Rácz absent-mindedly browses the auction catalogue. Besides the Hotel Ambassador, the neighbouring department store, a big food palace named CentroGourmand, the luxurious Restaurant Savarin and a few smaller restaurants will have their fates decided. Rácz looks at the lawyer. Words are unnecessary. This is their day. They’ll have to take it all. If the Austrians lend them money for one site, they’ll lend them money for all of them.
There are few interested parties. Almost none. Not only because they’ve managed to keep the auction almost secret, but mostly because everyone in the city knows that Ambassador belongs to Rácz. There were only two other potential buyers, from outside the city. They learned of the auction by some mysterious act of fate, and so they came.
“They might have a man in the Fund,” the lawyer explains to allay Rácz’s worries.
Fortunately, the two cheerful vegetable growers from the Danube Island are happy to learn that it would be much appreciated if they would be spectators this morning, and they would get a small sum in compensation. Rácz knows how to appreciate a favour.
The auction begins at nine sharp. At first the small sites in the city centre are auctioned off. Rácz is not interested and magnanimously leaves them to the vegetable growers. When the Hotel Ambassador lot comes up, he gets nervous. He doesn’t let on. He sits relaxed, not moving, one leg crossed over the other, and his metallic eyes hypnotize the auctioneer.
The starting price is ten million. Nothing: no interested buyer comes forward. The auctioneer has to move to a Dutch auction after a while, lowering the price. Gradually, in a dramatic voice, he reduces the price of the hotel. In the end, Rácz buys the Ambassador for five million, five hundred thousand. He looks at his companions with satisfaction.
“We could pay for it with cash from the office safe,” he tells Urban.
In the same way they acquire CentroGourmand and Savarin. Rácz’s people are sitting calmly and well focused. The next item is the department store. Rácz has plans for it. He wants to hire an architect and turn the building into a hotel and office building. So there’d be two hotels next to each other, like twins. One would keep its original name, the Ambassador, and the other one would be called Hotel Rácz, what else? Or both would be called Ambassador-Rácz: One and Two. He would decide.
The department store also changes ownership by Dutch auction. A bribe to the National Property Fund worked. Rácz gets it for a paltry four million.
Rácz laughs. “This is a dream, damn and blast it!”
At the end of the auction, the stoker is as proud as any outright winner should be. It’s all legal, in accordance with the law. He’ll never go back to the boiler-room, or drive a tractor in the village. He realises this and unobtrusively wipes an involuntary tear from his cheek.
Contracts are drawn up and a copy of each goes into the lawyer’s fine-leather case. Arranging a few days’ delay in paying the final sum is no problem for the lawyer and Urban. Each important official will leave with a thick envelope, a financial gift, in his pocket. Everybody is happy, as well as Rácz. They managed to keep everything quiet and no journalist will be digging around.
Euphoria has overcome Rácz’s companions, as if they’d drunk several glasses of sparkling wine. Their faces turn red; their staring eyes judge the surrounding world joyfully and with a merciful tolerance. The men have become noisy. The world has become elastic; it is both funny and joyful. They feel like doing nothing but celebrating and having fun. Only Rácz, happily smoking his cigar, brings them back to earth.
“We haven’t won yet,” he says and splashes a bucket of cold water on the merrily bubbling fountain of happiness. “The Hotel Ambassador is ours, we have enough money for that, but we are not masters of the other properties yet. What if they won’t give us a mortgage in Vienna?” he asks almost reproachfully, looking gravely at the excited Lawyer who has been happily playing with his nine fingers: he was the architect of the coup.
“It’s as good as done!” the Lawyer shouts. “It’s in the bag! Don’t you get it?”
Rácz shrugs: he is not so sure! It looks good, but it’s not yet time to celebrate. However, when the hotelier notices that his men look a bit down in the mouth, he hastily reassures them. Rácz didn’t mean to say that when everything is done, he’s not going to organize a big blowout, the biggest blowout in the history of this bloody city.
Rácz spells out his instructions in the car. “We are going to my hotel, you’ll let me out there, and continue directly to Vienna,” he says. “You’ve got your passports? Good. When you get the mortgage, call me from Vienna. I’ll be waiting. And call me even if you don’t get it,” the hotelier stresses. He’ll be waiting for a phone call.
“But why don’t you get yourself a passport, too, boss,” asks Urban. “You could travel with us.”
Rácz smiles. Rácz does not need to travel anywhere. He never travels anywhere. Rácz has people to do it for him.
They arrive at the Ambassador and park in the yard. All the employees are waiting, looking out of the windows. When Rácz enters the lobby, they all bow to him. They know already that Rácz is now their boss, legally as well as in reality. They all want to shake their employer’s hand. They bring him bread and salt on a round tray. Rácz takes a piece of bread and, chewing it, he pinches a pretty waitress on the behind.
The lawyer claps and announces, “Mr. Rácz, the President of Rácz Ltd., a company that has today acquired the Hotel Ambassador, is grateful to you all for your welcome and asks you to go back to work. Our President would like everyone to know that nobody who works hard and responsibly need fear losing his job. And now, please, back to work!”
* * *
Rácz shortens the tormenting wait for a phone call that will set him free by sipping a drink in the bar. He has Ďula and the ex-secret policeman Ščepán for company. They, too, are glad: they will finally get proper work contracts. Ščepán was promised a small percentage share in Rácz’s company. Nothing big compared with the percentages of Urban and the lawyer. They’re real partners, though the majority owner is, of course, Rácz.
He’s as tense as a taut string. He’s irritable and relieves his impatience by drinking Heevash Reygahl. He checks his watch and thinks: Urban and the lawyer must be in Vienna by now. And now they’re entering the bank. Maybe they’re negotiating already: both speak German very well. Rácz downs another Scotch and wishes that he had got a passport after all, and could accompany them.
Ščepán and Ďula sense that Rácz is nervous, and say nothing. They drink silently, but because they can’t take as much as the hotelier, they begin to reel on their chairs. Rácz ignores them, shrouded in the smoke of an expensive Cohiba cigar, and looks tensely and uncertainly at his nails. The blackness from the coal has long disappeared from the pores of Rácz’s hands. The dirt has washed out and the constantly damaged nails and fingertips have turned pink. The rest is due to a manicure: Rácz is now proud of his sensitive gentleman’s hands. Only their excessive size and his thick fingers tell a watchful observer that there once was a time when those hands worked to support their owner.
Both Urban’s wives, Wanda and Eva, appear in the bar. Rácz invites them with a gesture to join in and sit down. He orders each a glass of Becherovka.