Chapter 1 — What Disappeared
On the fourth day of summer camp the first thing disappeared: Réka’s torch.
On the fifth, a packet of biscuits. On the sixth, Balázs’s beret, which is completely useless in summer, and precisely for that reason everybody loved it.
We slept in the shared tent, twelve of us. There was no lock on the door, because at camp it is not the custom to lock up. The camp leader said it was “probably somebody’s joke”, and that “it’ll turn up”.
It did not turn up.
On the seventh day we were all called together, and the camp leader asked whether anybody knew anything. Nobody spoke.
Nor did I. But that evening I did not fall asleep straight away, because once a person starts paying attention, they cannot stop.
Chapter 2 — Who Was Always There
I noticed three things.
The first: every disappearance happened at night, and always on rainy nights. That matters, because on a rainy night everybody goes into the tent early, and nobody is outside.
The second: every object that disappeared was the sort of thing a person easily leaves behind. A torch. Biscuits. A beret. Nothing that was valuable.
The third: one of the boys, Máté, got up earlier than anyone every morning. I knew this because he was always the one who put the water on the fire.
I did not suspect him because he got up early. I suspected him because once I noticed that in his bag there was a torch that was not his.
I told nobody. First I wanted to talk to him.
The next morning, when he was standing by the fire, I went over.
“That isn’t your torch,” I said.
Máté looked at me, and did not deny it. That was the best thing about him: he did not deny it.
“No,” he said.
“Why did you take it?”
“I didn’t take it. I collected it.”
“Collected what?”
“What you left in the grass.”
Chapter 3 — What Máté Did
Máté led me behind the tent, into the bushes. There was an old wooden box, and in it everything: the torch, the biscuits, the beret, and six other things that nobody had even known were lost.
“In the evenings, when everyone had gone in, I went out,” he said. “Because on a rainy night everyone hurries, and everything falls out of your pockets.”
“Why didn’t you give it back?”
Máté was silent.
“Because I was afraid they would think I stole it.”
That sentence explained everything.
I did not steal it, I only collected it. But if I give it back, then everyone asks: why was it with you? And once somebody asks that, it no longer matters what you answer.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We tell them.”
“And if they don’t believe me?”
“Then I’ll tell them.”
That afternoon we stood in front of the camp leader and told him the whole thing. Máté spoke, I stood beside him, and when he once stopped, because he could not carry on, I carried on.
The camp leader heard us out. Then he asked Máté:
“Why didn’t you say something on the first day?”
“Because I thought there would be trouble.”
The camp leader nodded.
“There would have been, if you hadn’t spoken. This way there’s only a box in the bushes.”
That was the whole punishment. In fact: the next day Máté became the one who looked after the camp’s “lost property” box, and by the end of camp every object had gone back to its owner.
Balázs got his beret back, and he put it on, even though it was forty degrees.
Since I came home, I also watch what falls out of people’s pockets. Not so that I can collect it.
But because I learnt that most things do not disappear because somebody takes them.
They disappear because somebody does not dare give them back.
