By now the wind had really picked up, and I'd begun getting seriously cold, and I knew I'd start shivering soon, but I also knew that until my grandfather finished that second bottle of beer we wouldn't be going anywhere, and then I remembered what I'd read in a yoga book that Szabi lent me one time, that if you concentrate on your bellybutton then you won't be as cold, so I tried my best to concentrate on that part of me, but nothing happened, I was just as freezing as before, and I thought to myself that I should just stand up, I should get going, I wouldn't get back for the class bell anyway and maybe not even by the end of the main recess, I'd be in a heap of trouble for sure, they'd send me down to the principal and Mother would be called in, and I tried figuring out what excuse I could cook up, but nothing came to mind, and then I looked at my grandfather, figuring maybe I could see the time on his wristwatch, except that he was holding the bottle of beer in his left hand so I couldn't see his watch, but he must have noticed me looking because he turned toward me and said he'd heard that I always had my father's picture on me, and I nodded, and then my grandfather asked if it was with me now, and I said it wasn't, because I was in my gym clothes, which didn't have normal pockets, so I'd left it hidden in my school jacket, not in the pocket but on the side, in the lining, and my grandfather then gave a big sigh and said too bad, he would gladly have looked at it, because unfortunately he didn't have a single picture of my father, but no matter, if it wasn't here, well then, it wasn't, he still remembered my father's face pretty clearly, fortunately things like that were impossible to forget, and then he fell silent and took a sip of beer, the bottle was still almost half full, but my grandfather leaned up with one hand against the ground and said, "All right, let's go, we've been here long enough," and then he began struggling slowly to his feet, and I stood up quickly and grabbed his elbow and helped him up, and my grandfather leaned against me and stood, and he said thanks, and then he let me go, and with one hand he smoothed out the wrinkles on his pants, and he told me to hand him his sport coat, and I leaned down and picked up the coat by the collar and gave it to him, but my grandfather didn't put it on, no, he just lay it over his arm and picked up the bottle of beer, which was still a third full, and he said he wasn't going to finish it up, and all of a sudden he turned the bottle upside-down and poured the remaining beer out on the grass, and as the beer spilled out, he stretched out his arm and started lifting the bottle up high, the stream of beer thinned and the wind caught the drops and the smell of beer hit my nose, and the beer foamed white on the grass, and my grandfather lowered the bottle, and I thought he was about to fling it away, but he just dropped it on the ground, and he said, "Let's go," and he swung his sport coat to his shoulder and stuck in one arm, and he headed back toward the van, with the other arm of his sport coat swinging about as he tried to stick in his other arm too.
The ground had completely soaked up the beer by now, so all I could see was the black earth among the clumps of grass where we'd been sitting and the flattened grass where my grandfather's sport coat had been, and on noticing the two gold-colored bottle caps I leaned down and picked them up and closed my fist around them, and then I too headed back toward the van, after my grandfather.
18. Funeral
NEVER HAD I SEEN SO many cars at one time as on that day, on the road to the cemetery. Traffic was really down since gasoline rationing began, but cars and taxis kept going by us one after another as Mother and I went to the cemetery on foot, yes, there were even people riding bicycles in black suits, and by the time we reached the stations of the cross there were a whole lot more people walking, and everyone who went by us said to Mother, "I kiss your hand," and some even said, "My sincere sympathies," and whenever that happened Mother always nodded and gave the same reply, "Thank you, thank you very much." Sometimes people on bicycles turned their heads when passing by us, giving a wave of the hand or a tip of the hat, so anyway, it sure was something, I had no idea that so many people knew who we were, that so many folks in town knew Mother and knew me too.