“I’m going to the kitchen to see what they’re cooking,” says Donáth, who is hungry by now. Rácz goes off for a pee. If you watch flames all the time, you pee more often. Then Rácz shoves a wheelbarrow-load of coal into the furnace, on a whim, so that he can watch the fire seize its quarry. A little later, he lies down on the bench and looks at the fire.
* * *
The next day they visit the chemist’s and the leather shop. It’s raining. The street is glistening. The parking attendant feels the chill, as he huddles under an umbrella. They dine in the kitchen, in the dishwashing room. One of the staff brings them soup, stew and potatoes straight from the pot. Donáth takes a knife and cuts a piece of meat in half. “Tastes all right?” he asks with his mouth full.
“Tastes good.” Rácz nods.
They gobble their food — it’s already getting cold and doesn’t burn their tongues or gums. They glance at the girls washing the dishes. Rácz is about to wash the plates, but Donáth stops him. “No need,” he says. “The girls will wash up for us. We give them heating, don’t we?”
In the afternoon they check the heating in the Ambassador bar and cabaret. “You still can’t be a hundred-per-cent sure it will work,” Donáth says on the way there, “until you’ve tried it out for two or three days.” As they’re going through the service entrance, they meet one of the dancers. Donáth points her out. She’s just stepped out of an Opel with Austrian licence plates. She blows a kiss to the driver and walks towards the stairs. The stokers let her go first. She deliberately ignores them as she passes. She’s as slim as a racehorse. A smell of perfume follows her like a comet’s tail and wafts over them.
“Nice bit of skirt, isn’t she?” the old man remarks, when the dancer vanishes from sight.
“Too thin,” Rácz puts in like a man of the world. In fact, he’s upset at a woman ignoring him so pointedly. Ignoring him, a man who, when he was a soldier, was paid by a Czech whore! She paid him, not him paying her! “Oh God, I’d teach you a thing or two,” Rácz reflects. But then he thinks of Eržika. He imagines her pure, virginal face and becomes sentimental. What could Rácz find interesting in a whore of Babylon when a girl like Eržika is waiting for him at home!
“A thin pig has the best meat,” Donáth remarks. “Her name’s Silvia. Pretty well anyone rides her. She’s a fucking slut.”
The Ambassador Cabaret is quite small. A stage with maybe twenty tables around it, a long bar with ten stools, a dance floor and a band stand in the corner with drums, an organ, and speakers. The dancers sit around the pianist in their sweaters and gym gear, laughing at some joke. Donáth shows Rácz into a corridor. “Here are the changing rooms,” he tells him. “Bleed the radiators. I’ll go down to the basement to check the distributor pipes.” Rácz takes the tool kit and enters the first changing room. The room is about sixteen feet long. The mirrors, chairs, and make-up tables are on one side. On the chairs hang items of women’s clothing. Shoes are kicked under the tables. On the right yawns a row of wide-open cupboards. All sorts of silver costumes, peacock feathers, and leather harnesses are revealed for all to see. The radiator seems to be OK. Rácz opens the bleed valve on the side of the radiator and puts an empty can under it. When the air blows out and the can fills with black water, Rácz shuts the valve. He takes another breath of the smell of female sweat, powders and perfumes, and then goes out into the hall and opens the door to the next dressing room. The thin dancer they saw in the front entrance is changing her clothes. When she notices Rácz, she gives him a hostile look. “Can’t you knock on the door before you enter?”
“I didn’t know you were in,” says Rácz, and laughs.
“But now you do,” the dancer says firmly.
“Yeah, now I do,” Rácz agrees and enters the dressing room. “I’m just doing my job,” he says, when he sees her lips pursed in contempt, and the angry shake of her blonde head doesn’t escape him either. Disgusting slut, he thinks, night after night she shows it off on stage to the whole bar and now she’s shy? He squats at the radiator and tries the valve. The dancer takes no more notice of him. She pulls off her bra, and then her panties. She’s sitting on her chair wearing only a gold bracelet and earrings. The valve is stuck, maybe corroded. With every pore of his primitive sensual organism, Rácz senses the ethereal signals given off by her naked body, which is charged with energy. The dancer puts on a knitted white gym suit. Rácz works on the radiator, but glances at her out of the corner of his eye. Silvia is in no hurry to get dressed, the presence of a strange man doesn’t seem to bother her.
“Can you do up the zip on my neck?” she asks.
Rácz jumps up from the radiator, wipes his hands on his overalls. The dancer turns her back to him. Rácz struggles with the little zip, his hands are trembling. The woman radiates warmth and a dark musky smell.
“Thanks,” says Silvia. She doesn’t even look at him. She sits back and between her fingers appear a thin long cigarette and a miniature gold lighter. Rácz kneels at his radiator and gathers his thoughts: they’re scattered all over the place like an egg smashed against a wall. What was it he wanted to do? Oh yes, he was going to turn the valve. He takes an extension wrench, places it round the valve shaft and gently tugs it. It was only limescale. A bit of pressure and the valve turns. He turns it a few times back and forth, and then he puts the washer on and screws in the cotter pin. By now the dancer has put on her trainers and disappeared from the room. Rácz is sitting on the floor and carefully sniffs both his hands. They still smell of warm female skin. Eržika is so far away at this moment. “I’ll get you one day,” Rácz promises himself stubbornly. “I’ll get you and I’ll teach you some manners!”
* * *
In the army Rácz learned to use every free moment for sleep. He was young; he needed a lot of sleep. He managed to sleep no matter how much noise or light, in any position. Even five minutes’ sleep refreshed him. Once, during manœuvres, somebody stole his sleeping bag. It was winter and he faced two weeks of rough conditions in the exercise area. The other artillery crew members were freezing; at night they shook with cold and were going crazy, marooned by snow. Rácz just laughed. He wrapped himself in his coat, put his hands in the pockets and slept.
Donáth hardly sleeps at all. “I take a snooze for an hour or two,” he says. “The rest of the time I just sit there, smoke and think about things.”
After working all day they lie down on the bench and smoke. Rácz has now acquired a taste for cigarettes. They don’t talk; they’re both quiet and thoughtful. Once in a while one of them feeds the furnace and checks the steam pressure. Outside autumn has begun. The days are still sunny, but wild winds howl at night. The hot-water boiler is small and quiet. Rácz occasionally wakes up in the night and listens to the wind moaning in the cold chimneys. Then he falls asleep again. “Just get a good night’s sleep,” the old man, looking into the fire with a cigarette in his mouth, tells him. “When I was young, I used to sleep, too. The older you get, the less you sleep.” Donáth loads a wheelbarrow with coal and shovels it into the fire. Rácz isn’t bothered by the noise. He can fall asleep any time, even in the day. Sometimes he thinks of Eržika. Maybe he shouldn’t have left for the city, it occurs to him. He should have run off with her. That might have softened old Kišš. On the other hand, he’s not so sure. He could have just ruined his chances. Who knows what she’s like in bed? That matters a lot. What if she’s frigid? And what if she has a fanny as tight as a sheep’s? Rácz is suddenly scared. Then he wouldn’t even be able to get into her. He’s had some experience of this. A soldier’s whore nicknamed “the graduate” once told him that when the good Lord was handing out sexual organs, Rácz must have got a double portion. She used to follow the soldiers back to the barracks. He once screwed her in the quartermaster’s stores, when he was the assistant quartermaster. The “graduate’s” moans woke up the whole regiment. “Those were the days!” Rácz recalls. After the army he serviced a pretty widow, his neighbour, in a barn a few times and then he fell in love with Eržika Kišš and that was the end of it. He couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone but her. In fact, he couldn’t even imagine doing it with her.