Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

“Cleaning the urinals?” asks the young woman. “That would be fine. When can I start?”

Eržika and Feri are pole-axed.

“How much do you want for doing that?” Feri asks.

“Nothing,” says the young woman. “It would be nice if you gave me a place to sleep.”

“A place to SLEEP?” Eržika is puzzled.

“She’s run away from her husband,” Feri tells Eržika in Hungarian, so the lady can’t understand them.

Eržika nods knowingly.

“We’ll see,” she says in a good-natured way, gets up, goes to the men’s room, opens a closet with cleaning equipment and takes out a wire brush and disinfectant. “Go and clean the lavatories now,” she tells madam. “We’ll sort out somewhere for you to sleep.”

“What was all that about?” Freddy asks a rhetorical question, when the pretty woman goes off, carrying a bucket.

Eržika taps her forehead.

Feri is smiling. If madam doesn’t want to be paid, all the better for Feri and Eržika. Though madam won’t last very long.

“The real problem is where she’s going to sleep,” she reminds him.

Feri thinks seriously. “Yes,” he says. “Maybe we could make the entrance to the second lavatory a bedroom for the night. We sleep in the first lavatory, she sleeps in the second.”

“If she agrees to that,” says Eržika. She can lend her blankets, no problem. But would that be good enough for a fine lady like her?

Feri reflects. “What about Freddy Piggybank?” he asks.

Eržika doesn’t understand.

Feri explains: why not put her up in his trailer?

Eržika shakes her head. “That won’t work.”

Looking like a group of statues, they reflect.

The young woman stands above the urinal and takes deep breaths of the ammonia fumes from men’s urine. Her right hand can’t help slipping under her miniskirt, into her crotch. Her excitement knows no bounds. Behind her back the door opens. A beer drinker smelling of cheap cigarettes comes in to have a pee. When he sees the pretty woman he stops in amazement. The young woman drops her bucket, turns to face the drinker, her hand still on her crotch. Her eyes are those of a wild animal let off its chain. The drinker closes the door behind him. Lady’s every gesture offers her to him. The drinker clutches her. The pretty woman wraps her leg, clad in smoke-coloured tights, around him, as if she were climbing a tree. They lock themselves in a cubicle. Lady puts the lid down, sits and spreads her legs to the drinker. The drinker opens his fly with shaking yellow fingers. In the cubicle’s artificial light appears a huge member, darkened from disuse. Lady gasps. She has never in her life seen a member like that. Her technicolor husband’s is half that size, and even so he rarely gets it up, since he’s always sitting in his burgundy suit and tie at a computer screen.

The young woman sighs and moans loudly, as if she is about to die. The drinker kneels down between her legs. He enters her and moves wildly. After a few seconds, the young woman is drenched in a pulsating stream of white liquid. The drinker sighs. He quickly pulls his member out of Lady, gets off his knees and leaves without so much as a glance at her. In the front of the cubicle he urinates into the urinal for a long time and when he finishes, leaves.

The young woman rearranges her clothing. Her fire is still burning; it hasn’t been quenched. She gets up and staggers. Something is pouring out of her, so she uses the toilet paper. Then she picks up the cleaning fluid and begins to clean the bowl.

When Feri finds out from the satisfied beer drinker what he’d just been up to in the cubicle, he is dumbfounded. It takes a moment for his brain to get to work. He goes to see what Lady is doing in the lavatory. He watches her mopping the ever-wet floor.

“Everything all right?” he asks.

The young woman smiles and nods. Her hand reaches for his fly. Feri looks around in embarrassment as if he’s afraid of Eržika seeing, even though the door is closed. He’s a faithful husband. The city hasn’t spoiled him. One day, when they’re rich, Eržika and he will go back to the village in the south where they were born, and they will leave the lavatory and Lady behind them.

“You want a man?” Feri asks and immediately corrects himself: “Men?”

Lady nods.

“I can send you someone,” says Feri.

Lady runs the tip of her tongue over her lips. She nods.

“Just wait for me here,” he tells her and goes back to Eržika.

They haggle quietly for a while.

“How much are we going to ask each man for?” Eržika asks.

They can’t settle on a sum. A hundred is too little, two hundred is too much. They finally agree on a hundred and twenty for intercourse. One hundred will go to them, and twenty will be for her food and, if need be, for accommodation in Freddy’s trailer.

“Do something,” Feri orders Eržika, pointing to the men’s lavatory. “Give her a blanket,” he specifies. “So it looks a bit more cosy. I’ll go tell the men and then settle a price with Piggybank.”

Piggybank has his hands full. There are lots of cars. Feri guards them, collects the money, and asks for money already owing. Proud Feri Bartaloš in his white coat approaches and stands by him quietly for a while.

“What do you want?” asks Freddy.

Feri can’t find the right words. “Listen, I have a bit of a problem. We have this Lady, you know? The woman assistant. She’s run away from home and is working in the lavatory. She has nowhere to sleep.”

Feri eyes Piggybank.

“So what?” asks the fat parking attendant.

“So, Eržika and I were wondering,” Feri says, “whether she couldn’t sleep for a few nights at your place…”

Feri firmly shakes his head. Piggybank now lives in the car park. It’s the start of summer, high season. He doesn’t go home. He needs a bit of privacy. He works here, eats here, and sleeps here. By midnight he’s happy if he can shut his eyes for a few hours. Soon, in the morning, the whole thing starts again. By eight the car park is full. No, no, Freddy, doesn’t need some old bag in his trailer.

Bartaloš twists his face into a grimace, pretending to be surprised. WHAT? Has he heard right? Old bag? Well then, Freddy’d better come with him right away and take a look at what he’s calling an old bag!

Freddy Piggybank cautiously frees his shoulder from Bartaloš’s firm grip. Freddy is up to his neck in work. The car park is full; cars are constantly coming and going. That’s Freddy’s money. He’s not on a salary. He’s in business. He has no time to look at old cunts.

If Freddy gives Lady a place to sleep, says proud Feri, she may let him screw her.

Freddy pauses, but then just waves his hand. Freddy Piggybank doesn’t need to screw some old fossil. He’s got better contacts.

Bartaloš bursts out laughing: “You mean Five-Fingers Annie?”

Again he grabs the fat attendant by the shoulder.

“Come with me, if you don’t believe me,” he insists. “At least take a look, you don’t have to get close.”

They both cross the car park so they can see the entrance to the lavatories. Feri motions to Eržika to call Lady out. Eržika gets up and with a dignified gait enters the men’s lavatory.

Lady has by now made herself at home in one of the cubicles. A patterned blanket has been thrown over the lid of the pan, turning the cubicle into a love nest. Lady is sitting there, waiting for another drunk. Eržika takes her outside.

Freddy gawps. The young woman’s beautiful slender figure in an elegant two-piece takes his breath away. He can’t believe his eyes.

“Well? You want her?” Feri asks, noticing Piggybank’s amazement. “A fantastic woman, isn’t she?