Every day the old man explains to Rácz something about the boiler-room equipment. Rácz’s notebook is full of drawings, diagrams and tables. Rácz is no genius, he’s rather simple-minded, but he can learn quickly, like a chimpanzee. He draws diagrams of the distribution pipes system running snakelike along the walls. And the steam distribution pumps are soon no mystery to him.
“The circulation system is the Stanford-Schroeter type,” Donáth tells Rácz proudly. “You fire the boiler. When the steam in the generator reaches the right pressure, you open the valve to the pump. When the steam begins to blow through this small safety valve, you turn the circulation wheel a few turns. You can do it easily by hand. The pump will start by itself. Then you add more steam and the revolutions speed up. Then you open the circulation system. Understand? Right away the water temperature will drop, since the pump brings cold water from the heating system back to the boiler. In a nutshell, the steam pressure, the pump revolutions and the water temperature are the three things that have to be carefully matched. But I’ll teach you all this when we fire it up.”
Rácz writes everything down. He wants to learn as much as possible.
In the evening, Rácz goes out in the yard to get some fresh air. It’s cold now. You can’t see the stars; only the moon occasionally emerges from behind the ragged clouds. Hungry stray dogs fight in the dark for the kitchen waste. Their greedy black muzzles glisten. They snarl in the air and at each other. The strongest one grabs a huge boiled bone from the skip and drags it out of the yard. Rácz turns on the light. The dogs take fright and instantly run away. Rácz can hear the sound of the bone being dragged over the cobblestones by the hungry dog.
“They’re not so bold yet,” says Donáth. He’s heard the noise and the barking and followed Rácz upstairs. “You have to watch them in the winter,” he warns Rácz. “They can attack a man, too. I used to have a small-calibre gun and shoot them. They’re like wolves. Once I shot a drunken guest and the hotel lawyer smashed my gun. At least he managed to straighten it out without getting the cops involved…”
Donáth coughs and spits in the yard. Moaning, he urinates into a pile of ashes. Steam rises from the puddle. The dogs are fighting in the next street now. From the distance, one can hear their terrified barking.
* * *
The manager came in the morning. “You have to start heating!” he ordered in a strict voice and wiped his nose. His chauffeur, Ďula, stood next to him and looked menacingly at the stokers.
“That’s what we were going to do,” says Donáth and gets up from his breakfast. “The lad will back me up. Just yesterday I told him: tomorrow we fire the furnaces.”
“That’s right,” nods Rácz.
“Shut your face, dolt,” Ďula shouts at no one in particular.
The manager gives Donáth a long hard look. “You have to start heating.”
Donáth nods. “Yes, we will, why not?” he says philosophically.
“It was cold last night,” says the manager. “The French millionaire from number eighteen, and that pair of American businessmen from the red suite complained. It was embarrassing. Do I, the manager, personally have to stoke the boilers?”
Donáth nods wisely. “Yes, that’s a problem. But it’s easily solved. Tell them,” he begins solemnly, but the manager has already gone.
“Shut your face, dolt!” Ďula the chauffeur barks harshly and viciously. “You should be grateful that the manager has come down here to talk to you, but you answer back. Do you think that the manager has nothing else to do but deliver messages to you? Heat the place this very moment or else we’ll make your life hell!”
Ďula leaves and bangs the metal door behind him. Rácz throws a wrench at the wheelbarrow and makes a loud din. He’s upset: “If he’d said another word, I’d have…”
“You’d better be careful with that man,” Donáth says. “He creeps all round the hotel spying and then he reports to the manager. He sets people up. He tells on the manager to the lawyer, and on the lawyer to the manager.”
Donáth takes the matches from the table. He shakes them to make sure the box is full. “Let’s do it,” he tells Rácz. “Now watch me. Next year you’ll have to do it all by yourself…”
He doesn’t finish his meal. He breaks up some firewood, brings some paper and spreads a little in each furnace. Rácz goes back to his meal but watches the old man and tries to remember everything. The paper lights with a clear flame, Then the wood starts to crackle. The stack of firewood settles and the sparks fly. Donáth adds a shovelful of coal to each boiler. It gets noticeably warmer in the boiler-room. The old man takes his padded jacket off and sits down at the table. “Now we have to wait a bit until the steam pressure goes up,” he says, and starts to eat. “Then you can get the pumps going, I’ll explain everything, don’t worry.”
A few wheelbarrows of coal later and the boilers start to hum like the wind at the tram terminus. The metal grid door slowly gets red-hot. The pumps, newly oiled, gather speed with a quiet hiss. The large circulation wheels turn faster and faster, as Donáth steps up the steam. The piston runs to and fro.
Donáth takes Rácz to the back wall, which is interlaced with serpentine pipes and a forest of red valves.
“This is the heart of the whole boiler-room,” he tells him. “From here you regulate the temperature in the hotel rooms, the stores, and so on. This is the uptake pipe that heats the offices and guests’ rooms in the left wing. This one heats the right wing. The brass plates say exactly where everything is, but a lot of pipes have been re-routed and they’re no longer reliable,” he warns him. He taps his crooked finger on a big valve. “This connects both halves of the hotel and you can then heat them with one boiler. If you close all of these valves, all the people who rely on you will freeze. Make sure that everything is properly set.”
Rácz nods, closes one of the valves as an experiment and then opens it again. It’s heavy going. Steam escapes from the loose connections, the rubber belts on the circulation wheels of the pumps whistle quietly, the fires burn under the boilers. The boiler-room looks as if it has come to life, submerged in a flashing reddish glow reflected on the dirty walls.
“Now you’ll learn more than during the whole time you’ve been here,” laughs Donáth. He’s happy; he’ll soon be gone.
* * *
In the meantime, it’s begun to freeze. In the morning Rácz runs to the supermarket for beer, and his boots slip on the suddenly frozen puddles. There’s not a lot of work. Everything is running smoothly. In the morning Donáth is fidgety. He’s leaving tomorrow and can’t believe it. He looks into the furnace and grabs his head. He suddenly jumps up and breathes in so as to say what’s on the tip of his tongue. At the last moment he stops and instead of the expected liberating word, the boiler-room echoes with only a well-worn curse. Rácz can understand. He drinks beer and smokes. He nods. Donáth doesn’t know what to do first. He runs up the stairs so fast that he slips. He bangs the door. Rácz can hear him from his cubbyhole arguing with the laundry room gypsies. Then the yard grows quiet. Soon Donáth is back with a litre bottle of gin. “Make the tea,” he shouts with authority, “I’ve got company.”
“Company” means Mrs. Tóthová and one of the gypsy women who wash the dishes. She is wearing an apron and her hands are red from the hot soapy water. The women drink like fish. Donáth does not need much. He drinks a few shots and is already giggling and pawing both women. Rácz watches and drinks. He can take as much as a bull. The old man brings the radio from his cubbyhole and tunes it to some raucous station. Like anyone who is, for any reason, forced to listen to the radio at work, Donáth knows all the theme tunes and can sometimes sing along in his tuneless voice for whole sections, comically distorting the lyrics, of course. Emboldened by the gin, he pulls Mrs. Tóthová off her bench to the space in front of the boiler as it were a dance floor. The old woman laughs, tipsy on the cheap liquor.