Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

“Fine,” says Rácz, after a short pause. “I’ll give you five cents more for a schilling and twenty-five cents more for a deutschmark .”

Urban shakes his head. “Fifteen and fifty,” he says.

Rácz turns the video off and puts the remote control on the table. He looks at Urban. “OK, he agrees, “ten and thirty.”

Urban takes his wallet out, removes the money, counts it and puts it on the table. “Sixty-eight thousand schillings and eight thousand deutschmarks . Is that OK?”

Rácz is so astonished that he forgets to close his mouth, but he quickly gets a hold on himself. He stands up, leaves and soon comes back with a little metal safe. He takes his time counting the money. “You swine,” he tells Urban, piling a stack of one-thousand-crown banknotes on the table. “If you make just thirty cents on a schilling and one and a half crowns on a deutschmark , you’ll take about thirty thousand off me. That’s almost my daily take!” Rácz shakes his head, pretending to be upset.

Urban smiles. He stuffs the money into his wallet and gets up. He hasn’t got much time.

“Leaving already?” asks Rácz.

“Yes,” says Urban. “I’ve more work to do.” He can’t afford to take it easy. Would Rácz be interested if he brought more marks and so on?

Rácz lifts his eyebrows. “Just bring it,” he says. “I’ll take it all.” He pours a shot of Chivas Regal. “You’ve stunk the place out. What crap are you smoking?”

“Crap?” Urban, offended, takes the cigar out of his mouth. He reads the name on the ring and pronounces: “Davidoff.”

“Throw it away!” Rácz insists and reaches into a wooden humidor on the table. “Here, take this one, he says, giving Urban a cigar. “Cohiba. It comes all the way from Cuba.”

Urban stubs out his cigar in the ashtray and lights up a Cohiba. Through the cloud of smoke, he looks at a haughty Rácz. So, may Urban bring him more schillings and marks?

Rácz sees no need to answer. He spreads his arms in a gesture signifying “whatever you like, whenever you like.”

“I hope you’ll have enough pocket money left,” says Urban ironically.

But Rácz can’t take a joke against himself. “Rácz has enough money,” he declares, almost offended.

In the doorway Video Urban almost bumps into Ďula, who has been eavesdropping behind the door. Urban can’t be bothered waiting for the lift and runs down the stairs. He stops in the lobby: the glass entrance to the bar has been smashed. Long jagged pieces of glass, as sharp as swords, hang from the door-frame. “Closed owing to technical problems,” Urban reads on a paper notice. “What happened?” Urban asks the receptionist.

“Yesterday a drunken customer wrecked the whole bar: even four waiters couldn’t calm him down,” said the receptionist. “They had to call the cops. It was the fat bloke from the car park.” The receptionist can’t recall his name.

“I know,” says Urban. “I know the guy.”

“When the cops arrived he was going to hang himself,” the receptionist continues. “Another moment and it would have been too late.”

Urban arrives at the border crossing just on time. The customs officers had just cleared a huge orange monster with smoked glass and a sign reading LISCHKA REISEN. The travellers welcome Urban with satisfied expressions. The hands clutching banknotes have a liberating effect. He reaches for them greedily, with a crooked smile.

This time Rácz does not hide his astonishment. Looking at the piles of hundred- deutschmark and five-hundred- or thousand-schilling banknotes, he sits behind his desk with a stupefied expression. Not raising an eyebrow, however, he takes out his small safe, opens it, and wets the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

“Have you robbed a bank in Austria?” he asks, putting on the table the sum Urban names. Ďula stands near the radiator at the window. He bursts out laughing with amusement. “Shut your face, you fool,” Rácz turns on him. “Clear off! Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes, boss,” mumbles the driver, “I’m going.” He reluctantly leaves the window.

“You can tell me, no problem,” Rácz urges Urban, after Ďula closes the door behind him and presses his ear to the other side of the door.

“Tell you?” Video Urban asks cheerfully, as he stuffs money into his wallet. He meant to ask the stoker to give him hundred-crown notes. It’s stupid when a tourist wants to change two hundred deutschmarks and all you have is thousand-crown notes, and the tourist has no change. But then Urban decides to change them at the department store. The cashiers will do whatever he asks.

“You can tell me where you get the currency,” Rácz tells him. “I’m not going to use the information. You know I’m too busy to run around.” The stoker takes out a cigarette case and offers Urban a Players. Rácz is not a gossipy old woman. He’ll keep the information to himself. He’s not stupid, he knows it’s not easy to exchange that much money at one go. When a Kraut or Austrian shows up, he needs at most maybe two or three thousand crowns. Rácz can see that Urban must be doing whole busloads of them. But where is it happening? Certainly not in front of the hotel: Rácz has already asked the Albanians. So where?

Urban smiles, even though he doesn’t feel like it. Luckily, the door opens and in walks Silvia and her friend Edita, both weighed down with shopping bags and rosy from the cold air. Urban takes his opportunity and says goodbye.

“Will you bring me more today?” Rácz asks, as Urban heads for the door.

“I don’t know yet,” says Urban a bit annoyed: the stoker’s high-handed manners have been getting on his nerves lately.

“Going already?” The stoker sounds almost disappointed.

“I’ve got things to do,” Urban says evasively.

When he starts the engine and bumps off the pavement, he notices a movement in his rear view mirror. Round the corner appears the hotel’s Renault minibus, driven by Ďula. He hangs back, but is obviously following Urban. “Aha!” Video Urban concludes: Rácz has told Ďula to follow him. Instead of being happy to get a steady supply of currency, he’s jealous of Urban. It clearly annoys him that Urban is making just as much money as him on the deals. The stoker wants to trace the source of Urban’s currency and tap into it himself. Then he’d make not just what he gets already, but Urban’s cut, too. Urban thinks back to when he first met Rácz: the uncouth gestures, the ill-fitting suit, the pudding-bowl hair cut. He can’t help grimacing at the steering-wheel when he recalls having to explain to the sullen peasant what a deutschmark was, and what use it was. The stocky young man was silent and listened to Urban attentively with an inscrutable expression in his dark metallic eyes. “Bugger,” Urban relieves the tension with a curse. He jumps a red light at a crossroads and hears minibus’s brakes shriek. He takes a sharp turn to the right, and then another one. His mood improves. It would be odd if he, an experienced unlicensed taxi driver, couldn’t shake off an inept, stupid pursuer in the streets of his native city! Rácz has to be taught that Urban is not some moron who can be followed as in an American video. Urban takes another right turn and then one more. Soon he arrives at the crossroads where he got rid of that idiot Ďula. Now he calmly waits for a green light. There’s no sign of the minibus. He races the engine and takes off when the light turns yellow. He rushes to the border crossing. He’s wasted a lot of time as it is.

In the evening Urban has good reason to celebrate. He’s made almost a hundred thousand crowns’ clear profit in a day! Why didn’t he work it out sooner? He decides to take Lenka out that evening: she’s one of the girls that he cultivates, whom he phones from time to time, and who sometimes let him take her out to dinner. Naturally, he won’t take her to the Ambassador. He can’t risk meeting someone who might say something untoward.