David Szalay - All That Man Is

When they have spoken, he puts the phone in his jacket pocket. He says to Elin, ‘Edvard’s expecting me at his house in Spain this afternoon.’

It is forty degrees in Málaga when he arrives in the middle of the afternoon. The sea, from the plane, looked as dark as denim. The mountains looked prehistoric. From Hertz he picks up a white VW Passat, and with the air con shoved up as high as it will go, he enters Edvard’s address into the satnav.

The house is in a village somewhere up the motorway towards Córdoba. About an hour it will take to drive there, apparently.

He and Edvard last met only a week ago. That’s what he is thinking of as he drives away from the airport. The newspaper’s new owner threw a party. Edvard wasn’t the only minister there, but he was the most senior — the deputy leader of the party in power. He turned up as a personal favour to Kristian — Kristian’s own house-warming present for the new proprietor — and he stayed for only half an hour or so, sipping champagne on the lawn of the modest Danish-style stately home that had been hired for the occasion. Kristian made the introduction: Newspaper-owning millionaire, defence minister. Defence minister, newspaper-owning millionaire. He stood there watching with a sort of pride as they exchanged small talk. Afterwards he and Edvard spoke together for a while, at the edge of the gathering near an impeccably clipped hedge. Exchanged some tittle-tattle, discussed Edvard’s own prospects. Politically, the paper was on the minister’s side. He even wrote for them occasionally. Pieces were published under his name, anyway. Kristian sometimes wrote them. Most recently one about the virtues of less onerous labour-market regulation. Slightly odd, that the defence minister should be publishing something on an area of economic policy. He had his eye on the top job, that was an open secret. Which was partly why, as well, he stood on the lawn for half an hour nursing a glass of champagne last week in the pleasant summer weather — somewhat cloudy but no real threat of rain.

The motorway slams through a landscape of dry hills. For long stretches the only vegetation is the olive trees, millions of them, planted in tedious lines.

Near a town called Lucena the satnav instructs him to leave the motorway. The landscape is marginally less arid now. Some trees other than olives, not many, stand in the withering sunlight, shadows at their feet. Thin sheep on a hillside. A village with a white church, bells hanging still in little arches. The streets are empty. Siesta, he supposes. On the edge of the village is a house.

This is it.

The satnav tells him he is there.

A wall around a plot of land, one tree outside the wall, in the limited shade of which he attempts to position the white hire car. Then the gate, squeaking open on its hinges, a frisking from the minister’s close protection officers — two of them, expecting him, sweating in the heat — and the path up to the house.

—

The house is modest. A single-storey, white, with a porch at the front, a few white pillars. Some palmy-type plants of various sizes in pots. Dusty oleander. Some unpretentious furniture on the porch, a table and a few chairs: green-painted metal, with green-and-white striped cushions. On the wall of the house under the porch, some plates hung up for decoration.

The defence minister, in shorts, flip-flops and a short-sleeved shirt, is moving a sprinkler when Kristian arrives. His shirt hangs open to show the whitish hair on his front. He is also wearing a panama hat and sunglasses. He sees his visitor. ‘Oh, hello,’ he says, putting the sprinkler down. A green hose trails across the dry ground to a standpipe with a tap at the side of the house. A spray of water is visible where the hose is attached to the tap, obviously not very well.

The minister walks over to where Kristian is standing, sweating heavily, on the path.

‘Hello, Kristian.’

‘Hello, Minister.’

They shake hands. The minister’s handshake is exaggeratedly firm.

His face is tanned, handsome, tense.

‘Come and sit down,’ he says, gesturing towards the furniture on the porch. ‘You’re not dressed for this weather, are you?’ he laughs as they make their way there. Kristian has only been out of the A/C for a minute or two and already his shirt is sticking extravagantly to his back. Where his suit jacket hangs over his arm, his sleeve is sodden. ‘I didn’t have time to think of that,’ he says.

‘No,’ the minister says. ‘Please, have a seat. Would you like a drink?’

‘Just some water, please.’

Strings of beads hang in the open door of the house and the minister passes through them to fetch the drinks.

A minute later he emerges with another swish of the beads. He hands Kristian a glass of sparkling water with ice and a piece of lemon in it. He has furnished himself with a San Miguel. Heavily he sits down in the chair opposite and says, ‘Cheers.’ He is sweating too, though more lightly than his guest.

‘Cheers,’ Kristian says.

They drink thirstily in the waves of insect noise that assail the hot shade of the porch.

‘This is your house?’ Kristian asks.

‘It’s my ex-wife’s,’ the minister tells him. ‘She lets me use it sometimes. She’s Spanish,’ he adds.

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, now you do.’

Kristian lets his eyes wander nervously over the struggling vegetation.

‘Now,’ the minister says, impatient with the small talk, ‘why are you here, Kristian, and in such a hurry?’ He is plainly eager to know. His toes, having freed themselves from a flip-flop, have taken hold of a metal strut under the table.

Kristian has another sip of sparkling water, then he puts the dripping glass down on the table. He makes himself look the defence minister in the eye. He says, ‘Natasha Ohmsen. We know about you and Natasha Ohmsen.’

The insects, like the teeth of a comb sawing at something.

Finally the minister says, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Kristian smiles unhurriedly and takes off his glasses and wipes the sweat from his face with his sleeve. He puts his glasses back on. ‘You do know her?’ he says.

‘Yes, I know Natasha,’ Edvard says. ‘So?’

‘I have sources,’ Kristian says. ‘People talk.’

‘Who? What sources? What do you mean?’

‘I think you know what I mean.’

‘Well, I don’t know what you’ve heard…’

‘I have total faith,’ Kristian says, ‘in the information I have.’

‘Which is?’

‘Which is that you and Mrs Ohmsen are having an affair.’

‘That’s nonsense.’

Kristian shakes his head. ‘I don’t believe it is.’

‘Well, I’m telling you now — it’s nonsense. We’re friends, yes. Natasha—’

‘You’re more than friends,’ Kristian says, interrupting him. ‘This story isn’t about friendship. This story is about the fact that you and Mrs Ohmsen are, and have been for some time, very much more than friends.’

When Edvard says nothing, Kristian smiles again. It is a friendly smile. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I would not have gone to all this trouble today if I didn’t know this was true.’

He takes a sip of his water.

Then he says, ‘I don’t have any photographs to show you or anything like that.’

‘Then what makes you think it’s true?’

‘It’s my job to know what’s true, and this is true. The information I have is from sources I absolutely trust.’

‘Who?’ Edvard demands.

Kristian sighs tolerantly. He says, ‘All I would ask is that you look at what I have done here — I am here, in person, in Spain, to see you, today — and perhaps just admit that the information I have is true.’