Big Prodán bent down and opened up the bag, which was full of short iron-handled shovels, lots of them, at least forty, both the blades and the handles were painted with black enamel. Prodán picked one up and looked at the laborer called Feri and asked, "What do you want to do with them?" The laborer gave a nod toward the woods and said, "Not us, you're the ones who want to do something with them, a whole new neighborhood is being built up there by the woods, you know, and one of the sewage lines will run right by here, and you will all dig part of that line as community service work so you can save the state some diesel oil."
Big Prodán looked up and asked, "Where? Here, on the soccer field?" The laborer called Feri spit on the ground and said, "You bet, and in a sec we'll measure out exactly where."
After looking at the shovel and not saying a thing for a while, Big Prodán finally did speak after all. "But this is our field," he said. Trajan stepped over to him. "Sure," he said, stopping in front of him, "that's exactly why you all want to help do the digging, you're the ones who asked for it, your school, we got shovels just because of you, so enough gabbing, everyone take a shovel, the sooner you start the sooner you'll finish, you're kids, you don't need to earn your bread, so you got the time." Right then Big Prodán took a step back and said, "I don't go to school, I work at a construction site, today's Sunday, so sure as hell today I'm not taking no shovel into my hands." Trajan then swung back his arm, but he wasn't able to hit Prodán because the other laborer, the one called Feri, stepped up next to him and grabbed his arm. "Wait," said Feri, "this here's a smart boy, no sense being rough with him," and then he reached out that bag of caramels toward Prodán and said, "You didn't get any candy, go ahead, take some."
At first Big Prodán didn't want to take any, but then he stuck in his hand anyway, and when he pulled it out I saw clearly that it was packed full of caramels, and as he stuffed all that candy into his pocket he almost dropped one, and meanwhile the laborer called Feri was still holding the bag toward him. "Don't be shy," he said, so Prodán stuck his hand in one more time and again put the candy into his pocket, and then the laborer called Feri folded the bag shut. "All right, then," he said, "you'll get more later, now help hand out the shovels, meantime Trajan will measure out where the ditch will go," but Prodán didn't move, he looked at the excavators and then back again at the laborer called Feri and asked, "Can I sit up on the excavator too?"
The laborer called Feri shrugged and said, "All right, if the work goes well then I don't care, you can sit up there, you can even start it up if you want, but now go ahead and hand out those shovels, it's time to start digging, don'tcha worry, your school principal knows all about this, he okayed all of you working here every afternoon, all of you attend School No. 12, right? Tell the others that as long as they're working here, they don't have to do their homework, you'll see, they'll even be glad."
Big Prodán nodded and said, "Okay," and he picked a shovel up off the ground and gave it to Aronka, and then he handed one to each of us, one at a time, to me too. "Here you are, Djata, use it in good health." Of course he didn't give his little brother a shovel, only a caramel, and he looked at the laborers and said, "That's my brother, he's gonna help me," to which the laborer called Trajan gave a grunt, but the one called Feri just nodded. "All right," he said, "you two will be the brigade leaders, but if the work isn't going well, we'll find others to take your places, you'll see just how nice voluntary community service work can be, what a good feeling it is to build the country, you can all be proud of yourselves that even being kids you're able to take part in this, besides, if you do decent work you'll finish the whole thing in a week, and that's nothing, you should just see the Danube Canal, now that's real digging for you."
A fiery heat came over me when he said that, I reached into my pocket and touched my father's picture, I'd never met anyone who'd worked at the Danube Canal, and I looked at that laborer called Trajan and saw him pull a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, unfold it, and look at it a bit before picking a shovel up off the ground, walking to the end of the field, and thrusting the shovel into the ground by one of the goalposts. "I've done it," he shouted to the laborer called Feri, "I've measured it out, it goes straight exactly from here." Then Big Prodán and the laborer called Feri lined us up, we didn't have to stand according to height like we did at school, the point was only to stand in a nice neat line not too far from each other, and then, once everyone had stood up, the laborer called Trajan gave Prodán a shovel too. "All right, you don't have to work, but show the others how to use the tool, so get to it, drive it into the ground."
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.