Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

Freddy realises that he may have made a mistake by deciding to act himself instead of asking Urban to intervene.

Rácz sizes up Freddy for a while. Then he motions with his hand to a chair placed in front of the desk.

“Please sit down,” he invites Freddy.

Freddy blushes. He accepts the proffered chair. He politely declines to take a cigar from a wooden humidor that the hotelier offers him.

“Thanks, I don’t smoke,” he says. “Sorry,” he adds unsurely.

Rácz cuts the end of the cigar. He places it in his mouth and lets a bodyguard light it. His eyes half-closed, he puffs on it.

His movements are deliberate and unhurried. The hotelier’s whole personality radiates the austere, but benevolent calm of a wealthy and powerful man who knows no obstacles.

“It’s come to my attention that you’ve graced our hotel with your presence for a few days,” says Rácz, takes the cigar out of his mouth and inspects it closely with a pretence of interest. “It’s a great honour for us if a famous personality like you shows a preference for our hotel instead of the comfort of his own home.”

Freddy swallows a few times and clears his throat.

“Well,” says Rácz. “What’s brought you to us, Mr Mešťánek?”

Freddy clears his throat again. Then he begins to tell him the whole story. At a few points he blushes. At others, he displays righteous indignation. He presents himself as an upright artist and businessman who has long been harbouring a snake in his bosom. He gave an ambitious young man a chance, and this is how he’s been paid back. Freddy recognises his only mistake: he got too carried away by work. He neglected his family hearth. He portrays Sida as an slightly unworldly artist, good at heart, but romantically inclined, and now a slightly straying wife and mother whom he has already magnanimously forgiven. After all, it’s all the fault of that demon, the vile seducer, Zongora the home-breaker.

Rácz listens quietly. His eyes are firmly fixed on Piggybank’s face shining with animated, just indignation. At times, he subtly and solemnly nods to let the narrator know that he follows the thread of his narration.

Rácz’s men also listen quietly. Freddy is a little embarrassed, talking in detail of his family life in front of this audience. But the longing for revenge is stronger than shame. Freddy knows that only Rácz and his men can help punish Zongora. So he swallows his pride and takes an even harder stance against his wife’s lover: yes, Zongora will have to pay in blood and tears for these shameful moments, too.

Freddy describes Zongora as an ordinary plebeian, a thoroughly perverted parvenu: even his performances in Freddy’s films are for him a way not to solve financial problems, but only to satisfy his dark desires.

“He likes showing his prick, pardon the word, that’s all,” Freddy ends.

Silence reigns in the room after Freddy’s monologue.

“And how can I be of help?” Rácz asks after a moment: until then he has been listening, his hands thoughtfully clasped to his mouth, and has been furtively making a few notes on a piece of paper. The hotelier’s steely eyes bore into Freddy’s face.

“Why have you come to see me?” asks Rácz.

Freddy seems put out by this question. He stutters.

“I’m asking, because you’ve never needed Rácz before,” the hotelier continues. “How many times you’ve celebrated various premieres and as a producer you’ve had many prizes, including the Porn Oscar, if I’m not mistaken…” Rácz pauses for a moment to give Freddy time to appreciate his detailed knowledge, then continues, “but you’ve never invited me to any of your parties. Rácz wouldn’t say that he’d be sure to come, he’d rather not, but it’s the gesture that counts. Or take last year: Rácz was celebrating his thirty-fifth birthday. Congratulations came from all over the world. There were three baskets of telegrams. Did Mešťánek congratulate Rácz too? No.”

Rácz puts on an embittered expression. As if it really bothered him.

Freddy almost falls off his chair with embarrassment and a vague feeling of horror. Not even in his dreams did he imagine that his audience with the powerful hotelier would take this direction.

“And at the same time, it’s not so long ago,” Rácz continues, “that both of us, Rácz and you, were just nobodies.”

He used to be a stoker; Mešťánek was a car park attendant. What? Does Mešťánek think that Rácz has forgotten? No, he’s forgotten nothing. Today, of course, they’re both among the élite. Rácz is the most powerful man in the city; Mešťánek has achieved success in the arts. Rácz is of course aware that it’s only dirty pictures, but he doesn’t dismiss that at all. Quite the opposite: Rácz, as someone who’s made it virtually from zero, can appreciate anyone who’s good at his line of work. And Mešťánek is good, that much he knows. Rácz doesn’t follow these things, but others, who know about such things, have told him.

Freddy smiles uncertainly and pretends to shrug off this praise.

“Never, all this time,” continues Rácz, has Mešťánek needed anything from him. He never wanted to be his friend. So why come to Rácz now? Mešťánek is not the first man in the world whose wife went whoring. Would Mešťánek like to know what Rácz would do in his shoes? He’d take that wife and tie her to the fence and beat her so long that she’d crawl on the floor and shit tomato paste. And that bloke? He’d kill him with these two hands. Rácz lifts up his thick, but carefully groomed hands. “But first, he’d cut his balls off, roast them, and make him eat them,” he says, “and his prick, too.”

Freddy nods in agreement. He’d have liked that. But that would still be not enough punishment for what Zongora has done.

“Well,” Rácz continues, “Mr Mešťánek, however accomplished he is, seems to be a big coward. That’s why he’s come to see Rácz, to get him to punish the son of a bitch. After all, why not? Why should Mešťánek sacrifice his career, his work and his wealth for a prick who’s screwing his wife? That’s what all this is about, right?”

However, the hotelier does not wait for Freddy’s answer and goes on. “The problem is just that Rácz is not actually a friend of Mešťánek’s. It’s not that Rácz wouldn’t want to be one. He’d value friendship with such a famous man very highly; quite the contrary, it’s Mešťánek who’s never cared to be friends with Rácz. So he can’t help Mešťánek at all. He only helps friends. He wishes Mr Mešťánek a pleasant rest of the day.”

Shocked, Freddy realises that Rácz is no longer paying attention to him, but burying himself in papers on the desk. A man in his thirties comes up to Freddy from his left; it’s the man who showed him in. He gently presses Freddy’s shoulder and points his other hand at the door in a broad gesture. “This way, please,” he says. Freddy looks at Rácz again.

“I want to be your friend, Mr Rácz,” he says with determination.

“Are you serious?” Rácz’s face expresses doubt and one eye looks up from the papers. “But being Rácz’s friend is not that simple. Rácz’s friendship is cruel, harsh, and demanding. Rácz may happen one day to ask a favour in return.”

“Anything you like,” declares Freddy firmly. For Alfréd Mešťánek it will be a great honour to consider himself a friend of the great Mr Rácz.

Rácz gets up and walks round his desk.

“In that case,” he says, “Rácz accepts.”

His lips clenched, he extends his hand to Freddy, a bit too high for a simple handshake. Freddy hesitates a moment, but behind his employer’s back Rácz’s gunman hints what Freddy has to do. Freddy takes the hotelier’s manicured hand in both of his and kisses it, bowing his head.