Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

Eva moves deliberately, as if in a slow motion film. Urban would gladly be rid of his painful erection; he grabs her by her hips and forces her to speed up. The prostitute opens her eyes. She looks as if Urban had woken her from a pleasant dream.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing,” says Urban. “Keep going.” Eva closes her eyes and resumes her slow rhythmic movements.

Wanda shrieks. Then again. She tries to slide off Hurensson as fast as she can, but her hands slip on the Swede’s chest, which is wet with sweat. She yells with fear. The Swede is lying motionless on his back. His eyes are closed.

Urban pushes Eva off and gets up. He approaches the bed. Hurensson is not breathing. He lies there, his passive face expressing calm dignity.

“Do something!” Wanda shouts at Urban. “Do something!”

Urban, not without squeamishness, puts his ear to Hurensson’s chest. Wanda is quiet. Urban listens carefully, but can’t hear anything. The sweat on the Swede’s hairy chest is beginning to cool. Urban moves away with distaste. He gets up.

All three stand around the cooling body. The prostitutes in their sexy lingerie and Urban with his sinking erection. Hurensson’s erection does not recede. It sticks up like a submarine periscope in the middle of an icy ocean. Wanda bursts into tears. She snivels and wipes her tears with the back of her hand.

“What happened, actually?” asks Urban.

“I don’t know,” says Wanda. She was riding him when his eyes suddenly popped, he gnashed his teeth, somehow rose up and then collapsed as if struck by lightning. She didn’t kill him!

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Urban agrees. “It was a stroke.”

“Let’s call an ambulance, call an ambulance, call an ambulance,” says Wanda, crying.

Urban shakes her. “Are you mad?” he shouts. “What are we going to tell them? That we had group sex and that he died on the job? Get a grip!”

Wanda weeps even more intensely. She licks away her tears with her long tongue.

“We’ve got to call an ambulance,” opines Eva. “What if he still isn’t dead yet?”

Urban looks at Eva, then at the Swede lying on the bed, his toes curled, his nose pointed. “We’re not calling an ambulance,” he declares in a firm voice. “They’ll examine him and find out that he’s taken drugs. Then we’re screwed. He’s as dead as a doornail, anyway.”

The prostitutes pull themselves together. They go to the bathroom to make themselves presentable and to get dressed. They suddenly feel ashamed. Urban gets dressed, too. He pours himself a stiff drink, but he can’t taste what he’s drinking. He thinks. The prostitutes come out of the bathroom. Wanda is laughing now. She covers her mouth with her hand. That’s Wanda for you. Her father also died at home. She was single then. Her maiden name was Prepichová (meaning ‘penetration’).

Eva bursts out laughing. “What?” she asks.

“None of that matters!” Urban says and gets up. “I’ve got a plan. First of all, we have to get him dressed. Understand? Dressed. Right then!” Urban loudly claps his hands. “Dress the body! Be quick about it!”

The prostitutes reluctantly get to work. Each one puts on a sock. Hurensson’s face looks dreamy. Urban helps them. They put on the Swede’s trousers, vest, shirt, and jacket. He wasn’t wearing a tie. Only a cravat round his neck and tucked under his shirt. “Fuck that!” Urban orders when they fail to tie a proper knot round the Swede’s neck.

“And what now?” Wanda asks.

Urban reflects. “We have to drag him away somewhere. Understand?” Urban has thought it all out: they’ll take the body and dump it discreetly somewhere in the city. As if he’d had a stroke there. What do the girls say to that?

The prostitutes nod. They like the idea. But they don’t like the thought of dragging a corpse right across town.

“The worst thing is that we’ll have to walk,” says Urban. “I’ve been drinking and doing drugs. If the cops catch us in the car, we’re screwed.”

“Walk?” The prostitutes repeat with disgust. They’re wearing high-heeled shoes.

“Do you want to take him in a taxi?” Urban retorts.

“And why not?” Eva objects. “We’ll hold him up like a drunk. We’ll talk to him; I mean, you’ll talk to him. The taxi driver won’t notice a thing. He’s paid not to notice things.”

Finally Urban agrees. “But,” he insists, “it mustn’t be anyone we know.”

The corpse lies fully dressed, looking bored.

“Hurry up, or he’ll go stiff,” Urban warns them. He goes to the phone and calls for taxi. He gives his address. “We need a taxi right away. A Mercedes, Sierra, or Fiat Mirafiori. Do you have anything like that? Thanks.” He puts down the receiver. Now he’s quite calm. There’s no going back.

“Why does it have to be a Mercedes?” asks Eva. “Does it matter?”

Urban laughs. “Not to him, but it matters to us. None of the drivers I know has a Mercedes, Sierra, or Mirafiori. Get it?”

The prostitutes say no more. Urban reaches into the dead man’s wallet. “We’ll split this three ways,” he suggests, when he finds a thick wad of banknotes. “There’s enough for everyone. He won’t need it any more.”

“I don’t want the dough!” says Wanda, feeling disgusted.

“Don’t be stupid!” Eva shouts at her. “Who’s going to give you anything these days? No one!”

Urban shakes the banknotes in her face. “We’re all in the shit together, so take the money. We can all do with it. And no hysterics.” Urban goes through the rest of the wallet’s contents: passport, driver’s licence, car registration. “Oh yes, there’s the car. We can’t leave it parked by the house. First we get this over, and then I call Khunt. It will have to be taken to a garage, resprayed, stamped with a new engine number: then we’ll sell it,” Urban decides. He’ll keep the registration and the fine-leather wallet. Any other documents will be thrown in the rubbish bin.

“How much is a Volvo like that worth?” asks Eva.

“We’ll ask three hundred thousand for it,” says Urban. “We can’t ask for more. It’s basically a stolen car. Of course, we’ll split it three ways. I’ll deal with it, you just keep your mouths shut.”

Now even Wanda agrees. She can’t make that much money in a month. It wasn’t such a bad fuck after all.

They put the corpse’s shoes on. Wanda drops Hurensson’s feet and the shoes bang on the wooden floor. That makes Wanda laugh and she lifts and drops the feet again.

“Stop messing about!” says Urban. He lifts the Swede off the bed. The girls wrap a scarf around the stiffened neck and put the corpse’s elegant long winter coat on him. Urban puts a hat on the corpse’s head. “Let’s go!” he orders them. Wanda opens the door to the hall and Urban and Eva stumble out of the flat. The corpse won’t stand. Its head swings from side to side. The hat keeps falling off. “Pick that hat up!” Urban whispers to Wanda. They have to stop again. The corpse is turning stiff; its knees no longer buckle. “Where are we going, anyway?” asks Eva.

“That’s simple,” says Urban. “Where’s he staying? In the Ambassador. Right? We’ll leave him lying outside the hotel.”

The taxi is already waiting outside. The driver is a stranger, maybe he’s new to the trade. He’s smoking. Urban, Hurensson and Eva get into the back seat. Wanda sits next to the driver.

“I don’t want him throwing up on my seat covers,” says the taxi driver firmly, looking in his rear-view mirror. “Where did he get so rat-arsed?”

“A little party,” says Urban as offhandedly as he can.

The taxi driver mutters something and engages first gear. “Where to?” he asks.