Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

Order N o: 1820 0173

Price: 999.0 °Czech crowns

Club member price: 950.0 °Czech crowns

(From the Freddy Vision catalogue)

Freddy has been badly hurt. He detected that there was rather more to Sida’s and Zongora’s relationship than that of mere colleagues. It began when Sida started to stand up for Zongora even when he messed up or made a professional mistake.

“Do you really think,” Freddy shouted in front of the whole crew at this self-appointed lawyer for Zongora, “that if someone has a thirteen-inch prick he doesn’t have to arrive for a shoot on time?”

“No,” Sida answered. “I’m only saying that Luigi’s simply a star and you have to have different criteria for him.”

“What do you mean a star?” Freddy raged. “Only a year ago he was an ordinary worker at the Dimitrov factory, or somewhere. Who got him out of there? And now he gives me this attitude? He’s nowhere near being a star yet. Mister thirteen inches is still a big zero!”

“But just think,” Sida reminded him, “how much money this zero has earned you. Just think of that and treat him as a human being.”

“As a very unreliable human being,” Freddy said angrily.

Sida and Luigi have evidently taken to each other. Perhaps they have even fallen in love. In Freddy’s company Sida is morose and dismissive. She comes alive only when Zongora is around. Her eyes begin to gleam; her lips turn red and become enlarged. They meet secretly and make love, as if they did not get enough in front of the camera. Like any man in love, Zongora, too, would like somehow to make his relationship public and shout about his happiness to all. The laws of conspiracy, so binding for the more rationally minded Sida, are alien to him. Who knows why men are like that, why they need to brag about everything? Finally, even the birds in the trees are talking about it.

And as is traditional, Freddy is the last to find out. A kindly soul in the company whispered it to him. At first, he can’t believe it. His Sida? His fine wonderful wife Sida, with whom he shares so many pleasant memories? A whiff of menace has crept into Freddy’s soul.

In the evening, Freddy brings his suspicions into the open. He, suspects that Sida’s and Zongora’s relations have become more than a normal professional partnership.

Sida almost chokes on her food. She fires back: how could Freddy even imagine it? Inwardly she curses Zongora’s stupidity and carelessness in letting the whole company know how badly he’s fallen for her.

“And what about that sighing and moaning in front of the camera? You never moan with me,” Freddy complains.

“I just fake it,” says Sida. “I always do it that way in films, don’t I?”

“And why don’t you ever fake it with me?” Freddy asks.

Sida flares with quite unfaked anger. She shouts at Freddy and brings up everything she has kept back for so long. How he gets on her nerves with his suspicions, how he never gives her any attention, how he doesn’t hug her, or show her affection, how he gets off on her in a few seconds so that even if she wanted to moan, she wouldn’t have time even to take breath. She’s a neglected wife and no one in the world would find it odd if she took a lover. She is surprised she hasn’t done so yet, and yet she has to listen to these humiliating and absurd accusations.

Freddy is stumped. On the one hand, he’s glad that his wife has refuted his accusation. He wants to believe her. On the other hand, the doubts gnawing at him have not gone away.

“Look,” Freddy says calmly. “I love you…”

“Really?” Sida, listening ironically. “And how can I tell?”

Freddy jumps up, napkin in hand and foam on his mouth.

“HOW CAN YOU TELL?” he roars. “By the fucking jewellery and fur coats that I buy you. By making you into a world-class porn star. By all that I do to make you famous.”

“You do it all only to make your money, anyway,” says Sida.

“MY money?” Freddy is baffled. “You mean OURS, don’t you?”

The food turns sour in his mouth. He throws down his cutlery, gets up and bangs the door as leaves.

He walks alone round the pond till midnight, meekly submitting to the myriad mosquitoes that hungrily attack the unprotected parts of his body. So even the ungrateful environment is sucking his blood, he thinks as he morosely watches the pond’s calm surface.

Freddy’s suspicions, even after a few days, remain. The fact that the two have sex in front of the camera is fine. After all, Freddy scripted it. The fact that Sida massages and sucks Zongora’s prick, while he licks her crotch before they do it normally and anally does not bother Freddy. That’s the profession. It’s a job like any other. If anyone thinks that porn is carefree fun, then try it! The money’s hard earned. In short, it’s a business like any other. But private life is quite another thing. In private, only Freddy can have Sida. Only he is her husband.

The suspicion that Sida and Luigi may be meeting and making love in secret, even in their free time, is hard for Freddy to bear. He is almost insane with jealousy. He cannot track every step Sida makes; as a famous porn star she has a lot of social commitments, media interviews, promotions, work on the side. Freddy is too stingy to pay to have her followed. And so Freddy does his work only with great self-denial. They have to finish Anal Justice at any price.

Just before the film is finished, Freddy is in such a state that he does not know whether he feels like this because of overwork or jealousy. When they’re shooting a scene in a torture room, with Zongora tied to the rack and Sida whipping him, Freddy, as director, thinks that the lashes of the whip are too gentle and seem unnatural.

“Harder!” Freddy shouts at Sida. “You must do it harder!”

They repeat the shot. Sida swings her arm again and the leather straps fall on Zongora’s back with a whack.

“That’s too gentle,” Freddy roars. He jumps off his director’s chair.

“Give it to me!” he tells Sida and takes the whip from her hand. “This is how to do it.”

Fear shows in Luigi’s eyes. He sees Freddy’s glassy look and a strand of foam hanging from the corner of his mouth. Before he can say a word, his back and behind are cut with the first blow.

“This way,” shouts Freddy and hits with all his might. “This way! Like this! Like this!”

Luigi cries out with surprise and pain. Afterwards he cries continuously. The whip has cut his skin, and is now ripping out fibres of subcutaneous fat and muscle. Everything around is instantly spattered with blood. And Freddy looks like a meat packer in a slaughterhouse.

Finally the crew intervene. The cameraman and the soundman grab Freddy, and the lighting man takes the whip from Freddy’s hand. Freddy’s eyes are bloodshot and foam pours from his mouth. He hangs in their arms unconscious. He has fainted from being so overwrought.

Zongora is hanging on the rack. He, too, is unconscious. His eyes are turned up, covered by an opaque film and his swollen tongue hangs out of the side of his mouth. His head has fallen sideways.

“Shit, just what we needed!” shouts the production manager. “What a cock-up! Somebody untie him!”

Sida and the other women look after Zongora. They gently take him off the rack. It looks like a pietà in a Renaissance painting, but for the wailing women in sexy underwear and leather accessories. Zongora comes round and sighs with pain. Someone pours whisky into his mouth.

Freddy also comes round, in an armchair where they set him. He looks round with a dull expression.

“Is that what you wanted?” shouts Sida in front of everyone. “To lash out at a defenceless man? Why not do it when he wasn’t tied down, when he could defend himself? You disgusting coward! I hate you!”