The manager is merely tolerated now. The guests share this attitude. To the regulars, he is a pathetic wretch. To new guests he seems a weird, tragicomic figure to be met in a dark corridor any time by day or night.
* * *
Gunnar Hurensson sits in his Volvo and slowly drives from the border crossing, which is set deep in the fields, towards the ugly, snowbound and muddy city in the distance. The city reminds him of a monstrous tumour: each time he comes, it seems bigger and more monstrous than ever.
He’s not been here for a while. He’d been nursing a venereal disease that he caught from a Slovak whore. The hospital subjected him to such thorough and painful treatment, that ever since then he has been able to see with each eye a different side of the world.
He’s got a camera in his suitcase. He’s promised it to a young man whom he met last summer. The boy is sure to be expecting it. He is slender, with a sad yet charming face. Hurensson likes boys like that. He likes girls, of course, but he likes boys, too. He has decided. If the young man is nice, really nice to him, he’ll get the camera as a present. It will be a gift from an older friend from Sweden.
It is snowing heavily. As far as the bridge over the river Hurensson crawls along in a queue behind a snowplough. Two men on the back of the snowplough are generously shovelling coarse salt onto the road. In Sweden they’d be lynched for it, Hurensson thinks. But in this dim and depressed nation, nobody takes any notice. Dozens of Škoda cars have overtaken the plough without any trouble, so why should he get out and argue with them? He wouldn’t be able to make himself understood, anyway. He’s fluent in five languages and can get along anywhere, even Thailand. But that’s not the slightest use to him here. In the Hotel Ambassador café Hurensson waits for a coffee. This small nation with its artificially hypertrophied and incomprehensible national pride is a nation of geniuses misunderstood and unrecognized by the rest of the world, he feels. They all believe that they’re better than they seem at first sight. The young hustler and unlicensed taxi driver thinks he is an artist. The blonde whore never fails to stress that she was originally a ballet dancer. The stooped porter with spidery bony fingers who takes your bags turns out to have been at one time a lecturer at the evening university, now closed, of Marxism-Leninism. He was a philosopher, or so he says. Whatever they do now is only temporary, done out of necessity. The café waitress is miserable; no doubt, she originally planned to be an actress. She finds it degrading to serve Hurensson coffee. As if Hurensson were partly to blame for her failure to become an actress. This is a nation of the underestimated, it occurs to Hurensson. They could have given the world some of the most brilliant artists, ballet dancers, and scientists — at least that’s what they claim. Why didn’t they — that’s the question?
Hurensson found out about the existence of this nation only because of its ridiculously cheap prostitutes, willing to put up with anything that doesn’t leave visible traces. Only then did he find out from the residents of this nation about the apparently famous artists, astronomers, and inventors whom he’d never heard of before. But so far Hurensson has only been able to meet cheap whores, black market hustlers, arrogant waiters and taxi drivers, lazy room-maids and venal policemen. However, Hurensson does not condemn anyone outright. He believes the milieu in which he circulates as a bisexual tourist has shaped his opinion. He has no doubt that this nation is composed not merely of parasites and fools, but also of honest and educated working people. The point is that Hurensson has never yet met such people, nor even found a trace of their existence. He needn’t give a toss. He doesn’t aim to do sociological research while deep among these people. He is a serious employee of a top Swedish furniture company; he is forty, and a follower of the great Marquis de Sade. He is a self-indulgent libertine. He doesn’t mind spending a whole week’s income coming over here to have fun with pretty Slovak prostitutes who have no taboos and who are stunningly cheap compared to their colleagues in Bangkok, where Hurensson used to go.
But this time Hurensson has come with a different aim. He’s firmly decided to induce the handsome young man, whom he promised a video camera, that the Hurensson way of life is one of freedom and pleasure. As an older special friend he will gladly guide the young man through an unknown and perhaps thorny, but eventually dizzily sweet garden of enchanting passion.
During his involuntary stay at a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases in Uppsala he never stopped thinking of his cherubic Slovak, and seducing him became the first thing he’d do when he was cured. Hurensson considered the splendid camera a sufficient means of enticing the young man and guaranteeing them both a pleasurable weekend in a suite at the Hotel Ambassador.
Hurensson does not have to go looking for Urban, who’s come of his own accord. He rushed out of the department store where Piggybank’s panting phone call caught up with him.
“Hi, how are you doing?” Hurensson calls out in his Swede’s English, getting up and giving Urban a friendly hug.
“Thanks,” says Urban and adds reproachfully. “Long time no see.”
“I ain’t got time,” says Hurensson.
“Have you got the camera?” Urban asks.
Hurensson smiles. “Of course,” he says.
“The same type I wanted?” Urban wonders…
“Not exactly, but much better than this.”
“Can I take a look?”
“Sure, in my hotel room,” Hurensson suggests. “Here’s an owner’s manual, here you are.”
“Thanks,” Urban answers and leafs thoughtfully through the manual.
“Do you like the camera?” Hurensson asks impatiently.
“Oh, sure!” says Urban. “But it must have been very expensive. I wanted the other type because it was much cheaper than this one. How much do I owe to you now?”
“Don’t talk of money,” Hurensson suggests and grabs Urban’s hand. “Let’s talk about ourselves!”
Urban’s face flushes red.
“Actually, I do not understand,” he admits and frees his hand from the Swede’s big, dry, fatherly hand.
Hurensson smiles patiently. “I mean that you can have this camera if you want,” he explains to Urban. “You don’t have to pay. It’s up to you. C’mon, let’s go to my hotel room. You should go with me if you want to see the camera. I think we can go much closer to each other, can’t we?”
Urban knows only too well that he doesn’t have enough money for this camera. It cost almost twice as much as the one he ordered. On the other hand, he can’t tell the Swede that he doesn’t want it because he wanted the cheaper model. The picture of the camera on the manual is seductive.
“Yeah, let’s go upstairs,” he sighs.
He’s got to have that camera, no matter what.
* * *
At first the manager considered fixing the broken heating himself. But he’s afraid Rácz might find out. He’d rather freeze.
Ďula sometimes stops by the manager’s office, but not out of pity. He checks everything out and then informs Rácz.
“Tell me, Ďula,” the manager asks him one day, “what would happen if I fixed the radiator myself?”
“I’d have to tell Rácz,” says Ďula, looking straight at the manager’s pale face.