Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

* * *

The weather is bitterly cold. Snow has been falling at night. There are snowdrifts three feet high. The hotel is packed with guests. The temperature has dropped. The thermometer often drops below minus thirty. When the wind blows through the empty night streets, it gathers terrific speed. It ravages the courtyard like a tornado and overturns the dustbins.

Rácz relishes his importance. Thoroughly grimy with coal and oil, he walks through the hotel. Willy-nilly, everyone praises him.

Only the manager’s radiator still doesn’t work. It’s snowing outside. The manager is freezing in his office. His face is glued to the window as he watches the goings-on in the courtyard and in front of the boiler-room. The furniture in his office is all cracked. He has brought in an electric hob from home. He warms himself over it. There are blisters on his hands and his back is freezing. He runs around the hotel in a tracksuit and a fur hat tied under his chin. He moves with his back sliding along the walls, carefully looking around corners. He is afraid of the wild stoker. He had made a mistake. And he wanted to put it right. He set out several times to see Rácz to apologize and say that he was cancelling the punishment. But each time in front of the iron door to the boiler-room he was overcome by fear and went back to his office. He is always hanging about in the vestibule, getting warm. Torontál doesn’t like it, fearing that the manager is after his job. The unhappy senile old man’s angry shouts send the manager back to his freezing office. Everyone is pointing a finger at him.

In his office, the manager unzips a sleeping bag and sits in it at his desk with an expression of hopelessness on his face. Icicles hang down from the ceiling. The manager’s fingers ache with cold; it has got under his nails. Even a triple layer of winter underwear is useless in this cold.

Rácz has become the star of the hotel. Everybody bows to him. Ďula calls him “chief”. The hotel lawyer calls him “Mister Rácz.” They know that Rácz hates the manager and so they all avoid the manager, or pretend they can’t see him. Nobody wants to be compromised by being seen talking to a condemned man. Desperation has given the manager a tic round his mouth and face. He trembles and his teeth chatter even in the warmth of his home. He doesn’t make sense when he talks. His wife is beginning to distance herself from him. She’s decided to take a lover, and is trying to do something about it. The manager can’t get it up any more.

Unlike the manager, the stoker has frequent hard-ons. And Silvia also sees him frequently. Ribana shouts at him, but he ignores her. He’s aiming higher. He sits in his boiler-room and smokes American cigarettes. He uses lemon soap. For aftershave, he pats Cologne N o1148 on his face. He chews gum. When he can’t taste it any more, he spits it out and unwraps another piece.

Occasionally, he checks the guest book at the reception desk. Nobody minds, and people bow to him while he’s looking at it. When Rácz sees that a guest has moved out, he enters the empty room and turns off the radiator. He’ll turn it on only when the guest, informed by other guests or by the staff, pays a suitable sum, or offers a gift of appropriate value.

* * *

Urban tries to make a living any way he can. He has to live. He almost never comes to work. His salary is small, so what do they want from him? He works only as much as they pay him. From time to time he dresses a shop window, but not often. He works only when inspiration seizes him. He spends the mornings in a white coat in view of the watchful passers-by. He does not think of himself as an ordinary artist. He graduated from an applied arts college, but he is a life artist. He did not complete theory of culture at university. He lives in an artist’s attic studio in the old town. In summer he hustles in the centre, buying and selling foreign currency. You can live well doing this. Then the season ends. There’s no business in winter, because few tourists show up. People who come on business need a receipt. They wouldn’t change money with him. In winter, Urban lives modestly. But he’s not destitute. He ekes a living moonlighting as a taxi driver. He criss-crosses the frozen snowbound city at night. Drunken freezing people coming out of the clubs often wait in vain for a licensed taxi. There aren’t any. But Urban shows up and gladly takes them. He charges according to distance, the temperature outside and the alcohol content of the passenger’s blood. If the passenger’s very drunk, Video Urban lets him pay twice: at the beginning and at the end of his trip. The drunk is happy, so is Urban. He’s not hurting anyone. He’s simply pursuing his quarry.

Urban is in the middle of adjusting a neatly shaped fold on a roll of fabric when someone knocks on the shop window. Urban gets up and looks behind him. On the pavement he sees the stoker trying to tell him something. “What is it?” Urban asks.

“Come down and see me!” Rácz shouts. “When you’re free!”

Urban nods. “When I finish this,” he shouts through the window. “I’ve still got the Christmas decorations to hang.” He realises that Rácz wants to unload his seven hundred marks. Oh well, Urban will buy them if the price is right. He can always make a profit on them. Urban feels quite pleased.

Rácz is waiting for him in the boiler-room with a pile of foreign currency on the table. “Will you have something? Whisky Heevash Reygahl? Benson and Hegyesh cigarette? The notes are here on the table.” Rácz needs to sell them. “There’s a list on this bit of paper.” Next to the paper is an estimate of what they’d fetch according to the bank rate. Rácz is no fool. All you have to do is to buy the Friday newspaper. Rácz could insist on the bank rate, but he knows that Urban needs his cut, too. He’ll be happy to get X crowns.

“How much?” Video Urban asks: he thinks he must have misheard. Rácz repeats the sum.

Urban is ready to do the deal immediately. He gets out his wallet and looks into it. Rácz drinks his whisky and puts the tin cup down on the table. Of course, Rácz is no idiot. Yes, Urban heard right. X crowns. Rácz knows it’s a very good deal. Urban can count on him for more foreign currency in the future. Rácz is not interested how much Urban sells the money for or what he does with it. That’s Urban’s business. But Rácz needs a favour. Rácz is a stranger here. He needs Urban to tell him from time to time what people want, what everyone’s after, what’s in short supply. Rácz will get it and Urban will sell it. No, Rácz stresses, he’s not talking about stolen goods. It’s just that Rácz has no time to get information or tip-offs; he’s too busy working.

Urban nods, he understands. It sounds like a good idea. But what are the currency dealers going to say? Not the small fry, like Urban. He’s thinking of the big currency dealers: Harry, Fedor, Khunt, and mainly the Albanians.

“Albanians?” Rácz wants to know: “Who are they?”

Urban explains. “They’re Yugoslav Albanians. The Ambassador is teeming with them. All the big foreign currency deals, cigarette smuggling and so on is done by them. You don’t want to tread on their toes. And they’re police grasses; otherwise they couldn’t do their deals so calmly and boldly in broad daylight. They’re trouble!” Urban stresses the last point.

Rácz thinks hard. Then he makes his decision. “Screw them,” he says. “We’ll do as we like and we won’t worry about them. You can do a deal with anyone. First we’ll try the nice way!” Rácz says and clenches his fist until his hair stands on end. “Well, what do you say?” he asks, pretending to lose patience. “Are you in or out?” Urban can’t resist this tempting offer. He puts the cash Rácz asked for on the table. “Can I rely on you?” Rácz asks as he counts the money.