The whole thing started when it turned out that the new sewage line would pass right through the middle of our soccer field, which meant we had to go over to the soccer field used by the kids one street over whenever we wanted to play. At first their field was supposed to be dug up too, but then one day the workers left and never did come back, even though their tool shed was still there by the ditch. Anyway, the other-streeters, which is what we called those kids, let us play there until the day the Frunza brothers, orphans who moved there to their grandfather's place, beat up Zsolt, who until then was the strongest other-streeter, yes, the two Frunzas took over their gang and said we couldn't go there anymore, meaning we could go only if we paid, and when Big Prodán laughed in their faces and said, "What do you think this is, a soccer field is public property, you can't just take it over," then Romulus Frunza said, "Folks don't go talking back to my big brother," and then Remus Frunza flicked out a switchblade and stabbed Big Prodán in the shoulder so fast that Prodán didn't even have time to pull out his own pocketknife, and right when he put a hand to his shoulder, the leather ball his cousin sent him from Yugoslavia fell out of his hands, and Romulus Frunza leaned down and picked up the ball and said that from now on the ball was theirs and that Prodán could thank his lucky stars they hadn't stabbed him in the belly, because that shoulder wound was nothing, it would heal in a week, his big brother hadn't stabbed deep, no, he'd given Prodán just a little taste of his knife. Romulus Frunza then started bouncing the ball on the ground and said, "Well, that's that," and if we didn't like it, we could go to war with them, they'd send us a declaration of war with all the details written down precisely, and just so we'd know, the battle would be up on top of the hill in the wheat field behind the apartment blocks, and it would be life or death, our side would have to attack, and if we got as far as the watchtower at the edge of the woods and then escaped with this here leather ball, then we'd have to get the ball only as far back as the Big Tree, and if we did that, we'd win, and then we'd not only get back the ball but we could also use their soccer field for free whenever we wanted. But they knew that nothing would come of this, we were such scaredy-cats that even the declaration of war would make us shit our pants, no way would we be brave enough to stand up to them, said Romulus Frunza, no fucking way, that much was obvious on account of how Prodán just stood there without a word, letting them take his blood.
At first Big Prodán didn't say a thing back, he just took his palm off his shoulder, his whole hand was drenched with blood, I saw, and not only his palms but every one of his fingers, and then he looked at his palm as if he was seeing it for the first time, and suddenly he said, "Blood can be washed off only with blood," and he took one step forward and he gave Romulus Frunza a helluva slap on the face, so hard that Romulus staggered back against his big brother, and Prodán's bloody palm print stayed right there on Romulus's face, and then we all turned around at once and started running back toward our street, we were scared they'd come after us, but the other-streeters just threw some big rocks our way and luckily they didn't hit anyone, and meanwhile we could hear Romulus Frunza yelling really loud about how we were good-for-nothing sons of bitches and half-blooded sissies.
The next morning the declaration of war did arrive, a bloody beheaded pigeon was stuck in the mailbox at Prodán's place along with a sheet of notebook paper that had a declaration of war supposedly written in pigeon's blood. Prodán asked Jancsi to read it out loud, it said the battle would be on Sunday in the wheat field, and they'd have us know that what everyone was whispering about them really was true, the two of them, Romulus Frunza and Remus Frunza, had both fought in the civil war, so it would be best if we all got ready for certain annihilation because anyone they got their hands on wouldn't be getting any mercy and they wouldn't even have a goddamn rock around here to crawl under and call home, and besides, we were fucking losers, every last one of us, and we were motherfucking assholes too. When Prodán heard this, his face got all red with rage and he tore the declaration of war right out of Jancsi's hand, crumpled it up, threw it on the ground, and stepped on it good, and he said that those Frunza brothers wrote stuff like that because they didn't even have a mother, their father raised them until the old man hanged himself out of despair on account of having sons like that, everyone knew that's why they ended up here with their grandfather, because they didn't have anyone else in the whole world, and besides, their saying that they fought in the civil war was a bunch of crap, the civil war was seven years ago, they couldn't have been past eight years old back then, and not to worry, come Sunday we'd show them, and until then every one of us should go make blowgun pellets, bend lots of nails, collect stones for slingshots, and put feathers on arrows, so we'd be properly armed, and we shouldn't be scared of the Frunzas, no, we'd show them they can't go fucking with us.
No one said a thing, we all just stood there tongue-tied, looking at Prodán and the bloody pigeon and the crumpled declaration of war by his feet, and then Prodán made a fist and punched an arm toward the sky three times and cried out, "Hurrah!" The nails rattled on his wide leather wrist-guard, and all of a sudden everyone else started shouting "Hurrah!" and I joined in too, but when I looked at Prodán's face I could tell that flailing his arms like that made his shoulder hurt.
Starting then, the whole week we went all out getting ready for the battle, everyone knew it would be a hard struggle because even if the Frunza brothers hadn't fought in the civil war, they were really dangerous all the same, before ending up here they lived in a village somewhere up in the snowcapped mountains to the west, and supposedly they lived there like Indians, hunting and snaring birds until their father died, and no one knew exactly how old the two Frunza brothers were, both of them were in sixth grade but Remus looked even bigger than the ninth graders, while his kid brother, Romulus, was so short he would have counted as little even among the fourth graders, but both of them were really strong and equally good at fighting, plus they knew a thing or two about weapons, their slingshots weren't made of cut-up bicycle tubes but of real upholstery rubber, for example, and we heard that the other-streeters had made themselves all sorts of secret weapons, which is why all of us made sharp pellets for our blowguns, the sort with a pin on the end. I made myself armor out of cardboard and tinfoil to protect my back, I even tested it to see if it would fit under my T-shirt and I asked Puju to shoot me in the back so we could see if it worked, but he didn't want to, he told me to remember the time we wanted to test if I could catch an arrow like the Indians do in the movies, but I told him I was younger then, a nine-year-old little runt, so it was no wonder my reflexes weren't as good, and luckily the nail on the end of the arrow wasn't too sharp so it went less than an inch into my arm, all it did was pierce my skin, the bone in my forearm stopped it no problem, sure, the tetanus shots afterward hurt a lot, but this wasn't going to be like that because we were bigger now, almost twelve years old, and besides, this armor didn't depend at all on reflexes. But not even after I said all that did Puju want to, no, I had to give him four caramels before he finally agreed to shoot me in the back three times, and of course the armor really did do the trick, it stopped the pellets just like it was supposed to, the shots felt only like mosquito bites, and I decided to make armor for the front of me too, I'd already cut out the pieces of cardboard, the only things left to do were the sewing and the gluing, around half a day's work in all, but then I just ran out of glue, so I couldn't make that extra armor after all.