David Szalay - All That Man Is

‘For me?’

‘For you, sir.’ The smiling man — middle-aged, with a lean, tanned face — pushes a slip of paper across the desk.

It is a handwritten note:

Dropped by — you weren’t in. I’ll be in Waves from 5 if you wanna meet up and talk things through. Leif

Bérnard looks up at the smiling man’s kind, avuncular face.

‘Are you sure this is for me?’ he asks.

Still smiling kindly, the man nods.

Looking at the note again, Bérnard asks him if he knows where Waves is.

It is near the sea, the man tells him, and explains how to get there. ‘It’s a popular place with young people,’ he says.

Bérnard thanks him. It is already five, and he is about to set off again when he remembers the shower, and turns back. He does not know exactly how to put it, how to express his dissatisfaction. He says, uncertainly, ‘Listen, um. The shower…’

Immediately, as soon as the word shower has been spoken, the smiling man says, ‘The problem will be sorted out tomorrow.’ For the first time, he is not smiling. He looks very serious. His eyes are full of apology. ‘I’m very sorry, sir.’

‘Okay,’ Bérnard says. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the man says again, this time with a small deferential smile.

‘There is one other thing,’ Bérnard says, emboldened.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘There is a swimming pool?’

The man’s expression turns sad, almost mournful. ‘At the moment, no, sir, there is not,’ he says. He starts to explain the situation — something about a legal dispute with the apartments next door — until Bérnard interrupts him, protesting mildly that the hotel had been sold to him as having a pool, so it seems wrong that there isn’t one.

The smiling man says, ‘We have an arrangement with the Hotel Vangelis, sir.’

There is a moment of silence in the oppressive damp heat of the lobby.

‘An arrangement?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What sort of arrangement?’

The arrangement turns out to be that for ten euros a day inmates of the Poseidon can use the pool facilities of the Hotel Vangelis, which are extensive — the aqua park pictured on the Poseidon’s website, and also in the leaflet which the smiling man is now pressing into Bérnard’s hand.

The smiling man has a moustache, Bérnard notices at that point. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Thank you. What time is supper?’

‘Seven o’clock, sir.’

‘And where?’

‘In the dining room.’ The smiling man points to a glass door on the other side of the lobby. Dirty yellow curtains hang on either side of the door. Next to the door there is an empty lectern. The room on the other side of the door is dark.

—

‘You wanna party, yeah?’ Leif asks, smiling lazily, as Bérnard, with a perspiring Keo, the local industrial lager, takes a seat opposite him.

Bérnard nods. ‘Of course,’ he says, fairly seriously.

A tall, tanned Icelander, only a few years older than Bérnard, Leif turned out to be the company rep.

Now he is telling Bérnard about the night life of Protaras. He is talking about some nightclub — Jesters — and the details of a happy-hour offer there. ‘And then three cocktails for the price of two from seven till eight,’ he says. ‘Take advantage of it. Like I told the others, it’s one of the best offers in the resort.’

‘Okay,’ Bérnard says.

Leif is drinking a huge smoothie. He keeps talking about ‘the others’, and Bérnard wonders whether he missed some prearranged meeting that no one told him about.

Who were these ‘others’?

‘Kebabs,’ Leif says, as if it were a section heading. ‘The best place is Porkies, okay? It’s just over there.’ He takes his large splayed hand from the back of his shaved head and points up the street. Bérnard looks and sees an orange sign: Porkies .

‘Okay,’ he says.

They are sitting on the terrace of Waves, he and Leif. Inside, music thumps. Although it is only just six, there are already plenty of drunk people about. A drinking game is in progress somewhere, with lots of excitable shouting.

‘It’s open twenty-four hours,’ Leif says, still talking about Porkies.

‘Okay.’

‘And be careful — the hot sauce is hot.’

He says this so seriously that Bérnard thinks he must be joking and laughs.

Just as seriously, though, Leif says, ‘It is a really fucking hot sauce.’ He tips the last of his smoothie into his mouth. There is a sort of very faint disdain in the way he speaks to Bérnard. His attention always seems vaguely elsewhere; he keeps slowly turning his head to look up and down the street, which is just starting to acquire its evening hum, though the sun is still shining, long-shadowedly.

‘So that’s about it,’ he says. He has the air of a man who gets laid effortlessly and often. Indeed, there is something post-coital about his exaggeratedly laid-back manner. Bérnard is intimidated by him. He nods and has a sip of his beer.

‘You here with some mates?’ Leif asks him.

‘No, uh…’

‘On your own?’

Bérnard tries to explain. ‘I was supposed to be with a friend…’ He stops. Leif, obviously, is not interested.

‘Okay,’ Leif says, looking in the direction of Porkies as if he is expecting someone.

Then he turns to Bérnard again and says, ‘I’ll leave you to it. You have any questions just let me know, yeah.’

He is already standing up.

Bérnard says, ‘Okay. Thanks.’

‘See you round,’ Leif says.

He doesn’t seem to hear Bérnard saying, ‘Yeah, see you.’

As he walks away the golden hair on his arms and legs glows in the low sun.

Bérnard finishes his drink quickly. Then he leaves Waves — where the music is now at full nightclub volume — and starts to walk, again, towards the Hotel Poseidon.

He feels slightly worse, slightly more isolated, after the meeting with Leif. He had somehow assumed, when he first sat down, that Leif would show him an evening of hedonism, or at least provide some sort of entrée into the native depravity of the place. That he did not, that he just left him on the terrace of Waves to finish his drink alone, leaves Bérnard feeling that he has failed a test — perhaps a fundamental one.

This feeling widening slowly into something like depression, he walks into the dead hinterland where the Hotel Poseidon is.

It is just after seven when he arrives at the hotel. The lobby is sultry and unlit. The dining room, on the other hand, is lit like a hospital A&E department. It doesn’t seem to have any windows, the dining room. The walls are hung with dirty drapes. He sits down at a table. He seems to be the last to arrive — most of the other tables are occupied, people lowering their faces towards the grey soup, spooning it into their mouths. It is eerily quiet. Someone is speaking in Russian. Other than that the only sound, from all around, is the tinking of spoon on plate. And a strange humming, quite loud, that lasts for twenty or thirty seconds, then stops, then starts again. A waiter puts a plate of soup in front of him. Bérnard picks up his spoon, and notices the encrustations on its cloudy metal surface, the hard deposits of earlier meals. With a napkin — which itself shows evidence of previous use — he tries to scrub them off. The voice is still speaking in Russian, monotonously. Having cleaned his spoon, he turns his attention to the soup. It is a strange grey colour. And it is cold. He looks around, as if expecting someone to explain. No one explains. What he does notice, however, is the microwave on the other side of the room — the source of the strange intermittent humming — and the queue of people waiting to use it, each with a plate of soup. He picks up his own soup and joins them.