* * *
The summer is slowly reaching its peak and the leaves are beginning to take on autumnal tints. Everywhere there is noise, colour, people, and cars. Rácz walks hesitantly. He wonders how Donáth can find his way in this madhouse.
“Here is the Mototechna car parts shop,” the old man points at a shop window full of stickers, motorcycle helmets, and tyre pumps. “Upstairs is a chemist’s,” Donáth continues, “and here in the Tatra Mall is the leather shop, and the household goods shop. We heat all of them,” he stresses. “And around the corner is the Ambassador.”
The hotel truly looks impressive. It is all of six storeys high. With its weathered and unkempt look it has evidently seen better times. In front of the hotel is an attended car park. Cars with foreign licence plates are parked in two opposite rows. In the basement is a bar and cabaret. Donáth tells all this to Rácz, who stares at the liveried porter standing under a canvas awning, looking stern and keeping his hands behind his back. The hotel entrance gleams with mahogany and smoked glass. Rácz has come into a world of completely new phenomena. He is looking at most of the things around him for the first time in his life.
“The girls who dance in there are almost completely naked,” Donáth continues, winking at Rácz.
“And have you been down there?” Rácz asks.
“Not as a guest,” Donáth admits, “it’s for foreigners only. But in winter I sometimes go there to bleed the radiators, and so on. I go there in the morning, when they rehearse. They dance on stage and wear next to nothing. They’re all hookers. After the show they go out with foreigners. And why shouldn’t they? I say to myself. Let them make money while they’re young. What do you think?”
Rácz is silent. Basically, he’s not interested. All he wants to do is start making money. This world is of no interest to him; it’s useful only to get him into his own world as soon as possible. He’ll crawl into his boiler-room and crawl out when he’s ready to travel back with his money. That’s how he was on military service. Everyone was dying to get out on leave, but Rácz had no leave for two years. Instead, he locked himself in the gym and lifted barbells. What ingenuity he had to use to avoid the officers sending him on forced leave! His friends used to touch their foreheads meaningfully. But Rácz didn’t mind being locked up in the barracks for two years. He familiarised himself with his world right from the start and then he felt at home in it. Excursions into an unknown terrain didn’t tempt him. He often said how beautiful it would have been if he’d been drafted to serve in a submarine. It would submerge and two years later would surface again. When they let Rácz go home from service, he gave them back his leave uniform almost unused. With the exception of a few film shows during basic training, the service oath, and the trip to his parents’ funeral, he never used it.
The boiler-room would be his submarine, Rácz decided. He’d keep only minimal contact with the outside world. He’d be interested in nothing except how much money he could bring home.
“This way,” says Donáth. Rácz nods. He bends down and picks up a little plastic bag. He takes a look and sees it’s got foreign banknotes inside. “Where are you?” Donáth shouts impatiently. Rácz puts the little bag in his pocket and follows Donáth through the dark passage into the yard. “Up there is the kitchen,” Donáth points to a grey annexe, obviously a later addition. “And down here is the laundry room. Buy them a coffee occasionally and they’ll wash your things.”
Rácz wonders: who could have lost the bag of foreign money? He can’t get his head round it. It looked as if someone had deliberately hidden it in a big concrete plant tub with an ornamental shrub. As if that someone meant to retrieve it later. Rácz can’t get his head round it, but he’s not going to ask Donáth. Why bother the old man? Rácz will figure it out on his own.
“And here is the boiler-room,” Donáth explains. He opens the metal door and they both run down the narrow stairs. “Put your suitcase over here,” says Donáth, pointing to the rickety table. It takes Rácz some time to see where things are in the dark room. Rays of daylight penetrate through dirty little windows, filtered through bright particles of dust floating in the air. At the back are the boilers, now dead and cold. Only the one on the left is heated. Steam leaks from the pipes.
“It is an old boiler-room,” says the old man and sits down. “Everyone uses gas and oil for heating now. If they wanted to redo this and modernise it they’d have to demolish half the hotel. They’d have to stop all operations and the hotel wouldn’t meet its targets. The shops would have to close as well,” says Donáth.
A door opens at the back and a long-haired young man enters. “What are you doing here?“ Donáth says, laughing. “Are you on the run again?”
“Are the cops still up there, Mr. Donáth?” asks the young man.
Donáth shakes his head. “Not a soul. Has there been a raid or something?”
“A big one,” the young man says emphatically, “I had to hide in your place.”
“Well, the old man shrugs, “you know what you’re up to. But I’ll make you sorry if you land me in the shit! I don’t want to know about your rackets, understand? It’s all right,” says Donáth, when he sees Urban taken aback by the sight of Rácz. “Well, boys, get to know each other,” he suggests. “This is my replacement, Rácz.”
“Urban,” says Urban.
Rácz nods but doesn’t get up.
“Stick close to this crook,” Donáth advises. “He’ll get hold of anything you need.”
“I won’t need anything,” Rácz thinks, but decides to keep quiet.
“Well, I’d better go, if the coast is clear,” says Video Urban. “See you.”
“I really like crooks like him,” says Donáth, when the metal door upstairs bangs shut. “He takes it easy all day long, doing nothing. But he’s got lots of money. One of these days he won’t take cover in time and he’ll end up in Leopoldovo prison. You don’t want to be one of his sort,” Donáth warns Rácz. “Keep on the straight and narrow!”
Rácz sits down. Donáth starts to describe life in the boiler-room. For example, he won’t have to worry about food at all. The stoker always goes to the kitchen to eat. They always have scraps in the kitchen. You have to keep on good terms with the cooks and kitchen staff. Let them have all the steam they want. When they’re cooking dumplings, for example, they let Donáth know, and he increases the pressure. When the dough has to rise, the kitchen has to be as hot as an oven. Donáth will show him all the ropes.
Rácz nods. He quite likes it here. He walks around the boiler-room and looks with bafflement into the furnaces. Cold air blows from the open muzzles. The draught roars in the chimneys and pipes. From the ventilation shaft you can hear the street sounds, distorted by travelling down the long metal pipe.
The old man sits at the table, fiddling with his ashtray. He’d be glad if Rácz decided to stay. Donáth promised to find a new stoker. It’s a matter of principle. He’s old; he’d like to have a rest. He’s got to take it easy. He’s been a stoker all his life. Never managed to do a thing. And now he’s found a lady friend. She’s the right age. She owns a house in Zahorie. A widow. They want to leave together. Donáth’s spent forty years of his life here. Before, he worked as a crane operator in the Czech country. Worked on different sites, here and there; in Ostrava, Vitkovice, and Kladno, the steel heart of the republic, and so on. He liked looking down on the world from a high crane. And he had a Czech wife, from Česká Lipa. She started to screw around in the spa, Marienbad. They divorced. She took the children. Ever since then Donáth’s worked here. But he doesn’t want to croak and still be stoking boilers.