Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

Urban reaches for the phone. He hesitates for a second and then dials the number of that dry whore Lenka. “What are you doing?” he asks her.

“Is that you?” Lenka asks and she seems quite happy. “You haven’t called me for quite some time,” says Lenka. “What’s happened to you?”

“Nothing,” Urban says. “I’ve been busy. I’ve started my own business.”

She does not react as he imagines she should, so he asks her, “And what are you doing?”

“I’m on holiday,” says Lenka.

“How I envy you!” says Urban.

Lenka laughs.

“You shouldn’t have got kicked out of university,” she says.

“Here we go again,” Urban says. “Let’s go out,” he suggests.

“Where to?” asks Lenka.

“I’ll take you to the pictures,” says Urban. “Then we’ll go and have dinner. Would you like to?” He quickly moves the paper closer and leafs through it with his left hand. “The Slavia’s showing La Dolce Vita .”

“Fellini?” Lenka asks. She’s seen it already.

“ La Dolce Vita is the ultimate film,” Urban believes. “You have to see it several times. It’s Fellini at his best.”

The dry whore Lenka is playing hard to get. Apparently, she’s got a lot of work on. Only after more persuasion does she let herself be talked into going. Urban puts down the phone, jumps up and starts to look for something nice to wear. Life has meaning, at least this evening. “I’m going to screw you one day, anyway,” says Urban, knotting his tie. “We know about these virgins. It is all a question of the right circumstances.” He knows all about it.

“By the way, are you doing anything on New Year’s Eve?” Urban asks her after the film, as they sit in a Chinese restaurant, waiting for the food to be brought.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” says Lenka, taking the wind out of Urban’s sails. “You want to invite me out somewhere,” continues Lenka, noticing Urban’s shock. “I’ve got an invitation to a classmate’s party.”

Urban feels sad. He nervously looks at the waiter, and drums his right hand on the table. Then he looks at Lenka. He likes her, naturally. Maybe he’s in love with her. He is sometimes, certainly.

“I hope you don’t think that’s silly,” she says.

“No, no,” Urban assures her, shaking his head decisively.

“I hope you don’t think it’s silly, Lenka repeats, “but I wanted to ask you if you’d like to go to the party with me.” Urban sits there, not smiling. “You know,” Lenka says, “I want to make it look as if we’re an item. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” says Urban. “Actually, I don’t.”

Lenka is embarrassed. “I want to be sure that no one tries anything on. You know what I mean? I want them to think I have a boyfriend,” she adds after a while.

It takes Urban time before he can speak. Of course, he’ll find it pleasant, even fun to oblige. He meant to invite her to the Ambassador cabaret bar. Lenka surely knows her classmates inside out; they have no surprises left. Urban is certain no one would dare try anything on, even if Urban weren’t her pretend-boyfriend: they’re all impotent bookworms, anyway.

“You’re wrong!” Lenka protests. “You don’t know Krnáč and Taragel.”

Urban nods in agreement. He must admit that he doesn’t know them. But he wants to show her something she doesn’t know: the hidden face of the city. Urban pauses, stirred by pride that he put it so nicely. The hidden face of the city. But the hidden face of the city doesn’t impress Lenka.

“I’m sure you want to introduce me to those idiot friends of yours, the money-changing morons,” she says accusingly.

The slant-eyed waiter brings hot stoneware dish-warmers and then the food. While he serves them, Urban and Lenka are silent. The food has a pleasant aroma.

“Bring me a knife and fork, please,” says Urban, putting the chopsticks aside.

The waiter bows. He leaves and soon returns with cutlery on a tray. A condescending smile plays on his immobile Asian face.

“It only takes a minute or two to learn to use chopsticks,” says Lenka, when the waiter leaves. “I can’t imagine eating Chinese food with a knife and fork.”

She adroitly picks up the chopsticks and taps them together like a claw.

“Look, see? I’ll teach you.”

“I don’t want to learn,” says Urban. “I have a knife and fork.”

“Shall I ask for chopsticks?” asks Lenka.

Urban shakes his head.

“I asked him to take them away,” he says. “What’s done, is done. They’ll think I’m an idiot.”

“Does it matter what the waiter thinks of you?” Lenka asks and taps her chopstick-claw menacingly. “Isn’t it more important what I think of you?”

“Listen, we’ll do a deal,” Urban starts. “I’ll go with you to the party and act as your boyfriend. But when it gets boring, we’ll go to the Ambassador.”

Urban smiles. Urban has an invitation, too. And not just anybody’s: Rácz himself has invited him.

“Who is Rácz?”

“It’s pointless trying to explain,” says Urban, “or to describe it. You’ve got to see and experience it. Urban is certain that this would be a completely different sort of experience from Lenka’s blasé and impotent classmates with their endless blethering about existence, truth, experience, background, values, epistemology, and all that crap.

“You’re just jealous of them,” says Lenka.

“Of them?” Urban is astounded. “And just what is there to be jealous of, if I may ask?”

“You could have been studying, if you hadn’t been so stupid,” Lenka said. “and next year you’d be graduating.”

“And then I’d live with my dear parents until I’m thirty, making twelve hundred crowns gross a month,” says Urban. “Not if I can help it.”

“I bet your parents must be really proud of you now!” Lenka says.

Urban gets angry. He makes more in a day than his father makes in a month. Is that nothing?

“Who is Rácz, anyway?” Lenka asks after chewing for a while.

Urban pauses to reflect. “He’s a natural calamity,” he says. “A money-making machine.”

“So he’s just another money dealer?” Lenka asks, disappointed.

Urban nods in agreement. He thinks. “Rácz is the stupidest and the most limited person I’ve ever met,” he finally says. He has less intelligence than Urban’s left shoe. But he is incredibly adaptive. And predatory. Urban knows what Rácz wants. He wants everything. Rácz is a natural catastrophe. Urban looks at Lenka. Rácz would show her who’s boss, he thinks, imagining Lenka’s fragile white body in the stoker’s paws. “She deserves it,” he muses.

* * *

The stupidest and the most limited man Urban had ever met is sitting in his suite, silently watching the television screen. It’s morning. An overcast sky can be seen through the window. On the screen a giant muscle man is brandishing a five-foot sword that emits sparks.

Ďula knocks and enters. “I’ve come, as you ordered. Here’s that list of yours,” he says, handing Rácz a piece of paper. “I’ve retyped it, like you told me.”

Rácz takes the paper and looks it over, muttering approval. “You can see straight away it’s better,” he says with mild reproach. “And you have to add the lawyer,” he decides.

“I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know what he’s like and what we can expect of him. He doesn’t let on. He keeps himself to himself.”

Rácz looks at Ďula. “We’ll invite him, too,” he says. “Do it. Clear?”

“I don’t know if he’ll come,” Ďula allows himself a doubt. Their joint foray to the stoker’s village has strengthened, in Ďula’s mind, his ties to the powerful stoker. “I mean if he doesn’t have other plans,” adds Ďula wisely.