David Szalay - All That Man Is

What is sadder than the furious exhaustion of the bull? Than the bull’s failure to understand, even at the very end, that his death is inevitable, and always has been? Is just part of a show.

The village is quiet in the deep dusk. Some sort of bar is open in the square where the church is.

It is still oppressively hot.

—

‘What are you doing here again?’ Edvard says, standing on the steps of the porch. ‘What do you want?’ He is still in his shorts, his flip-flops.

‘There’s something important you didn’t tell me, Edvard.’

‘What?’

‘She’s pregnant, isn’t she.’

Edvard looks amazed.

‘You didn’t know?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m telling you — she’s pregnant. Is it yours?’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Edvard says in a loud voice. He has been drinking. His lips are stained with red wine. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Kristian is at the steps now. Looking up at Edvard, who is a head taller than him even without the advantage of the two steps, he says, more quietly, ‘Mrs Ohmsen is pregnant. If you didn’t know, I’m sorry it has to be me who tells you that.’

‘How the fuck do you know?’

Elin had Mrs Ohmsen followed, and Mrs Ohmsen led two journalists to a private antenatal clinic where she spent more than an hour. That was what Elin told him on the phone.

‘I just know,’ Kristian says. ‘You didn’t?’

‘No,’ Edvard says, pathetically.

‘Do you think it’s yours?’ Kristian asks him.

‘Will you just fuck off,’ Edvard says. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here. This is my life we’re talking about.’

‘Yes, it is…’

‘It’s my life. Not yours.’

‘I know…’

Edvard says, ‘Why don’t we talk about your life? Would you like that?’

‘I’m not here to talk about my life…’

‘There are some things I know about your life.’

‘I’m sure you do…’

‘I know about you and Elin Møllgaard,’ Edvard says, speaking more quietly, ‘your editor.’

After a momentary hesitation, Kristian says, ‘I’m not interested in that.’

‘You and Elin,’ Edvard says, sensing that he has, if only very slightly, unsettled Kristian, and liking it. ‘Does your wife know about that?’

‘Edvard…’

‘Does she?’

‘Edvard, nobody’s interested in that. They’re interested in you. They’re not interested in me. You are the defence minister of Denmark. You have been having an affair with a married woman, Mrs Ohmsen. Mrs Ohmsen is pregnant. It might be yours. That is a matter of public interest…’

‘It is not a matter of public interest,’ Edvard says from the step, a silhouette against the dim light which is on in the porch. ‘There’s no public interest there.’

Kristian says, ‘It’s my opinion that there is.’

‘No, there isn’t. That’s just a pretence. It’s just a way for people like you to have power over people like me.’

‘People like me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean by that.’

From the step, Edvard eyes him furiously, woundedly.

‘You’re upset, Edvard,’ Kristian says. ‘I understand that. And I’m truly sorry to have dropped this on you like this. I assumed you knew. You probably want to phone Mrs Ohmsen, don’t you, and find out what’s going on. Why don’t you do that? Okay? I’ll wait here.’

Edvard stands there for a few seconds. Then he turns and enters the dark house, and Kristian waits on the path in the hot twilight. He does not sit down on the porch. There is, he notices, the debris of a solitary meal on the table there. He is hungry, suddenly. He hasn’t had anything to eat himself since a sandwich on the plane this morning. He often forgets to eat when things are moving fast.

—

It is dark when Edvard emerges from the house again, into the shadowy electric light of the porch. Kristian, left waiting for nearly half an hour, has finally sat down.

Now he stands. Edvard, he thinks, has shed a few tears. Something about his discoloured nose, the evident fragility of his self-possession.

‘Did you speak to her?’ Kristian asks.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And?’

‘She doesn’t know how you could know about it. She hasn’t told anybody. She thinks you must have bribed somebody at the clinic where she went.’

‘We didn’t.’

‘You say that.’

‘Is it yours?’

‘I don’t have to answer that.’

‘No, you don’t. The question will be asked. You will have to address it at some point.’

‘Maybe.’

‘It would better for you,’ Kristian says, ‘to put everything out there now, rather than have it trickle out over a longer period of time. It will be less damaging that way, and less painful.’

‘Are you my media advisor now?’

‘I’m trying to help you, Edvard.’

‘No, you’re not.’

There is a prolonged silence, only the implacable throbbing of the insects. Then Edvard says, ‘It’s mine, she says. She isn’t keeping it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Now please leave.’

—

‘This,’ he says to Elin, travelling south again on the dark motorway, the air conditioning still purring, ‘is a sensational story now.’

‘It is,’ she says. ‘Well done.’

‘I’m thinking,’ he says, ‘do the basic story tomorrow, without naming her, without saying she’s pregnant. Then hope someone else names her during the day. Then Friday we do the full story, with names, pictures, everything. Don’t do the pregnancy, though — save that for Saturday.’

‘Sounds fine,’ she says. ‘Unless someone scoops us on it.’

‘They won’t.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Should help with the audit,’ he suggests.

She laughs. ‘That is the furthest thing from my mind at this point.’

He laughs too. ‘If you say so.’ He says, ‘I’m hoping I haven’t missed the last flight. I should get to the airport at tenish. So office some time after two.’

‘We’ll be waiting for you,’ she says.

—

He has missed the last flight. When he phones Elin to tell her, she suggests he stay in a hotel and take the first flight in the morning.

‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s an Air France flight to Paris in about half an hour, and then one to Copenhagen at fourish. It gets in at five forty-five.’

‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ she says. ‘It sounds totally exhausting. Everything’s okay here.’

‘Yeah, I need to do that,’ he says.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Okay. If that’s what you want. How long do you have to spend at the airport in Paris?’ she asks.

‘Two or three hours.’

‘That sounds fun.’

‘I’m going to love every minute of it,’ he says.

And indeed the exhilaration he is feeling — the thrill of feeling that he is smack in the middle of things, major news events, things that everybody is talking about — takes him through the flight to Paris and the hours at Charles de Gaulle, the hours from one to four in the morning, when more people start to arrive in the huge lounge where he has been sitting and looking at the stuff Elin sent him. The first edition:

DEFENCE

MINISTER’S

SECRET

LOVE

A picture of the minister looking shocked that they found somewhere, archive. Another, on the inside pages, of him looking sad.

The stunning brunette, 40, is refusing to leave her husband, one of Denmark’s richest men…

He finally falls asleep on the flight to Copenhagen.

It is already light. Paris, familiar, in the little oval window.