I had to yell to reach Kálmán, and I did, at the top of my voice; I was also tugging and pulling him to come on! because stones were beginning to hit the stiff canvas top; Prém was running and throwing stones, with devilish agility running, bending down and throwing without breaking his stride, but Kálmán was so caught up in this orgy of destruction he saw nothing, heard nothing, and I thought I'd have to leave him there, though that didn't seem plausible, so I kept nudging and pushing him and still he didn't notice that they were almost on top of us and that Prém had overtaken Krisztián; we had no time left, I had to make a decision, so I sneaked behind the tent and, holding on to branches and roots, constantly looking back to see why he was taking so long, started to climb up, trying to reach that miserable rock and the safety of the large bushes; Kálmán stopped right in front of the tent, stood up straight, and stared them in the eye; they were only a few steps away; then Kálmán bent down and with a leisurely saunter circled the tent, pulling up every single stake, kicking the looser ones free with his feet, and only after he'd pulled up the last one did he take off, running and then climbing after me.
The tent collapsed the very instant the boys reached it, and the sight clearly stunned them; they may have had some idea about what they were going to do, but now they just stood there, panting, helpless.
In the still booming wind I could hear the crunch and then the falling of pebbles dislodged by Kálmán's feet as he scrambled his way up toward me.
Their defeat was so spectacular, so final, their losses so considerable, they simply couldn't move, couldn't yell or curse, couldn't chase us; a single look couldn't possibly take in the extent of the destruction, and any move or word would have been an admission of this total defeat; they simply couldn't find an appropriate response, which gave us further satisfaction; in spite of our retreat, we were in a position of perfect advantage: we were above, looking down at them from a well-hidden, protected observation post, and they were below, in a fully exposed open space; as soon as he was next to me, Kálmán threw himself flat on his stomach to avoid being a target, and we lay there quite still, waiting; victory was ours, but its possible consequences were unpredictable, and for this reason I can't say we savored it for long; it was as if we ourselves were reappraising the dimensions of our deed; I was now shocked both by the sight of it and by my own presentiment that we had crossed a barrier into the forbidden, not with the treachery of our attack or the unexpected termination of a friendship — we could always find a nominal justification for that— but with the real destruction of real objects; we shouldn't have done that, we couldn't just simply return from that and resume our customary games; so now something even more dreadful, something fateful was yet to happen, it was no longer a game; by smashing those objects, we had exposed the boys to unpredictable parental intervention; however justified our retaliation may have been according to the rules of the game, by doing it the way we did, we had in effect turned the boys in; our victory, therefore, was an act of treason, and it put us outside our own law, too, for not only had we administered justice but we had exposed them to the reprisal of the common enemy; we knew only too well, for instance, that Prém was beaten nightly by his father, and it was no ordinary beating: his father set upon him with a stick, a leather strap, and if Prém fell down, his father would go ahead and kick him, too; the hurricane lamp and the alarm clock belonged to his father, Prém had taken them without permission, I knew that, and I also thought about it the very moment when I'd heard them break to pieces; still, it was our victory, and we were not to be deprived of its momentary advantages by petty ethical considerations or the shock induced by the extent and possible consequences of the destruction, if only because our victory had given them a moral superiority we couldn't possibly endure.
They didn't look at each other, just stood there motionless above their collapsed tent; Krisztián was still holding his stick in one hand and his knife in the other, which in light of their stinging defeat looked ridiculous rather than ominous; their faces were also completely motionless, and it didn't look as though they were exchanging secret signals to ready themselves for a counterattack but that they realized it was all over; their necks were stiff, Prém was closing his fist as if still holding the stone he'd hurled at us moments before; but if it was all over, what then? I didn't know what Kálmán was thinking, I myself was weighing the possibility of an immediate, unconditional, and silent withdrawal; we had to extricate ourselves somehow from this impossible situation, back off, slink away, quit the battlefield in a most cowardly fashion, if necessary, forget about our victory, and the sooner the better; but Kálmán quickly got up on his knees and, realizing what a wonderful arsenal he had been lying on, scooped up a fistful of pebbles and stones, leaned out of the bush, and without even aiming began throwing them.
With his very first stone he hit Krisztián in the shoulder; the others missed.
And then, as if pulled by the same string but in opposite directions, the two boys ducked and took off, one to the right, toward the woods, the other to the left; they disappeared among the trees at the edge of the clearing.
By doing this, not only did they blunt the attack and confuse us, the attackers, but they also dispelled the illusion that in their defeat they didn't know what to do.
It may not have been written on their faces, but they had some kind of plan; this running off was a planned move, not a flight, which they must have prepared right before our eyes, only we couldn't comprehend their secret signals; and this meant, of course, that there was a special bond between them, after all, something that could never be broken.
What an animal, what a prick, I muttered angrily, what did he have to throw those rocks for? using a word that ordinarily I'd never have used, but now it felt good, because it was part of my sweet revenge for everything.
Kálmán stayed as he was, on his knees, still holding the stones in his hand; he shrugged his shoulders lightly, which meant there was no reason to get excited; the curious pale splotches vanished from his face and he wasn't trembling anymore; he was content, calm, and gave me a friendly look filled with a kind of witless superiority born of hard-won victory; his mouth relaxed, the savage glint left his eyes, though in this newfound amiability there was a certain amount of contempt for me; with a wave of his hand he indicated that those two were probably trying to surround us, and it would be highly advisable to stop grumbling and turn around, because we had to secure our rear, too.