Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

After the gifts came the agenda’s next item, which Geľo, Samo and Adam had been looking forward to: travelling in time and space. When the familiar bottle came and started its rounds, the brothers exchanged happy looks. What they had been waiting for so long had now arrived.

Geľo’s first sip was as bitter as seal gall. After the second sip, heat spread round his mouth. The heat increased and then suddenly stopped, as if switched off. Two men had to hold him down to stop his spasms of jerking and writhing. But Geľo was now unaware of it. He was trying to get out of a dark space, a kind of giant, dark yurt. He was escaping through some half-solid obstacles. His head kept hitting something like pelts hanging from the ceiling. Everything around trembled like the ice floes cracking in the spring. Over it all was a dark universe with stars like lamps. There Geľo flew, free as a bird, with a heart full of exaltation and with tears of happiness that flowed down his weathered cheeks.

* * *

Urban is an enthusiastic patron of Prague restaurants and pubs. His favourite place is a wine cellar called the Domažlice Room on Strossmayer Square. He is also one of their favourite customers. He goes to the Domažlice Room with his friends, or sometimes alone. It’s a traditional Czech restaurant where nothing can surprise him, unlike the time that Tina and he went to a Japanese restaurant, Shusui in Malá Strana.

They were waiting for their meal. At the next table someone had ordered a very exotic dish: when it came, the tray was carried by two Japanese waiters followed by a Japanese singer with a fan in each hand. The singer danced in an absurd, jerky way, ceremoniously bowing in all directions, opening out the fans and singing a strange song in a high throaty voice. Urban noticed tender pink slices of some fish on the plate. The customer started eating, but right away his eyes popped, and he suddenly stood up, clutched his throat with both hands and collapsed on the floor, gasping for air. For an instant his hand appeared above the table as his fingers, bent in a spasm, raked the air; then he pulled down on himself the tablecloth, the filigree little Japanese plates, bowls, glasses and trays.

The other customers in the restaurant sat on tenterhooks. The meaning of this event was an enigma to them. Everyone, including Urban, waited to see what would happen next. Cousin Tina put her hand in Urban’s, squeezed it hard and said nothing, while she waited. Two waiters ran in, picked the customer up and put him back on his chair. The customer’s head dropped forwards, his arms hung by his side. He was dead. One of the staff ran into the kitchen and quickly ran back, followed by the chef.

“This is like a Kurosawa samurai film,” said cousin Tina. “They run to and fro there, too.”

Video Urban had a silent foreboding of what would follow.

The chef approached the dead customer and carefully looked him over. Then he ran back to the kitchen.

Urban smiled encouragingly at cousin Tina. He pressed her hand to show that everything was all right.

It was not.

The chef soon returned, but this time holding a filleting knife. He knelt on the floor and a waiter positioned himself behind him and raised a meat cleaver: the biggest meat cleaver that Urban had ever seen since he’d watched Bad Taste . The chef, his eyes goggling, yelled a few rapid sentences in his mother tongue and then, without warning, stabbed his belly with the knife. He gave a shout of pain and shock, as did the most of the customers watching him; then he began to twist the knife round his guts. Finally, he moved the knife to where most people have an appendix. The chef’s jacket was instantly covered in blood. The chef’s head drooped. He raised it with his last ounce of strength and said something in Japanese, whereupon the waiter cut off his head with a well-aimed blow.

The head rolled under one of the tables: the customers jumped away from it as if it were a smoking bomb.

“That’s probably enough,” Urban said to Tina, and threw his napkin with a firm gesture onto the table. “We’d better leave.”

Nobody tried to stop them at the door.

They came out onto the street and headed for a taxi rank.

“We won’t go back there,” Urban said when he recovered. “Why do they burden us with their problems?”

“The service there was awfully slow, anyway,” said Tina. “We’d probably have to wait forever. And now they could only offer us a cold supper.”

* * *

From time to time cousin Tina organized dinner parties for people close to her, her best clients and friendly fashion journalists. Originally, the dinners were held in various élite restaurants round National Avenue and Wenceslas Square, but Urban finally persuaded her that “his” Domažlice Room was the perfect establishment for this kind of event, and also much cheaper. So even now, when he came to Prague to have his films dubbed, he would come to one these dinners. Tina introduces him everywhere as her cousin, a successful businessman from Slovakia.

“What kind of business are you in, Mr. Urban,” the editor of Cosmopolitan asks him during the aperitifs.

“In film,” says Urban.

“Are any films made in Slovakia?” the Harper’s Bazaar editor asks incredulously.

“Certainly,” Urban says.

“My cousin works in video films,” cousin Tina rushes to his aid. “They’re short films, educational films, and so on.”

“Really?” the exalted lady editor seems impressed. “That’s fabulous. How refreshing!”

The co-owner of the Domažlice Room appears in person, to make sure that everything is fine. Urban knows him and so invites him to join them at their table. The owner hesitates, but then accepts.

“What will you have, Pavel?” Urban asks him.

“If I may, scotch on ice,” says the restaurateur, still a young man.

“One scotch with an ice cube for the boss,” Urban orders.

They are just bringing in the dishes. Most of the guests ordered Stuffed Steak à la Lamminger; some ordered Poacher’s Game Bag; cousin Tina, a vegetarian on principle, went for the mushroom omelette. The food is perfect, and everyone uses superlatives. So the guests express an interest in meeting the chef who’s cooked these remarkable dishes.

The chef, a chef’s cap on his head and wearing a double-breasted jacket with black buttons for the occasion, is personally summoned by the boss, and is greeted by the guests’ applause.

“This is Jarda, our master chef,” says the boss, after they all drink a toast to the blushing master of gastronomy. “He’s been with us for several years. He worked here when my father owned it.”

“And did your father…” asked Tina, “pass away a long time ago?”

“Dad?” Pavel laughs. “Dad’s doing fine. He only gave up the Domažlice Room and runs just his two other restaurants: the Pivoj and Houbar .”

“He’s the very tall gentlemen with a blond moustache who was standing by the bar an hour ago,” says Urban.

“Of course, all I do is watch who’s standing at the bar,” says cousin Tina and looks back at Pavel. “Your father must have a lot of faith in you to let you have such a famous traditional establishment.”

“He didn’t let me have it,” says Pavel. “He sold it to me. To me and my quiet partner Robert. You must know him, he works here, too.”

“Oh, is he the fair-haired lad with a ponytail, right?” asks Tina.

“Yes, that’s him,” says Pavel.

“That’s how I remembered you,” said cousin Tina. “The dark one with the beautiful eyes and the fair-haired one with the ponytail.”

Pavel doesn’t know where to look.

“There, you see,” says Urban, “now you’ve finally been introduced.”