12. Gold!
BEFORE THEN, we used to think the old clay pit was closed because its wall collapsed in the big earthquake, revealing a bunch of priceless prehistoric reliefs, but ever since Zsolt showed us a gold nugget one time, everyone knew that wasn't really why you couldn't go there, that it was actually because the quarry walls were full of gold, yes, all you had to do was swing a hammer on the slate where the veins of ore ran, and the nuggets would come flying right out of the wall. Zsolt told us he stole the gold nugget out of his dad's desk drawer, from beside his railway worker's ID and worker's medals, and he even let us take it into our hands, it was damn heavy, it was real gold, no doubt about it. Often we wanted to go to the clay pit and give it a try to see if we could really get ourselves some gold, but as long as old Mr. Vászile guarded the site with his two German shepherds it didn't work out, because he was there day and night, he lived in an old trailer and never let anyone into the clay pit or even onto the property around it, and he never kept his dogs chained, one time when Zsolt climbed over the fence on a dare, one of the dogs bit his ankle so bad that afterward Zsolt had to get thirty shots in his belly, so when we got the news that Mr. Vászile had hanged himself, none of us were sorry at all, and indeed we were glad to hear that he first shot both of the dogs. Zsolt said right away that we should take advantage of the opportunity and go get ourselves some gold before a new guard got appointed, yes, it would be best if we headed off right away, so we should go home and get hammers, besides, he was itching to see those prehistoric reliefs for himself.
Because the quarry was far away, we went by bicycle. I sat behind Zsolt, on the rack, and on the other bike Jancsi rode in front of Csabi. The fence was pretty high and had barbed wire up top, but at least there wasn't any barbed wire above the locked gate, and Jancsi figured out that if we leaned one bike against the gate, then from the seat it wouldn't be hard to climb up to the top, and we really did get up there pretty easy, and only when all four of us were inside did Zsolt say we were complete idiots not to have pounded off the lock with a hammer because then we could have at least brought in the bicycles too, but Jancsi just waved a hand and said it didn't matter, the important thing was that we got inside and didn't have to worry about those lousy dogs.
As for the prehistoric reliefs, I thought they would be a lot more exciting, sure, they looked nice and big, high up there on the quarry wall around twelve feet from the ground, I couldn't really imagine how the folks who made them could have climbed so high, but they sure seemed pretty worn, you could hardly tell what they were supposed to show, I could make out some sort of houses and animals and a bunch of human figures, a couple of the people were shooting with bows and arrows, and some were hunting for wild boar and for bears from a horse-drawn cart using a spear, plus there was a gigantic person lying on the ground, you couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and practically all that was left of the face was the eyes, the rest had been washed away by the snow and the rain, and even Jancsi said he didn't understand what was so priceless about these reliefs when you could hardly see a thing on them, but then Zsolt said he'd heard that they weren't prehistoric at all, no, the miners had made them out of boredom but then half plastered them over because they turned out so badly, and there really wasn't much to see on them at all.