Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

Lenka is certain that Urban’s high standard of living comes from his job as a shop window dresser and video artist. To her, Urban is basically one of life’s losers, but a nice and entertaining loser. For a college girl like Lenka, anyone who fails second-year theory of culture can’t be anything but a loser. She’s not impressed by money; she grew up in a rich home. Lenka is a language student. English and Arabic. She may sleep with Urban one day, but not yet. Who knows if she ever will? She likes leading him on. Sometimes she even lets him kiss her. She’s a big, slim, silent, walking promise. Urban has the right phrase for this type of girl: “dry whore”. But it’s still fun going out with her. One day she’ll stop being faithful to her future boyfriends. Meanwhile, Urban can screw married women. There are plenty of them in a department store. It’s nice and warm in the shopfitters’ room and both he and the married woman are paid for their efforts. Life is beautiful, Urban concludes. He decides to get up early the next day and set out for the border crossing once again. It’s a gold mine. All that money for the taking.

Lenka has seductive eyes. The champagne foams. Urban puts his hand on hers. A slant-eyed waiter hovers noiselessly. “A dry whore,” Urban tells himself silently. He is a slave to his own æsthetics.

* * *

Rácz is having supper, too. He is drinking because he’s angry. He kicked the incompetent Ďula in the testicles when he got back to the suite with a long face and threw up his hands in a tragic manner. He’d have kicked him to death, if Silvia hadn’t stopped him. She paid for that. A slap. Two slaps. Then it was the shopping bags’ turn. He tore up all her parcels. Both women were in tears, trying to save the clothes they’d bought. They fought Rácz for the shopping, like chicks fighting a rooster for a juicy worm they’d caught. “How could you let him get away?” Rácz went on raging at Ďula.

After a long while spent dithering and moaning, Ďula got off the floor. Silvia had to spray a whole bottle of soda water on him.

“You certainly know how to kick a man, boss,” said Ďula humbly, his face drawn with pain, his hands between his legs.

By now Rácz is standing in front of a mirror with his right hand solemnly raised. Rácz won’t rest until he finds out where that city slicker, that hustler Urban gets all his currency. Nobody, but nobody will make a hundred thousand a day out of Rácz! Who ever heard of such a thing?

Rácz only calms down and cheers up in the cabaret bar. He requests his favourite song and then orders a bottle of cherry brandy. “What would you like to have,” he asks his company, Silvia, Edita, and Ďula. “Order anything you like. My treat! You want to eat? Eat! Musicians, play my tunes one more time!” Rácz shouts and bangs his fist on the table. Ďula quickly gets high and starts to laugh stupidly. The drunken women move their bodies in rhythm with the music. “That’s it! That’s it! That’s it!” the stoker shouts and, with a bottle of cherry brandy in his hand, he jumps up and dances around the table. His eyes are hazy, as if covered by a cloud. The musicians sweat so hard that their temples are shine. They smile a forced smile. Their faces are sleazy professional masks, grimacing with insolence, conspiracy and connivance. They meekly follow the drunken stoker on his way of the cross through the Ambassador’s cabaret bar.

* * *

The snow is shining; it creaks under the runners of the dog-sledge. The hunters run over the ice, shouting. The sea, covered by cracking ice floes, is close. Its cool, salty breath can be sensed from far away. A vicious wind whistles in their ears. “Walrus! Walrus!” the oldest Inuit shouts, pointing at the crack. The manager weighs his harpoon in his hand and hurls it at the herd of snarling walruses. Then he wakes up in the dark, in his office. He yells with fear for a while, but then he collects himself. He unzips the tent flap and emerges completely frozen. It’s dark in the office. The manager looks at his watch. It’s nearly midnight. A snowstorm rages outside. Icicles hang from the ceiling. Lately, the manager has spent most of his time asleep. His teeth are loose in his gums. He is troubled by nightmares about the Inuit. It takes him a long time to wake up and recognize his surroundings. He’s got to keep moving, he tells himself and starts to pace the office up and down. Standing still means certain death for a hunter: keep on moving, constantly do something! The manager quickly splits some firewood and starts a fire in the middle of the office. His fear of freezing overcame fear of burning down the hotel a long time ago. There’s nothing flammable left in the office, anyway. The parquet floor, furniture, and mahogany panelling are all gone. There’s no danger of a conflagration. Now he roams the building at night, stealing a chair or armchair where he can. He once managed to get a settee from the lobby; he stole it right from under the nose of the dozing receptionist. It burned for a long time. The manager got warm burning it, singing a happy song. At the same time he roasted a small dog he’d caught near the skips in the courtyard. Crouching motionless in the dark, he waited hours for that dog.

That was before he’d hunted out the hotel’s immediate surroundings. Now he has to get his prey further away from the hotel. He ended up finding a relatively rich hunting ground across the street, in the courtyard of the cancer clinic. But he caught almost nothing but cats there. That was one drawback. Secondly, the manager had to get into the courtyard furtively, since the lodge porter at the rear entrance kept a careful lookout. In his thick anorak and ski trousers, carrying arrows and a long bamboo bow made from a foot-scraper, wearing baggy felt boots, the manager had a hard time climbing the fence of the cancer clinic. It was even worse on the way back with his prey: a cat, dog, or small rodent. Happy moments of careless feasting only took place when the manager made it safely back into the hotel building, hugging the walls, keeping to the shadows until he was in his office. Such moments were rare. More often the manager starved and froze until he was so weak that he could barely lie in his tent, motionless and staring vacantly.

The fire does not warm the whole office. A few feet away it’s still cold. The manager has to sit very close to the fire. He can light a bonfire only at night. Then the smoke coming out from the half-open office window can’t be seen.

The manager has somehow come to terms with his fiasco in the kitchen. For some time he has even been considering not sucking up to Rácz. However, as winter goes on, he desperately realises that only making peace with the stoker will enable him to survive. Nobody else will help him. So the manager decides to make one more attempt to win the stoker’s favour and pardon. Then the heating in his office will be turned on again and the manager can take off his baggy ski trousers and peacefully get his position back. Then the manager’s salary will no longer vanish somewhere in the hotel corridors. He could buy food, even raspberry soda. The manager’s wife and her lover would take him back. In time he would then push the lover out and once again sleep in his managerial bed.

But first, the manager has to regain Rácz’s favour. Fortunately, he knows how. This time he really does. A sudden revelation came to him one evening when he was putting on the fire the last leg of a chair he’d looted in the lift. This epiphany was so powerful and intense that it made the manager jump up as if he’d been bitten. He walked up and down his icy office for a long time, issuing various shrieks of astonishment, stumbling into the stretched skins of various small rodents he was drying, drumming his chest with his fists in blissful triumph and hope for a speedy solution to his problems When he was worn out, the manager sat down by his fire again and shook his head until he was giddy, as if baffled at someone like him having such a brilliant idea.