The White King (23 page)

When I reached Harvest Street, all of a sudden someone ran by me, and then another person and another one, and each one turned onto Ant Street where the grocery store was, and I thought right away that I should hurry up, that they must be heading to the store because they heard that something or other was in stock and being sold, but then I thought right away that that was dumb, what could they be selling that was all that special, and besides, I wasn't really in the mood to stand in line for margarine, flour, or eggs, but then someone else ran by me too, and I couldn't resist, so I called after him to ask if he knew what was being given out, but he didn't even stop, he only called back while still running, "Nothing," he said, except by then I'd picked up my pace all the same, but I really started running only when I noticed Mr. Szövérfi walking toward me with a jam-packed plastic bag in his hand, and I saw he was eating a banana.

Sure, I'd had bananas a couple of times, but I never ever saw anyone eating one in public before, my parents always got them under the table somehow or other, and most times they were still green and we had to wait a long time until they got ripe, one time I tried eating one green, sliced up with sugar on top, but it wasn't very good like that, and Father really bawled me out when he noticed. For three years already I hadn't eaten any sort of tropical fruit, and so I ran toward Ant Street as fast as my legs would take me. I could hear the shouting from far away, and as soon as I turned the corner I saw the line, it reached all the way to the middle of the road, yes, it must have been around fifty yards long and four or five people wide toward the end, but it narrowed by the store entrance because only two people at a time fit through the door, and at the front of the line an ironworker was shaking a red-faced man in a trench coat by the collar and shouting what did he think this was, did he think they'd just let him cut in line, they knew his shifty sort inside and out, well, this time he wasn't going to worm his way in among all these decent folk standing here in line. The man in the trench coat replied that he'd been standing here before, he had to run home for money, he'd asked someone to save his place, but the ironworker shouted, "Forget it, no saving places here," if he needed something he could stand in line himself and wait like every decent person, and he shoved the man in the trench coat so hard that he fell right on his behind and got all muddy, and when the man in the trench coat stood back up the worker shouted at him to get going to the back of the line, but then the man in the trench coat said he wasn't about to stand in line again and that they could all go choke on those bananas and oranges as far as he was concerned, except they wouldn't be so lucky at all, they were wasting their time standing here, in no time the store would run out of everything, and anyway they could go drop dead, and he turned around and went away, but just which way I didn't see because by then I was standing at the end of the line.

The line wasn't really moving, no, around ten minutes passed and we'd gone only about one step ahead, so I tried asking one of the ladies standing in front of me how long she'd
been standing there, but she didn't want to tell me, she only hissed for me to shut up, but then another lady did speak, she said they'd been there a pretty long time, a good two and a half hours already, and she added that I could see for myself how slowly the line was moving and that the people up front by the display windows said the line inside the store wound around the shelves maybe three times, and right as she was saying this, a commotion erupted up front by the door, as if someone wanted to come out of the store even though the door up there was supposed to be only an entrance, yes, someone was trying to get out but the people in line up front didn't want to let whoever it was do that because no one wanted to step back even a little. Instead everyone tried shoving the person in front of them back toward the door, which caused a whole lot of pushing and shoving up front, but then somehow the line edged backward after all, even the woman ahead of me was shoved back, she hit me dead-on and I too almost fell back, but by then the people way at the end of the line had begun jostling their way forward, yes, someone pushed right into me from behind and I fell forward, but by then the whole line was piled up just like when people try cramming onto a bus, and now someone elbowed me in the side and I tried kicking right back and then pressing forward even more. Sure, I was still being shoved pretty hard from behind, but then the line edged backward again, so suddenly this time I almost fell flat on my back, and I would have too, if not for all the people behind me, and then the ones all the way at the end of the line also had to take a step back because way up front by the store entrance some lady was jostling really hard to get out, you could hear her shouting, "Make room, comrades, back up already, don't you understand, step aside, can't you see my arms are full?" Right away I recognized her voice, and then as she shoved the people in line out of her way, I saw that it really was Miss Ani, she was holding a bunch of stacked
wooden crates and using them to clear a path, and meanwhile she was shouting for everyone to keep quiet and back up. "Quiet already," she yelled, "this is uncivilized behavior, it's completely intolerable, you people must back up at once away from the door, it's outrageous what you comrades are doing," yes, that's just how she put it, adding that she didn't understand what some people were thinking, where they thought they were, to be standing four-deep in line and yelling like animals instead of waiting in a civilized, courteous manner for their turn to come, so they'd better back up right this instant. While shouting on and on like that, she kept shoving people back with the crates, and finally she did manage to push everyone away from the entrance, and the line gave way and the people in it now gathered around Miss Ani or were pushed onto the street, and Miss Ani was standing by the entrance, and I could see that even on the inside the store really was full of people, they were at each other's heels by the shelves every bit as much as the people outside. Miss Ani then put the crates on the ground and took a big rusty lock from the pocket of her smock, slammed shut the front door, and in one nimble move slid on the bolt and clicked the lock, and then she leaned down and picked the crates back up and again started shoving people out of the way, snarling at them to let her through, to let her pass, she had work to do, and then all of a sudden the ironworker stepped right in front of Miss Ani, grabbed the crates with both hands, and asked her why she had locked the front door, couldn't she see how many people were waiting out here, and Miss Ani yelled at the worker, "Let go of the crates at once," couldn't he see for himself that the store was closed or, well, it wasn't really closed, but they weren't letting in any more customers, they were out of goods, they'd be lucky if there was enough for those comrades who were already inside, everyone should just go on home, there would be tropical fruit distribution tomorrow too, or if not tomorrow, then next week at the latest, it was worth coming early in the morning, she said, but everyone knew that anyway. Suddenly people started yelling left and right and the crowd surged forward, sweeping me along, and as I was shoved ahead I felt that big wheel nut drop out of my pocket, but by the time I reached out to catch it, it had already rolled somewhere among all those legs, and meanwhile the ironworker was yelling really loud that this wasn't fair, and he wrenched the crates right out of Miss Ani's hands and flung them on the ground so hard they broke into pieces, the boards flew all over the place and slipped every which way over the pavement. People were pressing toward the entrance and someone shoved me so hard I fell down and my palms got muddy, one of the boards from a crate happened to be right there in front of my eyes, and printed on it in big black letters was the word
CUB A
, but I saw that only for a moment before someone kicked the board away, and I crawled forward really fast, and when I tried standing up to keep from being trampled, suddenly my palm came down on the nut, but right then someone stepped on my calf, and as I jerked away my leg, the nut again went rolling out of my hand, but this time I didn't crawl after it, no, I was pretty scared. I remembered what Jancsi had told me about how a crowd trampled a person to death one time in the stadium, so first I struggled to my feet and only then did I try sidling in the direction the nut had rolled, toward the middle of the road away from the crowd, but then someone's knee hit my thigh so hard that I almost fell back down before I finally did squeeze out of the crowd somehow, and there in front of me was the nut, so I leaned down right away and picked it up and wiped it on my pants to get the mud off.

By then everyone was shouting and pushing and shoving like crazy, and they were scuffling too, so instead of going back in line I looked on from the middle of the road.
Although I couldn't see the ironworker or Miss Ani anywhere, people were pressing toward the door with its two thick panes of glass, four or five of them were banging it so hard that the lock rattled really loud, and that's when I noticed that another worker had fought his way out of the crowd and started screaming, "That's not the way to go about it, I'll show you how!" and he leaned down and with both his hands he grabbed one of the drain grates from next to the sidewalk and picked it up, and above everyone's heads he slammed it into the biggest display window. Well, that huge pane of glass popped right out of its frame in one piece before splintering into a thousand pieces, sending the canned sardines in oil and sardines in tomato sauce that had been stacked in pyramids just behind the display window tumbling all over the place, and by now even the folks inside the store were at each other and shouting, I heard someone yell "Fire!" and then the other two display windows also got smashed in, and I saw two ironworkers lifting the front door off its hinges and rocking it back and forth before flinging it onto the road right in front of me, the glass showered out of its broad, blue-painted iron frames and sprinkled all over the pavement, but I saw that the rusty lock was still there on the door at the end of the ripped-off bolt.

I knew I shouldn't stick around any longer since I remembered Mother begging me not to get mixed up in anything, but all I did was step back a little as I stayed there looking on, everyone was jostling their way into the store, some people ran up to the window and leaped right in, and the shelves inside toppled over and folks started throwing canned foods and glass jars outside, someone was crying for help and somebody else, a woman, kept shouting that the store was on fire, and then suddenly this old lady next to me shrieked that people shouldn't be going in through the front but through the stockroom in the rear, because if they did that, they would find what the sales clerks were hiding back there, and by the time she finished, a bunch of people were already scrambling toward the stockroom door, but they hadn't even gotten there when the door was flung open and out stepped that first ironworker, he was yelling, "Look, just look and see what they're hiding back here, take a look for yourselves!" and he emerged with a big sack on his shoulder, he put the sack on the ground and shouted that it was full of genuine unroasted coffee beans, they could take his word for it, that stockroom had everything in it that they could imagine, it really did, chocolate and oranges and dried figs and dates and crates full of Greek lemon juice, everything, understand, everything, why, it was plenty itself.

In no time people were running out of the stockroom door one after another, lugging bags and bales and crates and oranges in red netting, while others were coming out the front, not only had all the display windows been smashed in, but their frames had been ripped right out of the wall, a tall thin woman was trying to clear a path for herself out of the store using a board from one of the shelves, and under her other arm she was squeezing a really big pickle jar full of green olives, and by now people were trying to yank things out of each other's hands, two old ladies next to me were clawing at a huge cluster of bananas packed tight in clear plastic, both of them were baring their teeth, and finally the plastic ripped and the cluster came apart, and as it did, a nice big banana fell right in front of me. I leaned down and picked it up, it was really cold as if someone had just taken it off a block of ice, but right away I stuck that banana under my T-shirt at the neck, and then I saw a man trying to put all these big bars of Swiss chocolate that had spilled on the ground back into a ripped-open cardboard box, and I began heading that way so I could get at least one bar for myself. Which is when someone started shouting, "Where are the clerks, where did they go hide, now they'll get what's coming to them!" and right then I noticed Miss Ani lying there on the ground by the front door. She must only have passed out though, because in no time she began coming to, and as she tried standing up, a thin redheaded woman noticed her and pointed at Miss Ani and shrieked, "There she is, there's that fat, shameless whore!" and then two people ran at Miss Ani and wrested her to her feet, and suddenly the first ironworker was standing next to her, holding this big steel fire-hose reel that's in every store next to the fire extinguisher, he'd already wound the hose halfway off, and in no time he tied a noose on the end and hung it around Miss Ani's neck, and Miss Ani started shouting hoarsely for them to let her go, she was innocent, she didn't do a thing, they should let her go, what did they want with her, and then all of a sudden sirens blared from the direction of Long Street, from beyond the bridge, I could hear them coming closer, and someone started yelling, "Let's run, the police will be here in no time along with state security and they'll take everything back," and then the crowd surged all at once, I was shoved so hard I almost fell, but someone caught my arm and yanked me up, and although by then everyone was running back toward Harvest Street, I could still hear Miss Ani screaming, "Help, leave me alone, don't, don't do that," but by then the sirens were so close I could hardly hear a thing, and not even I was about to look back anymore, so instead I started running home so fast that I could feel the blood throbbing in my eardrums and the banana sliding slowly downward under my T-shirt, but I caught the banana through the cloth and pressed it to my belly, and on I ran.