he was transferred here he almost had to start from scratch, but it was worth it because you could hear singing like this only in heaven, and maybe not even there. "That's right," I said, "never in my life have I heard anything as beautiful," and then I got on my school jacket and thanked him for sewing it and for helping me, and I told him he was really a good person, and I thanked him very much but said I now really did have to go because my mother would be worried sick by now.

Pickax then said all right, I should go if I wanted, but that he'd like me to see what he invited me over for, because it was much more important than the birds even, it was something no one had seen in a really long time.

With that, he unbuttoned his jacket and took a yellowed envelope from the inside pocket and put it down in front of me on the table. I reached out for it at once, but Pickax told me to wait, first he wanted to ask me something, he wanted to know what I knew about what had happened to his face. So I told him what I heard from the other workers, that he'd caught smallpox down on the Danube Canal and he was lucky he didn't die, but that it had scarred his face forever. Pickax shook his head and said, "No, that's not true, but just what the truth is, it's best you don't know that." It went without saying that ugly things had happened to him, he explained, that was plain enough anyway, but when they took off his bandages and he looked in the mirror for the first time afterward, he fainted, and when he came to he couldn't remember his old face anymore. Pickax then pointed at the sealed envelope he'd taken from his pocket and said it contained his old ID holder, which was returned to him when he was let out of the military hospital. There, in that ID holder, was the only picture of him from back when his face was in one piece. Not that he was a coward, but he never had gotten up the courage to look at that old picture, no, instead he always lied that he lost it, and he'd had a new ID made with this new face of his. Pickax then got all quiet and looked down at the envelope and then up at me, and he said he wanted to ask me a big favor, I shouldn't say a thing, I should just take the ID holder out of the envelope, open it up, look at that old picture, and then slip it back in, put the ID holder back in the envelope, take it with me, and hang on to it. That's all he was asking me to do, he knew it was no little matter, but it would mean a lot to him, and if I did it, then he would ask that when I think of him from now on, I should try thinking of him with that old face of his, I should try imagining what he would look like now, after so many years, how he would have gotten older, where the wrinkles would be. Sure, he knew this would be hard, and he wouldn't even mind if it didn't work, but he was asking me all the same to give it a try because it would make his life a whole lot easier. Of course, if I thought I didn't have the strength or the courage to do it, then I didn't have to, I could feel free to go home.

I looked at Pickax, at his face with all those wounds and scars, and I said, "All right, I'll do it," so I opened the envelope, whose yellowed paper was so thin from being carried around in his pocket that some of it crumbled in my fingers, and I took the ID holder out, the national coat of arms and the words had completely worn away from the gray, greasy cover, and I opened it at once and looked at the picture, which was right there on the first page, it was a poor-quality black-and-white photo, Pickax couldn't have been any older than seventeen, his hair was parted neatly on the side, he was smiling, and he was in a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. His Adam's apple really stuck out, and his name was typed underneath in Cyrillic letters, not that I could read it, but I didn't want to either, instead I looked at his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his smooth clear skin, and the overall contours of his face, and even though he was smiling, the way his mouth curled sharply upward at the edges gave him a look of unyielding severity, but anyway, I then tried imagining what he would look like now, just like he'd asked, but I couldn't really do it. While looking at that young man's face I somehow thought of my father, of the picture of him that I'd taken out of his old military ID holder, and I could feel a tear trickling out of each of my eyes, and then I closed Pickax's ID holder, slipped it back into what remained of the envelope, put it in the inside pocket of my school jacket next to my ivory white king, and I looked at Pickax and thanked him and said I'd take good care of it, and those two teardrops flowed all the way down my face, and after wiping them away with the back of my hand I said, "I'll be going home then."

Pickax stood up, came over beside me, put a hand on my shoulder, and said thanks, that I was a really brave boy, that my father would no doubt be awfully proud of me. I nodded and said sure, but I just wished I knew how he was because maybe Mother was right, maybe he would never come home again.

After taking his hand off my shoulder Pickax said that if I wanted, he could show me my father. An old Lipovan had once taught him to see faraway through a mirror, did I want him to give it a try? He didn't like doing this sort of thing, but if I asked him, he would. I knew I should have said I didn't believe in this stuff, but instead I said I wanted him to give it a try, and Pickax said all right, but I had to promise not to tell anyone, and so I promised. Pickax turned around and went to the wall, where he opened one of the cages and took out a little bird and told me not to watch, but by the time I turned my head it was too late, he'd already wrung its neck, which let out a soft crack. He then came over to the table, pulled out a pocketknife, and cut off the two wings of the bird, which was just a sparrow, and after throwing its body onto the ground he scooped up a handful of thick loamy mud, held it in front of me, and told me to spit on it, and so I did. Suddenly Pickax reached for my head and ripped out a strand of hair, which he then pressed onto the ball of mud. Then he pulled the big sewing needle from the spool of thread, put it in my hand,
and
said that all we needed now was blood, that I should prick my thumb and let three drops fall onto the hair. The needle was so sharp that at first I could hardly feel it pierce my skin, only when I pulled it out and the blood started dribbling in big red drops did my thumb begin hurting. Holding the ball of mud under my fingers, Pickax waited until three drops of blood dripped onto the hair, and after telling me to suck out the wound so it wouldn't fill up with pus, he went about kneading the mud while chanting words I barely understood, and nice and slowly he shaped a human figure. It looked more like a rag doll than anything else, its arms and legs were just barely formed, and as a finishing touch he stuck the two sparrow wings in its back, making it look like some ugly angel. Next he went over to the back wall, took a flashlight and a little shaving mirror out of a toolbox, put an empty beer bottle on the table, leaned the mirror up against it, and put the doll in front of the mirror. Pickax told me to look into the mirror but to keep my eyes on the reflection of that little mud figure, and so I did. He then asked me what I saw, and I said that all I could see was the doll and nothing else, and Pickax said that was okay, that's all I needed to see just now. Then he picked up the flashlight, pointed it at the mirror, and explained that in a second he'd turn it on, and when he did, the light would shine right back into my eyes from the mirror and would be blinding, but that not even then should I shut my eyes or look the other way, and I shouldn't blink either, no, I had to keep looking straight into the light, I had to keep my eyes open nice and wide, and I had to be thinking of my dad. When Pickax then clicked on the flashlight, at first I saw only the light and the clay doll, but then all at once the doll began to move and started beating its wings, and just like that, it flew straight into the mirror and disappeared. A chill poured through me as the mirror now billowed like waves on water, and then all I could see was brown, muddy, wavy water,
it seemed I was a bird flying above the water, but before long I arrived at a clay wall, and I started scampering up it, the grains of earth and layers of slate were clear as day. And then that image faded into the distance and suddenly I saw all sorts of ramps and roads scooped into that high clay wall and people working on them, so many people that they looked like ants, they were digging and swinging pickaxes and pushing wheelbarrows, and then the image turned, and there was my father, he was really thin and he was trudging up a ramp with a sack of cement on his shoulders, and I could tell he was out of breath, there were a whole lot of others in line in front of him and behind him, each was wearing the same sort of striped prisoner's outfit, and all at once I felt my heart up in my throat and knew I'd burst out crying in no time, but suddenly the mirror again started billowing like waves on water, and then the image faded away, and again all I could see was the light and the mirror, but the winged doll wasn't on the table anymore, and that is when Pickax clicked off the light and asked me if I'd seen my dad, and I said yes, I had. Pickax asked what I would give to bring him back from there, and without thinking I said, "Anything, I'd give anything at all," and right when I said that, the beer bottle tipped over and the shaving mirror fell off the table, turning once in the air before flopping face up on the mud floor, but it didn't break, no, it just cracked lengthwise. Pickax's face froze and he made the sign of the cross, and he said I didn't know what I was talking about. After picking up the mud-smeared mirror, he drew his finger all along the crack and said it was his fault, he shouldn't have asked me, but maybe it could still be undone, and he looked at me and asked if I would give even a life to have him back, and he shook his head as if to say no, and he told me to think it over carefully before answering, to think it over really well. The air around me felt cold, and with my eyes on that long crack on the mirror I said, "Yes, I would give a life, my life," and the mirror then split in two right there in Pickax's hands, and he said just above a whisper that it didn't matter anymore, it already happened, it couldn't be undone, he'd have me know I couldn't give my own life, only someone else's. I would lose a loved one, but my father would come home. He nodded and put a cup before me on the table, and then he filled the cup from the watering can before telling me to drink the water and go on home, and to take good care of his ID and never show it to anyone.