* * *
The next day Urban gets into his car and drives across the river, deep into the fields, towards the border crossing. He slams the car door shut, feels the weight of his full wallet in the inside pocket of his windcheater and then sits down in the espresso bar, drinking coffee, waiting for the first bus from the Austrian side. Soon the punters arrive. Urban calls the waitress, pays, goes out into the cold and joins the Austrians. Furtively, sotto voce, in a muted monotone, he repeats his pitch. The Austrians smile. They take out their wallets. Urban does the same. Money-changing starts. The buyers are happy. They prefer accepting this well dressed and polite young man’s offer to supporting the economy of a foreign state, an insatiable Moloch that devours without trace money and other valuables. It is a usurious state that takes, at a disgracefully extortionate rate, real money backed by real assets in exchange for worthless socialist pieces of paper. They all crowd around Urban and push their banknotes at him. “Gut! Gut!” says Urban politely in primitive German. “I’ve enough for everybody. No worries.”
It’s snowing again. All around the fields shine with whiteness. The sky is grey-black. The road is covered in a murky brown slush. Urban feels the coarse salt corroding his expensive fine leather boots. He goes to the car and puts on a bright baseball hat. When the next bus arrives, he daringly gets into it. He’s welcomed by pleasant warmth and a pleasant aroma of perfume. He says a few words to the driver, who is also the owner of the bus. The latter announces Urban’s offer through the microphone. Urban slowly moves down the aisle and with ill-disguised impatience reaches for the proffered banknotes. These are deutschmarks. It’s a German bus. The Germans are well dressed, their bags smell of leather and they all wear thin-framed glasses. An elderly gentleman is smoking a cigar and offers one to Urban. He politely accepts. He leaves the bus with a wallet filled with western currency and a Havana in his mouth. He feels like having a juice or a coke, but decides not to waste time. He gets in the car and speeds off to the Hotel Ambassador. Water is splashing into wooden vats in the parking lot. Men are setting up wooden booths. Urban parks on the pavement and, taking no notice, puffs on his cigar as he passes through reception.
The stoker is in the living room of his suite and, bored, is watching a video. On the screen a very nice-looking madman has decided to tear a young girl in two by chaining her arms and legs to two lorries. The stoker nods at Urban. Urban obediently sits down. Rácz’s feet are on the coffee table.
“How are you?” Urban asks jovially.
“Rácz is always fine,” is the answer.
“Need any currency?” Urban asks.
“I don’t need anything,” says Rácz. “But if you have any, I’ll take it.” The hero of the video sits down with the madman and spends a long time persuading him there’s no need to rip the girl in two. Rácz takes his eyes off the screen. “What’ve you got?” he asks, pretending to be uninterested.
“All sorts,” says Video Urban. “Schillings and marks.”
“How much do you want for them?” asks the stoker.
“What’ll you pay?” retorts Urban.
“The usual,” says Rácz.
“Look at today’s paper,” Urban argues.
“I never read it,” Rácz states with pride. The blond madman is toying with the accelerator, smiling demonically. The girl tied to the bumper is groaning. “This is a film for Freddy!” Rácz roars with laughter: his eyes are not laughing, but watchful.
“The schilling and deutschmark are both up,” says Urban.
Rácz just waves his wrist, which is adorned with a thick golden bracelet. “Want a drink?”
“Do you have any juice?” asks Urban.
“In the fridge,” says Rácz, pointing.
By the time Urban comes back with a frosty can of pineapple juice, the girl has been torn in half.
“Fine,” says Rácz, after a short pause. “I’ll give you five cents more for a schilling and twenty-five cents more for a deutschmark.”
Urban shakes his head. “Fifteen and fifty,” he says.
Rácz turns the video off and puts the remote control on the table. He looks at Urban. “OK, he agrees, “ten and thirty.”
Urban takes his wallet out, removes the money, counts it and puts it on the table. “Sixty-eight thousand schillings and eight thousand deutschmarks. Is that OK?”
Rácz is so astonished that he forgets to close his mouth, but he quickly gets a hold on himself. He stands up, leaves and soon comes back with a little metal safe. He takes his time counting the money. “You swine,” he tells Urban, piling a stack of one-thousand-crown banknotes on the table. “If you make just thirty cents on a schilling and one and a half crowns on a deutschmark, you’ll take about thirty thousand off me. That’s almost my daily take!” Rácz shakes his head, pretending to be upset.
Urban smiles. He stuffs the money into his wallet and gets up. He hasn’t got much time.
“Leaving already?” asks Rácz.
“Yes,” says Urban. “I’ve more work to do.” He can’t afford to take it easy. Would Rácz be interested if he brought more marks and so on?
Rácz lifts his eyebrows. “Just bring it,” he says. “I’ll take it all.” He pours a shot of Chivas Regal. “You’ve stunk the place out. What crap are you smoking?”
“Crap?” Urban, offended, takes the cigar out of his mouth. He reads the name on the ring and pronounces: “Davidoff.”
“Throw it away!” Rácz insists and reaches into a wooden humidor on the table. “Here, take this one, he says, giving Urban a cigar. “Cohiba. It comes all the way from Cuba.”
Urban stubs out his cigar in the ashtray and lights up a Cohiba. Through the cloud of smoke, he looks at a haughty Rácz. So, may Urban bring him more schillings and marks?
Rácz sees no need to answer. He spreads his arms in a gesture signifying “whatever you like, whenever you like.”
“I hope you’ll have enough pocket money left,” says Urban ironically.
But Rácz can’t take a joke against himself. “Rácz has enough money,” he declares, almost offended.
In the doorway Video Urban almost bumps into Ďula, who has been eavesdropping behind the door. Urban can’t be bothered waiting for the lift and runs down the stairs. He stops in the lobby: the glass entrance to the bar has been smashed. Long jagged pieces of glass, as sharp as swords, hang from the door-frame. “Closed owing to technical problems,” Urban reads on a paper notice. “What happened?” Urban asks the receptionist.
“Yesterday a drunken customer wrecked the whole bar: even four waiters couldn’t calm him down,” said the receptionist. “They had to call the cops. It was the fat bloke from the car park.” The receptionist can’t recall his name.
“I know,” says Urban. “I know the guy.”
“When the cops arrived he was going to hang himself,” the receptionist continues. “Another moment and it would have been too late.”
Urban arrives at the border crossing just on time. The customs officers had just cleared a huge orange monster with smoked glass and a sign reading LISCHKA REISEN. The travellers welcome Urban with satisfied expressions. The hands clutching banknotes have a liberating effect. He reaches for them greedily, with a crooked smile.
This time Rácz does not hide his astonishment. Looking at the piles of hundred-deutschmark and five-hundred- or thousand-schilling banknotes, he sits behind his desk with a stupefied expression. Not raising an eyebrow, however, he takes out his small safe, opens it, and wets the thumb and index finger of his right hand.