Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

He acts like a boy in a school story book who wakes up one day to find everyone, including his parents, gone. He can do anything he likes. At one time Freddy was quite taken by that edifying story. Every time he walked down the village in the evening, looking at well-lit windows, he chose houses that he would enter once the people vanished somewhere. The house of a noted aeroplane model builder Ebringer took first place.

Now he was rediscovering that delicious feeling; moreover, he had realised that people need not stop him doing anything. They don’t have to vanish: they can stay. Freddy can do whatever he wants, anyway.

He had long ago discovered the excitement aroused by evil, and had exploited it in his porn films. Now he’s excited by even more intense delights than the virtual delights offered by pornography. He has broken all bounds and now goes in for risky ventures. He has got used to a regular dose of adrenalin, like an addict getting used to a drug.

So he takes a late evening train to Nová Ves, not one with compartments, but an ordinary commuter train. Freddy chooses a dark, unlit, cold carriage. He sits on a cold leatherette bench near the door by the carriage platform and listens closely. His heart beats high in his chest with excitement and expectation: how will it go today?

In the middle of the carriage two Moravian girls are chatting.

“But I did tell him!”

“Well, then tell him again!”

And so on.

The train departs. It judders as it hits the points, and then it enters the tunnel. It’s pitch dark. This is Freddy’s moment. He has about thirty exciting seconds before the train emerges from the tunnel on the other side. Night vision goggles would be ideal, but they’re too big and clumsy. They’d let him down. He gets up and, holding onto the seat rests, sets out towards the girls’ voices. He puts a hand on the thigh of the nearest one.

The girl starts.

“What?” she shouts in Moravian dialect.

Freddy embraces her with one arm; with the other he grabs her crotch and breasts. He prefers skirts. He once groped a girl who had nothing on under her skirt. The girl screeches and her friend can’t understand. She keeps asking in the dark:

“What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?”

Freddy is excited, but still counts carefully. Before the thirtieth second has passed, he retreats. Putting his hands on the seat backs, he gropes his way back to his seat. He opens the door to the carriage platform, but stays seated. He sits down on the leatherette bench. Forty two seconds: just time for Freddy to adjust his appearance. The train leaves the tunnel. The young passenger is in shock. Freddy jumps up.

“What happened, young lady?” he asks in a matter-of-fact way. He gets up and approaches the girls as if to help.

“Some pervert!” complains the Moravian girl.

Freddy nods. He heard a girl shout, then some one ran past him and onto the carriage platform.

“He must be in the other carriage by now,” he assures her.

The girl has now recovered. Moravian girls are tough.

“I’d cut his balls off and feed them to him,” threatens the other girl.

Shivers run down Freddy’s spine. It’s a thrill to be so close to terrible punishment and yet be relatively safe.

“Did he hurt you?” he asks in a matter-of-fact way.

“He pawed me all over!” the victim complains.

Freddy goes back to his place. As he sits there, the buzz of excitement in his ears dies down. He’s got away with it again. A pity, though, that the Bratislava tunnel isn’t at least ten seconds longer.

But perhaps he would welcome being caught and gaoled. At least a change would yank him out of the totally pointless and aimless life that he’s leading. Without Sida and his little girl, he’s just a figure staggering through life, clinging to his habits and daily rituals like crutches.

In any case, Freddy vainly seeks for any force that would give his confused staggering meaning. If he liked alcohol and it didn’t make him sick, he’d drink himself to death.

* * *

There have already been a number of attempted burglaries at Freddy’s: each time the burglars found that they couldn’t get into the house thanks to the extreme security arrangements, but they broke into his garage or his summer kitchen. The damage was never very great. Once he lost a battery charger, other times a spray gun, a pump, or cast iron wheels with winter tyres. But when the burglars took his petrol lawn mower, he was enraged. They got into the shed by smashing the door with a pickaxe.

“It wasn’t professionals,” said Rácz who’d just driven Freddy home from a seasonal Adrenalin Club outing: setting cooperative farmers’ haystacks on fire. “It’s addicts. Filthy, wretched, fucked up druggies.”

“If I got my hands on one, I’d show him,” Freddy fantasizes, as he counts the damage.

“Pay for security like Rácz,” suggests Rácz. “My house and garden are guarded day and night by armed guards. Don’t tell me you don’t have the money! I’ll get you some good men.”

But Freddy is stingy. He’s really angry with the burglars, but the thought of paying to protect property which he’s already paid for is unimaginable. If he caught them, he’d gouge out their eyes.

“If the police catch them, they let them go,” says Rácz. “And even if they’re sentenced, the victims get nothing out of it. No one compensates them for damage. And the thieves are out in a few months.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” boasts Freddy. “If I catch them in the act, I’ll cut their fingers off!”

“You can’t,” says Rácz. “Then you’ll end up in court, too. It has to be done another way. Fuck them right away and bury them.”

Freddy likes the idea.

“You know what?” Rácz says, “If you ever do catch a burglar, tie him up and call me. Rácz will show you how it’s done.”

Indeed, a few weeks later, Freddy notices tools for burglary hidden in the bushes by his garage entrance. The discovery excites him. He thinks about what Rácz told him. He likes the idea of avenging himself for all the humiliations that thieves have caused him ever since they stole his collection bag when he worked as car park attendant.

From his company’s props department he takes a few pairs of steel handcuffs. He loads a gas pistol that he and Sida bought on their first holiday in Spain. Just looking at the pistol, a replica of an American policeman’s Colt, brings home painful memories. He remembered passing day after day by the shop selling knives, replica weapons and antiques, until he finally bought it. Sida took a dislike to it, so he had to explain to her that it would be a prop for a forthcoming film.

Now Freddy stays at home for days on end. He works at home on a screenplay. His ears are pricked and his heart beats with excitement. His feelings are transferred to his screenplay. The lady of the house catches a burglar; she and her maidservant torture and humiliate him: they puncture his sexual organs and nipples with knitting needles and he is forced to drink their urine. But writing gives Freddy no fun. He has to make himself do it. The loss of his wife and daughter has taken all the pleasure out of his work and life. Everything he does is done by sheer inertia. He no longer eats, washes, picks up or answers the phone. His letter box overflows with newspapers and post. His blinds are always down and he prefers to switch on the lights so as not to be reminded by the world around him of what his mind has long since rejected.

Freddy wakes up in the night. He hears a noise. He looks through the blinds and notices stealthy movement in the yard. He runs out with his gas pistol and corners the burglars. The burglars are two underage drug addicts. They have long hair but look quite respectable. Freddy hands the handcuffs to one of them and orders him to put them on the other one. Then he handcuffs the first burglar. He calls Rácz’s mobile.