We didn’t talk about it for several days. I didn’t want to, it all seemed crazy to me. It still does. But you can only avoid an issue for so long before the silence become unbearable. He cornered me one afternoon. We were leaning against the wall of a house, watching as the light of the setting sun painted the land red.

‘I wouldn’t actually die,’ Karcsi broke a long silence. ‘I would continue living, but in a different way.’

‘I won’t help you,’ I declared, hoping that I sounded cold enough.

‘I can’t do it without you. It can’t be done alone.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Then I have to try the other way.’

I looked at him.

‘Other way?’

‘The usual way. Jump off a roof, or hang myself.’

‘Go ahead!’

‘Maybe it would work. But Mom and Dad said that the earth would reject me if I did that. That I would return. I don’t mind, I’m curious to know what that’s like . . .’

‘Stop it.’

‘. . . but then I wouldn’t get across. Those who return from the grave don’t get across. That’s what Mom and Dad told me.’

‘Shut up.’

He didn’t shut up. Later we fought too, not as a game, but for real. Our faces bled, our arms were covered with bruises. At home, my mom and dad also beat me up for fighting and tearing my clothes. They wouldn’t let me out of the house for days.

In the end I wound up helping him. I didn’t want to see him returned.

I woke up at dawn and slipped out of the house. It was still dark as night, and I was afraid I would trip over something and alert my dad. I shivered in the cold. I regretted not having smuggled a sweater out as well. I met Karcsi at the end of the street. He was holding a spade and a shovel. I had the storm lamps with me in my rucksack. I took the spade from him and we ran towards the fields. I prayed for rain so we would get stuck in the mud and have to abandon the plan. My prayers weren’t answered, not then, not ever. We ran, and after a while I felt that we were a good distance away from the houses. The distance a person goes to dig a birthhole.

‘It’s a good spot,’ he whispered in a shaky voice. You could see he was nervous. We lit the storm lamps and placed them on the ground. Karcsi grabbed the spade.

‘Don’t just stand there. Help me!’

And just like that he dug the spade into the earth.