Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

Rácz gets up, gathers up the photographs strewn all over the floor and studies them attentively once more. No, Silvia wants Rácz. It’s just that she won’t sell herself cheap. She wants to torment Rácz a bit. That’s why she’s done all this. This, too, was one of her tricks to get him all hot and horny. Rácz smiles. He’ll get her one of these days and then he’ll punish her severely for cheating on him with other men. He’ll punish her and then he’ll shower her with kisses, flowers, jewels, and presents: that’s the kind of man Rácz is.

But as for the American Junec, that’s a very different matter. Rácz gave him a friendly warning, even offered him an indemnity, if that was what you could call his bribe. Junec the American accepted it and seemed to have got the message. He seemed to have known what kind of game he’d got involved in. Rácz looks over the American’s trim figure and his taut genitals ravaging Silvia’s pudenda. Yes, the hotelier decides, the only way he can wash away such deep humiliation is with blood. American blood.

He presses the button of his intercom.

“Get me Mozoň, Šolík and Tupý,” he orders his secretary. “At the double!”

The trio of ex-secret policemen appears in an instant. They line up in front of their boss and stand respectfully to attention.

Rácz doesn’t acknowledge their presence. He is working hard at something with scissors, his tongue protruding between clenched lips as hard as leather. Finally, he has finished. The result of his efforts is two clumsy likenesses of a man, only too obviously cut out from larger photographs. The man’s face shows excitement, sensual ecstasy in the extreme. Mozoň’s men would rather like to have seen the rest of the photographs, but these have ended up shredded into tiny fragments in Rácz’s wastebasket.

“Who is he?” asks Mozoň.

“He’s staying here in the hotel,” says Rácz. “The Slovak American. Mozoň saw him when I had a meeting with him.”

“So what’s up with him, boss?” asks Tupý. “Why are you giving us his photo?”

Noisily, but with all the dignity he can muster, Rácz gets up from his chair, walks round the gigantic desk, and starts pacing the room with his hands behind his back.

“What’s up with this American?” asks Tupý.

Mozoň kicks him on the ankle.

Rácz paces the room a little longer and then stops. He looks at his bodyguards. He doesn’t want to know anything. He pays his men royally; in exchange he supposes he can express a wish not to be involved in anything, right?

Mozoň nods. “We understand, boss,” he says. “Don’t you worry.”

“I hope you haven’t lost your touch yet,” says Rácz, looking the trio over.

“No worries, boss,” Mozoň assures the hotelier. “His life insurance is about to be cashed in,” he says with a vicious smile.

Rácz theatrically covers his ears. The ex-secret policemen respectfully leave the office.

* * *

Old Mr Mešťánek stops at Freddy’s old car park, where construction is in full swing. He is carrying a string shopping bag and in it is a two-section lunch-tin. The upper part contains freshly made doughnut balls and the lower part is filled with vanilla custard.

Dismayed and puzzled, Freddy’s father surveys the huge construction site, but then his face brightens up. In a corner between the construction site and a busy fast-food stall he spots Freddy’s trailer. Old Mr Mešťánek walks across the Wooden Village and knocks on the trailer’s fibreboard door. Nobody answers, nobody opens the door.

“What do you want over there?” some arsehole sticks his head out of the snack bar and asks Mešťánek’s father. “There’s nobody there!”

The old Mešťánek turns to the arsehole.

“Hey mate, do you know where I can find the man who works here?” he asks.

The arsehole loses his temper.

“I threw him out,” he says. “I’m the boss here.”

That makes no impression on Freddy’s father.

“Do you know where he works now, mate?” he asks.

“I don’t, and I don’t like you calling me mate,” the bastard boss takes offence. “I don’t remember saying you could take liberties.”

“Why would I want to be mates with a runt like you?” asks old Mr Mešťánek and, thwarted, strides to the exit from the Wooden Village.

“Hey,” an unkempt, short man reeking of beer addresses him. “You looking for Fweddy? Fweddy Piggybank? He’s working now somewhere called a Perverts’ Centre , it’s a bwothel. It’s called Justine . Below the main railway station. Ask the taxi dwivers, they’ll know!”

The man went back to his beer.

Old Mr Mešťánek is so shaken that he forgets even to say thank you. In utter horror he approaches the parked taxis. The first one in the rank flashes its lights. Freddy’s father goes up to it.

“Could you tell me, please,” he asks shyly, for he has never in his whole life spoken to a taxi driver, “Do you know of an establishment called… ah, Justine ?”

“Of course I do,” the cabdriver smiles in amusement. “Get in, we’ll get you there!”

Stunned, Mr Mešťánek submissively gets into the taxi. For the whole journey he is very tense, gripping in his hand the string bag with Freddy’s snack.

“Going to let your hair down?” The taxi driver tries to get a conversation going, as he spins the steering wheel.

Old Mr Mešťánek feels very tense and awkward sitting there. He now regrets taking a taxi; he could have taken a tram and then walked.

“Well, here we are, sir,” says the taxi driver and puts a finger on the taximeter’s digital screen. “Eighty four,” he says.

Old Mr Mešťánek takes out his purse and reluctantly pays off the driver.

“Have really good fun,” says the driver politely.

Freddy’s father stops on the pavement, his head flung back, examining the neon girl and a sign which is alternately bright and dim and says “ Justine .” Then he knocks hard at the door of the villa.

A little window opens and two penetrating eyes stare at old Mr Mešťánek. Old Mr Mešťánek politely says hello, takes a breath and tries to explain why he has come.

“Are you a club member?” the man at the entrance asks him.

“No, but…” says old Mr Mešťánek.

Obviously, the bouncer has decided that this scraggy old man, his skin yellow from nicotine, presents no danger, and lets him in.

“I’m only visiting,” says Piggybank’s father. “To see my son… I’ve got his supper here…”

Old Mr Mešťánek lifts up the string bag with lunch-tin and scones.

“Oh, I see,” says the bouncer. “And which one is it?”

“Alfred Mešťánek,” says the father. “He’s quite a big fellow.”

“Freddy?” the bouncer asks. “Freddy Piggybank?”

“That’s what they call him,” Freddy’s father nods unwillingly. He has never liked that nickname, though he’s heard it a few times before.

“I don’t think he’s free at the moment,” says the bouncer. “He’s with a client.”

Mešťánek’s father is dumbfounded with horror.

“You mean?” he says, puzzled.

“Well, he’s got a client,” says the bouncer. “Don’t you know what your son does? Come and sit down in the bar for now. I’ll get him to come and see you when he’s finished.”

In the course of a few minutes old Mr Mešťánek aged ten years and shrank four inches. He followed the tall brute into a bar elegantly lit by spotlights.

“That’s Freddy’s dad,” the bouncer told the barmaid who was wearing a tight knitted miniskirt. “He’s brought him his supper.”

They both smiled knowingly.

“What will you have, Mister Piggybank?” the barmaid twittered. “Cola, Fanta, coffee? Or perhaps a little cognac?”