Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“What was the other man’s name?” Sirovec-Molnár interrupts.

“You don’t know him,” Freddy says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Geľo smiles, “What was his name?”

Freddy knows of the almost sacred importance that Junjan Slovaks attach to names. For them, a name mirrors the personality, and is a sort of talisman. If someone commits an ugly act, he has to change his name to atone for it. Similarly, if someone gets seriously ill, he has to change his name to get better. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why the guerrillas wanted to know the name of Freddy’s companion: to be able to imagine him better.

“Urban,” Freddy says without thinking.

Men begin to whisper. They respectfully nod their heads. Urban is a good name.

“Telgarth and Urban,” says Geľo with respect.

“We only had handguns,” Freddy continues. “I’ve always insisted that you need a shotgun for this kind of work.”

The guerrillas sitting round Freddy mumble in agreement and nod their heads in admiration.

“When we entered the flat where the thieves were hiding,” Freddy continues, “they were just having breakfast. They almost shat themselves with fear. I shot dead right away one of them who was relaxing on a sofa, so the others were clear whom they were dealing with. I made another one very nervous by eating his breakfast and drinking his drink.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” roared the men with understanding laughter.

“A suitcase full of gold was in the kitchen dresser,” Freddy recalls.

“And then they slew them all.” Freddy uttered this sentence from Holy Scripture every time he filled someone with lead. When he began the sentence, Urban would already know that the baddies were doomed. But finally, another of the baddies ran out of an adjoining room and shot the whole magazine at Freddy and Urban, without hitting any of them even once. So they killed him, too. “Thou shalt not steal! He who takes with his hand… and so on!”

Freddy’s single eye looks at Geľo’s group.

“And you?” he says. “You’re too merciful. You won’t win like that. You have to be unfeeling and fanatical! Why do you shoot in the head? It’s too small a target. Besides, you only put one enemy out of action. Shoot in the belly, so that he stays alive! Then you get rid, as well, of two others who have to carry him away. And besides, the cries of the wounded in a campaign destroy a unit’s concentration and damage its morale. What’s more, they give away its location, too.”

“The mercenaries don’t care about their wounded,” says Geľo. “They leave them where they fall. We often have often finish them off.”

“Don’t,” says Freddy. “Let them suffer and yell. I’d make propaganda use of them, I don’t know… I’d impale them on spikes so they yell even louder. Let everyone see how our enemies end up. Everyone has to be afraid of Slovaks. Yes!”

The men mumble respectfully. They nod in agreement.

“Tell me, Telgarth,” Geľo suggests shyly. “Would you like to stay with us and help us until we finally win? We need someone like you. You’re a Slovak by birth, but you’re different from us. You’re experienced. We’re just simple hunters…”

“Don’t underestimate yourselves,” Freddy says. “You’re great fighters, you’re just too nice to your enemy. And you lack combat experience. I’ve got the experience, but, on the other hand, I don’t know how to deal with the local harsh environment. You’ve made an ally of it, as you’ve always lived here. Teach me what you know and I’ll teach you what I know. Otherwise, you and your fighting morale remind me of the boys I commanded years ago in my special unit.”

Freddy blushes, but when he sees the hunters hanging on his every word he continues with more courage: “It was a rescue mission, too. Terrorists were hiding their hostages in a fortress on a high mountain. There was only one road leading there not guarded by the terrorists: straight up this vertical rock, about two hundred metres high. There were patrols all over the place.”

The men only understood every third word, but their hearts caught the thread.

“We had to climb to the top up this vertical rock, use the element of surprise, enter the fortress and rescue the hostages. Before the climb, I gathered my boys and told them: ‘Ahead of us is a dangerous climb and the enemy is listening. The slightest noise gives us away and means death to the hostages. So I beg you: if anyone can’t make it up the rock and falls down into the chasm, he mustn’t make a sound. Otherwise he’ll give us away. I believe we’ll all make it to the top safe and sound, but I want to be sure. Anyone unsure of himself should step forward: I won’t reproach him.’ Nobody stepped out.”

The guerrillas respectfully mumble and nod.

“The climb took us over two hours,” Freddy continues. “We often had to take a rest, so that our hands wouldn’t get cramped and we could use our weapons right away. Of twenty men, only eleven made it. Nine of my fellow fighters slipped from the rock and were lost in the bottomless abyss. None of them made a noise. Falling to certain death, they were as silent as the grave. Thanks to them, the mission was a success.”

Freddy pauses to drink tea.

“Well, you remind me of those men,” ends Freddy and keeps looking at the ground with his single eye, lost in thought.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Geľo interrupts the heavy silence with his mild voice. “Will you stay with us?”

“I’ll gladly help you,” says Freddy, recovering from his reverie. “I’ll be with you through thick and thin. My life has been worthless until now. Except, of course, for various heroic exploits I’ve done at home. Together we’ll triumph!”

The men are happy. Finally they have on their side someone who is as big a swine as Tökörnn Mäodna!

“Tökörnn Mäodna?” Freddy burst out laughing. “When the Slovak guerrillas catch that man, they’ll gouge his eyes out and put him in a cage to show him to the hunters’, reindeer herders’, and fishers’ settlements along the coast and in the tundra. They’ll just show him to the people. Nobody will be allowed even to touch him. They’ll feed him well, he’ll be healthy and his face will glisten with fat. And then a committee will sit down and decide how Mäodna is to leave this world. Freddy has a few good ideas. But no matter how, his execution will take a long, long time. Tökörnn Mäodna will be dying in unimaginable torture for entire weeks. His howls will reach all Junjan Slovaks on the coast and deep in the tundra. Everybody will know that the man who hurt the Slovaks so much will now, in small, carefully measured doses, part with his black soul.”

* * *

The hostage video with Freddy pleading never gets to Slovakia.

That Slovakia is going from bad to worse has long been clear to Urban. For a few years he consoled himself with the vain hope that when the right kind of people won the elections and got a chance to rule, things would start to get better. In the meantime, there were several elections, end-of-term and mid-term, but nothing improved. It is worse and worse not just for poor, simple people who own nothing, but for businessmen. All right, Urban isn’t starving, naturally, and can afford to dress well, but he too finds it hard to give so much money to the state only to see that nothing is achieved. Deductions are higher and higher, the business tax burden more onerous. Only a stupid Slovak can work under such ridiculous business terms. A German, Englishman, or Frenchman wouldn’t give a toss for business on those terms. Urban can see it by looking at the owners of the video rental outlets, sex shops and video and multimedia shops that buy from Freddy Vision . They keep going only because they started long ago and can’t give up now. They have put too much of their own money into it and nobody would pay that much to buy the business.