Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

Martin has a drink and takes a look at his watch. Silvia seems to have been gone too long.

“Maybe you’re wondering how Rácz could help you,” says Rácz, and gives a muted clap with his hands: from behind the curtain comes a waiter with another bottle of vintage French champagne. Rácz insists on opening it and pours it out.

“I like good food,” hotelier admits, “and I don’t say no to good drink either. I’ve become rather fond of whisky. The most expensive and best tasting one: Heevash Reygahl . Good champagne isn’t bad either.”

Martin absent-mindedly nods; his mind is on something else.

“I know what brought you here,” Rácz goes back to the previous topic. “But if you keep running round government offices, you’ll get fuck-all. The door you have to knock at to ask for a meeting is the one where Rácz is drinking cognac. Why are you looking at me like that? Rácz has his sources. Some time ago I happened to buy a big lot with factory floors, in the middle of the port area. Ideal for you. You’d make your lamps and you’d ship them by Danube direct to Austria and Germany. If you like, we could do a deal. As partners. We’ll set up a limited company. I’ll put in my land and buildings and you your technology and know-how. What do you say?”

Rácz is getting fidgety.

“If you go it alone, you’ll end up as fucked as Poland in 1939, I’m telling you,” he says menacingly. “You don’t know anyone here, you don’t know how to go about it. This isn’t America. For example, how are you going to get your debtors to pay? Well? Take them to court? Well, in that case, kiss your money good-bye! And when you get your money, if you ever see it, with our inflation, you can only use it to paper your toilet. I have a special firm to collect debts. My own company, Rácz’s.”

Rácz pauses, takes a sip and loosens his tie. He unbuttons his shirt collar as well.

“Another thing is how well you know our commercial law system. I bet you don’t. And I pay — royally — three commercial lawyers who do nothing but look for loopholes in our laws, so that Rácz can walk through them. Nobody will ever screw Rácz!”

Rácz taps his low, bumpy forehead. He takes an aluminium case from his elegant beige jacket pocket, extracts a cigar, bites off one end and lights up.

“We have a lot in common,” he flatters Junec. “We both started with nothing. Both of us right here, in the Ambassador: you were a musician, I was a stoker. And we’ve both made it all the way to the top. So let’s join forces. If you like, come to my office tomorrow and we can discuss everything with my lawyer. If we come to an agreement, we’ll begin straight away by getting the paperwork over with.”

Rácz finishes his champagne and puffs his cigar.

“I think,” he says and his eyes turn dark, “that Rácz isn’t underpaying you for keeping your hands off his mistress.”

Martin nods.

“Well,” he says, “it’s a lot. But I suppose that you’d offer me this much, anyway, what do you say?”

“Yes,” Rácz admits. “I’d have spoken to you even if you weren’t seeing my mistress.”

“I was thinking,” says Martin, “that you’d speak to me even if I don’t keep my hands off your mistress, as you put it.”

“I can’t say if I’d speak to you,” says Rácz, “more likely you’d wake up one morning without those hands.”

Rácz smiles and Junec silently nods, as if he expected the reply and had been forewarned.

“Well,” he says finally. “Tomorrow morning at ten I’ll come and see you.” He raises his hand to summon the waiter, but Rácz pulls it down.

“Forget about paying,” he says. “Today you’ve been Rácz’s guest. It’s on the company account. See you tomorrow!”

Martin bows and leaves the restaurant. He doesn’t know whether to feel like a beaten dog, or a winner.

Meanwhile, Rácz, cigar in mouth, crosses the restaurant and takes a key to his office from a female waiter. At the entrance to the kitchen he meets the waiter whom he knocked down and sacked shortly before.

“Good work, Uličný,” says the hotelier, puts a rolled up banknote in the man’s breast pocket and sticks his smoking Havana into his mouth.

“I’m pleased with you!” Rácz says. “I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he adds with concern and gives his cheek a rough pat.

“I wouldn’t like to get fucking knocked down by you every day, boss,” says Uličný, blending politeness with a show of male solidarity, and takes a puff from the hotelier’s cigar.

“You know, Rácz never does anything by halves,” replies the hotelier, who is in a good mood. “Learn that and world is yours.”

When Rácz unlocks his office, a furious Silvia hurls herself at him and starts to punch him in his face and chest, although her fists still hurt from battering the leather-upholstered door.

“What’s all this supposed to mean?” screams the hooker, gasping for breath, as she tries to punish the hotelier with her enraged punches. “The bloody cheek! You’ve locked me in here as if I was…”

Effortlessly, Rácz pushes her off, and his immovable metallic eyes dwell lovingly on the dry dress that she has changed into.

“See, it still fits you…” he says, referring to the dress. “You still look good, by God! I knew you’d be back…”

Rácz closes in on Silvia and opens his arms to her.

“Don’t touch me, you swine!” Silvia shouts in panic, backing against the desk. Rácz flings himself at her, but Silvia eludes his grip.

“Why are you playing hard to get?” says Rácz in a rasping voice. “In Austria you even fucked ponies and God knows what else, and now you won’t spread your legs for Rácz?”

He lurches at her again, and this time he manages to grab her and turn her so she has her back to him. Rácz’s weight tumbles Silvia onto the desk. In her panic she finds an ivory letter knife and stabs at random over her shoulder. The knife penetrates Rácz’s biceps, which he is using to press her against him. Rácz’s eyes pop and he shouts in pain. He doesn’t loosen his grip, but he slaps her face hard from behind. In one sweep, he rips her dress from top to bottom. He pulls off her knickers, gripping her neck with his other hand and pushing her against the desk. Then he opens his fly and his erect member is exposed. When Silvia feels his glans brushing her inner thigh, she twists her head in distress and opens her mouth to yell. Rácz’s giant manicured hand gags her just in time.

“You’d have screwed that Yank right away, wouldn’t you?” gasps Rácz, panting after an exhausting battle. “It’s only with Rácz that you play hard to get, don’t you? You think Rácz is dirt, don’t you? Rácz can be a hotelier a hundred times over, a thousand times over, a million times over, but to you he’ll always be that dirty stoker, won’t he?”

He thrusts his flanks and, from behind, he pushes his member between her legs and presses it deeper and deeper in.

Silvia’s contempt for his passion has enraged him. He comes from a family of simple, rich, but miserly parents. Everything grown in the orchard, or raised in the stalls, was sold. Rácz first ate eggs when he visited his Uncle Endre. Rácz’s parents sold all their eggs, milk, butter, and fruit in the market. They themselves ate only dry black bread and drank coffee made from roasted acorn flour. That’s how they brought up Rácz and his brother. (Soon afterwards, the brother fell under a train while drunk.) When Rácz wanted to butter his bread, he had to do it secretly, without them knowing. Ever since, he had the habit of eating his bread with the buttered side down. Even at working breakfasts with the president of the country, or the prime minister, members of the cabinet or of parliament. His parents later choked on money. But Rácz is as good as anyone else. He too wants love.