M
aybe we ’ ll find
a gun,” Pitkin said, aiming his finger at the guardhouse next to the gate. “Pchooooof!” “Or even a machine gun,” Tamás said, firing an imaginary weapon from his hip. “Ratatatatatatata!” “Or a tank!” “They took all the tanks with them,” Tamás said with sudden, inappropriate realism. “A grenade then,” Pitkin tried. “Don’t you think they might have forgotten a grenade somewhere?” “Well, you never know,” Tamás said to avoid totally deflating his friend’s hopes. Darkness had just fallen. It had been a wet day, and the smell of rain and damp still hung in the air. If the rain hadn’t stopped, they probably wouldn’t have come. But here they were, he and Pitkin, and even though he didn’t really believe in the miraculous pistols, machine guns, or grenades, excitement was fizzing inside him, as if his stomach was a shookup bottle of soda. There was a fence around the old military camp, but the lone night watchman had long since given up trying to defend it against the hordes of scrap thieves and junk dealers. He stayed in his boxy little guardhouse now, the only building still boasting such amenities as electricity and water, and watched TV on a little black-and-white television set that he took home with him every morning at the end of his shift. Once he had actually fired a shot at the Rákos brothers when they had tried to steal his TV—something that had earned him a certain amount of respect. Now there was a sort of uneasy détente: The guard’s territory extended from the guardroom to the gate and the area immediately around it; even the most enterprising of the
“