Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“The spider’s caught two flies,” he repeats a phrase from some film.

Rácz hasn’t seen the film: it takes him time to grasp what it’s about.

“Should I call the police?” Freddy asks.

“No, no!” Rácz shouts, and all the sleepiness goes out of his voice. “They’re ours now!”

Rácz’s voice echoes a passion for hunting, or rather fishing. As if a fisherman suddenly found a huge fish hooked on his rod and then asked a fellow-fisherman to help him land the catch.

Freddy barely has time to put down the phone when from outside comes the impatient screech of Rácz’s Mercedes sports coupé.

“So these are the ones?” Rácz asks looking at two bundles of bad luck crumpled in the corner.

The burglars are starting to realise that something’s wrong. They naïvely assume, however, that as they’re minors, they’ll get off cheaply.

“Okay,” says one, acting casual. “Call the cops; let’s get it over with.”

“Oh you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Rácz laughs malevolently. “Don’t worry, we shan’t need the police to deal with you.”

The thieves fall silent. They haven’t counted on this turn of events.

“Bring us something to drink,” Rácz tells Freddy.

Freddy searches the whole house and finds in the fridge a bottle of champagne left by Sida. He pours two glasses.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Rácz asks Freddy and drinks the champagne like beer. He holds out his glass for more.

Freddy pours him another glass and shakes his head.

“Not yet,” he confesses.

“Not even an animal?” Rácz asks. “I mean a biggish one: a dog, a cat, a hen?”

Freddy thinks about it.

“No,” he shakes his head. “The hens, geese, and rabbits were killed by our uncle who used to come to do it.”

“In the village I come from,” Rácz says, “everything was killed by Rácz. Even goat-kids.”

“Well, I don’t think I could do that,” says Freddy.

“If you had to, you’d get used to it,” says Rácz. “And what about Christmas carp?”

“Sida buys… used to buy frozen fish fillets,” says Freddy. “I hate the bones and the muddy taste of carp.”

The captive thieves listen to the conversation with growing consternation, into which a vague horror is creeping.

“I know what you’re saying,” says Rácz. “But if you marinate the carp overnight in milk and put it in the fridge, the muddy taste goes away. Lenka, my lovely wife, taught me that.”

“I don’t care any more,” says Freddy. “What’s Christmas to me, now that Sida’s run away?”

“She’ll be back, you’ll see,” says Rácz. “Do you want her back? Rácz will find her for you, no matter where she is. My men will get her back to you. But in my opinion, you shouldn’t give a fuck about her. You need a healthy virgin who’s been to university, like the one I married, not some sort of… Actually, I’d like to know, tell me, how could you stand her being fucked by so many men in your films? How could you go to bed with her, when you knew she’d had so many pricks in her already? That’s what I’ve always wanted to know.”

“It’s a profession like any other,” says Freddy. “It never bothered me at all.”

“Or perhaps it turned you on a bit, did it?” Rácz looks impish. “There are people like that… They get excited when everyone has their woman, when they can see her tits and everything below her neck.”

Freddy reflects and realises that Rácz is actually right.

“Well, this is what you get in return, Freddy,” says Rácz. “As you sow, so shall you reap. After all, your wife didn’t have to work, as you say. She could have stayed home and you could have made those swinish films with other little pussies, couldn’t you? And you wouldn’t have the problem you have. I’ll tell you one thing, Freddy. If anyone saw my wife’s pussy, Rácz would gouge out both his eyes for it.”

Rácz drinks up his champagne and firmly puts the glass on the table.

“Well, that’s that,” he says. “You know yourself best. So, you’ve never yet killed any creature?”

“I have,” says Freddy. “I’ve killed flies, and all kinds of vermin. I even killed a mouse once with my shoe. When I was at the car park. It got into my trailer.”

“Killing a man’s just as easy,” says Rácz. “Only the humanitarians have invented a lot of blather about it. In reality, a human being is not much more than a mouse. And these two are even less than a mouse. What’s more, they do more harm than mice. By killing them, you help humanity. Not just now, but later generations. Because these druggies could spread the revolting useless genes that attracted them to drugs and then poison humanity, which is degenerate enough as it is, even more.”

“Hey, what are you talking about?” asks one of the long-haired youths. “You can’t just kill us! We haven’t done anything. We’re minors! Call the police right away!”

“We’ll pay you back for everything,” pleads the other one.

“Shut his gob,” say Rácz wearily, not even looking at the delinquents.

From a corner Freddy takes a greasy, wet, hairy rag used for washing the floor, tears it in half and stuffs half in each mouth. The thieves writhe and try to spit out the stinking textile.

“If you two don’t shut your fucking mouths right away,” says Rácz with annoyance, “we’ll burn you alive. We’ve got the petrol.”

Then he turns to Freddy.

“I’m not saying that killing a man’s nothing,” he says. “It’s an experience that takes you to another place. Once you’ve killed someone, you look at everything quite differently. There’s a very thin line between life and death. Just watch.”

Rácz takes a pistol from his armpit, screws on a silencer, and cocks it.

“You’ve seen my face, so you’ve got to die,” says Rácz to the burglar, laughs loud and menacingly and shoots him without hesitating.

Despite the silencer, the shot in the small room is deafening. When the acrid smoke clears, the burglar is twitching in his death agony; finally all movement stops.

“It did the job, didn’t it?” says Rácz and hands the pistol to a shocked Freddy. “Now, you do the other one.”

The other thief is trembling with horror and through a layer of rag come muffled whimpers.

“Now show me you are a man and not a piece of shit, Freddy,” Rácz orders him. “Take the law into your own hands.”

Freddy aims the gun at the burglar. His hand starts to shake and the barrel drops.

“I can’t,” says Freddy.

“Give it to me,” says Rácz, takes the gun and fires again.

Two corpses lie next to each other; the room smells of burnt cordite.

“Don’t worry about it, Freddy,” says Rácz in a conciliatory way. “You’ll cope next time. Now we’re in the same boat. You’re my accomplice now. Apart from our common interests, this binds us together.”

Freddy can’t pull himself together. He stares at the twisted corpses.

“They won’t steal any more,” says Rácz. “Well, Freddy: now they have to be buried. Get a pickaxe and shovel and dig a hole out in the garden. Why are you staring? You don’t expect me to do it all myself?”

Freddy begins to dig. He digs at the back of the garden, under the trees. On Rácz’s advice, he carefully sets aside the turf. The night is quiet, only the sounds of shunting engines come from the station. Freddy tries to make as little noise as he can, not to wake the neighbours up. Once the hole is dug, Freddy and Rácz put both thieves’ bodies in it.

“Light as a feather!” Rácz is surprised by the first one. “This is what drugs do to a man. Well, heave-ho!”

They swing the corpse, throw it in the hole, then get the next one.