Mr. Vászile's shack was there at the foot of the quarry wall under the prehistoric reliefs and around ten yards from the lake, it was a trailer with wheels, like the sort construction workers live in, and when we passed by it Zsolt said we should go in and see what the old man left behind, but Csabi then made the sign of the cross and said, "God forbid we should go in there because that would stir up Mr. Vászile's ghost, and the clay pit is haunted to begin with," but Zsolt said that was just a superstition, that he didn't believe in ghosts at all, though he himself had heard the quarry lake was full of bones, but he didn't believe even that, people said things like that only because they liked scaring each other, if the water cleared up enough, maybe he'd dive in and see for himself, and as for Mr. Vászile, he couldn't have a ghost because ghosts didn't exist at all. And when Zsolt said that, he pulled his hammer from his belt and took a couple of good whacks at the side of the trailer and yelled for Mr. Vászile's ghost to come forward if it dared.
At first nothing happened, but then all of a sudden something moved inside, we could hear snarling and scratching plus some groans, the whole trailer moved just a little, and I got so scared that my hammer almost fell right out of my hands, even Zsolt turned stone white, I saw, and I knew we should run away, but my stomach knotted up so much that I couldn't move at all, and the others didn't budge either, no, all four of us just stood there next to the trailer, and then I saw this white skeleton hand reach out from underneath, from between the trailer's big wheels, and then Csabi cried out, "God help us, now we're done for," and the skeleton hand was groping around, I wanted to cry out too, but I couldn't, not even a peep left my throat, and then another hand reached out beside the skeleton hand, but this one was a real person's hand, and by then I saw that even the skeleton hand wasn't really a skeleton hand but just the end of a crutch, and then the whole crutch came flying out from between the wheels followed by another crutch, and then we could hear all this swearing and snarling and panting, and we saw this one-legged man struggling to crawl out from under the trailer, one leg of his military trousers was tied in a knot up where his leg was almost completely gone, and he had long matted hair and a big black beard, and when he finally managed to pull himself out from under the trailer, he grabbed one of the crutches and sat up on his knees so he was leaning against the crutch with his good leg, and then he reached back into the trailer and pulled out a huge green backpack by its strap and took out a little corked bottle and stuck one of the crutches under his arm and with a groan he stood up straight, and that's when we saw that he was really thin and really tall, at least a head taller than even the trailer, and using his teeth he then pulled the cork out of the bottle, and he spit the cork on top of the trailer and took a big swig, and only then did he finally get around to asking who we were and what the motherfucking hell we were doing inside the fence.
By then Zsolt's face was back to its usual color, he straightened himself out right away, saluted, and said, "I hereby report to Comrade Corporal that we're looking for Comrade Vászile," and he explained that we came from School No. 13 to do community service work, that our shop teacher sent us to hammer some tin plates, and Zsolt even showed his hammer, and I saw that the one-legged man really did have a corporal's epaulet on the shoulder of his fatigue jacket, but he had only one of them, only the threads showed on the other shoulder.
At first the corporal didn't say a thing, he just looked us over, loosened the crutch under his arm, and took another swig from the bottle, and then he asked if we'd really come to see Mr. Vászile, we should tell him honestly, he said, because as far as he knew, his poor father had had no friends and no one was mourning him, why, he'd even heard that everyone was happy about his dying, folks hadn't really liked his father much, God forgive them, not even now that his father was dead and gone did they have any good words to say about him, they were talking up all this nonsense about how he threw his life away, saying he hanged himself, yes, they were out to besmirch his father's memory with lies like that, and then here we were looking for the poor old fellow with such love, why, maybe we hadn't even heard the news, and then Zsolt said, "No, when did it happen?" and the one-legged man replied that not even three days had passed, and he'd have us know it wasn't suicide, and then we all gave him our sincere sympathies and said we were really sorry and that we didn't want to bother him anymore, and I was already turning back toward the gate when the corporal told us to wait, not to hurry, because he wanted to ask us one or two things and that we shouldn't offend him by leaving him high and dry to go on mourning all alone, so all four of us then turned back, and the corporal asked how long we'd known his father, and Zsolt answered, "A pretty long time, almost three years," and the corporal nodded and took another swig, and he said he was asking us to answer honestly and not to besmirch his father's memory by being all prim and polite, we should tell him just what sort of person his father was, what we knew him to be like, and at first Zsolt didn't say a thing, he just stared at the ground, but then he finally did look back up at the corporal and say, "He was a good man, he was, strict and hot-tempered, but a really decent, really straight-shooting fellow." As Zsolt was saying this, I noticed him waving one of his hands behind his back, so then I spoke too, "That's right," I said, "Mr. Vászile was a good man," and then Jancsi and Csabi said the same thing, and they also said, "May God rest his soul."
The corporal nodded and told us we were good boys. "God bless you," he said, and then he reached out his bottle to Zsolt and told him to drink up in memory of his father, and Zsolt took the bottle and drank, and the corporal took out a handkerchief and blew his nose really loud, and when Zsolt wanted to give back the bottle, the corporal told him through his handkerchief to pass it along to the others, they also deserved it, he said, they loved his father too, so Jancsi and Csabi then also took swigs, and then they handed the bottle to me, and I too had a gulp, it was plum spirits with a real bite, it was so strong I had to cough, and as I lowered the bottle I saw the trailer door open up and three really huge sheepdogs saunter out one after another, each one was at least as big as a Saint Bernard, and their heads were as big and round as a bear's, they stopped right in front of us and they didn't bark and they didn't growl, they just stood there looking at us, but even that was enough for me to feel my body get all cold and heavy right away, and I could tell that the others were at least as scared as I was. But then the corporal clicked his tongue, and the dogs all sat at once, and the corporal said he was sorry, he didn't want to scare us, the dogs had come out at the sound of coughing because these dogs, they were real man-killing machines, but we shouldn't be scared, they wouldn't bother us, the only thing we had to be careful about was to avoid running, because then the dogs would catch us for sure because it's coded into their genes that a running person has to be wrestled to the ground and mauled, so we shouldn't even think of running from them, no, we should move nice and slowly instead, and we shouldn't look directly in their eyes, and as long as we didn't do any of that we wouldn't suffer any harm, and then he took the bottle from my hand, drank down the rest of the plum spirits, and flung the bottle into the quarry lake, and he gave a big sigh and said the only thing he was ashamed about was that he arrived late, that he couldn't be there at his father's burial, he left as soon as he got word, he did, but they buried the poor old fellow really quick, it's just awful that he couldn't say a proper goodbye, and now he'd been here for half a day already, but he hadn't yet gotten up the courage to go inside his old man's shack, no, he'd sent the dogs not long ago so they could look around a little, that's all, because he could remember this trailer from when he was a kid, and he was pretty scared of memories, though we had to believe him that he wasn't a coward, he didn't even know why he was telling us all this, we were kids, we wouldn't understand anyway, but he had to tell someone all the same, and for some reason he felt he could trust us. And so he'd ask us for a big favor, we had the time as long as we came here to work anyway, so we should be so good as to help him take stock of his father's estate, he was afraid that he wouldn't have the strength to do this alone, of course sorting through things while on crutches wasn't easy to begin with, and as he said this he waved one of his crutches toward us, which made the dogs growl, and then Zsolt said that this was only natural, it was the least we could do. The corporal nodded and again blew his nose and said he really appreciated it, he saw right at the start that he could count on us, and then he pointed to the picnic chair, the folded-up metal picnic table, and the great big sun umbrella leaning against the side of the trailer, and he said we should begin by setting up the sunshade and putting the chair and the table underneath, because he wanted to just sit around here a bit like his father used to do, and then we could start emptying out the trailer so he could take stock of what his father left behind.