Let’s meet our hero, the chef Svatopluk, and learn about his run of bad luck.
Right at the start, I want to mention that if the title reminds anyone of a once-popular TV series, this is not some erotic spin-off of that series, as has become quite common lately. At the same time, I apologize that there is no sex in this first installment. But there will be in the sequel—I promise.
The state-owned enterprise Vzlet had several unforgettable characters among its employees who were, in a way, part of its inventory and contributed to its unique atmosphere. One of them was Jarmila Svatá, later married name Bejčková, who was featured in the series *Sto kilo krásy* (*A Hundred Pounds of Beauty*). Another unforgettable character was the boilerman František Josefi, nicknamed the Emperor, or Sáčko, because even in the bitterest cold he wore only a jacket, as he couldn’t afford a coat. He’d often start saving up for one, but then a moment of weakness would strike and he’d drink away all his savings in a single evening.
It might also be worth mentioning the well-behaved, notorious drunkard Tonda Fongus, the main character of the short story “Joj, to bola súlož.” But today we’ll take a closer look at the cook Svatopluk. At the time of our story, he was about 30 years old and was the head chef of the factory kitchen. He lived in the bachelor dormitory and was single. That wasn’t a requirement at all, because, ironically, the dormitory was mostly inhabited by young married couples who had been promised a company apartment in the future.
The head chef, whose real name was Svatopluk Novák, was better known to the public as Sváťa Puchejř. This nickname was by no means an exaggeration. Nature had taken its toll on few people as much as it had on him. He was small, stocky, and misshapen. While it’s true that few chefs are slim, Sváťa had been deformed since early childhood. On top of that, he was extraordinarily ugly. To say he was ugly as sin was almost an insult to sin itself.
What God denied him in looks, he made up for in mastery. He was a renowned chef and sauce specialist, adorned with many medals, diplomas, and honors, including international awards. Any five-star hotel would have snapped him up in a heartbeat, were it not for his repulsive appearance. After all, a chef’s duties sometimes include personally presenting the food, and high-ranking guests often wish to meet the master chef in person. And in Sváťa’s case, that was absolutely out of the question. As a certain director of an international hotel, who often served on international juries, aptly put it, introducing this little monster to a satisfied guest would only make the guest feel even more queasy.
Thanks to his appearance, Sváťa, understandably, had never had a girlfriend. He did make a few attempts to meet someone through personal ads, but he soon realized that this path was a dead end as well. If he received a reply and arranged a date, it never went beyond a single meeting. Once, he corresponded for some time with a widow in her forties who grew increasingly aroused with each letter. She described to him how sexually starved she was and promised him that no matter what he looked like, she was certain they would definitely click and make wonderful love together.
After about three months and half a dozen letters from both sides, they finally arranged a meeting. Sváťa was looking forward to the day and at the same time afraid of it. When the day finally arrived, right after his shift, he spent an hour in the bathroom working hard on himself, though in vain. Then he dressed as if for a wedding and took the bus to Prague. Since neither of them was from Prague and they didn’t know the City of a Hundred Spires very well, they set the meeting place “by the horse,” that is, on Wenceslas Square under the statue of St. Wenceslas. The identifying mark was a rolled-up newspaper, which Sváťa was to hold in his left hand.
Exactly two minutes before the appointed time, he took up a waiting stance at the designated spot. He felt awkward. He had the impression that he was standing there like a naked mannequin in a store window and that all the people flowing past him in an endless, chaotic crowd knew why he was standing there. The minutes ticked by, and Sváťa slowly came to the conclusion that he had either fallen victim to a stupid prank, or—and this was an even worse thought—his online girlfriend had discreetly sized him up from within the anonymity of the crowd and, without acknowledging him, had chosen to slip away.
He was getting more and more pissed off, and suddenly he remembered a joke he’d once laughed heartily at. A young man is standing under the clock, saying to himself angrily:
“It’s half past four now. She was supposed to be here at four. So if she doesn’t show up by five, I’ll get pissed off at half past five and go home at six.”
He didn’t let it go that far. After 35 minutes of waiting in vain, he gave up and headed to the nearest pub. And so it happened that Sváťa arrived at Florenc on unsteady legs and noted with satisfaction that the “night bus” was already parked there. The lights were off, and a few people were dozing inside. The driver usually arrived at the last minute before departure, and the conductor a little earlier to check passengers in.
And it was this gruff old woman who caught Sváťa leaning against the side of the bus, shamelessly relieving himself by peeing on the front wheel.
“You animal, can’t you go to the bathroom?” she lashed out at him.
“Take it easy, ma’am,” Sváťa soothed the indignant, corpulent woman. “A real coachman pees on the wheel. And if your driver doesn’t do it, you should thank me for doing it for him,” he tried to joke.
Then he yanked the door open and pushed his way inside. He collapsed with relief into the first seat and began searching his pockets for money.
“No way, you’re not riding with us. You’re drunk, and I’m kicking you off the bus. Get off immediately.”
Sváťa, of course, had no intention of doing so and instead tried to shove the fare money at her. The woman tried to lift him up and push him out of the bus, but she simply didn’t have the strength. After a moment, she gave up and went to the transit office for help. Sváťa took immediate advantage of this, and as soon as the conductor walked away, he laboriously got up and moved all the way to the back, to the rear bench.
When the conductor returned a moment later with some menacing-looking hulk, she found that Sváťa was no longer in the front seat.
“He’s not here anymore. He probably gave up on his own when I told him I was going to get help. Thank you, Karel.”
Karel mumbled something and, visibly pleased that he’d been spared a fight with the drunk, turned and disappeared into the darkness.
The conductor got on, satisfied, turned on the lights, and began selling tickets. After a moment, the driver arrived as well, and since it was time to depart, he stubbed out his cigarette, started the engine, and pulled away. Only after a few minutes did the conductor, carrying her purse and ticket clip, make her way all the way to the back, where the exhausted Puchejř was sitting. Furious, she refused to sell him a ticket.
“I couldn’t care less, miss. I’ll gladly ride for free,” declared Sváťa.
The conductor rushed forward to the driver and demanded that he stop immediately and help her kick out the person she had barred from the bus for being drunk. He, however, brusquely dismissed her, saying that he was there to drive and keep to the schedule, and that kicking out drunks was not part of his job.
“You shouldn’t have let him on the bus in the first place. That’s your job,” he replied, returning his attention to driving.
A group of teenagers, students, and apprentices watched the whole scene with amusement. Some were in Prague for fun, others were returning from shopping, or coming from school or work. They were between 15 and 19 years old and thought the world was their oyster. They were also appropriately loud, as young people of this age tend to be, so it was no surprise that the other passengers occasionally scolded them.
It was a fairly regular group, these night owls, who took the night bus home quite often. Some of these young people were also tipsy, though they were nowhere near as drunk as Sváťa. They behaved inconspicuously and were glad that attention was focused elsewhere.
The bus wound its way through the city at night. Meanwhile, Puchejř in the back seat was battling growing nausea. His face was pale, as the jolts of the rickety bus were triggering increasingly intense waves of nausea. He held on bravely, but eventually gave in. He was wearing a green nylon jacket with large side pockets. With his last ounce of strength, he held one of those pockets to his mouth and, with relief, emptied the contents of his stomach into it. For a moment, he had peace. But then the “second wave” hit, and Sváťa dutifully filled the other pocket as well.
The retching sounds he made and, of course, the characteristic odor immediately drew the attention of the other passengers. They rose from their seats in annoyance and moved to the seats at the front of the bus. Although the bus had left Florence nearly empty, the closer it got to the outskirts of Prague, the more it filled up, and by the time it left the capital, it was almost packed. Today was no different. At every stop, the new passengers rejoiced when they saw how many empty seats were in the back and immediately rushed there. When they realized what was going on, they tried to grab at least a seat as far away as possible from the source of this terrible stench.
He had already lost all inhibitions, and since his pockets were full, he tossed one cigarette after another right beneath him between his spread legs. In the end, the bus was packed, as usual. All the seats were taken, with the exception of the back bench, where our drunkard was sprawled out comfortably. At the fourth seat, where people usually played cards by the dim light of a briefcase, four bewildered passengers were sitting this time. One of them was a distinguished philharmonic musician, Professor Vondráček, whom everyone around respectfully called “Maestro.”
The violinist sat with a grimace on his face, trying to convey to his fellow passengers his impressions of Paris, from where he had just flown in today. Suddenly, he stood up nervously, took a travel bag with the words SABENA from the luggage net, and took out a package from it, in an almost artistic gift wrapping. With trembling fingers, he tore open the beautiful paper wrapping and took out a delightful perfume bottle with a small balloon from the velvet box.
“That was supposed to be a gift for my wife,” he muttered to his fellow passengers in disgust. Then he began to squeeze the balloon and from the nozzle of the bottle sprayed a fine mist of the pungently scented contents in all directions. The result was disastrous. The stench of vomit mixed with the heavy scent of French perfume, and the result was something that simply could not be defined. As the bus passed through the various villages, it gradually emptied, naturally from the back.
In Klecany, the grumpy conductor got off because her shift was ending, and her place was taken by a colleague, a well-known prankster, conductor Švancara, who was in his final years of retirement and was known in the whole area as a fake five. He was supposed to sleep with the driver at the hostel in Větrušice for the final time and leave for Prague in the morning at 4.50.
Švancara was understandably not in the picture, so he greeted the driver and sat in the service seat in the front. Sváťa, undisturbed by anything, comfortably drove to Odolka and got off there in peace. Only a group of golden youth remained on the bus, who still had a few stations ahead of them.
When the cause of the scandal disappeared, hope for another fun sprang up. Its hero was yet to arrive. Lom, who regularly got on at the next station, rode all the way to the final. He was their peer, but no one liked him. In addition to being stupid, he was also arrogant, although he certainly had no reason to be. Although many went to school with him, no one talked to him. Everyone called each other by their first names, but Lom was simply Lom. He usually got on, didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t linger to greet anyone, and headed straight to the back, where he sprawled out on the bench.
The young people were now eagerly waiting to see if Lom would get on and if so, whether he would go and sit in “his” favorite place at the back. The place that Sváťa had so thoroughly spoiled.
“He’ll go and sit there, that’s for sure. He wouldn’t sit with us. But when he finds out about the little treat that awaits him there, he’ll get up and move to the front.”
There was, of course, another opinion.
“Gentlemen, he’ll sit there, but when he sees that we’re all looking at him, he’ll get over it and stay there. He’ll act as if everything is fine. He’s as angry as a ram and he won’t make us happy.”
In the end, it became a bet and everyone was impatiently waiting to see if he’d be at the bus stop.
“I’ll tell you, he’d be pretty pissed if he didn’t come today,” one of the young men said.
“Gentlemen, he’s there. It’ll be fun,” shouted Jirka Kotrous, who was sitting closest to the door, happily. The bus stopped, the doors hissed open, and Lom got on. Švancara didn’t even try to force a ticket on him, he knew he had a weekly pass. Of course, the cocky idiot, as always, ignored everyone present as if they were nothing and headed straight back to “his” favorite spot.
As soon as he got on the bus, he immediately realized what a trap he had fallen into. He also noticed that all eyes were on him and it was clear to him that everyone was expecting him to behave. So he put on a stony face and stayed where he was.
“Gentlemen, I won the bet,” Kotrous declared contentedly.
The next stop was the penultimate and everyone was getting off. Lom was the only one who had gone all the way to the final stop. As they were pouring out, Kotrous suddenly thought of something. He stopped on the steps and said to the conductor:
“Mr. Švancara, Lom has taken a dump in the back.”
Then, feeling a sense of a job well done, he got off. The doors hissed, closed and the bus started moving. The last thing the laughing youths saw was Švancara rushing down the aisle to the back and then, for a short moment, in the rear window, energetically grabbing Lom and thrashing him around like a sack of potatoes.
Meanwhile, Sváťa Puchejř was staggering towards the company’s prison about a kilometer away. The cold night air made him slowly sober up. He began to realize how he had behaved and tried to make amends. He stopped and poured out the rest of the contents of his pockets. The jacket was waterproof, but the pockets inside were only made of ordinary fabric, so the liquid, unappealing contents slowly but surely leaked out. It was clear to him that his holiday suit had suffered damage that was perhaps irreversible.
As he approached the building and passed the garbage cans, he first had the urge to take off his jacket and throw it away. But then he realized what a sinful amount of money he had paid for it. He decided to try to save it. He just prayed that he wouldn’t meet anyone in the hallway or in the elevator. Luck was on his side. Without witnesses, he took the elevator to the 7th floor, where he had a studio apartment. He undressed neatly in front of the door, unlocked it, and entered. He headed straight for the bathroom. He climbed into the shower stall, fully clothed, and turned on the shower. He tried to wash all the crap off himself under the stream of pleasantly warm water.
He gradually got rid of the worst of it and began to undress one by one under the stream of water. He always rinsed off the top layer and threw it away.
