David Szalay: All That Man Is

Simon himself feels very shaky. Without saying anything he stands up and wanders off to find the bathroom. There, forgetting where he is, he spends a long time staring at some shampoo bottles and a wind-up plastic frog on the tiled edge of the bath. He just stands there for a long time, staring at them. He is staring at the wind-up plastic frog, its innocent green face. The hum of the extractor fan sounds more and more like sobbing.

—

When he sits down on the living-room floor again, about twenty minutes later, Otto asks him, ‘How much shit is left?’

‘None,’ Simon says. The living room — all beige and cream and Oriental art — seems unfamiliar, as if he is seeing it for the first time.

‘You finished the shit?’

Ferdinand, in spite of himself, starts giggling, and then keeps saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’

‘You finished the shit?’ Otto says again, still in the same tone of disbelief.

Ferdinand giggles and says he is sorry.

‘Yes,’ Simon says. He has also hot-rocked the pale, lustrous carpet but he decides not to mention that now.

‘Fuck,’ Otto says. And then, as if it might have been a joke, ‘Really, you finished it?’

‘Really.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ferdinand says, suddenly with an extremely serious expression on his face.

Otto sighs. ‘Okay,’ he says. He has not quite come to terms with it though. ‘Fuck,’ he says a few seconds later, ‘you finished the shit…’

Slowly, Simon inserts himself into his sleeping bag and turns away from them. They are still talking when he falls asleep.

—

The next day he and Ferdinand visit Potsdam. It is the one thing Simon seems to want to do while they are in Berlin — see the Palace of Sanssouci.

From Potsdam station, an ornate green-painted gate. Then an avenue of small trees, and the palace on the summit of a terraced hill. At the foot of the hill a fountain flings high into the air, and white stone statues dot the park — men molesting women, or fighting each other, or frowning nobly at something far away, each frozen in some posture of obscure frenzy, frozen among quiet hedges, or next to the still surfaces of ornamental pools.

Simon wanders through this landscape — the long straight tree-lined walks, the fountains where they intersect, the facades where they end — with a kind of exhilaration.

There is a place to have tea and they sit on metal outdoor furniture and he talks about how the whole landscape, like the music of J. S. Bach, is expressive of the natural order of the human mind.

Ferdinand, eating cake, complains about the acne on his back, that it stains his shirt.

Simon has a similar problem but does not mention it. (He is fastidious, also, about concealing his body from his friend.) Instead, he puts down The Ambassadors , and tells Ferdinand about Frederick William, Frederick the Great’s father, and his obsession with his guardsmen — how they all had to be extremely tall, and how he fussed over the details of their uniforms, and how he liked to watch them march when he was feeling unwell. The story makes Ferdinand laugh. ‘That’s brilliant,’ he says, using his finger to take the last smear of cream from his plate. Complacently, Simon finishes his tea and picks up his book again. It is late afternoon — they had trouble finding the place. The shadows of the statues stretch out over the smooth lawns.

‘What should we do this evening?’ Ferdinand says.

Simon, without looking up from his book, gives a minimal shrug.

Otto’s sister, who was in the flat when they woke up, had suggested they join her, and her friends Lutz and Willi, for a night on the town. Ferdinand now alludes to this possibility. Simon, once again, is studiedly non-committal. The prospect of spending the evening with Otto’s sister and her friends fills him with something not unlike fear, a sort of fluttering panic. ‘They’re twats, aren’t they?’ he says, still in his book. He and Ferdinand have spent much of the day laughing at Lutz and Willi — their leathers, their piercings, Lutz’s shrill laugh, Willi’s morose moustache.

‘They seem okay,’ Ferdinand says wistfully. For ten days, he has had only Simon for company. ‘And Otto’s sister’s nice.’

‘Is she?’

‘Isn’t she?’

‘She’s okay,’ Simon pronounces, turning a page, ‘I suppose.’

‘Anyway, what else are we going to do?’ Ferdinand asks, with a sort of laugh.

‘Don’t know.’

‘I mean, let’s just have a drink with them anyway,’ Ferdinand says. ‘They can’t be that bad.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Time we were getting back.’

‘Really?’ Simon says, turning his head to look at the shadow-filled park. ‘I like it here.’

—

In the end, they do spend part of the evening with Otto’s sister and Lutz and Willi. Simon seems determined not to enjoy himself. He just sits there with a solemn expression on his face while the others talk until Ferdinand is almost embarrassed by his presence — a detached unhappy figure, sipping home-made wine. They are in a hippyish place in Kreuzberg, sitting outside, under some trees whose blossoms have a spermy smell.

‘What’s the matter with your friend?’ Lutz asks Ferdinand, leaning over to whisper it with a jingle of piercings. ‘Is he okay?’ Lutz is sandy-haired and ugly.

‘I don’t know,’ Ferdinand says, loud enough for Simon to overhear him, though he pretends not to. ‘He’s always like that.’

‘Then he must be fun to travel with.’

Ferdinand just laughs.

Lutz says, ‘He’s just shy, no?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m sure he’s okay.’

‘Of course,’ Ferdinand says. ‘He’s very intelligent.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘And very funny sometimes.’

‘Yah?’

‘Really.’

‘I can’t imagine it,’ Lutz says.

His friend Willi, however, is almost as taciturn as Simon, and smiles as little, and for the most part the evening is a matter of Ferdinand, Lutz, and Otto’s sister. They talk, inevitably, about the places Ferdinand and Simon have already been to, and what they have done there — the tourist sites they have visited, mostly ecclesiastical. This outrages Lutz. ‘You can do all that shit when you’re older!’ he protests. ‘You don’t need to do that now ! What do you want to do in churches ? That’s for when your hairs are grey. How old are you boys?’ he asks.

They tell him — seventeen.

‘You’re so young still,’ Lutz says feelingly, though he is at most ten years older. ‘Have fun, okay? Okay?’

Have fun.

An overnight train to Prague. There is not a single empty seat, and they spend the night lying on the floor outside the toilet, where they are frequently kicked by passing feet.

Some time after dawn they stand up and look for something to eat.

Outside, the undulating landscape skims past in lovely morning light.

Pine forests wrapped in smoky mist.

Simon is still thinking of a dream he had during one particular snatch of sleep on the floor. Something to do with something under a lake, something that was his. Then he was talking to someone from school, talking about Karen Fielding. The person he was talking to had used a strange word, a word that might not even exist. And then he had passed Karen Fielding herself in a narrow doorway, and lowered his eyes, and when he looked up she had smiled at him and he had woken saturated, for a moment, with indescribable joy.

‘You look totally fucking miserable, mate,’ Ferdinand says, sitting opposite him at a table in the dining car.

‘Do I?’

‘I mean — are you okay? You don’t look well.’

Ferdinand is, he thinks, making an obvious effort to patch things up.