Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

Donáth and Mrs. Tóthová drunkenly dance in front of the boilers, the radio plays, barely audible or comprehensible.

“Are we going to do it?” asks Ribana.

“Do what?” Rácz doesn’t understand.

“Do you feel like

doing

it to me,” repeats the gypsy.

“You mean like…” Rácz finally gets it.

The gypsy nods with her tongue between her lips. They jump up and head for the cubbyhole. The gypsy lies down on the dirty bed, lifts her dress and spreads her legs. Rácz’s brain has stopped working, he drops his dungarees to the knees and gets on top of her. The gypsy uses her hand to help him and then just passively holds him.

“What a huge one you’ve got,” she tells him after a while and gasps for breath. “I can feel him all the way to my kidneys.” Rácz writhes wildly. Suddenly his face freezes and he lets a suppressed exhalation escape from his mouth. Then he turns onto his side and, still lying, he pulls his dungarees back over his bare body.

“Good, wasn’t it?” Ribana asks. “You can do it to me any time you like. Just come and get me from the dishwashing room.”

Rácz nods.

The women have gone somewhere. It’s getting dark behind the cellar windows. Donáth has collapsed onto the table. The bottle is empty. Someone grabbed the radio and smashed it against the wall. The boilers hum, the pumps silently puff. The wheels whistle. It’s hot in the boiler-room. Rácz sleeps half-naked on the bench, his jacket under his head.

When Rácz wakes up in the morning, Donáth is standing over him, dressed in his Sunday best and trying to say good-bye. Mrs. Tóthová is there as well. They both look somewhat embarrassed. “So, we’re off,” says Donáth. They sit down for a while before they set out on their journey. They are silent. “We had a ball last night, didn’t we?” Donáth suddenly shouts with a forced cheerfulness. “I’ve still got a headache!” Mrs. Tóthová smiles. Rácz nods and gathers his dulled facial muscles into a smile. “Our train leaves at seven,” says Donáth. His tears flow. He blows his nose on a dirty handkerchief. “Come and visit us when you’re in the neighbourhood,” he suggests. Rácz nods. They both know it will never happen. “That’s how it is with us…” Donáth waxes philosophical after a moment of embarrassing silence. They get up and part. Rácz accompanies them to the yard. They shake hands.

Rácz returns to the boiler-room. He takes off his boots and lies on the bench to finish his sleep. He is the boss here now.

* * *

The next day Ďula comes. He behaves arrogantly, talks down to Rácz and is rude. The leaking radiator in the manager’s office has to be fixed. Right away. Ďula doesn’t hang about and leaves haughtily.

Rácz gets his tools ready. He realises that he hasn’t been in the actual hotel building yet. When Donáth had to fix something, Rácz was busy unloading the coal. “Well, I’ll find it somehow. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll ask someone how to get to the manager’s office.” Rácz takes the tool-bag and sets off.

It’s wet outside. The fat parking attendant is shivering under his umbrella, and his wet fingers are raking through the red bag he carries. Video Urban is hanging around the entrance to the bistro, discussing something with three gypsies.

“Still not shown up?” Rácz asks him in sympathy. He admires Urban though he’d never admit it. He admires Urban’s smooth style, his comfortable way of life, his articulate speech, his city attitudes and city problems, such as his waiting for a Swede. Isn’t that enough? Someone supposed to come all the way from Sweden just to see Video Urban! And Rácz has never even spoken to someone from Sweden. Once, when he was on his way to buy some beer, an elderly couple addressed him in some weird language, probably wanting him to show them the way. Rácz was so scared that he ran away in confusion and hid in a passage leading to the yard. He was afraid to go to the supermarket all that day, thinking the couple might be waiting for him and wanting something from him. Rácz hates foreigners, but at the same time, he’s irresistibly drawn to them. And Urban? He can talk to them just like that in any language (Rácz has seen for himself), he jokes with them, laughs with them. He even does deals with them, the same way he would with Rácz, and then he gets mad when the foreigner doesn’t keep his side of the bargain. Urban comes to work only occasionally, so he can be seen as someone who is there, but has just stepped outside. It’s a different kind of work — no dungarees, no dirt, no noise. Rácz catches himself envying Video Urban. If someone asked him how he’d like to live, Rácz would have answered without hesitation: like Urban.

Rácz then made a decision: he’d return home, marry Eržika, as planned, but he’d persuade her to adopt Urban’s cool city attitudes. Rácz will change the whole village. It’s easy. The world is not just full of work and suffering, the real world is comfortable.

“So he hasn’t come yet?” Rácz repeats the question, since Urban didn’t hear the first time.

“Oh, hello…” says Urban absent-mindedly, and gives the leather-clad gypsies an embarrassed look. It’s hard to tell if he’s ashamed to be seen with Rácz by the gypsies, or vice versa. Rácz generously assumes the latter.

“So he still hasn’t come?” Rácz asks in a friendly manner, to let the gypsies know that he’s linked to Video Urban by a secret they share. Urban shakes his head. “No, Hurensson hasn’t come yet.”

“Come and see me in the boiler-room,” Rácz asks him, “I’ve got something to show you.”

“What?” Urban wants to know. Rácz won’t tell him, and hurries off to the hotel to avoid getting wet. By the time he’s run into the hotel entrance, he is all wet.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The liveried doorman stops him.

“I’m from the boiler-room,” says Rácz. “They asked me to…”

The doorman looks him up and down with obvious distaste, as if he were something that a dog had brought in off the street. “Who cares?” he says arrogantly. “You don’t plan to walk into reception like this, do you?”

“Let me in,” says Rácz, “I’m going to fix the manager’s radiator.”

The doorman yells at him. “Get lost, you wretch, I don’t ever want to see you again! Who wants to see you? You only spoil the view from entrance!” He looks around to see that no western hotel guest is going to come out and see him in the compromising company of the stoker.

“Let me in!” Rácz yells and makes a feint to the left only to sneak in on the right past the clumsy doorman, and goes through the revolving door. The doorman blinks his piggish eyes and runs cursing after him.

All black, in greasy boots, Rácz enters the reception hall. A soft runner-carpet muffles his clumping steps. “You can’t loiter here!” the receptionist calls to him from behind his counter. “Do you hear me? You have to go through the service entrance!” Rácz looks him over briefly, but pays no attention to him. A huge crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling has caught his attention. With his bag on his shoulder he gawps at this amazing object. He taps the runner on the floor with his foot, and runs his finger along the marble top of the reception counter. With his rough hand he feels the quality of the tapestries decorating the wall. He bangs his fist on the mahogany panelling of the restaurant door.

“God!” he says. “Great God! What a place!”

The doorman is standing behind him, not knowing what to do. Rácz’s entrance has created a stir. In the fashionable cosmopolitan atmosphere of an international hotel his dirty dungarees and shaved skull look like a gob of phlegm in a champagne glass. The assistant manager enters. He looks over the hall and in an instant works out what’s happened. He nods to his underlings. The doorman and the receptionist grab Rácz and drag him to the exit. Rácz is so overwhelmed by the hotel’s luxurious appointments that for a moment he obediently lets them lead him out. Then he notices the stir that he has caused by his entrance and becomes unsure. Why are all these foreigners watching him? He angrily shakes both underlings off. The doorman pounces on him determined to tackle him with a double Nelson. Rácz disdainfully knocks him down with a blow of his fist. The receptionist tries to grab him from behind, but Rácz hits him with his bag full of steel tools. They lie on the floor, not uttering a sound. Rácz is on guard, with his huge black fists ready. The assistant manager gives him a cowardly sidelong glance and backs off towards the stairs. Rácz uses the confusion to leave the hall, retreating through the revolving door.