No sooner has Rácz finished his act in the basement of the chemist’s, than the leather goods manager shows up. “Fix my heating, and when the leather jackets come in, I’ll put one aside for you,” he offers Rácz.
Rácz shrugs. Why not? A cheap leather jacket can always come handy. “Cheap, but good,” he stresses, looking the manager in the eye.
Rácz stops working at dinner-time. He hungrily gulps down some soup and an under-cooked piece of meat that he fished out of the pot. The chef eyes him hesitantly, but doesn’t dare object.
Rácz returns to the boiler-room. A good meal has pleasantly warmed his belly. He tends the fire and then stretches out on the bench. The manager could come down now, it occurs to him. Rácz would snap him in two. Indeed, nobody from the hotel has shown up to whine about the heating. But God help them if they send Ďula. The manager can come down himself. Rácz will cut him to pieces and flush him down the lavatory, if he doesn’t cancel the fine.
Still sated with food and lulled by thoughts of revenge, Rácz falls asleep.
* * *
Rácz seldom dreams. He sleeps like a log — with his mouth half-open. His toes twitch. At home he used to dream occasionally, but his dreams were mostly sober, realistic — about work, about Eržika, about Mr. Kišš. What he dreamed about could easily have happened to him in real life. When he woke up, he often wondered if it had happened, or if it was only a dream.
He doesn’t have dreams in the boiler-room.
Half asleep, he takes his boots off and hangs his socks to dry on the back of the chair. Then he stretches out, relaxed, without waking up. He begins to have his first dream since arriving in the city.
He is returning home, to his native village. He walks along the muddy road from the little station. Suddenly proud Feri Bartaloš gallops past him. He sprays Rácz head to toe with mud and dirt. Rácz takes no notice, but walks straight to Kišš’s house, his throat gripped by tension. His pockets are stuffed with thousand-crown notes that won’t fit in his rucksack. He resolutely enters the Kišš house. The Kišš family are all dressed in their Sunday best, sitting stiffly round the table. “Take this!” he roars at them and empties the contents of his rucksack right in the middle of the table. Mr. Kišš raises his eyebrows incredulously. Mrs. Kišš yelps. Eržika starts to sob and buries her face in her mother’s shoulder. Rácz keeps pulling crumpled banknotes from the pockets, adding them to the heap. “I made all this,” he says. “I’m a rich man. Now give me Eržika, as you promised!” The butcher buries his fingers in the banknotes, reluctant to pull them out. He looks disconcerted. “Son,” he finally says in a weak voice, “I can’t give you Eržika now. I married her off a month ago!” — “Who to, mister?” Rácz yells. His fingers clutching the banknotes freeze in their gripping movement. “Who to… Who to…” Kišš mumbles, pulling his fingers out of the heap of money on the table. “Well, to Feri Bartaloš. We thought you weren’t coming back. Thought that was the last we’d see of you. You wouldn’t be the first one… Not many people feel like coming back from the city…” — “But not someone who has a girl waiting for him…” says Rácz and collapses on a chair. Demonic rage builds up inside him. He’s about to bang his fist on the table, but he controls himself. From the courtyard comes the clop of horse’s hooves. The rider jumps off his horse and enters the kitchen. He is ruddy-faced, well built, smelling strongly of tobacco, leather, and horse sweat. Eržika jumps up from her chair and throws herself into his arms for protection. “Why have you come?” Feri Bartaloš asks Rácz menacingly. Rácz says nothing and makes a half-turn away. His hands are still clutching the crumpled banknotes. He gets up and begins to stuff them back into his rucksack. “I’m asking why you’ve come!” Feri Bartaloš proudly repeats, bringing his whip down on the table into the banknotes. “Eržika was mine,” Rácz says stubbornly. The Kišš couple sits crestfallen at the table. “I’ll squash you like a maggot!” Rácz declares. His eyes fill with tears, but suddenly somebody puts a cold hand on his face. “Leave me alone!” he barks at the owner of the hand, whoever it may be, and lets his fist fly. He suddenly tumbles into an abyss. The kitchen full of startled people disappears.
He wakes up on the cement floor with his tail bone hurting badly. “Wake up,” says a female voice above him.
“I’m not asleep,” mumbles Rácz and comes to properly. He is lying under the bench and bending over him is — it can’t be — Silvia. Silvia, the dancer from the Ambassador Cabaret Bar.
Astonished, Rácz sits up sharply. His head is heavy and the place where the girl touched him burns like fire. Rácz touches his cheek. He really had been crying. He furtively wipes his tears.
“You were asleep,” says the dancer.
“OK, I was asleep,” mumbles Rácz, “I must have been.” He gets over his surprise and puts on his act again. He’s very busy. He doesn’t know what to tackle first. The pipes are clogging up. Everyone wants him to fix those pipes. Is that what Rácz is here for? He doesn’t even have the tools for that. Lucky he was trained as a tractor-driver and mechanic.
“Is it possible?” he asks himself. She’s here, alive, in all her beauty. The blood pulses in her and Rácz can sense close up the energy radiating from her healthy supple body. He had that sensation once before, when she asked him to do up her zip. It must be damned cold in the cabaret bar by now.
“I just dozed off,” says Rácz. “I’ve been on my feet since morning.” He’s working flat out. He’s doing his best.
“We’re terribly cold, too,” says Silvia. “We can’t rehearse. Can’t anything be done? We have to rehearse a new number. You must have heard it; it’s playing everywhere: Pampa Jam. That’s the name.”
Rácz shakes his head. No, he doesn’t know it. He knows other songs, old ones, like Rivers of Babylon. But she probably doesn’t know those.
“No, I don’t know that one,” says Silvia. “Can’t something be done about the radiators?”
“It’s not easy,” says Rácz. He gazes into her bright light-blue eyes. The equipment is in a hopeless state, and suddenly everyone expects him to perform miracles. He pauses. He’d love to grab that slut, drag her into his cubbyhole and screw her on the bed. He gets up, but realises he’s got a hard-on. He sits down again. “There is something we can try,” he says. “What wouldn’t I do for you?” he adds and his face goes red. The anger she aroused all the time he was watching her has evaporated.
Silvia knows that she can twist him round her little finger. He’s going to eat out of her hand, she tells herself. In her face there is a remnant of that cold brazenness of girls who once wore their straw-blonde hair tied in two pigtails, played with boys and tortured frogs or beetles. Rácz senses her closeness on a primitive level. No, he can’t say that he likes her. After all, she’s not his type, as they say. Rácz prefers Eržika: dark, strong, with a big behind, breasts and reddish thighs. Silvia strikes him as a bit sickly. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, he fancies her. He’s never desired another woman like that before. Not even in the army. The fragrance of Silvia’s perfume is alien in the boiler-room, which permanently smells of hot ashes doused with water. Rácz summons all his civilized self-control to overcome a sudden desire to grab her by the thigh. He rubs his hands in confusion.