He fell silent. His face went from white to green, like a forest in springtime. He took a few deep breaths like someone about to sneeze, then he threw up. Vomiting is not a typical allergic symptom, but I got scared nevertheless. Karcsi spat, then looked up.

‘It was awful. Like raw fat mixed with cotton candy. Disgusting,’ he said eventually. He looked at his vomit.

‘Stop looking at it, or I’ll throw up too,’ I said.

‘It’s not there.’

‘What?’

He drew closer to the pool of vomit. He smiled.

‘The piece I just ate. It didn’t come out.’

I looked. The raw flesh wasn’t there.

We waited for the better part of an hour, but nothing happened. It appeared that eating the flesh caused no reaction whatsoever. We got bored in the punishing heat and decided to go out and play.

We ran out of the attic into the burning summer sun, and we drifted away with the breeze, like the seeds of a dandelion.

That was our last really good day.

‘It could be like school for them,’ Karcsi said, as he stuffed pie in his mouth.

We were sitting by the trunk of a tree, the lukewarm marmalade pies lying wrapped in a scarf. It was an off week during processing. During these weeks the whole village cooks and prepares meals together, waiting for the next batch of crop to ripen. Karcsi and I got our hands on as many sweets as we could and ran away with them.

‘School for who?’ I asked.

He swallowed the pie.

‘For those who want to come across. From the other side.’

This made me think.

‘But where is the other side?’

He frowned.

‘Well . . . in the afterlife. Where the dead live.’

‘But where is that?’ I asked.

I couldn’t picture the dead anywhere besides the grave. What do they do, get together underground and play cards? If so, how could they be dead? What form do they take? At the time I couldn’t imagine a place that wasn’t physical. The most extreme form of fantasy, as far as I was concerned at the time, was the idea of America. I knew the place existed somewhere, and I also knew that it was impossible for me to get there because I would have to fly. Flying was also in the realm of fantasy. Since then, of course, I have flown many times to a number of countries.

Karcsi threw the rest of the pie away. He would always just eat the middle, where most of the marmalade was.

‘My dad used to say that life was like a school. It trains us for what comes after life.’

My face was a question mark. Karcsi rolled his eyes.

‘Life prepares us for death. Death comes after life. But Dad said that death was also a sort of life, only different.’

I shook my head.

‘Death can’t be like life. Then it wouldn’t be death, would it?’