“Have you robbed a bank in Austria?” he asks, putting on the table the sum Urban names. Ďula stands near the radiator at the window. He bursts out laughing with amusement. “Shut your face, you fool,” Rácz turns on him. “Clear off! Don’t you have work to do?”
“Yes, boss,” mumbles the driver, “I’m going.” He reluctantly leaves the window.
“You can tell me, no problem,” Rácz urges Urban, after Ďula closes the door behind him and presses his ear to the other side of the door.
“Tell you?” Video Urban asks cheerfully, as he stuffs money into his wallet. He meant to ask the stoker to give him hundred-crown notes. It’s stupid when a tourist wants to change two hundred deutschmarks and all you have is thousand-crown notes, and the tourist has no change. But then Urban decides to change them at the department store. The cashiers will do whatever he asks.
“You can tell me where you get the currency,” Rácz tells him. “I’m not going to use the information. You know I’m too busy to run around.” The stoker takes out a cigarette case and offers Urban a Players. Rácz is not a gossipy old woman. He’ll keep the information to himself. He’s not stupid, he knows it’s not easy to exchange that much money at one go. When a Kraut or Austrian shows up, he needs at most maybe two or three thousand crowns. Rácz can see that Urban must be doing whole busloads of them. But where is it happening? Certainly not in front of the hoteclass="underline" Rácz has already asked the Albanians. So where?
Urban smiles, even though he doesn’t feel like it. Luckily, the door opens and in walks Silvia and her friend Edita, both weighed down with shopping bags and rosy from the cold air. Urban takes his opportunity and says goodbye.
“Will you bring me more today?” Rácz asks, as Urban heads for the door.
“I don’t know yet,” says Urban a bit annoyed: the stoker’s high-handed manners have been getting on his nerves lately.
“Going already?” The stoker sounds almost disappointed.
“I’ve got things to do,” Urban says evasively.
When he starts the engine and bumps off the pavement, he notices a movement in his rear view mirror. Round the corner appears the hotel’s Renault minibus, driven by Ďula. He hangs back, but is obviously following Urban. “Aha!” Video Urban concludes: Rácz has told Ďula to follow him. Instead of being happy to get a steady supply of currency, he’s jealous of Urban. It clearly annoys him that Urban is making just as much money as him on the deals. The stoker wants to trace the source of Urban’s currency and tap into it himself. Then he’d make not just what he gets already, but Urban’s cut, too. Urban thinks back to when he first met Rácz: the uncouth gestures, the ill-fitting suit, the pudding-bowl hair cut. He can’t help grimacing at the steering-wheel when he recalls having to explain to the sullen peasant what a deutschmark was, and what use it was. The stocky young man was silent and listened to Urban attentively with an inscrutable expression in his dark metallic eyes. “Bugger,” Urban relieves the tension with a curse. He jumps a red light at a crossroads and hears minibus’s brakes shriek. He takes a sharp turn to the right, and then another one. His mood improves. It would be odd if he, an experienced unlicensed taxi driver, couldn’t shake off an inept, stupid pursuer in the streets of his native city! Rácz has to be taught that Urban is not some moron who can be followed as in an American video. Urban takes another right turn and then one more. Soon he arrives at the crossroads where he got rid of that idiot Ďula. Now he calmly waits for a green light. There’s no sign of the minibus. He races the engine and takes off when the light turns yellow. He rushes to the border crossing. He’s wasted a lot of time as it is.
In the evening Urban has good reason to celebrate. He’s made almost a hundred thousand crowns’ clear profit in a day! Why didn’t he work it out sooner? He decides to take Lenka out that evening: she’s one of the girls that he cultivates, whom he phones from time to time, and who sometimes let him take her out to dinner. Naturally, he won’t take her to the Ambassador. He can’t risk meeting someone who might say something untoward.
Lenka is certain that Urban’s high standard of living comes from his job as a shop window dresser and video artist. To her, Urban is basically one of life’s losers, but a nice and entertaining loser. For a college girl like Lenka, anyone who fails second-year theory of culture can’t be anything but a loser. She’s not impressed by money; she grew up in a rich home. Lenka is a language student. English and Arabic. She may sleep with Urban one day, but not yet. Who knows if she ever will? She likes leading him on. Sometimes she even lets him kiss her. She’s a big, slim, silent, walking promise. Urban has the right phrase for this type of girclass="underline" “dry whore”. But it’s still fun going out with her. One day she’ll stop being faithful to her future boyfriends. Meanwhile, Urban can screw married women. There are plenty of them in a department store. It’s nice and warm in the shopfitters’ room and both he and the married woman are paid for their efforts. Life is beautiful, Urban concludes. He decides to get up early the next day and set out for the border crossing once again. It’s a gold mine. All that money for the taking.
Lenka has seductive eyes. The champagne foams. Urban puts his hand on hers. A slant-eyed waiter hovers noiselessly. “A dry whore,” Urban tells himself silently. He is a slave to his own æsthetics.
* * *
Rácz is having supper, too. He is drinking because he’s angry. He kicked the incompetent Ďula in the testicles when he got back to the suite with a long face and threw up his hands in a tragic manner. He’d have kicked him to death, if Silvia hadn’t stopped him. She paid for that. A slap. Two slaps. Then it was the shopping bags’ turn. He tore up all her parcels. Both women were in tears, trying to save the clothes they’d bought. They fought Rácz for the shopping, like chicks fighting a rooster for a juicy worm they’d caught. “How could you let him get away?” Rácz went on raging at Ďula.
After a long while spent dithering and moaning, Ďula got off the floor. Silvia had to spray a whole bottle of soda water on him.
“You certainly know how to kick a man, boss,” said Ďula humbly, his face drawn with pain, his hands between his legs.
By now Rácz is standing in front of a mirror with his right hand solemnly raised. Rácz won’t rest until he finds out where that city slicker, that hustler Urban gets all his currency. Nobody, but nobody will make a hundred thousand a day out of Rácz! Who ever heard of such a thing?
Rácz only calms down and cheers up in the cabaret bar. He requests his favourite song and then orders a bottle of cherry brandy. “What would you like to have,” he asks his company, Silvia, Edita, and Ďula. “Order anything you like. My treat! You want to eat? Eat! Musicians, play my tunes one more time!” Rácz shouts and bangs his fist on the table. Ďula quickly gets high and starts to laugh stupidly. The drunken women move their bodies in rhythm with the music. “That’s it! That’s it! That’s it!” the stoker shouts and, with a bottle of cherry brandy in his hand, he jumps up and dances around the table. His eyes are hazy, as if covered by a cloud. The musicians sweat so hard that their temples are shine. They smile a forced smile. Their faces are sleazy professional masks, grimacing with insolence, conspiracy and connivance. They meekly follow the drunken stoker on his way of the cross through the Ambassador’s cabaret bar.
* * *
The snow is shining; it creaks under the runners of the dog-sledge. The hunters run over the ice, shouting. The sea, covered by cracking ice floes, is close. Its cool, salty breath can be sensed from far away. A vicious wind whistles in their ears. “Walrus! Walrus!” the oldest Inuit shouts, pointing at the crack. The manager weighs his harpoon in his hand and hurls it at the herd of snarling walruses. Then he wakes up in the dark, in his office. He yells with fear for a while, but then he collects himself. He unzips the tent flap and emerges completely frozen. It’s dark in the office. The manager looks at his watch. It’s nearly midnight. A snowstorm rages outside. Icicles hang from the ceiling. Lately, the manager has spent most of his time asleep. His teeth are loose in his gums. He is troubled by nightmares about the Inuit. It takes him a long time to wake up and recognize his surroundings. He’s got to keep moving, he tells himself and starts to pace the office up and down. Standing still means certain death for a hunter: keep on moving, constantly do something! The manager quickly splits some firewood and starts a fire in the middle of the office. His fear of freezing overcame fear of burning down the hotel a long time ago. There’s nothing flammable left in the office, anyway. The parquet floor, furniture, and mahogany panelling are all gone. There’s no danger of a conflagration. Now he roams the building at night, stealing a chair or armchair where he can. He once managed to get a settee from the lobby; he stole it right from under the nose of the dozing receptionist. It burned for a long time. The manager got warm burning it, singing a happy song. At the same time he roasted a small dog he’d caught near the skips in the courtyard. Crouching motionless in the dark, he waited hours for that dog.