Vyhľadávanie
BLOODY MARY
(Extract)
“How long you working here?” the guest asked the barman. He was sitting on a stool, his arms resting on the bar. They were the only two in the pub. The barman was propping himself up on his elbow and gazing across the room at the dark window opposite.
“Until two,” he replied.
“Have one on me,” said the guest.
“Thanks. I don’t drink while I’m working.”
“Sure. But all the other pubs shut an hour ago. If anyone wanted to come, they’d be here by now.”
“Okay, then. Tequila.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Orita and Olmeca.”
“Olmeca. Silver for me.”
The barman poured a silver and a golden tequila and cut thick slices of lemon and orange. The guest lifted his glass. “I’m Martin.”
The barman smiled, “Imagine that. I’m Martin, too.”
The guest shook some salt onto his left thumb, licked it, took a bite of lemon and drank. “I wasn’t asking you how long you’d be open, but how long you’ve been working here,” he said.
“This is my third week,” the barman replied.
From the street came the sound of the tower clock striking briefly. It was a quarter to one. The guest sat up and stared into his empty glass. A minute later he said, “ Let’s have one more.”
The barman brought the chopping board nearer the guest. “The next one’ll be on me,” he said. “I don’t know what’s up today. At this time we’re usually at least half full.”
“Full moon. It’s a full moon today,” the guest said.
“So what?”
“You’re not from these parts, are you?”
“No. How d’you know? You’re a local? I haven’t seen you before.”
“In this town when there’s a full moon they close all the pubs at eleven.”
They drank and the barman poured another round. “It’s on me now,” he said. “That must be some mumbo jumbo. Why should a full moon make them close?”
“Didn’t the owner tell you?”
“I’m the owner. That is… I’ve taken it on a lease.”
“Ah. How much do you pay? If it isn’t a secret.”
“Hm… I must say, surprisingly little.”
“I see. So little that you doubt whether it’s worth his while leasing it out?”
The barman gave a nervous smile. “Have you come to collect protection money? I thought I could avoid that in this hole,” he said.
The guest fixed his eyes on the barman. “You’re talking rot. Do I look like an arsonist?” he asked.
“Sorry. I don’t know anyone here yet. Just a joke. Didn’t come off.”
“It wasn’t a joke. Never mind. I’m just interested. Three years ago I was standing where you are now.”
“You had the lease?” The barman was genuinely surprised.
“Yes. I had a job in the capital and I saved a bit. So I told myself I could stand on my own two feet.”
“Well I never! And why aren’t you still here? Didn’t it go well?”
“I’d’ve had to have been an absolute moron for it not to.”
The barman stared at his guest. His whole body hinted at the unasked question.
“The full moon,” said his guest after a while.
“The full moon? What’s a full moon got to do with business? And anyway. After all, that’s… only once a month, I guess.”
“Once every twenty-eight days.”
“Okay. So that still leaves twenty-seven days for business.” The barman poured another round without asking.
“Charge that to me,” said the guest.
The barman’s interest was aroused. “Is there some problem here I don’t know about?”
The guest did not respond.
“A secret? You don’t want to talk about it? You can’t?”
The guest said nothing and just stared into his glass.
“I’ll pay you,” said the barman.
“Leave off! You’d do better if you went and looked out of the window.”
“What?”
“Go over to the window and look out into the street.”
The barman cautiously came out from behind the bar and walked towards the nearest window. Halfway there, he stopped and turned to look at the guest. The latter hadn’t budged. He was sitting with his back to him and staring into his glass. “Don’t worry, I won’t take anything,” he said.
The barman was surprised. He wanted to ask something else, but then thought the better of it. He went over to the window. The wind was blowing leaves along the moonlit street.
“What can you see?”
“Nothing. What should I see?”
“Can you see any people?”
“No. So what? It’s midnight, they’re all asleep. They have to get up early to go to work tomorrow.”
“And yesterday they didn’t have to?”
The barman looked over his shoulder. The guest hadn’t moved. “You must know how it is. There are days like that. Sometimes business just couldn’t be better and it’s not even pay day, a bank holiday or anything. At other times it’s quite the opposite. There’s no logic to it,” he told the guest to his back.
“Take another look. Can you see any lights?” asked the guest.
The barman looked through the window once more. “That’s interesting… There are no lights on anywhere. Not even the street lights,” he said after a while.
“You see,” said the guest.
The barman stared into the street again. “Hm. If the light wasn’t on in here, I’d have thought there was a power cut,” he said, going back to the bar.
They drank. “Do you do mixed drinks?” asked the guest.
“Of course. Shall I mix you something?”
“Can you make a Bloody Mary?”
“Yes.”
“A real Bloody Mary?”
“Well… What do you mean? Tomato juice, vodka, black pepper, salt, Tabasco, lemon juice, Worchester sauce. That’s a real Bloody Mary, isn’t it?”
“That’s just it. It isn’t.”
“I don’t get you. I can put Absolut vodka in it for you instead of the ordinary. Or Fyodor, or…”
The guest looked the barman in the eye. It made him feel uneasy. “Do you want to know why I don’t work here any more?” he said.
“Of course I do!”
The guest pulled a cigarette case from his pocket and picked out a cigarette. The barman lit it for him. “I had a bit of cash and I needed to get away from the city,” said the guest, exhaling smoke.
“You were in trouble?”
“That’s neither here nor there. I was simply attracted by the bargain and I was in business for almost a month. Had to work pretty hard. But I could’ve lived cosily here for at least two or three years. Small town, hills and forests all around… Nothing to take me by surprise. But then the full moon came.”
“Ah. Not a living soul in the pub.”
“Exactly. Not a soul.”
“Did you ask anyone about it?”
“Of course I did.”
“And?”
“Nothing. No one told me anything. They just gave me strange looks. So I waited for the next one.”
“The next full moon?”
“Are you going to keep interrupting me?”
“Sorry.”
“Exactly the same happened. Except that at midnight a guest appeared. Just one. I was actually glad to see him. You know what it’s like. The only people who come into a pub late at night are the ones who’ve been drinking elsewhere. They’ve spent nearly all their cash and they come to you just to round off with small beers. And they’re the most trouble at closing time. But then I’d been all alone in the pub for several hours, so I was glad when at least someone appeared. The guy had hardly sat down before he asked me whether I could make a real Bloody Mary. That threw me a bit. Like it did you. I’d mixed all kinds of shit, but I never suspected my Bloody Mary wasn’t the real thing. I used to make a Gypsy in the Desert, Screaming Orgasm and Concrete Estate. Once I mixed equal amounts of gin, rum and plumb brandy with Coke and grenadine. But I was caught out when it came to a real Bloody Mary. So that guy explained it to me. He said that a real Bloody Mary wasn’t made from tomato juice, but…”
“But?”
“…blood.”
“What?!”
“You heard. Blood. He said he’d give me a thousand crowns for one drink. So I made it for him.”
“Where did you get blood from at midnight?”
“Where do you suppose? Think.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Just what I thought. The guy put a thousand crown note down on the bar. On this very spot,” the guest tapped the thick wooden board with the knuckle of his middle finger.
“How much juice do you usually put in a Bloody Mary?”
“A decilitre.”
“Exactly. So I thought to myself that, after all, a decilitre of blood wouldn’t kill me. A joke’s a joke and a thousand’s a thousand. Do you know what was the hardest thing?”
“What?”
“How to get a decilitre of blood out of myself. Then I remembered I’d got a used plastic syringe in the storeroom. You know how it is? People often have something like that at hand. You never know when it might come in useful. For blowing into the carburettor, for instance.”
“I know. I once spent three hours telling myself I could do with something like that. I’ve got one in the storeroom, too. Among the tools,” the barman said.
“I went to get it, gave it a thorough wash and left it to soak for five minutes in vodka. All that time I expected the man to burst out laughing and say it was only a stupid joke. Or that a herd of drunken pricks would come bursting through the doors hollering something about a bet. But no. The guy just sat and watched me.”
“You made it for him?”
“What else could I do? When you give blood, they take a lot more than that. I drew out two half decilitres and mixed him the drink.”
“And he drank it?”
“You bet he did. He even paid for another.”
“Wow! For another thousand?”
“No. The next Bloody Mary was for two.”
“Wow! Three thousand for two drinks?!”
“In cash.”
“And then?”
“Nothing. The man got up and by one he’d left. When I woke up next morning, the first thing I did was look in my purse. The money was there.”
“Look here, you’re having me on.”
“Do I look the type?”
“We-ll… No.”
“You see. Then it was the usual slog. Couple of times I tried to ask someone discreetly. But the moment I mentioned the full moon, they all pretended to be deaf. So I waited for the next one.”
“Wow… That’s the best yarn I’ve ever heard, I can tell you.”
“That was only the beginning. The next full moon it happened all over again. I opened at five as usual and no one set foot in the pub until midnight. When the tower clock struck the hour, two men came in. They looked okay. They sat more or less opposite where you are now and ordered two drinks. Apart from that they didn’t say a word. They put three thousand on the bar. I mixed the drinks, they drank them and ordered another round.”
“Wait a minute! For the next two they gave you… Six?”
“No. You can’t count. Twelve.”
“Twelve thousand?!”
“Of course. The first Bloody Mary was for a thousand. The second for double that and each one after that for twice as much again. Altogether it was fifteen thousand for four decilitres of blood.”
“Wow! That’s good business!”
“I thought so too. The clock struck one, these guys got up and walked out without a word. Twenty-eight days later three of them appeared. They poured salt on sixty-three bits of paper on the bar and I gave them over half a litre of blood. I felt the effect of that quite a bit.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you now,” said the barman. However, he bent over the bar and watched his guest’s mouth carefully, so as not to miss a word.
“You needn’t.”
“Just a moment,” said the barman, picking up his calculator. “So the first time it was two decilitres and three thousand. The second time four decilitres and fifteen, the third six and sixty-three. That makes, that makes… One litre and two decilitres of blood and eighty-one thousand! That’s what I call business! What about those guys? Were they perverts, or what? So why did you leave this place?”
“They weren’t perverts. And I didn’t leave,” said the guest.
Translated by Heather Trebatická
