Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

“To the Ambassador,” says Wanda.

After a short night ride through the city, they stop at the Ambassador. Wanda the Trucker pays. Urban and Eva drag Hurensson out of the car and stop on the pavement to get their breath. The taxi drives off.

“Where do we leave him?” asks Wanda.

“In the old car park,” says Urban. “Nobody will see us there. They’ll find him in the morning and everyone will see: alcohol, heart attack, freezing cold. Let’s go.”

Now Wanda helps grab the body. Her court shoes slide in the snow. “Fuck,” she says to relieve her tension. They make slow progress on the icy pavement. Wanda skids and falls on her behind. Urban can’t hold Hurensson’s weight and falls with him. “Ah!” says the Swede. Wanda and Eva take fright.

“He’s alive!”

Urban is unsettled, too. He shakes Hurensson. It is cold, and rigor mortis is obviously setting in. “It was just air escaping from his lungs when he fell,” he tells the prostitutes. “Help me with him. Let’s get a move on!”

Piggybank’s old car park is dark and unlit. It’s fenced off by big cement flower tubs, to stop cars getting in. The wind gusts between the wooden booths. Waxed paper cups, plastic plates and paper litter the dirty snow. The wind blows them over the space round the hotel.

“This is where we leave him,” decides Urban. Relieved, they drop the body down. Hurensson seems to stay on his feet for a moment and then falls, face down, into a snowdrift. His hat falls off his head and rolls under the tables. “ Arrivederci, ” says Urban.

“He wasn’t so bad,” says Eva.

“He was always generous,” Wanda adds.

“Even more generous now he’s dead,” says Urban.

“Now where to?” Urban asks when they find themselves at the entrance to the Ambassador cabaret. Urban is going home. He’s had it up to here. He points to his neck. The prostitutes can’t make up their minds. “Oh, well, why don’t we go back to my place? We’ll make ourselves comfortable. You can watch the rest of the Disney film. Well?”

The whores agree. They’ll take a taxi back. Urban will call the dealer Khunt.

Khunt is there in half an hour. He’s brought a friend. “The other man will drive the car we came in,” he explains, when he catches Urban’s look. “I don’t suppose you want me to park it in front of your place.”

Urban nods. “Shall we take a look at the Volvo?”

Khunt shakes his head. “There’s plenty of time for that tomorrow in the garage.” Khunt gave it the once-over before they came up to see Urban. “You can relax and stay at home,” he says knowingly, seeing two women’s coats on the coat-stand. “Get nice and warm,” he adds ironically. “And how much are you asking?” he says.

Urban ponders. “Considering that a new model is nine hundred to a million, then three hundred thousand is not too much.”

Khunt smiles. “Three hundred thousand for a stolen vehicle is still too much,” he says. “I’ll give you two hundred.”

“Two fifty,” says Urban.

Khunt is silent for a while. “All right,” he says in a tone that suggests he is doing Urban a favour. “Give me the keys and the registration.”

Urban hands them over. “You’re getting it for almost nothing,” he tries to provoke Khunt, who does not react. Khunt nods at his companion standing motionless by the door, and they both go out onto the landing.

“When do I get the cash?” asks Urban.

“This week,” says Khunt. “I don’t know about the car’s condition yet.”

“You’ll still sell it for six hundred, you piece of trash!” Urban thinks, when the men have gone and he locks the door. “Let’s leave it at that! The money’s come out of the blue. The hookers will have to make do with fifty thousand each,” he decides.

The women are taking a shower together. The air in the bathroom is humid and hot. “Come and join us,” says Wanda, lathering her crotch with a sponge. Her wet hair sticks to her face in long strands. Urban undresses and, laughing, joins them in the shower corner. There’s not much room. All over his body he can feel slender female arms, legs, elastic breasts, and hot skin.

“Move in to my place!” Urban suggests unexpectedly. They live in different, bloody expensive rented rooms. In his place, they wouldn’t have to pay for accommodation. And he wouldn’t feel so lonely. They could live together. Urban would help them. He’d protect them, if anyone tried to harm them. People are swine. The girls need someone to take care of them, to help them. Urban knows they don’t have anyone to do that. And he’s just the right person for the job.

The prostitutes laugh. They lather their entire bodies.

“We’d have to think hard about that,” says Wanda. It’s true that she lives in an expensive private room rented from a money-grubbing landlady. She used to have her own flat, but when Polgár, her ex-husband, got killed, they threw her out. She wasn’t an employee of the Water Supply Department. The manager of the Water Supply Department is a stupid dickhead. She told him so. A psychopath. A bureaucrat.

Urban gets excited. His member and its rolled foreskin stick out like a telescope. Eva massages it with smooth movements. The hot water forms a whirlpool over the drain. The shower streams down. Female voices mingling with the sound of falling water awaken strong desire in Urban. He thinks of the corpse freezing outside the Hotel Ambassador. He tightly embraces both young women at the same time, as if he needed proof that he and they, all three of them, were still dizzily alive.

* * *

Rácz lolls about in bed. It is morning and the trams rumble outside the window. Tonight he’s going to the theatre with Lenka. To see an opera. He can’t stand the squawking, but Lenka adores it. For Rácz this is a historic day in a way: for the first time he’s going into town. There is a knock at the door and Ďula enters.

“Good morning, boss,” he says. “You told me to wake you up at nine. The tailor is here. He’s waiting in the living room.”

Rácz jumps out of bed. He does exercises with powerful arm movements. Then he picks up his exercise springs and stretches and releases them a few times. He runs into the shower and turns on the cold and then the hot water. He cleans his teeth in the shower. Ďula is waiting with a towel ready. Rácz takes it and dries himself. He combs his hair back. “Rubber band,” he tells Ďula. Ďula knows what Rácz wants. He takes an ordinary piece of red elastic off the marble shelf and hands it to Rácz. Rácz uses it to tie his hair at the back.

“Shall I get your shaving water, boss?” Ďula asks.

Rácz feels his face with satisfaction. Overnight, thick black stubble has sprouted, covering his face right up to the circles under his eyes. “No,” the stoker decides, “from now on, I’m going to shave once every three days. We’ll look like artists. After all, we are artists.” He puts on a colourful bathrobe and enters the living room, opening the door energetically and firmly.

“I’ve brought your dinner jacket, professor,” says a tiny old man with a bird’s face, handing a dinner jacket on a coat hanger to the stoker. Rácz murmurs with approval. “If it needs more minor adjustments, we can easily do them by this evening. Please try it on. I want to see.”

Rácz puts the dinner jacket on in the bedroom. It fits him like a glove. Even in the shoulders it’s not too narrow. He returns to the tailor.

“Excellent!” says the old man. “It’s a pleasure to work for the professor. He has a perfect figure.”

Rácz looks at himself in a full-length mirror. The dinner jacket fits perfectly. He smiles.

“Wonderful work,” he praises the tailor. “How much do I owe you?”