The White King (8 page)

At first Prodán didn't move, but then old Miki snarled, "Whatsa matter, are you chicken about this too?" and Prodán stood and went over to the old man, who took the accordion off his own shoulder, and then, once Prodán was there in front of him, he reached out, grabbed Prodán's shoulder, and held Prodán up close to him. "Don't be scared," he said, stepping behind Prodán and putting the accordion into his hands, "go ahead and put it on your shoulder," and Prodán did put it on, and then old Miki stood right up close behind him, put his two hands on Prodán's hands, and he said, "Let yourself go, loosen up," and then one on top of the other their hands pressed the buttons and the keys, yes, old Miki began moving
Prodán's fingers, and then suddenly the accordion made a sound, then another, at first the sounds were all weird, but then little by little a sort of melody took shape, at first I didn't recognize it, but then I realized what it had to be, it was a soldier's song, when I was little my father used to sing it, but I didn't remember the words, only the melody. So that's what they were playing, but not exactly, the sounds somehow slipped out of place and the rhythm was different, and the whole song slowed down, it didn't have as much of a crackle to it, and old Miki leaned up close to Prodán and whispered something in his ear, and for a moment the accordion got almost all quiet, bellowing a single note that kept up for a while, and then old Miki leaned his chin on Prodán's shoulder from right behind Prodán, and Prodán shut his eyes, and then all at once they began a new tune, one I never heard before, it was a really complicated tune full of sudden chord shifts, it sounded like a mix of two different tunes, I didn't think one accordion could do that sort of thing, I'd never heard anything like it before. Old Miki began moving his head to the rhythm, and then Prodán also began slowly tossing his head, and the tune kept speeding up, and I saw how Prodán's fingers and old Miki's fingers were making their way over the buttons and keys, sometimes I couldn't tell whose fingers were whose, it seemed like Prodán was already playing on his own, that old Miki wasn't even guiding him anymore, and it seemed like they were dancing too, by now they were moving their whole bodies to the rhythm as if they were jumping in place, old Miki's black glasses almost slipped off his nose, and the tune got even louder. Then all of a sudden Prodán opened his eyes and his face twisted up, and he yanked his hands away from the keys and he shouted something, the music was too loud to hear what he said, but it must have been a swear word because he gave a backward kick and even tried hitting old Miki with his elbow, but the old man sure must have been holding him hard because Prodán couldn't free himself from his grip no matter what, he stepped forward and tried turning with the accordion still on him, and when he finally managed to get free, things didn't get all quiet, not yet, the accordion was still moaning away, but by now I could hear what Prodán was shouting, he was swearing, calling old Miki a motherfucking son-of-a-bitch and a dirty bastard too, and the old man nearly fell down when Prodán pushed him away, old Miki was also shouting, he was calling Prodán a chickenshit and saying he'd never learn to play the accordion, never in his life, because he couldn't stick it out, and then Prodán lunged at the old man. "I'll kill you, you filthy faggot," that's what he yelled, and I saw him reach into his pocket and pull out that pocketknife with the fish-shaped handle, and old Miki must have sensed what was happening because he tried stepping out of the way, he was beating the air with his hands, but Prodán jabbed the knife straight into old Miki's belly, and then both of them cried out at once. Old Miki stooped over the accordion for a moment before stepping back, tripping on his jug and almost falling down again, and Prodán then put his hand into his own mouth, his fingers were bloody, I saw, but I couldn't see the pocketknife anywhere, and only when Prodán then turned toward me did I notice that it was there all right, stuck into one of the accordion's folds. And then I knew right away what had happened, the knife had snapped shut on Prodán's fingers and cut his hand, and then, when old Miki stooped forward, it had pierced the accordion, yes, that's what must have happened.

Old Miki grabbed his jug and crawled on all fours toward the path, and when he found it he stood up and headed off toward the apartment blocks so fast that he was just about running, and Prodán was gasping as he then sat down on the ground and rubbed his wounded hand on his shirtsleeve, he looked at me and said he'd beat my brains out if he got wind of my telling anyone what I'd seen, and I said all right, I wouldn't tell anyone, and that's when Prodán took the accordion off his shoulder and he too noticed the knife stuck in it, and he said a swear word and pulled out the knife and stood up. Old Miki's white cane was still there by the bench, and Prodán leaned down and picked it up before sitting back down beside me, looking in the direction old Miki had gone. "I'll never play a decent cocksucking note," he said, and then he broke the cane in two on his knee and threw the pieces on the ground behind the bench.

A
CCORDING TO
the roll book, Szabi and I were supposed to be the monitors that week, but Szabi fell into the ditch at the construction site back in May and his ankle broke so bad that it had to be operated on three whole times, so anyway, he was in the hospital, and every day another one of us had to take the lesson in to him, and on account of that, Iza and I were the weekly monitors, because her name came next after Szabi's on the roster.

Before then I never spoke to Iza, who wound up in our class only in fourth grade and became the best student in no time, but since playing with her was impossible, no one liked her, and she didn't really have any girlfriends either, the teachers always told us to follow her example. "She's such a diligent orphan and always winning academic competitions," that's exactly what the teachers said. Iza's parents died in a car accident when she was little, and she was raised by her uncle, everyone in town knew he was a brute, he was even kicked out of the fire department because he got so angry one time that he almost beat someone's brains out, but it did no good asking Iza about it, she never said a thing about her stepparents or about being tortured by her stepfather even though the girls in class said her back was always covered with black and blue spots and streaks. But Iza never ever said a thing about it, so these days we never really asked her about this, and I was pretty down about being a weekly monitor with her because with Szabi I'd play tag and throw chalk, and I knew that with Iza I could thank my lucky stars if she didn't go tell the head teacher that I wasn't cleaning up.

The two weekly monitors had to stand up front at the start of each class, right beside the raised platform with the teacher's desk on it, and wait for the teacher so they could report out loud who was absent. Anyway, Iza and I were waiting there for the math teacher when the class bell rang, and then all of a sudden some kind of sweet smell hit my nose, it was like a flower smell but not completely, at first I didn't know what it was, but then I looked at Iza, and Iza just happened to be adjusting her skirt and tucking her white Young Pioneer shirt back under her belt because it had come loose, and as she did so a little sliver of her waist showed clear as day, and I could have sworn I saw a blue spot, but maybe it was just where the elastic of her tights squeezed against her, and in the meantime I could still smell that smell, and then I thought to myself that it must be a big-girl smell because Feri said girls grow up when they get to sixth grade, their boobs get bigger and their smell changes on account of becoming big girls, and indeed Iza's boobs really were pretty big already, almost as big as little peaches, and then I thought to myself that Iza had become a big girl and that was what I was smelling, her being a big girl, and right when I realized this, that's when our math teacher came in. We called him Sir Uclid, and the whole class stood up, and Sir Uclid went to his desk and slammed down the roll book with all his might, as usual,
and then he looked at us and waited for our report, and although it was my turn, I couldn't think of what to say, I just stood there all tongue-tied, but luckily Iza then stepped forward, she saluted and then she spoke, just like we were supposed to, "I report to Comrade Teacher that class attendance today is..." But somehow I wasn't even paying attention, no, I was just staring at Iza's neck from behind her, at how her long black hair hung loose and only her headband held it in place, never before had I even noticed that she had earrings, but now I saw that she had a tiny little stone set in one of her earlobes. So anyway, Iza then read out the absences and said the usual closing words, and Sir Uclid told us he accepted our report and said we could go sit down.

As we went back to our seats I smelled that big-girl smell again, it wasn't as strong anymore, but when I sat down and opened my notebook I still smelled it a little, and then I thought of Iza, and I looked up front to where she was sitting on the model students' bench, and it occurred to me that ever since Father had been taken away I was half an orphan too, and then all of a sudden I wondered what Iza looked like naked, whether she really had black and blue streaks and what her thighs were like, because the other day Feri said, "Naked girls are really interesting," but I said, "No, they're not, I don't see it that way at all, they're all the same," and Feri told me I was full of it, he gave a big laugh and said I didn't know a thing, I was dumb, it was obvious I'd never had a lover, why, he'd seen naked girls three times already, and one of his cousins even let him look between her legs, and that cousin was already all hairy down there.

And I was still looking at Iza, at how she held her head a bit to the side as she wrote, but I couldn't imagine that thing between her legs, under her panties, even though when Feri and I had talked about it he asked if I ever saw a pussy, and I said, "Sure I have, of course, and not just one," though really I had never seen a pussy at all, only the illustration in the seventh-grade anatomy book, which the older students would show us younger ones for money, and when Feri asked, "Whose pussy?" I said, "One time when I was eight years old I went with my dad to the swimming pool, and I noticed that you could crawl under the wall of the changing cubicle to the ladies' side, a regular grown-up man wouldn't have fit, but I just barely squeezed through, and then I hid behind a curtain in the ladies' shower room, and there I saw at least fifty ladies, and then when I crawled back they almost caught me, but luckily I was soaped up good and so I slipped out of their hands," and then Feri asked me if I saw blond women and redheads too, and I said, "You bet I did," and he asked if their pussy hair is the same color as their head hair, and I said, "Sure it is, it's exactly the same," but Feri didn't believe that.

But even as I thought about this I kept looking at Iza the whole time, and meanwhile Sir Uclid had started explaining something, some example, he even drew a triangle on the blackboard, an isosceles triangle, he wanted to prove that the bisector divides the sides into equal parts, but when I tried imagining that isosceles triangle, all I could think of was a pussy because I knew that pussies are triangle shaped and that drawing a pussy is exactly like drawing an isosceles triangle, and then I carefully turned my notebook because the triangle was pointed the wrong way, and now that I'd turned it, there was just enough room above it for two semicircles, which I drew as boobs, because Feri said that anyone who can draw a pussy can draw a whole naked woman too, and then I tried drawing the curves of the body, the way the waist thins out toward the middle, but the drawing didn't turn out too well, no, it wasn't at all nice, so then I began shading in the triangle a bit, and meanwhile I kept looking at Iza, the way she was copying down what Sir Uclid was writing on the blackboard, but from the middle of the bench where I was sitting I couldn't see her boobs at all, only her back and her arms and the side of her face, and as I sat there looking at her she almost turned around one time, she must have sensed that I was watching, and then I thought for sure that she'd turn around and look at me, and I felt myself blushing, and I turned my head right away and noticed that Sir Uclid was approaching from behind.

He was in the habit of giving anyone he thought wasn't paying attention a whack on the head, so I quickly turned the page from my drawing and started copying the last line from the blackboard as if I'd begun a new page, and when Sir Uclid got there he just barely swatted the back of my neck, it wasn't a real whack, and so I figured that was all I had coming to me, because by then Sir Uclid had passed by my bench, but then he reached back and grabbed my ear without so much as looking back, and he jerked it so hard that it felt ready to rip right off, and I cried out from the pain, and then I heard Sir Uclid suck in air through his teeth and tell me to bring along my notebook, and so I did, and he pulled me by the ear right up front toward the platform and he said, "Maybe you didn't notice that this is math class and not drawing class, but I'll make you notice, don't you worry about that," and he yanked the notebook right out of my hand and opened it, and he held my drawing up in front of the class for everyone to see, and he told me I should be ashamed of myself, and as he passed by the platform he yanked my ear so hard I almost fell right on the platform, and I heard the others laughing at me, and Sir Uclid still didn't let go of my ear, no, he took me straight over to the trash can and then let me go and kicked over the can, all that paper and all those apple cores and pencil shavings poured out onto the floor, and then I knew what my punishment would be, and indeed Sir Uclid really did announce that starting now until the end of class I'd be a pillar saint, and he said, "Power of two," which meant I had to stand on top of the upside-down trash can, and until the end of class I had to balance there like just that, on one leg and with my arms straight up in the air, and meanwhile I had to count in my head two times two and always multiply the product by two, and again and again and again, and by the end of class I had to come up with a number at least ten figures long, because if I didn't, Sir Uclid would automatically slap a failing grade on me for each digit short of that ten-figure number, and doing that was really hard, no one was ever able to complete it, because everyone got to four thousand ninety-six, no problem, but after that it wasn't easy keeping the numbers in your head.