But he didn’t say anything. The evening was going to be difficult enough without having to field the manager’s questions about Poland. As cups and glasses and plates began to come back through the hatch, Rudi fired up the Hobart and began loading trays.
He didn’t usually drink until he came off duty, but because this was New Year’s Eve Jan had allowed a bottle of Becherovka in the kitchen, and between courses and rushes of dirty crockery they perched on a worktop and added tonic water to the bitters to make the drink Czechs called ‘concrete’ and toasted each other.
“Na zdraví,” Jan said, raising his glass.
“Cheers.” Rudi checked his watch. Ten past eleven, and the noise in the dining room already sounded like that caused by the crowd at an important football match.
Jan drained his glass and wiped his forearm across his forehead. “I’d forgotten how much fun this was.”
Rudi grinned. “How do you feel about swapping jobs?”
“What?” Jan laughed and waved his glass at the Hobart. “Go back to working on that thing? I’ve worked for years so I wouldn’t ever have to do that again.” He topped up their glasses. “I was pretty good, though.”
“I’ll bet.”
Jan raised his glass in another toast and drained it again. “I was. Really.”
Rudi looked across at four trays of cups and plates and cutlery that sat along the worktop, and nodded significantly.
“No,” said Jan, following his gaze.
“Why not?”
“They’re already clean. It wouldn’t be the same.”
Rudi shrugged. “What does it matter?”
Jan smiled a sly smile. “Fifty crowns?”
Fifty crowns was Rudi’s wages for a shift, but what the hell, it was New Year’s Eve. “Okay.”
“Fine.” Jan hopped down off the worktop. “You go first.”
They split the contents of the trays equally between two baskets and Jan stood beside Rudi with his wristwatch held up in front of his face. “Ready, steady. Go!”
There was a rhythm to it, a matter of twisting at the hips, not moving your feet. Cups arranged upside down on a tray and loaded onto the spikes of the conveyor, then pick up a stack of plates and deal them one by one upright between the spikes. Rudi was very good. By the time he’d finished loading one tray of crockery into the machine the cups were coming off the other, and he had to trot round and lift them off, then take the plates off and stack them. Then back to the far end to load the next tray.
“Not so bad,” said Jan, stopping his watch when Rudi had stacked the last plate. “But not good enough. Here.” He handed the watch over. “Press the little silver button once to reset the stopwatch, and again to start it.”
Rudi turned the watch over in his hand. “Very nice.”
“From the owners,” Jan said, stationing himself at the end of the Hobart. “When I was promoted to manager. Ready?”
“Oh. Right.” Rudi held up the watch and put his finger on the button. “Three, two, one, go.”
Jan had this technique by which he just seemed to spill an armload of plates into the machine, and that was what made the difference in the end, though they both admitted he didn’t win by very much.
“Best of three?” Jan asked when the money had changed hands and their glasses were full again.
“I’m impulsive, Jan,” Rudi told him. “I’m not stupid. I know when I’m beaten.”
“Ah,” Jan clapped him on the shoulder, “that everyone was like that.”
A pile of dessert dishes had appeared in the hatchway while they had been trying to out-macho each other. “Back to work.”
“You did come here from Poland, didn’t you?” Jan said as he watched Rudi putting the dirty dishes in a tray.
“I can’t understand this thing you’ve got about me and Poland, Jan. I’m Estonian, for heaven’s sake. I’ve never said a word about Poland, you’re the one who’s always bringing it up.”
“My cousin drives a taxi,” Jan said, leaning back against the wall. “He was down at the station when you arrived. He says you got off the express from Kraków.” He poured himself another drink. “And you do speak Polish, don’t you?”
“No.” Rudi carried the full tray over to the machine, set it on the conveyor and pressed the button to start the belt. “And even if I did, what’s so wrong with that?”
Jan suddenly became very serious. “Because I hate people lying to me, even about tiny little things.” He drank his drink. “The way I see it, if somebody’s prepared to lie to me about tiny little things they’re prepared to lie to me about great big things.”
Rudi went back to the hatch and started loading another tray. “I’m really getting tired of this, Jan. Your cousin has the wrong bloke. He saw somebody who looks like me getting off that train. Shall I tell you how I know this? I know this because I didn’t come here by train from Kraków. I hitched here from Vienna, and I hitched to Vienna from Paris.” This happened to be true; Rudi had been very careful about his approach to the Zone. “I don’t speak Polish. I’ve never been to Poland.”
Jan listened soberly to all this, nodding. When Rudi was finished, he shrugged. “You forget my position,” he said. “I take on a lot of temporary staff, sometimes people just passing through the area. Are they criminals? Are they on the run from some polity’s armed forces?” He looked at Rudi and tipped his head to one side. “Surely I should know these things.”
Rudi looked at Jan for a moment. Then he shook his head. “I’m a resident of the Zone, Jan. I’ve lived here for six years. I have a resident’s passport. I can apply for citizenship next year.”
Jan nodded. “Yes, and very good references you have from your last job. From your last three jobs, in fact. I contacted your last three employers, and they all spoke very highly of you. Which is what makes me suspicious.”
“Your logic is impeccable, Jan. My previous employers have nothing but good words to say about me. Therefore, I must be a criminal.”
“Take your girl, for example.”
“What?”
“Marta, your girl. Oh, come on. Everyone in the hotel knows about you and her.”
Well, if he’d learned anything while he’d been here it was that it was impossible to keep a secret in an hotel. “What about her?”
“Arrived here two days before you. Impeccable references. Hotel Bristol, Warsaw. The Warszawa, Warsaw. The Cracovia in Kraków. Wonderful references.” Jan almost looked nostalgic remembering them. “And here are you, just turning up at the back door with nothing but a rucksack and a nice smile.” Jan nodded and refilled his glass, apparently not caring any longer whether or not he was drunk on duty. “Terrific references.” He waved his hand, forgetting he was holding his glass, and sloshed concrete everywhere. “Just like you.”
Rudi said, “Jan,” and then he stopped.
When he thought about it later, he thought that Jan had actually heard it before it happened, which he supposed was what separated the kitchen porters of this world from the managers. They had both grown used to the increasingly raucous noise from the dining room, but Jan suddenly tipped his head to one side as if listening, and then all hell broke loose.
They went to the hatch and looked out. The dining room had been reconfigured for the disco, chairs and tables pushed against the walls. The lights had been lowered and the volume of the Poles’ sound system raised, and blinking lights and flashing lasers picked out an immense brawl. Bottles and glasses were flying across the room, people were punching each other, girls were screaming, glass and furniture was breaking. As they watched, a little circular table, caught in the stop-motion of a strobing laser, clambered jerkily out of the general chaos and hung in the air for a moment before falling back.