By then my belly was really churning, and I felt like the whole chestnut roll was about to come right up at any moment along with the boiled potatoes I'd had for lunch, so I stood up and went out to the bathroom and clenched my teeth, I wasn't about to puke if could help it, so I stopped by the faucet and let the cold water run and then I splashed some of it on the back of my neck because I learned in school that doing that stops nausea. I even drank a little water out of my hands, and luckily that took care of my queasiness in no time, and when I went back into the kitchen, Mother was already done haggling and Mariusz was just putting the harness full of hangers back on his shoulders, and when he saw me he said that as long as it was my birthday, why then, I had a gift coming to me, and he took a wooden knife off one of the strings tied to the harness and put it in my hand, and he told me to use it in good health, but all I did was nod, I didn't want to thank him, plus I was afraid of getting queasy all over again, and then I opened the door for him to go and closed it after him too.
We could hear him clattering up a storm as he went down the stairs, and Mother looked at me and said I should be glad I didn't know what being hungry meant, and then she went back to the living room and those papers, and I hurried into my room and stood up on my bed and opened the window and just caught sight of Mariusz as he turned out onto the sidewalk from the path to our building, and I gripped that wooden knife tight and took a deep breath, but then I didn't try throwing it at his head after all, because I knew I wouldn't hit him, that he was already too far away.
14. Plenty
THE ONLY REASON I headed off toward the grocery store was because I found this huge wheel nut and two big bolts on the dirt road leading to the construction site, and I wanted to stuff the nut with match heads because I remembered Zsolt saying that if you then screw on the bolts from both ends and tie a shredded plastic bag to one of the bolts, like feathers on an arrow, and then toss the thing out the fifth-floor window, those gigantic tractor-wheel nuts explode like the devil and blow a hole even in the pavement, and so I wanted to buy some matches, at least four or five bundles with a dozen packs in each, but the pastry shop where I used to buy them wouldn't sell me anything ever since Szabi and I put a smoke bomb under the glass display case and they had to throw out all the pastries because every one of them smelled like burnt plastic, thanks to the tractor-tire shavings and shredded Ping-Pong balls we mixed into the bomb, and because of that I had to go to the grocery store when I wanted to buy matches, but at least there I could buy as many as I wanted at one time, and that's because I knew one of the stock ladies, Miss Ani was her name, but everyone called her Fat Ani because she was as big as a pig, like a house even, not that I ever called her that, no, she was Mother's friend, one time she even stayed with us for two days when her alcoholic husband chased her out onto the street, and ever since then she'd been really grateful to Mother, and whenever I asked, she always brought me unopened bundles of matches and acetone for smoke bombs, sometimes as many as four or five bottles a time, and she never even asked what I needed the stuff for, no, all she asked was if my mother was doing okay, so it really was worth it walking all the way to the grocery store, even though it was pretty far.
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.