David Szalay - All That Man Is

And he made some silly remark about how that sounded like him and started to fondle her nipple, to tease it into life. They were naked.

She said, ‘I think these cards are suggesting that you should maybe stop thinking about your… thing all the time.’

He laughed. ‘My thing?’

‘This.’

She put her finger on it.

‘What it means,’ she said, looking him in the eye, ‘is that your skirt-chasing days are over.’

‘But I don’t chase skirt. I’m not that type.’

‘Oh, yes, you are.’

‘I promise you,’ he told her, ‘I’m not.’

—

It is ideal, he thinks, the set-up they have. He is unable to imagine anything more perfect. He is unable to imagine living more happily in the present.

The huge sheds of the Stella Artois plant at Leuven, its steaming stacks, are half-obscured by the drenching weather.

How well he knows this stretch of motorway, its different surfaces, the sound of the tyres shifting suddenly, dropping in pitch, as you pass from Flanders to Wallonia. How often, in the years he was studying in Ghent, did he drive it, and how insignificant a distance it seems now, as part of his longer journey — he is already halfway to Liège and it feels as though he has only just left Brussels.

And now here it is, Liège — the place where the road plunges down into the valley.

Pines start to appear in the woods as he mounts the heights on the other side, overtaking trucks in the slow lane.

Suddenly fresh, everything.

He needs to finish the piece for the Journal of English and Germanic Philology ; he was hoping to have it done by now. The question of whether, in the pre-West Saxon period, æ sometimes reverted to a — or whether in fact the initial change from a to æ , postulated for the West Germanic period, that is to say prior to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, never in fact took place at all. The principle evidence for the former hypothesis was always the form ‘slēan’ — if that form could be shown to be anomalous, then the whole venerable thesis would start to look very questionable. Hence the importance of his proposed paper, already accepted in principle by the journal, ‘Anomalous Factors in the Form “Slēan ” — Some Suggestions’.

He had used some of the material, teasingly, in his talk to the UCL symposium last week. Quite a stir. (The look on Macintyre’s face!) Yes, this might be it — the thing he has been looking for, the thing that makes him, in the world of Germanic philology, a household name. Something everyone in the field simply has to have read. Worldly power. So he must take time over it — seclude himself with it for the rest of the summer. Stop thinking about his thing all the time.

He is eating a chorizo sandwich, drinking Spa water.

Sitting in a huge Shell services with a Formula 1 theme. Francorchamps is nearby, somewhere in these forests.

There are not many people about. Even though it is high summer — the second week of July — the weather is foul, and there is little to do up here in the woods when the rain is just steadily falling, seeming to hang whitely against the dark slopes of pines.

With cold hands, he puts more petrol in the car. He has an idea that it is cheaper here than in Germany. He isn’t sure. Stańko is paying for the petrol anyway. He tucks the receipt into his wallet with the others as he walks out again into the rain.

This is where he leaves the road he knows — the motorway running east towards Cologne. He looks, sitting in the car while the rain falls, at the printed Google map. An indistinct line drops diagonally down from where he is into Germany, just missing Luxembourg. The E42. It ought to be easy. He folds the map and sits there, in the rain-pelted car, finishing his coffee. Luxembourg. Never been there. Like Surrey was a country. Silly. Anomalous . Like ‘slēan’ . A household name. He just needs to devote himself to his work. Stop thinking about his thing. Time to grow up. That’s the headline. He had liked the way she said that.

The windscreen is a mass of trickles. Summer. Still, there is something romantic about the rain. There are not many people about. It was her idea to meet at Frankfurt airport. Not the Frankfurt airport — Frankfurt-Hahn, a no-frills-type place deep in the countryside, and nowhere near Frankfurt; Frankfurt doesn’t even appear on his Google map, even though the little pin indicating the airport is almost in the middle of it. They are used to airports like that, these lovers. Sleepy places next to a village with twenty flights a day at most. They have been in and out of them a dozen times so far this year. In and out. In and out. It was her idea to meet there, and finish the journey to Skawina together, taking their time, spending a night or two on the road.

The airport is harder to find than he thought it would be. There is more driving, when he leaves the straightforwardness of the E42, on narrow twisting lanes, more following tractors. A hilly landscape. The day is grey and humid. There is insufficient signage. He passes through a village, starting to worry that he might be late after all, and then quite suddenly it is there. Soon he is moving among parked vehicles, looking for a space, in a hurry now.

He finds a space.

And then it happens.

There is a loud ugly metallic noise that for a moment he does not understand.

Then he does and his heart stops.

When it starts again he is sweating heavily.

—

She looks up from her magazine, smiles.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he says.

‘You’re not late. The plane was early.’

‘Everything was okay?’

She is putting her magazine in her bag. ‘Yes. Fine. You must be tired,’ she says, looking up at him. He appears pale and shaken. ‘You’ve had a long drive.’

‘I’m okay, actually,’ he says. ‘Probably it will hit me later.’

‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘Uh.’ He thinks about it. He was hungry, half an hour ago. He has had nothing to eat all day except a pain au chocolat on the ferry and that chorizo sandwich, up in the rainy Ardennes. Now, however, he isn’t hungry. In fact, he feels slightly sick on account of what has happened to Stańko’s luxury SUV. ‘Maybe I should,’ he says. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘I had something.’

‘Maybe I should,’ he says again.

‘Okay. Are you okay?’ she asks, suddenly sounding worried.

‘Yes. Yes,’ he says. ‘Fine.’

They speak English to each other. His English is more or less native-speaker standard. Hers is only slightly less perfect.

He queues at some sort of food place, one of only a few in the airport. The airport is shabby and unexciting. Modest improvement works are taking place behind plastic sheets and warning signs. He orders, in flawless German, a ham sandwich, a double latte.

‘Look,’ he says, sitting down next to her. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

To his surprise, her face instantly tightens. She looks frightened. ‘Yes?’ she says.

‘I had an accident,’ he says, taking the plastic lid off his latte. ‘With the car. In the car park. Here. There’s some damage. To the paintwork.’

She doesn’t say anything.

‘I hope your father won’t be too pissed off.’

‘I don’t know,’ she says.

‘Do you want any of this?’ he asks, offering her the sandwich. ‘I’m not really hungry.’ When she shakes her head, he says, ‘How was the flight? Okay?’

‘Yes, it was fine.’

‘From Katowice?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re staying tonight in a place called Trennfeld,’ he says, soldiering on with the sandwich. ‘It’s a couple of hours’ drive from here. According to Google maps anyway.’