Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

“I urgently need to talk to Mr Junec,” she tells the receptionist. “Is he in?”

“Yes, he is,” says the receptionist. “Mr Junec is asleep. He came back late last night.”

“I have to speak to him,” says Silvia. “Call him, please, and tell him I’m here.”

“Sorry,” says the receptionist. “I have strict orders not to disturb him.”

Silvia pulls out a thousand-crown note. The receptionist looks at the ascetic face of Monsignor Andrej Hlinka, Father of the Nation, on the note and, after an inner struggle, shakes his head.

“I’m sorry, I can’t …” he says.

Another note joins the face of Andrej Hlinka, all spirituality, on the marble counter.

“Mr Junec is going to kill me…” says the receptionist and reluctantly reaches for the phone, while his other hand discreetly slips the banknotes into the pocket of his dark-red uniform.

“Mr Junec is expecting you,” says the receptionist after a polite quiet conversation on the phone. “It’s what we call the Presidential Suite, on the sixth floor…”

“I know where it is,” Silvia interrupts him and strides to the lift. Still in the lift, she turns on a Dictaphone with a highly sensitive microphone and a miniature video camera which can record through a tiny opening in the bag everything within a radius of two hundred and twenty degrees.

Martin opens the door at the first knock. He is wearing a silk dressing-gown and he smells of toothpaste: he has quickly cleaned his teeth.

“Silvia,” he says surprised and almost afraid.

“Good morning, Martin,” says Silvia. “I hope I haven’t woken you.”

“Oh, no,” says Martin. “I’ve been up for ages.”

“Are you going to let me in?” Silvia asks.

“Of course!” Martin says and moves away from the door. “Sorry.”

Silvia enters the living room and looks around. The suite hasn’t changed since the time she lived there with Rácz. Silvia makes herself comfortable on the sofa and puts her bag to one side. She crosses her legs, ensuring that her narrow skirt shows as much of her divine shapely thighs as possible.

“Can I offer you anything?” asks Martin.

“A glass of mineral water,” says Silvia unconsciously running her fingers over her knees. She notes with pleasure that the crotch-high lump under Junec’s dressing-gown has begun to swell considerably.

“A glass of mineral water,” Martin repeats. “I’ll have dry sherry, he says. “It always wakes me up.”

“I’ll wake you up, just you wait,” Silvia thinks.

When Junec puts the drinks on the table, Silvia pretends to be scared and looks at the door.

“What is it?” Martin asks. He does fancy Silvia, but can’t forget Rácz’s well-meant advice.

Silvia presses a finger to her full lips and silently points at the door. Martin approaches the door and opens it wide. He looks left and right down the corridor, and then closes the door.

Meanwhile Silvia has dropped a white, highly soluble powder in his drink.

“There wasn’t anybody,” says Martin. “You were imagining things.”

He sits down and takes a sip.

“We haven’t seen each other for ages,” he says.

“I came to tell you that I am very sorry about…” Silvia says.

“About what?” Martin asks.

“Our interrupted evening,” says Silvia. The owner of the hotel had me locked in his office and only let me out after you’d gone.”

Silvia tactfully omits the fact that Rácz had also raped her. She felt that this would make her less attractive in the American’s eyes and thus endanger her plans.

“He did that to you?” Martin pretends to be amazed.

“Yes,” nods Silvia. “Didn’t you wonder why I took so long coming back?”

“I thought you and Mr Rácz might have something going,” says Martin in his defence. “I didn’t want to interfere in your affairs.”

“I’m sure Mr Rácz told you nice things about me,” Silvia remarks.

Martin has loosened the knot on the cravat round his neck under the dressing-gown. He is sweating profusely. His pulse has become very rapid. The sight of Silvia’s legs is driving him mad. His member hardens and stands to attention against the inner side of his right thigh.

“I bet,” says Silvia coquettishly, “that most of it wasn’t true.”

She throws Martin a kittenish look.

“Rácz told me that you had a relationship,” Martin says carefully, though he longs to throw himself at Silvia and thrust himself into her. “That you were…” he adds in confusion.

“That we were having sex?” Silvia helps him out.

“Yes, having sex,” says Martin, and sweat starts trickling down his left temple.

“That’s not true,” says Silvia. “We were lovers, yes. But that was a long time ago. I was very young and stupid then. Rácz is a coarse, vulgar man. A criminal. As a lover, he’s useless. Today I don’t often choose men for sex and I’m much more careful. I have strict criteria.”

Martin is quiet. He knows he should say something, but nothing suitable comes to mind. His throat is dry and his heart is beating somewhere in his throat. A sharp pain in his erect penis signals that almost all his blood is being pumped to this particular spot.

“Aren’t you interested in knowing if you meet those criteria?” Silvia asks provocatively and gets up. She comes to Martin.

Martin gets up, too, and puts his sherry glass on the edge of the table.

Silvia passes her long index finger over his chin and wipes a trace of toothpaste off. “Aren’t you?” she asks.

Instead of answering, Martin, drugged by a horse-size dose of aphrodisiac, hurls himself hungrily at her, throws her onto the sofa and starts making love to her compliant and passionate body, which she has positioned in the field of vision of the mini camera hidden in the bag.

* * *

The rickety old bus stops on the village square and the door opens with a hiss.

The dust raised by the bus slowly settles, and out come old ladies in headscarves, sweaters, full skirts and black polished shoes. Some carry wicker baskets in their hands, others bundles knotted from chequered tablecloths on their backs: they are returning from a district town market.

The old ladies get off, and behind them proud Feri Bartaloš leaves his footprints in the dust of the little square, as he drags a blushing Eržika by the hand.

They set off across the little square with heads raised high, touching and ridiculous in their dignity.

The old ladies stop at the local council building. They give the comical couple ironic looks and from time to time hide their sly smirks behind hands as wrinkled as squeezed lemons.

For Feri and Eržika, the road to the impressive house of Kišš the butcher is the stations of the cross.

The villagers stop to look at them and whisper to each other. Windows open. There is the sound of laughter from somewhere. Somebody says: “They failed…”

Feri grabs Eržika’s sticky hand all the more firmly. Over their shoulders they carry their sleeping bags and inflatable mattresses, their only possessions, in plastic bags. They are grimy and in rags. The battered high-heel shoes that Freddy Piggybank sold them hurt Eržika’s feet. Feri Bartaloš’s feet are wrapped in towels tied in plastic bags; his shoes were stolen last night in the Central Square underpass.

Kišš the butcher is sitting on a chair in the kitchen, enjoying a smoke with one eye closed. This is his day off; every other day he stands behind the counter from morning till evening. Today, Saturday, he closed at one.

When Eržika and Feri Bartaloš appear in the doorway, Kišš gets up, noisily pushing his chair back; his cigarette and holder fall out of his mouth.

His blood-shot staring eyes inspect his daughter and his son-in-law. He can see it all. They’ve failed. They’ve come back as poor as beggars. Hatred seethes in Kišš’s primitive mind, hatred of that nyomorult (as the Hungarians call a wretch) Rácz: he made it, but these two, though they had all the advantages, did not. The wealthy village butcher had believed in them. Not even in his dreams did he suspect that Eržika, his daughter, and proud Feri Bartaloš, his son-in-law, would fail in the city.