Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

The chef finishes his drink and apologizes for refusing another drink, as he has a lot of work in the kitchen.

“Did you know I used to come here as a student?” asks Tina, when they sit down again and Pavel orders another round of whisky. “But we didn’t eat much, we used to come more for wine.”

“Well, we had a good kitchen even when my father was in charge here,” said Pavel. “The menu hasn’t changed much since then.”

Everyone, including cousin Tina, browses through the menu.

“You might be interested to know,” Pavel tells Urban, “that we had the menu designed on a computer by a good friend from Bratislava. He comes here, too, but not as often as you. Perhaps you know him: Peter Pišťanek, a well-known writer.”

“I don’t,” Urban shakes his head. “He’s probably not that famous.”

“You know,” says Pavel, “there are restaurants, hotels, canteens, snack bars which keep their reputation for years. But it’s still true that it’s far harder to regain a lost reputation than to build one from scratch.”

“No doubt about that,” agrees Tina, lost in Pavel’s almond eyes.

“Under the old regime,” says Pavel, toying with his engagement ring, “there was a popular slogan: if you don’t rob the state, you’re robbing your family. That went for restaurant kitchens, too. And some employees, even owners, of private restaurants go on like that today, cheating their clients.”

“Unfortunately,” says Urban.

“Why unfortunately?” Pavel asks. “It’s only short-term. In a competitive environment, those businesses are bound to go under. People can choose where to go. And soon even the memory of those restaurants will vanish. Here, just down the road from us, there was a restaurant called The Rabbit’s . It was old and famous, too. But the owner relied on getting busloads of Germans. That kind of customer comes, eats, or doesn’t eat, what he’s given, and he’s never seen again. If a restaurateur doesn’t look after his steady customers, he might as well pack up. And that’s what happened to The Rabbit’s . The buses stopped coming, ordinary customers had long stopped coming: they had to close down. Now it’s an electronics shop.

“I wonder how you can cheat in that kind of restaurant,” says Tina.

“Well, there are various ways,” says Pavel. “Cooks can work all kinds of miracles. Raw meat can weigh less when raw, or you use different cuts of meat. A favourite trick is swapping expensive cuts for cheap ones. For example beef tenderloin can be replaced by sirloin and sirloin by rump steak.

“Terrible,” says Tina. “But I couldn’t tell the difference, anyway.”

“But I could,” says Pavel. “If you’re making a dish with more than one kind of meat, like Moravian Sparrow, or Szegedi goulash, you can use more pork flank and less shoulder. And if the flank is nice and from the top, it can all replace shoulder. Pork haunch, especially if you dice it first, can be replaced by pork shoulder. In a Playboy’s goulash, not many customers can tell if the meat is rump, or good front-end beef with the sinews taken out.”

“True, I don’t suppose many could,” agrees cousin Tina.

“Or,” Pavel recalls, “if there’s some leftover tomato sauce, the next day it can be turned into Gypsy roast beef. If you have some old cheese left over, it’s used for Dutch steak, various sautés, or is used to sprinkle on other dishes. Or take frying oil. Sometimes they fry in used oil bought from confectioners. That’s an old trick: old oil is much cheaper than fresh and can be used for quite a time.”

“And how do you know so much about it, Pavel?” asks Tina with a smile.

“Look,” says Pavel. “I run a restaurant. I have to know all their tricks so that I can recognize them and stop them in my business. We’re not into money laundering, we care about keeping our customers happy.”

When Urban and his cousin Tina were in a taxi on their way home, Urban could not help making a caustic remark to Tina:

“Odd, you were so taken by his talk about meat. I thought you were definitely a vegetarian.”

“So I am,” said cousin Tina. “But the boy spoke so nicely that I could have listened to him all night.”

“Careful!” says Urban. “That boy is happily married and has a child.”

“That’s doesn’t make him ugly,” says cousin Tina.

“Could you listen to me all night?” asks Urban.

“You couldn’t discuss your work so enthusiastically,” says Tina. “Then, what would you talk about? Your video business where girls screw dogs?”

“That’s only temporary,” says Urban, ashamed. “It gets on my wick, too. But there’s money in it. When I make as much as I need, I’ll drop it.”

“That boy Pavel,” says cousin Tina, “was talking all night about doing good to people, giving them the comfort and joy of good food and drink. He was talking about tradition, about what he’d learned from his father and grandfather, about pride in his company. And you? All the time, all your life, you’ve only tried to cheat. You’ve never done anything properly, nothing to make you happy or absorb you. You’ve always only gambled. So, please don’t be surprised if I take you as I see you. Prove to me that you’re different. Prove to me that you’ve got somewhere, that you’ve risen to a higher level. I mean spiritually. That boy Pavel is no intellectual, but spiritually he towers higher above you than you probably can understand.”

Video Urban is stunned into silence. He didn’t expect such a telling-off. He tried to take Tina’s hand and intertwine their fingers, as he always does coming back from somewhere, but his cousin moves her hand away.

“Show me you’re developing,” says Tina. “Do something. You’re nearly thirty-five. You can’t waste your whole life like this, doing things temporarily, as you are. I really like you; really, I do, because I know that, inside, you’re totally different. Occasionally something from inside you surfaces, in a kind of eruption. It takes my breath away. Those are beautiful moments. That’s the real you, in my opinion. If only I knew how to unlock you, if I had the key. I so desperately want to trust you, Urban.”

Urban is embarrassed listening to all this in the presence of a taxi driver who pretends he can’t hear a thing, but who has pricked up his ears. Cousin Tina, of course, can’t even see the taxi driver. She behaves like a queen shamelessly undressing in front of lowly servants. And this is something about her that gets on Urban’s nerves.

“And you do all that with that awful fat slob Mešťánek, or what’s his name,” says Tina, shaking with revulsion after a moment’s silence. “You only have to look at that man to see he’s sick. His hands are damp, as if he kept them in his underpants. How can you have a friend like that?”

“Freddy isn’t a friend,” says Urban. “He’s my business partner. And that’s a big difference.”

“And the way he looks at me all the time!” says cousin Tina. “He always looks at my legs. I don’t want to meet him again.”

“But he doesn’t come to Prague that often,” Urban defends Freddy.

“Then I don’t want to see him when he does,” says Tina. “Not even by accident. He doesn’t even try to hide those looks he gives. God knows what he thinks about when he looks at me like that.”

Well, you know how it is,” says Urban. “You’re the type that attracts kinky looks.”

“I can’t imagine any woman desperate enough to go to bed with him,” says cousin Tina.

“Would you believe,” smiles Video Urban “that his wife is one of Europe’s most famous porn stars? And she’s damned pretty.”

“You must show me what she looks like when we get home,” says Tina. “I’m really curious to see her.”