The crowd consists of people all as exhausted, nervous and unhappy as she. Their psychology, however, can cope better with the morning heat. The woman stripping at the tram stop doesn’t escape the attention of the passers-by. They all stop, surround the island and feel a collective need to get involved in the affairs of the unfortunate half-naked woman. At the sight of the madwoman, men’s pulses race, blood rushes to their heads, and the skin on their faces tautens. Whistles, sarcasms and disparaging comments are heard. But the woman pays no attention; her face reveals total concentration on herself. One of the gypsies who always hang around the Hotel Ambassador snatches the shopping bag, which the woman threw down when she started her macabre strip-tease, and nonchalantly wanders off. No one notices, as the sight of a woman undressing in the street blots out all other events.
Video Urban is also watching and he too is also more or less excited by the sight of the wretched woman’s white body. But he is disgusted by the heartless mob of joking people and so he rings the emergency services on 158 from the telephone in the entrance of the Hotel Ambassador: “SOMEONE IS STRIPPING IN FRONT OF THE HOTEL AMBASSADOR,” he says and hangs up. He has no desire to meet the cops. He needs that like a hole in the head. He has in his pocket a thousand-deutschmark bank note and he needs to hustle up a few more hundred marks, by changing money illegally for tourists, to get enough for a camera that Mr. Hurensson from Sweden promised to bring him. Then Video Urban will really start to live it up! The camera guarantees him a happy future. Urban has great plans for it. He’ll film weddings and family celebrations. You can make good money that way. Everybody wants a souvenir of some milestone and will gladly pay for it.
“She’s got guts to show herself naked with those tits,” says the parking attendant, nicknamed Piggybank for good reason, as a comment on the performance. Urban is silent. He watches a yellow and white car with flashing lights, and two cops with a grey blanket as they throw themselves on the naked woman and drag her violently into the car. The madwoman resists, bites, and jerks her head, kicking wildly, while, at the same time, revealing the most intimate parts of her body, something that Piggybank finds very amusing.
“Have you seen Hurensson today, by any chance?” asks Video Urban.
“Who?” The attendant is nonplussed.
“My friend, the Swede,” says Urban impatiently.
“The Swede,” Piggybank muses. “Well, the Swede hasn’t shown up today.”
The passengers at the tram stop stay excited long after the police car leaves. The extraordinary situation has brought them together, just as a calamity to be overcome brings people together. But the trams keep coming and each takes a few of the crowd and then adds new faces to it. The latest people have no idea what’s just happened. For them the woman’s high-heel shoe discarded near the rubbish bin has a different symbolic value. The plot’s been lost.
“What’ll they do to her?” Piggybank asks Video Urban. Piggybank’s face is pink, reflecting his happiness and good mood. He hasn’t been working here long and he radiates the servile happiness of a person whose salary of two thousand crowns has increased several times over. Piggybank got the job through his connections and now he wants to be in everybody’s good books.
“Perhaps she’ll cool down when a couple of cops screw her real good,” he says breathlessly. Urban watches Piggybank take money from an incoming driver, put the ticket behind the windscreen wiper and point to a vacant space. Disgusting, slimy, stinking swine, he thinks. “You really should finally get laid,” he says to him coldly, looking with disgust into the fat man’s watery eyes, overcoming the temptation to hit his red money-bag and tip it up so that the coins scatter all over the parking lot.
“Beg your pardon?” Piggybank pretends not to understand.
“I said you should get laid,” says Video Urban. “I can tell by your eyes that all you’ve ever done is wank.”
“Come off it!” The attendant smiles.
He won’t even take offence, Urban thinks, he’s so pleased with himself. “Since you save so much, you should invest in some woman who’ll fuck your brains out.”
“I’ve never had to pay for it,” Piggybank counters, and blushes.
“I can see that,” Urban agrees, “you’ve never had it. Look over there.” He points two girls out to Piggybank: they are getting out of a large Mercedes with a West German licence plate. “They could help you. They only work as a duo; it’s their speciality. They’re medical students, so you’d seem a bit stupid to them, but if you keep your mouth shut, they might not notice. They‘d only want to know how much you’d pay, anyway. I’d say three hundred marks,” Urban estimates. “That’d do it.” He laughs. “And if you tell them that at your age you’re still a virgin, they might even do it for you for free. What do you say?” he asks the stunned fat man. “Shall I arrange it for you?”
“Are they friends of yours?” asks Piggybank.
“Sure,” says Urban. “I’m friends with all of them. You didn’t even know about the Hotel Ambassador when I was cabbing here a long time ago. I went into the money-changing business later, when cabbing stopped being so lucrative. Now there are so many moonlighting taxis that people are happy to make two or three hundred crowns a night. Well, do you want those medical students?”
“You mentioned that they might do it for free,” remarked the red-faced Piggybank.
Video Urban can’t keep it up and bursts out laughing. Piggybank looks offended.
“Sorry,” says Urban, “I don’t know those girls at all. I know a lot of people, but only a few hookers. I only know the ones that I used to drive occasionally.” He saw Piggybank was embarrassed and added, “Don’t shit yourself! Believe me, I have the same problem with women as you. It’s even harder for me, as I’m a slave to my æsthetic standards.”
Piggybank can’t understand. He thinks æsthetic standards mean using a knife and fork. Luckily, the influx of cars keeps him so busy that he stops paying attention to Urban.
Urban is free to look for more business. Quite brusquely he goes up to an incoming Austrian Opel with the usual question. He does not feel good doing this, demeaning himself, but he needs at least another three hundred marks. Hurensson might come any day now with the camera of his dreams and he has to be paid. And then, it’s good-bye money changing! Video Urban will become a businessman. He’ll come to the Ambassador only occasionally for a nightcap and will never again submit to this degrading job for a few marks. To make a lot of money is no problem. The problem is how to make it and still preserve one’s self-respect.
Urban reflects that he ought to show up for a bit of work again, in the department store opposite the hotel, where he works as a window dresser, but he shows up there only in an emergency. Now he notices a group of policemen charging from the parking lot and the pavement opposite the Hotel Ambassador. A raid, he realises. And he has twelve hundred marks on him! If they nab him, the camera is history. He presses against the wall and without being noticed, inches his way towards an entrance into the yard. Luckily, he hasn’t been spotted. Keeping the policemen in sight as they search the gypsies and currency dealers and bundle them into a police van, he gropes his way along the wall. When he touches the corner, quick as lightning, he jumps into a dark underpass and runs into the yard. He’s still not sure that he’s got away unseen. Fear that his longed-for dream might not come true throws him into a panic. He opens the boiler-room metal door and leans against it from inside, breathing heavily. He’s safe. He looks around. Wrought iron steps lead to the basement. He runs down them and decides to stay in the boiler-room. It is better to stay for a while, until things outside clear up. He sits down on a bench at the rough table and takes out his crisp, handsome banknotes. Their velvet touch and metallic colour calm him down. That must surely be enough, he thinks; he told Hurensson exactly which type to bring. It can’t cost more than eleven hundred and fifty marks. All right, it could cost more in Sweden. Maybe he should buy another couple of hundred marks. When he has the camera, he will get his cash back within a year.