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.
5. Jamming
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.
Except for him I didn't meet anyone at all, no, I just sat there hammering away at my pocketknife, thinking how bad it must be, being blind, living in darkness forever, seeing only with a cane, and right when I thought this, all of a sudden someone put his hands over my eyes from behind me.
I was waiting for whoever it was to ask me who I thought it was, and I even tried figuring it out, but he held my eyes shut really tight so I couldn't see a thing, he had pretty big hands, I felt that right away, and also the fingers smelled of cigarette smoke. It couldn't be Janika, he never smoked, and it couldn't be Feri either, he'd gone away to his grandmother's for a week. "All right, Lad," I said, "let me go. I figured out right away who you are, huh," but the two palms were still stuck to my eyes, it seemed like he was pressing his hands harder and harder. "All right," I said, "you're not Laci, but don't go cheating, because if you don't ask me who you are, how am I supposed to figure it out?"
But he still didn't say a thing, all he did was start pulling my head back nice and slow until my neck was really strained and my back was pressed tight against the wood board of the bench. "Go to hell," I said, "go to hell, fuckit, don't cheat or I'll knock your brains out," but not even then did he let me go. I tried pulling my head out of his grip, but he held it tight, and I told him to watch out because I had a knife with me, and then all of a sudden I felt his breath against my neck as he leaned really close to my ears and whispered, "That's right, Djata, you got a knife with you, that's just the problem, because it's not your knife, you cheated my kid brother out of that knife," and by then I knew who it was, yes, I'd heard his voice, so I knew it had to be Big Prodán.