The fat parking attendant quickly interrupts, taking advantage of the momentary pause. Freddy Piggybank is also worried. Everything that is happening has happened before. Two years ago, in the middle of winter Freddy was thrown out of his car park. Of HIS car park! He has had to put up with enormous ingratitude. They said it was because of the Christmas Market. But those wooden kiosks stayed there till spring. He got so upset then that he fell seriously ill. It was his nerves. At the same time he mustn’t get worked up, because a vein in his head swelled up when he was a child. They were all after him. First the gypsies: they wanted a third of his takings for protection. But Freddy was brave; he wouldn’t pay. And what did they do? They hit back and hurt him badly. The attendant puffs his cigarette. Luckily, there are no gypsies around now. Rácz the hotel owner kicked them out of the city centre. Freddy, an honest businessman, feels safer now; nobody threatens him. But he still has to pay. Half his takings. For security. Shit! What kind of a businessman is Freddy Piggybank now? He’s a beggar. Half a beggar. Just look at this Wooden Village! There is no space for cars to park, but nobody cares; the point is that the city centre is full of wooden kiosks. And one day that bitch from the town council showed up with a decree cutting the parking spaces by half and using the other half for the Wooden Village. But Freddy’s rent would stay the same. While his income is less than half what it used to be. And Freddy is not even mentioning medical insurance and crap like that.
Bartaloš nods absent-mindedly, but without sympathy. If the snack bar were demolished, Feri and Eržika would lose their bread and butter.
The first tram rumbles down the street. They both take it as a signal. They say good-bye and go their separate ways. Freddy submerges in the warmth of his den which smells of hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, and Feri goes for a walk, waiting for the grocers to open. He fancies a beer.
The self-service shop opens, as usual, at five. Feri is one of the first customers. He buys two bottles of Bratislava beer, the sort that makes you crap, and stands, looking miserable, at a counter in the corner near the cashier. He opens the paper and reads his horoscope. Feri is a Cancer. A creature of the opposite sex will fundamentally change your life this afternoon. Feri cackles hoarsely and turns to the sports page.
The customers come staggering in, still half asleep. Nobody takes any notice of Feri; he sips his beer with his eyes half closed and studies the football results. His face jerks to attention when Four-Eyes appears. Four-Eyes enters the store. He deliberately ignores Feri. His bony figure, tall despite a hunch, moves towards the shopping baskets. He’s wearing black spectacles. Ever since he lost an eye, they’ve become an essential accessory to his face.
Four-Eyes isn’t on duty today. Feri and Eržika are. Four-Eyes wears orange overalls and a blue quilted overcoat. It is the work clothing of the City Transport road crews. He was sacked from there about two years ago, but he still feels he belongs to the big cheerful family of bus and tram drivers. Even today, Four-Eyes deliberately avoids the pavement: he walks along the tram rails in the middle of the road, his eyes focusing under his feet as if constantly checking the condition of the track. Now and then he bends down to pick up a stone. The tram people know him and give him a friendly ring when they see him. When not on duty in the Wooden Village, he often mingles with the crowd entering the transport employees’ cafeteria. He gets as much soup and bread as he wants.
Four-Eyes can still recite by heart any regulation that he memorised during the many years he drove trams. When they knocked his eye out in The Albanian pub, he was no longer able to judge distance and was made an inspector. He was too stupid to be a controller.
When he stole the money he collected in fines and got drunk, they moved him to a digging crew. He wasn’t much use there. He still considered himself a tram driver on leave. When the track was damaged, instead of digging with the rest of the crew, he would chat with his ex-colleagues waiting for the repair to be finished. The track master nearly had a stroke. When they started laying people off, Four-Eyes was the first to be sacked. He had two years to go before his pension, so he found a job in the Wooden Village. But in his heart of hearts he was still a transport worker. To this day he can recite all the regulations in a hushed but strict voice. He dramatizes each regulation really welclass="underline" Yevtushenko, reciting his poetry at a packed stadium, has nothing on him. An example of Four-Eyes’s robotic memory is accompanied by firm gestures of his right hand; he acts out each and every memorised sentence.
By now, Bartaloš has opened another bottle of crap beer. Four-Eyes turns up with a plastic bag full of bread rolls and milk and stands at another counter. He’s bought beer, too. They stand with their backs turned to each other.
Feri can’t hold out. He smiles when he sees Four-Eyes in his transport worker outfit. “Going to work?” he asks ironically.
The lanky man ignores him on purpose, and calmly pours the beer down his ageing mouth.
“I said, going to work?” Feri repeats.
Four-Eyes swallows the crap beer, wipes his chin with the back of his hand, takes a good look at Feri and then lazily turns his round, almost bald head with its striking aquiline nose. His eye is concealed by the dark lenses.
Feri takes no notice of the warning signals. “What would they do without you in City Transport?” Feri says, as if to himself. “Without you they might as well give up.”
In an instant, Four-Eyes is on him. His sinewy hand grips Feri’s neck. Feri’s eyes pop, and he falls silent. He is two heads shorter than Four-Eyes. The tall man keeps gripping him and won’t let go. He is quick-tempered. He beats his wife, too. Sometimes he beats her even in the snack bar, right in front of the customers.
The cashier starts to screech in her piercing voice. “Always the same thing,” she says, all worked up. “They knock it back first thing in the morning and then they fight. But nobody’s going to fight in this supermarket.” She’s going to call the manager right away. And he can call the police.
Four-Eyes gives her as much attention as he would to a buzzing fly. He still grips Feri by the neck and won’t let him breathe.
Feri tries to gather his last ounce of strength, and his fading eyes search around in panic in the hope that one of his beer-drinking mates will show up: bearded Honzík, his colleague from the snack bar across the street, or the murderous Fraňo Fčilek who collects the beer glasses at The Hunter. But there’s nobody around. In the corner near the pillar, stinking Majerník, who is never sober and who eats leftovers from other people’s plates, laughs at him; he won’t help.
Feri Bartaloš gathers his last remnants of strength and knees Four-Eyes hard in the crotch. Four-Eyes immediately releases his grip and grabs the painful spot.
Feri catches his breath and his face recovers its normal colour. Vengefully and slyly, with a coward’s cruel smile, he gives Four-Eyes two or three more kicks and runs out of the shop. He doesn’t even finish the crap beer. Weaving between the slow-moving cars, he looks back to see if there is anyone in pursuit.
Four-Eyes is crouching by the counter. His shrivelled hands are clutching his balls and his belly; he can’t decide what to do next.
In the chilly morning air Feri is followed by wild cursing, but he has now reached the other side of the street, laughing and grimacing under the influence of his victory.
* * *
After a brief sleep of less than an hour, Martin Junec wakes up in his suite, wondering for a while where he is. Once things are clear, he sits up in bed. In the Louis XV chair his former brother-in-law Žofré is sitting.