The White King

György Dragomán The White King

FOR MOTHER

1. Tulips

THE NIGHT BEFORE, I stuck the alarm clock under my pillow so only I would hear it ring and Mother wouldn't wake up, but as it turned out I was awake even before it went off, that's how wound up I was for the surprise. After taking my extra-special nickel-plated Chinese flashlight off the table, I pulled the clock from under the pillow and lit it up, it was quarter to five. I pressed the button so it wouldn't go off", and then I took the clothes I had put on the back of my chair the night before and dressed in a hurry, careful not to make a sound. While pulling on my pants I accidentally kicked the chair, which luckily didn't topple over but only thumped against the table beside it. Carefully I opened the door to my room, but I knew it wouldn't creak because the day before I'd rubbed the hinges with grease. I went over to the cupboard and slowly pulled out the middle drawer and removed the big tailor's shears Mother always used to cut my hair, and then I opened the lock on our apartment door and slipped out, quiet as could be, not even hurrying until I reached the first turn in the stairwell, where I broke into a run. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped outside our apartment block, I was warm all over, and that's how I went toward the little park, whose flower bed, next to the iron spout where people went for spring water, had the most beautiful tulips in town.

By then we'd been without Father for more than half a year, though he was supposed to go away for only a week to a research station by the sea on some urgent business, and when he said goodbye to me he told me how sorry he was that he couldn't take me with him because at that time of year, in late autumn, the sea is a truly unforgettable sight, a lot fiercer than in summer, stirring up huge yellow waves and white foam as far as the eye can see. "But no matter," he said, and he promised that once he got home he'd take me too, so I could have a look for myself, why, he just couldn't understand how it could be that I was already past ten years old and still had never seen the sea. "But that's okay," he said, we'd make up for this along with everything else we'd make up for, no sense in rushing things, there would be plenty of time and more for everything because we had a whole life ahead of us, yes, this was one of Father's favorite sayings, and I never did quite get it, but then when he didn't come home after all, I thought about it a lot, and that farewell came to my mind a lot too, when I saw Father for the last time, when his colleagues came to get him with a gray van. I'd just come home from school when they were about to head off, if our last class of the day, earth science, hadn't been canceled I wouldn't even have met them, they were just getting into the van when I got there, they were in a real hurry, Father's colleagues didn't even want to let him talk to me, but then Father told them not to do this, they had kids too, he said, they knew what this was like, five minutes really wouldn't make a bit of difference, and then one of his colleagues, a tall silver-haired man in a gray suit, shrugged and said he didn't mind, five minutes really wouldn't make a bit of difference here. So Father then came over and stopped right in front of me, but he gave me neither a pat nor a hug, no, he just kept clutching his sport coat all the while in front of him with both hands, and that's when he told me about how he was needed urgently in that research institute, he'd be there for a week, and if it turned out the situation was really serious, then he'd be there a little while longer until he put things right, and then he got to talking about the sea, but suddenly that tall silver-haired colleague of his came over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, doc," he said, the five minutes were up, now it was really time to go or else they'd miss the plane, and Father then bent down and kissed my forehead, but he didn't hug me, he just told me to take good care of Mom and to be a good boy, because now I would be the man of the house, time to raise that chin up high. And I said, "Okay, I'll be good," and told him he should take care of himself, and then his colleague looked at me and said, "Don'tcha worry, little guy, we'll take care of the doctor all right," and he gave a wink, and then he opened the side door of the van for Father and helped him get in, and meanwhile the chauffeur started the engine, and no sooner did the door slam shut on my father than the car headed off, and I picked up my school knapsack and turned around and went toward the stairwell because I got a new forward, one more button for my miniature soccer team, all its players were buttons, and I wanted to test the forward on the oilcloth to see if it slid as well on that as it did on the cardboard, so anyway, I didn't stay there and I didn't even wave, and I didn't keep watching that van, and I didn't wait for it to disappear at the end of the road. I remember Father's face clearly, he was scruffy, he smelled of cigarette smoke, and he seemed really, really tired, even his smile was a bit crooked. Anyway, I thought about this a lot later on, but I don't think he suspected beforehand that he wouldn't be able to come home.

A week later we got just one letter from him, and in it he wrote that the situation was much more serious than they'd figured, not that he could give details, seeing how this was top secret, but he'd have to stay on there for a while yet, and if everything went well maybe he'd get one or two days' leave in a couple of weeks, but for the time being he was needed there every moment. Since then he sent a few other letters too, every three or four weeks, and in every one he wrote that he'd come home soon. But then he couldn't come for Christmas either, and we waited and waited for him even on New Year's Eve, and before we knew it April had arrived, and no more letters were coming either. Which is when I got to thinking that Father had in fact fled abroad like the father of one of my classmates, Egon, whose dad swam across the Danube and went to Yugoslavia and from there to the West, but they hadn't heard a thing from him since then, they didn't even know if he was alive.

Anyway, that morning on my way to the park I slunk along behind the apartment blocks because I didn't want to meet up with anyone, no, I didn't want anyone at all asking where I was off to so early. Luckily no one was at the waterspout, so I was able to climb over the chain and right into the flower bed where the tulips were, and I took out the shears and started cutting the flowers, snipping their stems way down by the ground because my grandmother once told me that the lower down you cut tulip stems, the longer the flowers will last, that it's best if you just cut the whole thing, leaves and all. Anyway, at first I wanted to cut only twenty-five stems, but then somewhere around fifteen I lost count so I just kept cutting one after another, meanwhile my jacket was getting all covered with dew, and my pants too, but I didn't bother about it, no, instead I thought of Father, of how he too must have done something like this every year, he too must have cut the tulips like this each spring. Mother told the story lots of times of how he gave her tulips when he proposed, how he courted her with bouquets of tulips, and how he gave her tulips every year on their anniversary, every April 17 he surprised her with a huge bouquet. Yes, by the time she woke up, the flowers were there waiting for her on the kitchen table, and I knew that this anniversary was going to be their fifteenth, and I wanted Mother to get a bouquet bigger than any she ever got before.

I cut so many tulips that it was all I could do to hold them right, and since the bouquet only slid apart in my hands when I tried hugging it tight, I laid it down on the ground beside me, shook the dew off the shears, and went on cutting one stem after another, and meanwhile I thought of Father, how he must have used these very same shears, and I looked at my hands and tried imagining Father's hands, but it did no good because all I saw were my own thin, pale hands, my fingers in the shears' worn metal rings, and then all of a sudden this old man shouted at me, "Get over here at once, what do you think you're doing, cutting those flowers? I'll have you know I'll call the police and you'll wind up in reform school, which is where you belong," but I looked up and luckily didn't recognize him, so I shouted right back, "Shut your trap, stealing flowers isn't a crime," and I pocketed the shears and gathered up the tulips with both hands. A couple of stems fell away, but by then I'd already jumped out of the flower bed, and I heard the man shouting after me that I should be ashamed of myself for talking that way, but no matter, he'd jotted down the ID number on my arm, but I didn't even look back because I knew he couldn't have done that, since I had come on purpose in the jacket without my school ID number sewn onto its arm, and so I ran right on home holding the flowers in both hands, carefully, so they wouldn't break, the flowers were smacking against each other and sometimes touching my face, the broad leaves were swishing and swooshing and flapping about, and the smell was like freshly cut grass, only much stronger.