Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

Freddy’s parents are beside themselves with happiness. Mother particularly likes Sida’s bridesmaids. Old Mešťánek likes them even more. They would certainly be astonished to learn that one is called Dárius, another Otmar, a third Radúz and the fourth, Vratko.

Before the reception, the old Mrs Mešťánek gives the newlyweds a wedding present: wool for Freddy’s and Sida’s pullovers. She will never find out what son and his bride do for a living; her husband won’t tell her and she’ll never guess. She simply doesn’t want to think about it.

* * *

Ten thousand miles away, another wedding is taking place. Doctor Edna Gershwitz and Martin Junec say “Yes, I will,” to each other, and soon set out on a honeymoon trip to Israel, Edna’s parents’ ancient homeland. Martin’s firm Artisania Lamps is doing better and better, and soon he’ll manage to set up a European branch. Understandably, Martin doesn’t come to Europe in person; he’ll never ever do that again. He sends his manager and a lawyer. In a little village, fifteen miles from Dresden, they buy cheaply a site with commercial buildings and after the necessary reconstruction begin producing the famous plywood lamps. After some time, Martin gives up his job as the CEO, leaves the firm, buys a ninety-foot yacht and sails with Edna and an eight-men crew on a round-the-world cruise. We should add that Žofré will keep his word and, ever since he left Martin outside the Hotel Ambassador, nobody will ever see him again.

Hruškovič devotes a few more years to his patients, but then retires. He has enough money and doesn’t need to lift a finger for the rest of his life. But he has to devote this remaining life to seeing doctors to cure him from diseases that he seems to have caught from the patients he’s cured. Hruškovič bears it humbly: he sees it as a punishment from God for being a charlatan and a fraud. Until the day he dies he is one of the most respected residents of Nová Ves. More than ten thousand people from all the corners of Slovakia and from abroad, mostly his former patients, attend his funeral, and it’s on the evening television news.

Rácz finally exploits the real estate property he bought in the port area and buys a couple of tug boats and a few barge towers and, in addition to all his business activities, he throws himself into the river transportation business, as well. He finally understands that he will never get Silvia back. He takes it like a man and finds another mistress. Of course, he won’t stop passionately and jealously loving his wife Lenka. The Chamber of Commerce votes him Businessman of the Year, the Association of Hoteliers and Restaurateurs votes him Hotelier and Restaurateur of the Year, the Alliance of Private River Shippers votes him River Shipper of the Year, and one women’s weekly magazine even names him Man of the Year.

Eržika Bartalošová works in her father’s, the butcher Kišš’s, shop as a sales woman. Her husband, proud Feri Bartaloš, rears pigs on old Mr Kišš’s farm. They make good money. Soon Eržika gets pregnant and they have a baby boy. They name him Antal, after his grandfather. They go on living in the Kišš house. Proud Feri spends his evenings in the pub, telling the men about his life in the city. They have all by now had enough of his bragging stories, but they keep listening, since they too feel, at least temporarily, somehow illuminated by the big city lights. When old Mr Kišš comes into the pub, Feri goes quiet. He knows that his father-in-law would instantly stop his bragging with a pointed poisonous remark. So he prefers to stand Kišš a shot of apricot brandy, keep his peace and patiently wait for the old man to kick the bucket.

Fraňo Fčilek, suspected of murdering Four-Eyes, was arrested and investigated. He soon had to be released for lack of evidence, as my more observant readers will have noticed. Fraňo Fčilek now collects beer mugs in the Hunter’s Inn . As for Four-Eyes, the official verdict on his death is that he slipped on a mustard-covered plastic sausage tray and fractured his lower cranial bone.

The Heilig spouses manage to deceive everyone. As soon as they get back from holiday they move to Berlin. None of their new colleagues and acquaintances ever suspect little Felicitas to be anyone but their own daughter. Felicitas grows quickly. In the future she will be a talented pupil and a good athlete. People will all be amazed how much she resembles her mother.

Silvia’s Perverts’ Club prospers. Silvia spends most of her time in her spacious attic flat. Only occasionally does she venture outside, looking about in case Rácz’s men are lurking; she worries that she might be kidnapped and thrown to the hungry and bestial savage hotelier. She lives like this for a long time, but then, at a gallery opening, she meets an intelligent young woman who wins her heart and soul. As it turns out, the young woman quite fancies Silvia, and so a little bit of simple happiness and love moves into the attic of the pretty villa by the main railway station, where a neon girl with a little whip in her hand shines into the dark night.

Freddy and Sida Mešťánek use their savings to buy a comfortable flat on Björnson Street, less than five hundred yards from the Perverts’ Club . Sida soon becomes pregnant, but works until the last moment: the advanced pregnancy gives her services a certain perverse cachet. After all, it is a Perverts’ Centre . After the birth of their child, named Silvia, in honour of their boss who acts as godmother, Sida stays at home. She sells her motorcycle and buys a car, to avoid the hassle of a pram in the packed buses and trams. Freddy stays in the Perverts’ Centre . Since he no longer has a partner, Silvia invents a new role for him: devising new programmes, small perverted plays for Justine’s basement theatre. Freddy throws himself into his work with verve and soon turns out to have a great talent for putting together pornographic one-act plays. Later, when Silvia begins to cooperate with the Danish company Colour Climax Corporation in producing deviant pornographic films locally, Freddy becomes its sole scriptwriter. Of course, his income goes up accordingly. He is no longer dependent on Sida, quite the reverse.

Only occasionally, at night when their little girl is asleep, Sida enters Freddy’s study, almost unrecognizable in her make-up, in leather corset and gloves, the whip he gave her in one hand, a studded dog collar and leash in the other, and demands her due. Work or no work, script or no script, the contract that Freddy once sealed with his own blood is still in force and always will be. Freddy has to serve. And he likes serving.

Soon Sida talks him into studying, despite his advanced age, film and scriptwriting at the Academy of Arts. They accept him onto the programme because of his great talent: so Freddy Piggybank spends his mornings at lectures and his afternoons on film and theatre scripts for Silvia. He’s off medication: regular sex has cured his brain condition.

Occasionally he treats himself, sits down at the café outside the Academy and with a whimsical gesture orders a Becher. He sits alone; he’s still a skinflint. He’s not friends with anyone. He can’t understand his classmates and they in turn can’t understand him. There is almost a generation gap between them. Besides, they find their older classmate a bit pedestrian and stupid, even though he tries to cover it up with a few terms that he’s picked up from the lectures. Freddy downs his Becher and a pleasant warmth spreads inside him. He recalls his wife and daughter, the two beings he loves most in the world and his heart is seized by a sudden surge of love. He gets up and hurries home.

In the evening he sits at the computer, writing a new piece for the small theatre. The little girl is playing in the living room with her children’s puppet gallows set. Sida watches the video of a new film produced by Silvia to a script by Freddy.