“The manager won’t come to see you,” says Ďula.
“And why not?” Rácz wants to know.
“He’s afraid of you… chief,” says Ďula.
“So he’s afraid of me?” Rácz mulls over Ďula’s admission.
“But I’ll have to tell him something… sir,” Ďula insists, when he sees that Rácz has closed his eyes again.
“The pipes are blocked,” mumbles the stoker, half asleep. “It’ll have to wait,” he adds. He pays no more attention to the driver.
“Good, I’ll pass on the message,” says Ďula and runs up the stairs.
Rácz sleeps in peace. A little later he sits up, startled, as he senses that he’s not alone in the boiler-room. Ďula is gone, and in his place some foreigner stands there awkwardly. “What do you want?” Rácz barks at him from his bench and, annoyed, searches for his socks. The Englishman from number twenty-eight stares at the sleepy bully uncertainly. His fingers are blue with cold. He tries in vain to explain why he’s come to the boiler-room. “I don’t understand,” Rácz stubbornly repeats and shakes his head furiously. He listens carefully to sentences in an unknown language, but when the Englishman falls silent, ending with a question mark and a plea in his eyes, Rácz helplessly spreads his arms. “Who the hell can understand you?” he says. “Why haven’t you learnt to talk like us?”
The foreigner can’t believe that someone could be so slow on the uptake. He is beginning to suspect that the stocky stoker is pretending. He hands him a carton of Benson & Hedges. Now Rácz can understand. He puts the cigarettes on the battered table and ambles off to find his shoes. The Englishman gestures that he’s cold. Something has to be done. Rácz lights up a Benson & Hedges and, with a cigarette in his mouth, the smoke making him screw up his eyes, he puts on his shoes. He understands. It’s all clear to him now. He’s enjoying the cigarette. He scans the cigarette name on the box. Ben-son et he-gyesh. Fine, yet strong. Just right. These are the cigarettes that Rácz will smoke from now on. The Englishman runs off, but is soon back. He brings the moustached German and his pictures, the angry Arab, and the African monotonously repeating Bal-lá! Bal-lá! They all look uncomfortable. They are embarrassed. Rácz feels sorry for them. He gives in to greed. After all, they can’t be blamed, he concludes in a conciliatory mood. If they give him presents, then, fine! Let them have heating! It’s the manager who has to be punished. Rácz won’t hesitate, he won’t give in to empty, cowardly pity. But these people are not to blame.
The foreigners admire the boiler-room equipment for a while. Rácz shows them with signs and gestures where the problem lies. The visitors nod. Then they take gifts out of their pockets. There is a hundred-mark note from the German, with a carton of cigarettes. By some miracle he has found out Rácz’s favourite brand. The Arab wants to show his appreciation with some strange thick-rolled cigarettes with an unusual green tobacco and a fifty-dollar bill. His gestures stress that he is freezing. The African gives him nothing; he is stingy and, anyway, has nothing to give. He draws attention to his situation by whining, and begs for help. Rácz can’t take his eyes off him. He’s never seen a black man in his life.
After focussing his thoughts for a while, he sets off for the hotel. Just the way he is, in his dirty dungarees. No one gets in his way, no one tries to throw him out. The freezing employees see him as their Messiah. “Can you do anything about it?” The receptionist’s teeth are chattering. Rácz is silent for a long time. He downs a shot of vodka brought to him on a salver, and turns the empty glass around in contemplation. “Ah,” he says and then gives the receptionist a long hard gaze.
From the staff room and the changing room of the reception area comes the porter Torontál’s heavy cough. He has caught pneumonia from eagerly hanging around the cold reception area. The liftboy and two waiters from the day bar had to pry his greedy fingers from the mahogany reception desk by force. They carried him to the staff room, like a piece of luggage, to die. The staff room serves as a smoking room for the receptionist, his assistants and lift boys. The men sit in the corner, smoke, and talk in hushed voices. Occasionally they take a look at Torontál. The old man is lying on the floor with his big nose pointing up and his eyes glazed over. His throat rattles and hisses. The men check their watches, quickly put out their cigarettes, button up their jackets and tie their loosened bow-ties. They go back to work. The old man is left on his own. Nobody likes him; they’re all waiting for him to expire.
The doorman smiles nervously at Rácz. The assistant manager offers him a cigarette. “I’ve got my own,” says the stoker dryly and takes out a Benson & Hedges given him by the Englishman. A collective unsynchronized clicking of lighters, with gas hissing in various tones, and also a belated hysterical, panicky, hopeless striking of match against matchbox, descends like a tornado on the tip of the long cigarette casually hanging from his mouth. Rácz takes a mighty draw. “Well, let’s do it,” he decides.
The assistant manager himself summons the lift, as if he wanted to cancel the injustice committed at the scene.
Rácz walks through the rooms, pretending to fix radiators. He bangs on them, listens to their sound. He shakes his head, seemingly worried. They can all see that he is doing his best. He lies down close to the radiators and performs thousands of unnecessary actions. In each room he gets something. The German couple gives him a picture of the Pope; a grey-haired Canadian takes a five-hundred-crown note from his wallet. A young Italian furtively hands him a pornographic magazine showing four men quartering a live schoolgirl. A dishevelled long-nosed American violinist gives him a hundred-dollar bill. It all depends how badly they are shivering and freezing.
Most of the rooms are empty. The guests are keeping away from the building. Rácz has taken a liking to playing the saviour. “I don’t think,” he tells the assistant manager while putting the hundred-dollar bill into his wallet, “that the heating will be back on today. Tell them all I’ll have to come back tomorrow. I’m doing this in my free time. I’m not getting paid for this. Tell them what I said. It is up to them if they want to have heating or not.”
The assistant manager lowers his eyes. He nods.
“I’m relying on you,” Rácz adds. “If you don’t let me down, you’ll have all the heating you could dream of. But if you let me down me, then I can’t guarantee anything…”
Rácz enjoys looking at the gifts from the freezing guests. They forced Rácz to take these things. He hasn’t asked for a thing. A giver is a fool, but a refuser is an even bigger fool. And, anyway, hasn’t Rácz earned it? He’s been working here almost four months without pay. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to pay for his food. Who gives Rácz anything?
From the laundry room window Ribana grins at him. Rácz pretends he hasn’t seen her. He takes a glass bowl and spoon from the table and approaches the soup pot. The chef gives him a ladle: “Bon appétit, boss,” he tells him obsequiously.
“You don’t give a shit about my appetite,” says Rácz indifferently and stirs the thick, fragrant stock.
* * *
The next day by lunch time there is heating everywhere. Rácz carries off downstairs into his cubbyhole windcheaters, jeans, cartons of American cigarettes, pornographic magazines, chocolates, sports bags, French cosmetics, chewing gum, bundles of deutschmarks, francs, dollars, and pounds sterling. Every guest has given him something, or has left gifts for him on the bed in their room.