Rácz promises them a little pocket money, if they obey. He unties them. The gypsies stand and rub their wrists. They’re afraid of the explosive stoker; he can easily overcome them. They’re clumsy and sluggish. They shouldn’t have eaten so much. Rácz doesn’t waste time. He immediately starts training his slaves intensively. The valves must not be touched. They are only to stoke the furnaces. The pressure must not go over fifteen bars. “This far, look.” Rácz will come every day to check on them. He’ll bring them food in the morning. It will have to last till the next day. But the gypsies needn’t worry, there will be enough, and it will taste good. The lavatory’s at the end of the hall. Maybe they’ll lose a bit of weight, which would be good for them. They’d better not try to escape. There are bars everywhere. The chimney is narrow.
Rácz shows them how to stoke and how to remove the ash. He’s proud of his ingenuity. Rácz is smart: fixing things like this! Only now, when the stinking boiler-room is no longer hanging round his neck, only now can he show what he’s made of. A whimsical mood comes over him. He shouts rebukes at the gypsies and the next instant smiles benevolently at them. He shakes his fist at them and the next minute offers them spirits. Scotch. There is only a drop left, the gypsies can keep it. He lets them know: if they obey Rácz, he’ll treat them fairly. If they try to screw him, they’ll never get out of here.
It’s dawn. Rácz is no longer sleepy. He pulls his suitcase out and slowly packs items of everyday use. The gypsies mutter unhappily and fearfully. They find the shovels too heavy. The wheels of the wheelbarrow squeak unbearably.
* * *
Rácz moves into the hotel first thing in the morning. The receptionist gives him a suite with a river view. Rácz likes it there. The bed is soft and smells clean. Rácz lies down, but keeps his feet, still shod in work boots, on the carpet. After a moment’s relaxation, he takes off his dungarees, which are covered in coal dust. He takes a shower. Then he puts on new clothes that he’s brought from downstairs. He has a loose-fitting, fashionably loud orange and green tracksuit. The jacket has AMERICAN FOOTBALL printed on the back. The fabric is shiny and nice to touch. The leather-laced Adidas that reach halfway up his calves smell seductively new. They’re a couple of sizes too big, but the Italian who gave them to him in exchange for heating told him it was fashionable to wear oversize shoes. That’s fashion for you. Rácz gets up and goes to the mirror. The hair on his spherical head has grown a bit. His big ears have a disturbing effect. He presses them to his head with both hands. He listens to the sound of his blood for a moment. It occurs to him that just six months ago he was still driving a tractor over his native fields. Old Kišš should see Rácz now. For a moment he feels he hates the butcher, his daughter and all.
There’s a knock at the door. It’s the waiter. He’s pushing a trolley. A bottle of Moët et Chandon lies on ice in a frosty silver bucket. “Compliments of the restaurant manager,” says the waiter, lingering. Rácz figures he must be waiting for a tip. “Rácz hasn’t unpacked yet,” he tells the waiter. “He hasn’t got anything yet. Next time. Clear off!” The waiter backs out respectfully. His face registers disappointment.
* * *
There’s a snowstorm outside. Everything is covered in snow. It is pleasantly warm in the hotel, though. The gypsies are stoking the furnaces like crazy. The manager wanders down the corridors. He talks to himself. He is shivering with cold. He can’t get warm now even when he clings to the red-hot electric hob.
Things are bad at home, too. His wife’s lover has moved into his bed and wears his pyjamas. He combs his hair the way the manager does. He sits in the manager’s favourite armchair. The manager has to sleep in the kitchen, on chairs in a row. With tears in his eyes he has to listen to his wife’s moans and suppressed cries and his bed squeaking wildly. This often goes on late into the night. One day he comes home and finds the locks changed. He gets angry and bangs and kicks at the door. The door opens and his wife’s lover appears. He punches the manager in the mouth and throws him downstairs. In a flash the manager notices that the lover is growing his, the manager’s, moustache.
He moves into the hotel. The receptionist refuses to give him a room. “Those times are over,” he says stubbornly. “Maybe you can stay in a broom-cupboard where they keep the buckets,” he suggests. “There’s one on every floor. The cleaning lady has the key.” Let him wait for her. She could come any time. “And then again, she might not,” he adds maliciously. Even if he can have a broom-cupboard, then the manager would have to sleep standing. “Like in a lift,” the receptionist adds cheerfully, since he, too, had had his pay docked by the manager. He smiles. If the manager wanted to lie down, his legs would stick out of the cupboard. “That wouldn’t do. Despite everything, this is still an international hotel,” the receptionist stressed. “We can’t afford such eccentricities. What would the foreign guests say?”
Anyway, the receptionist says impatiently, pointing a fly swatter at the manager to stop him gripping the reception counter so hard, for this would leave greasy fingerprints, the receptionist doesn’t want to get into trouble. He’s not interested in politics. He doesn’t know what’s gone wrong between Rácz and the manager. The stoker is now the boss, though. The receptionist has survived several bosses. He wants to survive them all. He has a wife and kids, and so on. Rácz has eyes everywhere. The receptionist must ask the manager to stop compromising him, and to clear off. He’s still got his office, nobody’s taken that away from him.
With the last of his money the manager buys a pyramidal mountain-climber’s tent and pitches it in his office. It’s a question of survival. He spends most of his time in the tent now.
The news that Rácz has moved into the hotel shakes him. He crawls out of his tent and looks fixedly out of the window. Ďula is crossing the yard with a lunch-box in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. He stops at the locked door of the boiler-room, searching for the keys. The manager is now used to the constant cold. On his hotplate a pot of thick vegetable soup is boiling. The manager makes it out of green tops and vegetable peelings thrown out by the cooks. The soup is full of warmth and vitamins. The manager has been afraid to go down to the restaurant or to ask for food directly from the kitchen, ever since the head chef told him to go and eat elsewhere, adding that the hotel kitchen was not a Salvation Army soup kitchen. They’ve somehow forgotten to pay him his salary. He’s penniless. He spent his last penny on the tent. Fortunately, the skips in the inner courtyard are a cornucopia. Last time he found a whole loaf of bread in there. It was quite good, just a bit dry. The manager believes that his situation is only temporary. At the very least, his wife and her lover might pardon him and he will be allowed to come back home.
He throws himself at the pot and hungrily slurps the thick liquid. The soup will warm him up a bit. The manager is carefully protecting himself from frostbite. Unfortunately, he can’t light a fire in his office. The walls that he had panelled in mahogany in happier times would go up in flames right away. When he’s finished his soup, the manager slinks along the wall, so as not to be seen, to wash his saucepan in the toilet. He walks carefully in his shapeless felt boots. His thick ski trousers make a swishing noise. The manager sings to himself to overcome his fear.
When he returns to his office, he drinks hot tea. He bursts out crying. His tears freeze instantly on his cheeks. He still feels like the manager of the hotel and so he goes out on an inspection. Like a big puffed-up snowman he trudges the corridors, singing sad songs. Nobody respects him any more. Nobody is interested in his advice, let alone his orders. Everyone is afraid to be seen in his company by Rácz, or by someone who might tell Rácz. Rácz has his people everywhere. Now he is the master here. When he left the boiler-room and moved into a suite, he made it quite clear what he was after.