Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

“That does it,” says Hruškovič, takes his wire hat off and carefully puts it in the glass case.

“He won’t come back?” Junec asks with hope in his voice.

“Look, uncle,” says Hruškovič. “I think I can tell you that I don’t believe in this bullshit. I’ve done exactly what I do with my patients. It helps most of them. Maybe it will help you, too.”

Martin gets off his chair. Actually, deep in his soul he feels a refreshing relief. “How much do I owe you?” he asks.

“Are you trying to insult me, old pal?” Hruškovič retorts, putting his cape away in the cupboard. “How long have we known each other? We’re good friends, aren’t we? Am I so poor my friends have to pay me? Just buy me a beer and a shot of rum in Konzum , and we’re quits.”

* * *

Feri and Eržika find themselves on the streets without a job or a roof over their heads. The manager takes the keys to the lavatory from them and they can’t rely on Freddy Piggybank letting them sleep in the lavatory. Anyway, Feri is avoiding Freddy; he owes him money for the stolen bicycles.

“We can’t touch the bank account!” Bartaloš says firmly every time Eržika suggests that they take a sum of money out to improve their wretched standard of living. “What an idea!” he adds. “If we ever touch that money it will all be lost. We’ve got to hold out.”

Eržika grumbles, because at night she feels cold despite the sleeping bag and inflatable mattress. On the other hand, she believes that their suffering in the alien, hostile city will soon have its reward.

Some of the night Feri and Eržika spend in trams, for example, in the number 5. They get in at one terminus and get out at the other. Between the two, they get an hour’s uninterrupted sleep in the warm. After midnight, when the trams stop operating, they move into the underpass below the Central Square. They take out their sleeping bags and mattresses from plastic bags, make themselves comfortable and sleep. Sometimes they talk before they go to sleep. Eržika is quite clear what to do with their hard-earned money. They’ll go back home, to their native village, and open a boutique. Eržika can see herself as a boutique owner; wearing elegant clothes, she’ll stand in the middle of a fashionably designed room and welcome customers with a smile. She often fantasizes about her ideas for hours before she falls asleep.

Feri gets a better look at her in the underpass’s dazzling neon light. Eržika has a dreamy gaze and a smile plays on her lips. When she looks into some happy, prosperous future she doesn’t feel the cold or see the damp dripping off the broken and defaced wall tiles, nor does she notice the silhouettes of the nocturnal drunks stumbling through the underpass.

It is hard for Feri to join Eržika’s fantasy world; their bank account doesn’t exist any more, he’s lost the lot at cards. He doesn’t know how much money was in it, anyway. But he’d rather hang himself than let his wife ever find out about it.

Naturally, Eržika has as yet no inkling. She can’t understand why they’re still in the city and not returning home, to the village, to live on their hard-earned money.

Feri finds it increasingly difficult to persuade his wife that they still have to wait a while.

In the morning they are awakened by the first passers-by. Feri and Eržika get up. A new day, a new opportunity. The struggle continues.

For a time, Feri and Eržika collect old paper. They steal a cart, a collector’s most important equipment, from someone as poor as them. They follow him for a while as he hurries to the recycling depot in a green quilted jacket with his cart loaded to the brim, and then they track him furtively as far as the pub, where the poor man decides to refresh himself before his next trip.

He leaves the cart on the pavement. Feri grabs it and runs like greased lightning.

In the courtyard of the Hotel Ambassador, they repaint the blue cart red, and as soon as the paint is dry, they set off looking for business.

The best sources for a paper collector are fruit and vegetable stalls. Feri and Eržika make rounds of all the fruit and vegetable stalls and haul a big bundle of cardboard to the depot.

But a few days later someone steals their cart, parked and hidden in the courtyard of the Hotel Ambassador, and their income is gone.

“I’ve had enough of this!” Eržika screams at Feri. “Why stay in this bloody city where they rob you blind? People are buggers: they steal anything that isn’t nailed down. Thieving gangsters!” On the other hand, Eržika and Feri have certainly saved up enough for that boutique. They have to take their money out of the bank and go back home. She’d like to have a bath, anyway.

It’s harder and harder for Feri to pacify his wife. Finally, he has to stoop to deception.

One night, just as they’re getting to sleep on the floor of the underpass, a masked robber appears above them.

Eržika is scared and starts to yell like someone out of their mind, but the passers-by don’t even slow their pace as they walk by.

“Don’t scream, you gadjo cunt!” the masked robber, a toy gun in his hand, hollers at her and turns to Feri. “And you, you give me your money, you gadjo shit!”

Feri checks his pockets with trembling hands. As if by accident, his savings book falls out on the pavement. The masked robber grabs it.

“Look at that!” he says, pleasantly surprised, when he opens the book. “A nice little bundle! I see you used to be rich, ha, ha, ha! Used to be, but not any more! Now I’m the millionaire! My regards!”

With these words, the gentleman robber bows out and runs towards the escalator.

Eržika begins to scream again, and her whole body is shaking. She completely failed to notice the masked robber’s schoolboyish, amateurish performance, as well as the fact that he declaimed his lines unnaturally, as if someone had written them in advance and he’d had some trouble learning them by heart.

“Our money!” Eržika yells, as if out of her mind. “Our money!”

Feri pretends to be angry and bitter, too. With clenched teeth he curses and occasionally looks at Eržika out of the side of his eye.

Now Eržika’s rage turns on Feri. Yes, Feri should have done something. If he weren’t a coward, they wouldn’t have been robbed. That was everything they owned. All that effort wasted!

They argue long into the night about who should have done what and how. They finally tire and fall asleep.

The next day they decide to go to the bank to report a stolen savings book.

The cashier checks their account and tells them that it is empty.

Eržika gets upset. “What do you mean empty? That savings book was only stolen last night.”

The cashier just shrugs. She looks through the glass partition at the two dirty smelly individuals with frank revulsion. She knows nothing about it. The account was cleared. There’s just twenty crowns left in it.

Eržika begins to laugh bitterly, hysterically. “Well, of course!” she shouts. Eržika Bartalošová knows how it is done. That’s why the bank is so rich. Eržika and Feri worked day and night and suffered privation. And there’s only twenty crowns left? That account wasn’t empty. There was a lot of money in it.

Eržika stops for a second in amazement.

“There could have been a million crowns there! A million Slovak crowns! Empty account, my eye! That’s a lie! A swindle! This bank is a nest of swindlers. Poor people are robbed of their honestly earned money. How about the rich? Nobody would tell Rácz that there were only twenty crowns left in his account. They’re all afraid of him. But nobody hesitates to rob the poor.”

Everyone in the bank stares at Eržika. Feri is standing next to his wife, a little embarrassed by her. He was the only person who robbed the account, since he took out the last bit of money to pay his card debts. And the masked robber was Šípoš, whom Feri paid to do the job. Only now, seeing Eržika’s despair, Bartaloš fully realises what he has done. Shame begins to mingle with remorse in Feri’s soul.