Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

Karol doesn’t like the idea. His friends are here, and he can brag in school about his father. In England, they’ll all be like him. Maybe he’ll turn out to be the poorest one of all.

In a moment of weakness he confides in his father.

Rácz’s eyes almost pop out of his face.

“There’s no way Rácz’s son is going to be a poor man!” he roars.

Then he calms down. He will put a kind, but stern mask on his face. Karol shouldn’t brag about his father’s accomplishments. He should brag about what he’s going to achieve himself. If he does achieve anything. A bit of modesty never hurt anyone.

Karol’s mother joins in. She sides with his father, but she supports her son as well. Now she’s unhappy at the idea of losing him for a while. She tries to move the goalposts. She repeats that the boy is sensitive and afraid of being alone. He’s eight now and even today he gets into their bed whenever he has a bad dream. Doesn’t Rácz love him?

Rácz frowns. Now he has two rivals. He wants his sons to be tough, educated and manly. Not cissies. Yes, he does love Karol; after all he is his first-born son. He loves Attila, the younger one, too. And he loves Lenka, too. But Rácz’s love is not soppy or soft. His love is tough, demanding, and strict. He doesn’t want to feed his sons fish forever. He wants to teach his sons to catch fish. And do it better than anyone else.

Karol can’t grasp that. But he senses his mother could stop things happening, including his father’s decision. Didn’t she tell him he was afraid of being on his own? Yes, being on his own is what he fears. He’s afraid of being on his own.

Rácz laughs. Rácz has been alone ever since childhood. He was an orphan, practically. Nobody liked him. Where he comes from, everyone let him down, and, worse, hurt him. Karol needn’t bullshit Rácz, his own father. Rácz looks at his wife; her look of reproach bounces back to his eyes. But Rácz has to say it straight. Karol can’t use loneliness as a pretext for defiance. He has no idea what real loneliness is, he’s just blathering. When Rácz arrived in the city, in Rivers of Babylon , he didn’t know anyone there. He stuck out like a sore thumb. He lived in a little hovel behind the boiler-room. Everyone treated him like a mug. But he didn’t let them. And why not? Because he’s no fool. In the end he worked his way to the top. All that time he found only one being he could confide in and who really loved him. Yes, Karol’s mother! She even dropped out of university for Rácz’s sake. Because she believed in him. And who was he? A shitty stoker! This is how, like a little flower, he climbed out of his basement up to the light. And he finally got to where he is now. Rácz did it; now he wants Karol to do even better. Not to have to travel even one of the thorny paths his father had to take. He simply wants Karol to start where his father passes the baton to him. To take it further. And higher. So he’s got to go to that school. With strict discipline. And English, day and night. That’s how winners are educated, fucking right!

Karol’s cheeks are puffed. He doesn’t want to be like his father. He wants to be a musician. He wants to have guitar or drum lessons.

Rácz clutches his head with his hands. Why guitar? Why drums? No one in the Rácz family needs to learn a musical instrument. The Rácz family has enough money to hire people to play for them. Anytime, even at midnight. Karol will go to school, period. Other boys would shriek for joy. There are boys who study shit-all, because their parents haven’t got the money. Rácz, for example, only did two years at agricultural college. That’s all his education; luckily he has brains. His parents, God rest their souls, were so stingy that he had to eat his bread buttered underneath, so they couldn’t see. They had a boiled egg once a year, at Easter. The leftovers on Karol’s plate would have kept Rácz alive for a week when he was his age. A week!

Karol is quiet. He stubbornly shakes his head. That school, that Eton, makes you wear uniform.

“So what?” Rácz claps his hands. “SO WHAT? For Christ’s sake! Rácz had to wear overalls all his childhood. Handed down from his father. Even to school. That was his uniform. In summer he went barefoot, in winter he wore rubber boots. He used to stuff them with newspapers, and wrapped his feet in newspaper, too, to stop his toes freezing. Luckily, down south, the winters aren’t so bad. Uniforms? That’s what Rácz really appreciates. They’ll finally make a man out of Karol. No more of those revolting baggy jeans, baggy tee shirts and expensive trainers three sizes too big. By the way, talking about trainers, would Karol kindly tie his shoelaces? Rácz can’t stand the sight of them. He’s waiting. That’s more like it. Otherwise Karol might step on his shoelace and, since he walks about with his head in the clouds like a zombie, he could easily fall, hit his head, and get even more stupid than he is now! And those horrible baseball caps! The peak was meant to keep out the sun. So why is Karol’s cap turned rounded with the peak at the back? He looks like some kind of Jew. And anyway, why does he wear that cap, if it’s a baseball cap? Does Karol play baseball? Has he ever held a baseball bat in his hand? No, he’s clumsy at everything. What a bungler! In England, that school is sure to have baseball, too. He’ll learn how to play and right away he’ll find out what that cap is for.

Rácz hopes that his son will at least be happy about that. But Karol is not the sporty type. He’s still in a huff.

And Karol can kindly straighten his back, Rácz orders. They’ll teach him in that school. Twenty hours of P.E. a week. Karol needn’t make faces. There won’t be any staff there, no servants, no cleaning woman over there: Karol will have to do everything for himself. And not only for himself, but for others, too, because the first year he will have to be a fag for the older boys. He heard the first time. That’s how it is in English boarding schools. Bullying. But Karol mustn’t let it get him down: that’s nothing compared to the bullying that Rácz put up with in army service. Lešany near Prague. Military unit 5963, third artillery regiment, seventh battery. That was army service! And he survived. Because he was what? Because he was no fool, but tough and honest, as well.

Rácz smiles and lights a cigar. He puts his arm round his stubborn son’s shoulders and walks with him through the big French windows onto the spacious terrace. With his free hand, a cigar between his fingers, he traces an arc over the city’s illuminated night panorama.

“If you cope with all that,” he tells his son, “when humility, self-denial, and hard physical and psychological demands make a better person of you, then you’ll come back here and all this will be yours.”

The same way as it now belongs to Rácz.

As a sign of togetherness, he slaps his son on the back.

“May I go inside now?” Karol asks, still in a huff.

“Clear off,” says Rácz: he feels let down, shrouds himself in smoke and shreds in his hand an eight-hundred-crown Romeo y Julietta cigar.

The panorama of the city is breathtaking. Rácz searches out the lights of the buildings that he owns and slowly calms down. He has been having difficulties lately with distant vision. Everything looks foggy. If he squints, he can see well, but he sees everything double. Rácz is beginning to worry. Could he possibly need glasses? Rácz always used to have an eagle’s eyesight.

Luckily the buildings of the hotels Ambassador Rácz I and II are so prominent that the hotelier can effortlesly rest his admiring gaze on them. For a while Rácz plunges into memories. He recalls the times when he was a nobody, stoking the Hotel Ambassador. Gradually working his way up to be the king of the money-changers and a powerful man. And later buying the hotel at auction, surrounding himself with reliable people, and harshly sorting out the Albanian mafia. Yes, Rácz is a big boss, admired and feared. They all obey his every word. Word? They obey if he raises an eyebrow. It’s only in his own family that he can’t keep order. He’s too soft.