“I’ll recognize you. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

His friend catches up with him.

“Why did you run off like that?”

“It was pretty clear I had to.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

“You never said I had to tell you. Give me my schoolbag. And go to the movie by yourself. Just be glad you didn’t come in there with me – you’d have been thrashed, you dope!”

They go off separately, feeling riled up. It’s not Kaytek’s first fight.

And not his first bet. Because Kaytek loves to make bets.

One time at school they were talking about a soccer game.

What’s better, a game of soccer or a movie? Swimming or boating? Riding a bike or skating?

Kaytek says grown-up movies always end with kissing.

“Come on, I’ll show you how they kiss,” says one of the boys.

“Kissing a boy isn’t hard – you have to kiss a young lady,” says Kaytek.

“What a wise guy – just you try and do that.”

“You think I won’t? All right – I bet you an ice cream.”

“OK, shake on it.”

So along comes the final lesson.

And the final bell. They pack up their books.

Here’s the schoolyard, and the gate, and the street.

“You guys follow me,” Kaytek tells the other two.

And he goes off in front.

But now he’s sorry he made the bet.

He doesn’t want to pick on a little girl. It’d be a shame to do that because he’ll frighten her. Anyway, he said “young lady,” and that means a big one.

How’s he going to do it? He walks along, looking around.

He walks along, looks, thinks, looks, and waits.

“Not that one. Or that one.”

Never mind the ice cream, it’s just that it’s embarrassing to lose. He has to stick to his guns.

Until finally, there they are.

Two of them. Schoolgirls. And they’re older than he is. They’re laughing and chatting. They’re not in a hurry. One of them calls the other one Zofia.

She says: “Listen, Zofia, next time you come over . . .”

Kaytek doesn’t hear more than that. But now he has a plan.

He signals to tell the boys he’s about to start. He crosses to the other side, gets ahead of the girls, turns around and walks straight toward them.

He lets his head droop, as if he’s deep in thought.

Just as he’s passing them, suddenly he stops and looks at them.

“Oh! Zofia! When did you get here?”

She stops and stares at him in amazement.

And hop! he throws his arms around her neck and smack! he kisses her.

Silly girl – she even leans forward. That’s how superbly it worked.

Only then does she wake up.

“Who the heck are you?”

“Me? I’m Kaytek.”

“Kaytek who?”

“Kaytek no one, just a boy.”

He licks his lips, as if the kiss was tasty.

And runs for it.

The girls stare in surprise, until finally they guess what’s going on.

“Just you wait, you little scamp!”

“What an impudent boy!”

“How did he know my name?”

That time Kaytek won with honors.

He won with honors and got twenty groshys.

They shared the ice cream equally.

The third boy got some too, even though he didn’t deserve it.

So that’s what Kaytek is like.

Impatient. Bold. Head full of ideas.

He was like that before he ever went to school.

He was like that before he became a wizard.

* King John Sobieski (1629–1696) was the Polish king who defeated the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. (All notes have been added by the translator.)

** The zloty is the Polish currency.

*** A groshy is a Polish coin – 100 groshys equals one zloty.

Chapter Two

Complaints about Kaytek – Scars – Antek or Kaytek? – He smokes cigarettes – A mouse by the stove

There are endless complaints about Kaytek.

“What a bothersome boy,” his mother sighs.

“I’d never hit him, but if I lose my patience . . .” threatens his father.

“He has a kind look in his eyes,” his grandma smiles.

“He has a good head,” says his father.

“He’s curious about everything,” adds his mom.

“He takes after his grandpa,” his grandma smiles.

But the complaints keep coming in.

The building watchman says he threw a herring out the window onto the landlord’s head.

“Did you do that?”

“It’s not true.”

Firstly, it wasn’t a herring, just a herring’s tail.

Secondly, it wasn’t the landlord’s head, it was his hat.

Thirdly, it wasn’t out the window, it was through the stair rail.

Fourthly, it wasn’t Kaytek, it was another boy.

And on top of that he missed – the klutz.

The watchman says Kaytek put out the lights in all the stairwells.

“That’s not true. Not in all of them, just in one hallway. How does he know it was me? What if it was someone else? What if a girl did it, not a boy? Maybe it was a firefighter? There are firemen in Warsaw, after all.”

The watchman says Kaytek rings the doorbell and runs away.

“I do, yes, but at other gates. Never at ours. I once rang it, a long time ago.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Just because.”

Because he wants to know if the bell is working. Sometimes because he’s bored. Sometimes because he’s annoyed that he has to go to school, while the stupid bell just sits there like a prince and doesn’t have to do anything.

The watchman says: “He pried out a rock and dented the drainpipe.”

That is a total lie.

Kaytek even knows who did that.

“I nailed together a sled, but I did it with a hammer, not a rock. And I leaned the board against the store cupboard, not the drainpipe.”

He has a witness.