Rácz is not the kind of man a woman would fall madly in love with. He’s taciturn, sullen-looking, and moves clumsily. Only a very experienced or even depraved woman could recognize at first sight that he’d make a passionate, wild lover with relentless endurance and monstrous physical endowment. But Rácz isn’t bothered. A wild lover still sleeps inside him; he has not yet woken up. He is in fact reserved. He’s not yet felt in life that burning, all-consuming passion that could derange him. Even his feelings for Eržika, however intense and genuine, stem from his need to organize his life at any given time according to certain rules.
The blonde dancer from the Ambassador cabaret has now injected poison into his veins. He’s met her a few times. She often arrives for rehearsal when Rácz is emptying the barrel of ashes. Rácz has caught himself rushing outside just so that he can see her yet again. True, he can walk into the cabaret any time and pretend to fix the radiators. But he’s too proud and shy for that. All he can do is to steal a glance that goes right through her whenever they meet. Silvia has from the start pretended to be unaware of him, but recently she’s been giving him restrained smiles. She’s amused by the stocky young man’s serious, steely, anthracite eyes, and passionate facial expression.
* * *
“We’ve got to go to the car parts shop, too,” says Donáth one morning. “And then we have to check the heating in the hotel itself. I really love that,” he says ironically. “If I never had to go there, I’d be the happiest man in the world.”
“Why?” Rácz asks.
“You’ll see for yourself,” Donáth says. “Nothing but hassle. Everyone gives you a hard time, from the manager to the receptionist, and even the messenger boy.”
They have breakfast in the boiler-room. Donáth has brought in a loaf of bread, a chunk of butter and some ham left over from the foreign-currency guests’ breakfasts. The big teapot is steaming. Donáth, lost in thought, presses a lemon into it. “After that we’ll have covered it all. From then on you have to stand on your own two feet.” After a minute he adds, with emotion: “I’ll be gone in two weeks.”
Rácz spreads butter on the bread and puts slices of dried-up ham on it. On the one hand, he is happy that he will be getting all the money which induced him to come here: two salaries and all the bonuses. On the other hand, he is apprehensive.
“When are we going to the parts shop?” he asks matter-of-factly and takes a bite of bread.
“Right after breakfast,” says Donáth.
They eat in silence. Donáth is greedy and occasionally his food goes down the wrong way. His shoulders jerk and he chokes. He reaches with a trembling hand for his tea, takes a drink, closes his eyes for a while and then goes on stuffing himself.
It’s foul weather outside. Yellow leaves are falling off the trees. Muddy water rushes loudly down the drain. Water is leaking in a corner of the boiler-room. “The downpipe from the gutter is cracked,” Donáth says, watching the damp patch spread. Drops form on the blackened ceiling. Black drops begin to drop onto the dust.
The men drop in at the parts shop. They check the state of the radiators and the manager invites them for a drink. Donáth gives Rácz a meaningful wink.
“I’ve heard you’re leaving, Mr. Donáth,” the manager says after they’ve drunk each other’s health. “Yes, I am,” nods Donáth. “This young man will be taking over from me.” — “Well,” says the manager, “it can’t be helped.” The manager looks at Rácz. “You won’t let us freeze, will you now?”
“See how shit-scared they all are?” Donáth laughs when they turn the corner. “They’d sell their own mother for a bit of heat!”
Donáth has a lot of ill-suppressed contempt for anyone who depends on his boiler-room in winter. It’s like the feeling doctors have, however humane and good they are to their patients, for the faceless mass wailing and spluttering in their waiting room and grabbing them by their white sleeves every time they stick their noses out of their surgery. Donáth judges people by the way he imagines he’d have to produce heat for them. He goes out to buy beer and looks at a man standing in front of him with a shopping basket. He’d want me to heat a lot, Donáth thinks, and he’d always complain he was cold. That one over there — he looks at the woman at the till — would want adjustments all day long. At night she kicks off her blanket and sleeps naked, for sure, just like a tape-worm. And so on.
* * *
A prostitute hails a taxi. Inside her the sperm of Zdravko G., unemployed, residing in Vienna, Austria, is still dying en masse. The prostitute is tall, blonde, well dressed. She puts on lady-like airs.
Urban loathes this woman and doesn’t hide his feelings from Rácz. They’re standing on the pavement in front of the passage to the yard. Urban is waiting for Hurensson to show up: the Swede is bringing him the video camera he promised. Rácz is carrying a carton of cigarettes and a bagful of bottles of beer. He listens to Urban and watches him with his unblinking gaze. Women like these remind Urban of a gutter. They remind him of a public lavatory. Anyone with foreign currency can jerk off in her. No, he hasn’t been to the cabaret yet. He’s not interested. He prefers listening to Charlie Parker on a tape recorder at home.
Rácz looks the prostitute up and down with eyes wet with desire.
“I drove her home once,” Urban says. “She was putting on her lady-like act.” He didn’t fall for this act. He let her know, without being vulgar, that he considered her nothing more than a dirty scrubber. This was done so subtly, in fact, that she didn’t even get it. He asked her where she wanted to go. She opened her mouth to tell him the name of the street. Even half an hour later the car stank of the decaying semen of some dirty Yugo or Kraut.
Rácz silently looks straight ahead. Not a muscle moves on his face. It was Silvia. He clenches his fists inside the pocket of his overalls until the bones of his hand crack.
“But then she paid,” Video Urban adds. “She gave me five hundred, afraid that I’d grass her up.” Suddenly, Video Urban has to leave. He has to check out the other car parks, to see if Hurensson has shown up yet. It’s possible that he’s avoiding Urban, that’s he’s just shat on Urban and not brought the camera, and is avoiding him. That’s not fair. Urban still thinks that all the trouble he went to for Hurensson in June, when the Swede showed up for the first time, was a kind of down payment for the promised camera. Hurensson didn’t spend a penny on taxis, as Urban drove him everywhere. In any case, Hurensson is behaving like an arsehole, like a shitty, unreliable hippy. Urban has to look for him all over the city. Maybe he’s left already. Anyway, you obviously can’t have a normal conversation with Rácz today.
Rácz has a stony look on his face. He is still clenching his fists when he gets to the boiler-room. He keeps them in his pocket like a hand-grenade with the pin pulled out. He puts down his shopping and looks around. He looks for a suitable object. “Whore, for fuck’s sake!” he shouts and hits the nearest boiler with his fist, making a dent the size of a wash-basin. “I’ll get that whore one day, anyway.” She’ll suck him too. And he’ll beat her. He has to punish her for cheating on him for so long with other men. “Just you wait,” he tells himself. He lies down on the bench. He closes his eyes in anticipation of future delights to be provided by her supple little abrasive tongue.