Peter Pišt'anek - Rivers of Babylon

* * *

The lawyer is retching. He vomits another portion of dirty water. Tupý observes him with growing amazement. He gets up and jumps to his feet.

“Chief, chief!” he cries. “He’th coming back to life!”

Ščepán and Šolik in his torn shirt run into the room. The lawyer moves.

“We’ll have to drown him again,” Tupý states.

Ščepán gives them a look meaning “no”. “You’ve drowned him once,” he says reproachfully, “and look how it’s ended.” Ščepán’s nerves won’t take it. He reflects. “Take him,” he finally decides, “to his cell. We’ll have to think it over before we do anything.” Ščepán shakes with disgust. “We’re not drowning him any more.”

Ščepán’s subordinates obey. They grab the uncomprehending and feebly resisting drowned man and take him to the basement.

“And what now, chief?” they ask when they return.

Ščepán is smiling. He keeps them guessing on purpose. “What now?” he asks significantly. “Now we go to the Ambassador. For new instructions. We won’t be short of work, you’ll see!” Ščepán claps his hands a few times and then rubs them. “Don’t worry,” he tells his subordinates, “stick with me, and you’ll be fine.”

They take the trolleybus into town. The stoker is waiting for them in the café. He’s in a good mood.

Rácz did well to invite Video Urban to work for him. The lad is smart and knows how to deal with people. Privatization is looming at great speed but, thanks to Urban, Rácz has made sure that the Hotel Ambassador will not be auctioned off. They have to register a limited company quickly, as Urban advised. Then do a deal. Rácz asked him to do all the necessary preliminaries, but Urban shook his head. He’d be glad to, but he didn’t know how. “You’ll need to get hold of a lawyer,” he advised Rácz. “He’d come in handy.” Rácz smiled. “I have one like that,” he told Urban. “And is he any good?” Urban asked. “He’s good,” nodded Rácz. “A real big swine. For the time being, I keep him behind bars, in the safe house, you know, to soften him up.” Rácz extended a hand. “He’ll be eating out of my hand. Like this,” he demonstrated to Urban.

Rácz is content now, and in a good mood. Things are going his way. Whatever he touches turns to gold. That’s true of Lenka, too. Nobody from his village ever had a girl like that; they’d never even set eyes on one. They saw actresses and models only on television. Yes, Lenka is exactly what Rácz needs. And she loves him, she does! And her parents? Her parents lick his arse at every opportunity. Typical intellectuals: when they have nobody’s arse to lick, they get sick. An intellectual always bows down to wealth and wealthy people; especially intellectuals who have nothing but bookshelves full of books with nothing but shit in them. They put on ridiculous airs, but when they get to know someone who simply orders, pays for, and sends a hundred white orchids they just shit themselves. Rácz can figure them out as easily as he can a bloated goat. He knows that if Lenka were to decide in the future not to marry him, her own parents would kill her. And that is why Rácz is happy, because he is certain that Lenka is his and nobody else’s. It’s all a question of time. Now he has more important problems to think about. They are connected with Rácz’s future and Lenka’s, too.

“Well, gentlemen?” A self-satisfied Rácz welcomes the three ex-secret policemen. He asks them to sit down. Ščepán and his two subordinates sit down politely, with half an arse, and put their hands on their thighs. “What will you have?” asks Rácz.

“Just mineral water, thank you,” says Ščepán for all of them.

“I’ll have mulled wine,” says Tupý, but his superior gives him a look that goes right through him, and the intimidated Tupý squints and smoothes out the tablecloth.

“Actually, we don’t drink,” Ščepán remarks. “And if we do, never when we’re on duty,” he adds with an apologetic smile.

Rácz nods. He likes that. “With Rácz you’ll always be on duty. But you’ll be making money, too. Name a sum and Rácz will give you three times as much.” He smiles, noting the ex-secret policemen’s stares. The waiter comes and ceremoniously puts the drinks on the table. Ščepán, Šolik, and Tupý get mineral water and Rácz will have Heevash Reygahl and coffee. After the waiter has gone, the stoker continues. Rácz wants to tell them something in confidence: it won’t be long before this hotel belongs to him. He will need reliable protection. Hotel police. He will need people with experience and dedication, capable of anything. Rácz raises his glass of Chivas Regal for a toast.

Ščepán clears his throat. “If Rácz is talking about dedicated people capable of anything, he’s got them here,” he says solemnly. And they do have experience. If Rácz tells them to kill, they kill. That’s how they are, Ščepán and his two subordinates. Ščepán sips his mineral water. That reminds Ščepán of an idea. He says, “The lawyer.”

Rácz is now all ears. Yes, he’s curious, says Rácz. “How did it go with the lawyer?”

Šolik opens his big mouth. “A six-hundred-crown shirt! They had them only once in the shop! The next day the shirts were gone!” They tried to drown him in a bucket of Danube water. He fought like mad. Šolik was holding him tight, pushing his head into the bucket. “Six hundred crowns! Anyway, he finally stopped struggling and swallowed the water.” Šolik bursts out laughing. “Ha, ha, ha!”

Rácz stares at him. “You killed him?” He’s dumbfounded. He feels like throwing up. “You… killed him?” He blinks in disbelief and drinks his whisky. Then he collects himself. His eyes pop out of his dark face and he bangs his fist on the table. All the glasses jump. “You idiots!” he yells. I said, “Put him out of the way for some time! PUT HIM OUT OF THE WAY! Now we’re all in the shit! We can’t get off a murder charge so easily.” Rácz bores right through the ex-secret policemen with his wild, metallic grey stare. He now sees that all his plans have to be changed. He’ll have to find another lawyer. Too bad, this one would have been perfect. He was a cunning scoundrel. He won’t find another one like that anywhere. All he needed was his wings clipped a bit. For some reason Rácz remembered he had, a long time ago, in his native village, clipped his hens’ wings to stop them flying over the fence to the neighbours’ yard. Afterwards, the hens would sit in their coop, sadly looking into space. But they laid their eggs for Rácz.

Ščepán interrupts Rácz’s rant. “No, no!” he tells Rácz. “The lawyer’s alive! I swear to God, he’s alive! We just clipped his wings a bit, drowned him a little bit, so he’s more cooperative and pliant! We drowned him a little bit and then put him in a cell. That’s how we did it.”

Rácz is reassured. He gives a nod of appreciation. “That might work. The lawyer has to be frightened,” he suggests. “You have to keep him in his cell and take him out every day to be executed, you see? Pretend you’re going to drown him, hang him, and so on. And at the last moment, call it off. But don’t go too far,” warns Rácz. “I don’t want him made completely nuts. He’s going to be useful to us.”

Ščepán shakes his head. If he may say so, he has a different opinion. Fake executions derange a person being worked over. If he could suggest something, it would be better to make night and day the same for him. The light has to be on at all times. He has to be woken up every hour and told to report, “Prisoner number so and so, cell number such and such, number of prisoners one, I report that nothing out of the ordinary has happened.” And the same in an hour’s time. Does Rácz see what he means?