David Szalay: All That Man Is

Somehow they start talking about people at school. They are in their final year, are taking their A levels this summer, hoping to start at Oxford in the autumn. (Which is why Simon is ploughing joylessly through the works of Henry James, on the lookout for material pertaining to the ‘International Theme’.)

So they talk about various people — what twats they are, mostly — and then Ferdinand mentions Karen Fielding.

He has no idea, throwing the name out like some mundane object, that his friend frequently dreams about Karen Fielding — dreams in which they might speak, or exchange looks, or in which their hands might momentarily touch, and from which he wakes, still seeming to feel the touch of her hand, to a single moment of overwhelming joy. He transcribes these dreams to his diary, very earnestly, along with pages and pages on what they might mean, and on the nature of the dreaming process itself.

In the waking world, he and Karen Fielding have hardly spoken to each other, and she is unaware of how he feels — unless she has noticed the way his eyes follow her as she moves with her tray around the dining hall, or tramps back from lacrosse in her muddy kit. Practically the only thing he knows about her is that her family live in Didcot — he overheard her telling someone else — and from that moment the word ‘Didcot’ started to live in his mind with a special, mysterious promise. Like her name, it seems almost too potent to put down in writing, but in a youth hostel in Warsaw, one evening, while Ferdinand was showering, he wrote, and it made his heart quicken: It seems pointless to travel Europe when the only where I want to be is humble, suburban, English

His pen hovered.

Then he did it, he wrote the word.

Didcot .

Her name, more potent still, he has never summoned the nerve to form.

Now, when Ferdinand says it Simon just nods and pours more sugar into his coffee.

He longs to talk about her.

He would like nothing more than to spend the whole afternoon talking about her, or just hearing her name spoken aloud again and again, those four syllables that seem to hold within them everything worth living for in the whole world. Instead, he starts to talk, not for the first time, about the impossibility of achieving any sort of satisfaction as a tourist.

Ferdinand lowers his eyes and, stirring his coffee, listens while his friend holds forth ill-temperedly on this subject.

What was the tourist trying to do? See things? See more of life? Life is everywhere — you don’t need to traipse around Europe looking for it…

the only where I want to be

Withdrawing from even the pretence of listening, Ferdinand starts to write a postcard. The picture: Kraków Cathedral, black and jagged. The postcard is to a girl in England with whom he is involved in a vague flirtation, who he quite likes sometimes — who he thinks, anyway, he ought to keep in play. He smiles and feels the bristle of his strong chin as he writes, We’re both growing beards — it sounds pleasingly manly. When he has finished, he reads out what he has written for his friend’s approval. Then he stands up to look for the loo.

He is away for some time and sitting in the sun-filled restaurant Simon watches the smoke climb from the tip of his cigarette.

It is the tiredness, maybe, that makes him feel like crying.

What am I doing here?

The feeling of loneliness is immense as a storm front. His friend, after ten days of travel, he finds irritating most of the time. He struggled to muster a smile when he read out that postcard, and showed him the little sketch he had done in green ink of a bearded man. And the way he had sprayed himself with his Joop! before putting his pack in the locker at the station. The way he had ostentatiously lifted his T-shirt to spray the Joop! to show the world the whorl of hair on his chest…At that moment…And this is supposed to be his friend he is with. As immense as a storm front is the feeling of loneliness that overcomes him.

As he watches the smoke climb from the tip of his cigarette.

In the sun-filled restaurant.

—

In the evening, they present themselves at the flat again and find Otto’s sister there with two male friends in leathers, one small with a faceful of piercings — Lutz — the other much taller with a walrus moustache — Willi. Otto’s sister has no idea who Simon and Ferdinand are, but when they explain she suggests they make themselves at home and wait for Otto — he is sure to turn up eventually. She and her friends, she says, are just leaving.

Left alone, Simon and Ferdinand do make themselves at home. The flat is surprisingly large and they wander through it taking minor liberties, helping themselves to some expensive-looking whisky, and opening drawers. In one drawer Simon finds an odd pack of cards. They must be tarot cards, he thinks. Idly, he turns one over — a picture of a hand holding some sort of stick. As der Stäbe , it says. Ace of Staves? A phallic symbol, obviously. Not exactly subtle. Whatever. Nonsense. He shuts the drawer.

—

It is about two o’clock in the morning when Otto storms in and finds them in their sleeping bags on the living-room floor.

He switches on the light and screams.

Then he notices Ferdinand, who has just lifted his head and is squinting up at him, and shouts, ‘Fuck, man, you made it!’

‘Otto…’

‘Fuck!’

‘I hope you don’t mind…’ Ferdinand starts.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Otto screams at him.

‘I hope you don’t mind that we’re here…’

‘Do you think I mind?’ Otto shouts.

‘I don’t know…’

‘I was waiting for you.’ Someone else is standing there, at Otto’s shoulder, peering over it.

‘Listen, we tried to phone you…’

‘Yah?’

‘You weren’t here.’

‘I wasn’t here!’ Otto explains, still shouting.

‘And you weren’t answering your mobile…’

‘I lost it!’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, I lost it,’ Otto says, suddenly in a quiet, dismal voice. ‘I lost it.’

Having sat down on one of the sofas, he starts to make a spliff, disappointing Simon who had hoped he would immediately turn off the light and leave.

Otto is wearing a silly hat and his jacket sleeves stop well short of his wrists. His Adam’s apple goes up and down as he works on the spliff. It turns out that he and his friend have jobs all week serving drinks at an event somewhere outside Berlin. While he makes the spliff, Ferdinand thanks him again and again for letting them stay.

‘Listen, again, thank you so much,’ Ferdinand says, sitting up in his sleeping bag.

‘Hey, fuck, forget about it,’ Otto says, with lordly indifference, from the sofa, still wearing his hat.

‘What, er, what about the policeman?’ Ferdinand asks.

Otto doesn’t seem to hear the question. ‘What?’

‘The policeman. You know.’ Ferdinand indicates the spliff that is taking shape in Otto’s lap.

Otto is dismissive. ‘Oh, fuck that man!’ Then he adds, ‘He doesn’t care.’

‘What’s he doing there anyway?’

‘My father,’ Otto says. ‘It’s bullshit.’

‘Your father?’

‘Yeah, it sucks.’ Putting the finishing touches to the spliff, applying saliva with the tip of his little finger, Otto says, ‘He’s in the government. You know…’

‘In the government?’ Simon says suspiciously, speaking for the first time.

Otto ignores him and sparks the spliff.

Simon has taken an immediate dislike to Otto. He wishes Ferdinand would stop thanking him. For his part, he says almost nothing and when, after the first spliff has been smoked, Otto encourages him to make another, he takes the materials without a word. Otto keeps telling him to use more ‘shit’. He and Ferdinand are talking hysterically about people they know in London. Later, Otto says Simon should make another spliff, and again keeps pressing him to use more shit. They are all quite stoned. Someone has turned on the TV and found something possibly pornographic — some naked women in a wheatfield, it seems to be. Simon ignores it. The others are laughing at it. Otto’s friend, Simon suddenly notices, has left. Simon has no memory of him leaving. He has an unpleasant feeling that he imagined him, that no one else was ever there. The others are laughing at the women in the wheatfield, Otto staring eagerly at the screen, his eyes shining, his tongue half-out, transfixed.