The White King (6 page)

At first Prodán didn't want to do it, no, I could tell from the way he was holding the shovel that what he really wanted was to knock their brains out, but then he started digging all the same, flinging the dirt behind him, and then the others also got down to work and so did I, the shovel's handle had a really bad grip, it broke into the skin of my palms, and the dirt was so hard that I had to push the shovel into the ground with my feet, but the shovel was so short that I had to stoop over, and in no time my back was hurting. Anyway, the work wasn't going too well, not just for me but also for the others, and while digging I kept thinking of the Danube Canal, of how hard it must be to divert an entire river, and of just what my father was really doing there, because he'd written only a couple of times, and even then all he said was that he was doing fine and he didn't really say anything else, so that's what I tried thinking of, and meanwhile my back was hurting even more, along with my palms, but I didn't dare stop working.

Of course by then Big Prodán hadn't been working for a while, no, he was walking back and forth behind us, telling us to keep it up, he even gave Aronka a good kick on the ass, but then one of the laborers yelled at him not to do such a thing again or else he'd knock his brains out, it was enough to keep an eye out for anyone not putting his all into the shoveling, they'd take care of the rest, so from that point on Prodán didn't bother anyone, he just walked back and forth behind us and kept an eye on how we worked.

At one point I turned my head and noticed that the laborers had meanwhile spread a blanket on the ground by one of the excavators and laid down on it, the one called Trajan was puffing a cigarette and the one called Feri began to eat something, and then Prodán sat down there too, and by then only his little brother was walking back and forth behind us, and when I looked back again, I saw that those guys were playing cards.

Áronka was just about to try driving his shovel into the ground when his foot suddenly slipped off the blade and came out from under him, and he flopped on his side and just lay there with one foot in the ditch as if he didn't want to get back up at all, and when that happened all of us stopped working and wiped our foreheads and gathered around Aronka, and Prodán's kid brother asked what the problem was, but Aronka didn't say a thing, he just shook his head.

One of the laborers, the one called Feri, stood up and came over and looked at Aronka and said, "You weaklings wouldn't last even a day at the Danube Canal," and then he said, "All right, time for a break," and he said we could take fifteen minutes and try to pull ourselves together, but he was otherwise satisfied with us, we'd been doing decent work, and we shouldn't worry, we could go home for lunch, but everyone had to come back for the afternoon, the work would last till dark, and he added that they'd written down everyone's name and address on a sheet of paper, so they'd go after anyone who didn't come back, no one was allowed to sabotage community service work.

The laborer then turned away and went over to one of the excavators while the rest of us sat down on the ground by Aronka, everyone was resting, Janika was the only one still moving, he was juggling the soccer ball with one of his feet, yes, he had such a feel for soccer balls that he could have kept that up all day long. I just sat on the ground like everyone else, looking at the ditch I'd been digging, it wasn't deep at all, and at all those tiny pebbles and white roots of grass along the sides, and then I pulled out my father's picture and also looked at that, it was smudged on account of my touching it all the time, but his face was still clear as day. Everyone used to say how much I looked like my father, one time I looked at myself a long time in a pocket mirror while holding his picture up to it, and I really could tell that my chin and my mouth were just like his.

So I was sitting right there and looking at the picture when all of a sudden one of the laborers stopped next to me, I could tell from his bootlaces that it was the one called Feri, and he leaned down and tore my father's picture right out of my hand. "Whatcha looking at?" he asked, and then he held the picture really close to his eyes, like someone who couldn't see well. "Who's that," he asked, "your old man?" But I didn't answer, I only nodded, and this fiery heat passed from the top of my head all the way through me, and my ears were practically on fire and I couldn't say a thing, I couldn't say yes and I couldn't say no, all I could do was nod, and my stomach was in knots, it felt as if a lump had begun moving up out of my belly toward my neck, and when it reached my throat, somehow I did speak after all. "Do you know him?" I asked, but my voice was shaking terribly. "He's there too, at the Danube Canal, you guys also came from there, huh?"

The laborer held an index finger in front of his mouth, bent down closer, hissed
shhh,
whispered that this was a state secret, and gave me a wink, and then for a long time he didn't say a thing, no, he just kept looking at the picture, turning it in his hands as if he couldn't see it right, and meanwhile he kept biting his lips, and then he shook his head and stood up straight and called out to the other laborer, "Get over here, Trajan, get a load of this, you won't believe it!"

The laborer called Trajan then put down on the blanket the piece of bread he'd been chewing, stood up, and came over. When he got there, the laborer called Feri put the picture into his hand without a word, but then he said, "Look at it good, at first you won't be able to tell, but just look at it extra careful." The laborer called Trajan looked at the picture for a long time too, turning it in his hands, but then he shook his head and asked, "What am I supposed to see? Because I don't see a thing." Feri bit his lips again and said, "That's because you're blind," and he poked an index finger at my father's face and added, "Just look at that mouth and you'll see plain as day that this is none other than Pickax."

Knitting his brow, Trajan just stared at the picture for a while before suddenly breaking into a grin. "Holy Jesus, well I'll be, damn me if that's not Pickax." Now Feri started nodding and tore the picture out of Trajan's hand, "Pickax it is," he said, "and get a load of how young he was, get a load of how nice and smooth his face still was, I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it," and then Feri got all quiet and looked at me. "So then, you're Pickax's son, are you?" and he reached out a hand, and as I took it he patted my shoulder with his other hand and said, "You can be proud of your dad, he's a really decent guy."

He shook my hand tight but it didn't hurt, and so I asked, "You two know him? You really know him?" Trajan nodded. "You bet we know him, he'll be here in no time, he's bringing the shed we'll be staying in," and then Trajan put the picture back in my hand. "Here it is, put it away," he said, and I asked, "Is he really coming here, you swear?" Even I could hear how much my voice was trembling, and I could feel my whole body shaking, like when you get the shivers from being cold. The laborer called Feri then looked at me again and asked, "What did you say you're called?" When I told him, Feri nodded. "Yes, he mentioned you, he sure did, you remember too, Trajan, huh? He said he hasn't seen you in a long time, and he'll come look you up and bring something for you."

On hearing all this I got so dizzy all of a sudden and looked down at the ground, at my shoes, everything seemed to be turning round and round, the chunks of earth and blades of grass and pebbles too, everything was spinning and I almost fell, but then the laborer called Trajan put an arm around me. "It's all right," he said, "get a hold of yourself." But I was still shaking as I then remembered my father's postcards, and how Mother had at first waited and waited for him to return, and how she always shuddered whenever the doorbell rang, thinking that my father had finally been allowed to come home, and then I said to the laborers, "You two are lying, if my father really came back he would have looked us up for sure, he would have come home to us, to Mother and me, besides, my dad isn't called Pickax, my dad isn't friends with you guys."

The laborer called Feri then grabbed both of my shoulders and turned me toward him and said, "Get a hold of yourself, how long has it been since you've seen your old man?" "Almost nine months," I said, and he nodded. "Nine months at the Danube Canal is a real long time," and then he asked, "Do you know what smallpox is?" and I said, "Sure I know, it's a disease that's been wiped out already," and then the laborer said, "Yeah, yeah, sure," and he leaned even closer to me and started whispering, but so I could hardly hear what he was saying. And he whispered that he for one had seen men die of smallpox because that disease still flares up here and there along the Danube Canal, especially in the reeducation camps, but no one's allowed to talk about those camps, and that that's where my dad caught it too, and it almost killed him, but he was lucky that on account of this they let him go, that they didn't do the whole reeducation thing with him because then he wouldn't remember a thing about his former life, which is why only his face had changed, from the pockmarks, that is, but so much so that you couldn't even recognize him anymore, and he was real ashamed about this, and that's why he didn't write to us anymore, and that's why he didn't dare look us up, because he was scared of what my mom and I would say to him, he had to gather up the courage and the strength. But when he finally got here with that shed, why then, I'd see him for myself, and then the laborer called Feri told me again not to be scared, and he held out that bag of caramels and said, "Go ahead, take some, don't be scared, you'll feel the call of blood kinship anyway, and if you're brave enough, everything will be A-okay."

The two laborers then sat back down on the blanket, but not before Trajan slammed two shovels together and shouted that break was over and that we had another hour of work left, and then everyone could go home for lunch, and we'd have to come back only two hours after that.

Even though I was still dizzy when we got back to work, the shovel seemed to move by itself in my hands, yes, I kept flinging more and more dirt behind me, and the whole time I was watching the road, but no one came, and I didn't want to be looking that way all the time, but no matter how I tried I just couldn't stand not to look, so I shut my eyes because I didn't want to see that empty road, and I opened them only when I drove the shovel into the ground. But not even that helped, because even with my eyes shut I could see my father's face before me, and as the earth crumbled I thought of the smallpox, and I didn't want to imagine the pockmarks. And then all of a sudden I heard a cowbell, I looked up and saw the shed approaching, it was being pulled by two donkeys, and one of them had a cowbell tied around its neck, the shed was really big and it was painted gray, and someone was sitting up front on top of it, someone all wrapped up in a blanket and driving the donkeys with a long stick, and then the shovel fell out of my hands, and I kept looking at that figure, there was a peaked cap on his head, a miner's cap, and even though I couldn't see his face, the way he sat there wasn't familiar at all. Then the shed came closer and closer, it drove onto the soccer field, and the driver's face still wasn't visible, and then I climbed out of the ditch and I stood there at the edge and waited, and I felt my legs shaking and my hands shaking too. Then the man yanked at the reins and the donkeys stopped, and he jumped off the driver's seat, I could see only his back, but the way he now moved really did seem like how my father moved, at least the way he held his head, and by then everyone was looking at me, the laborers and everyone else, and I took a step toward the person on top of the cart, and then suddenly he turned and looked right at me and threw the blanket off himself, which is when I saw his face. It was nothing but pockmarks, I couldn't make out his features at all, the pockmarks were really deep and they flowed together, besides, they were spread thick with some sort of whitish cream that gave his whole face a greasy glitter, and when he saw that I was looking at him, he smiled, and I wanted to look only at his eyes and at his mouth, and by then I knew he wasn't my father, no he wasn't, no way could he be my father, but I took a step toward him all the same, and my mouth opened up and I cried out, "Father," even though I knew it wasn't my father I was looking at, I knew the laborers had lied, but I said it anyway, and because I'd said it, for just a moment I thought maybe, just maybe, I was wrong, that this was my father after all, because he was still smiling at me, and that made me even more scared, and I felt a chill come over me, and then suddenly everyone around me burst out laughing, Trajan and Feri and the Prodán brothers and all the others, and even the pockmarked laborer, who, I was now certain, was not my father, and as that blaring laughter came at me from all directions, I reached inside my pocket and felt my father's picture, and I knew I was about to cry, and I clenched my teeth and turned away and took off running toward our apartment block, and I could still hear them laughing at me, and although I had no idea what I would say to Mother, I just ran and ran toward home, wishing I would never ever get there.

I
WAS SITTING
on a bench behind our apartment block, up by the path on the hill, hammering away with a brick at my new pocketknife, it was a classic, with a fish-shaped metal handle, except the blade had come loose, it snapped shut nearly every time I stuck it into a tree or something, and I was scared it would cut my fingers. So that's what I was trying to fix, except the brick wasn't hard enough, it did no good slamming it down really hard on the rivet, it wasn't worth a damn except to get my school pants and my hands covered with brick dust.

Not too many people took that path in the afternoons, I'd been sitting there a half-hour already and only old Miki went by on his way to the waterspout, and I said hello, I wasn't scared of him even though others told stories about the things he did during the war before he went blind, but what did I care, he was always nice to me. Even now, when I said hello, he stopped and waved his white cane toward me and said, "Hey there, Djata." He recognized everyone right away from their voices, he may have been blind but he sure did know which way he was going better than lots of other folks. Anyway, he had a huge three-quart jug with him that he was holding by the handle, and I knew he was taking it to the spout because someone once lied to him that if he drank three quarts of water from the King's Well every day, he'd see again.