David Szalay - All That Man Is

Fucking obese, Rainey was now. It had been a shock to see him. He and the Pig still worked at Park Lane Publications, the office just off Kingsway. Lunchtime in the Penderel’s. Everything the same.

And when they asked Murray what the fuck he was doing, he said, ‘I’m just taking it easy. Enjoying life.’

‘Where you doing that then?’ the Pig said.

‘Croatian Riviera,’ Murray answered. ‘I’m semi-retired,’ he told them.

‘Semi -retired? What’s that mean?’

‘Means no one’ll give him a job,’ Rainey quipped, adding an empty to the many on the table and turning his head towards the bar.

Murray tried to smile. ‘I’ve had no end of offers,’ he said quietly, as if out of modesty.

‘Bollocks,’ Rainey said.

And Murray felt that his old friend had still not forgiven him for the events involving Eddy Jaw, the things that had happened some years back.

They had worked together again since then, of course. When Murray was sacked by Jaw he had found his way, inevitably, to the taupe glass door of Park Lane Publications, had found Paul Rainey working there again — at the same desk even, as if nothing had happened, lifting the same white handset to his sweating head.

Murray had been sacked from that job too. He seemed to have lost his touch, whatever touch he might once have had. It was then that he had decided to explore other options. In a way, the Pig was his inspiration. The Pig, notoriously, had once spent two years in Thailand, ‘enjoying life’, living off the money he had saved. Though Murray hadn’t saved any money, he did have a small house in Cheam — a sixties bungalow in a place called Tudor Close. He had acquired it in the glory days, around 1990. Twenty years later, the mortgage was negligible. So a tenant was installed and Murray set off to look for somewhere where he would be able to live on that small income.

The Croatian Riviera.

His flight to Zagreb is at ten thirty in the morning.

He is sitting in the departures lounge, with a headache. Outside, planes move silently. Sunlight torments him. He feels sick.

He had not told Rainey and the Pig why he was in the UK, about the funeral. He had not mentioned that at all, or even thought of it himself, as they went from pub to pub, moving east from Holborn.

Now, staring out at the planes through the shell of his hangover, he is surprised by a memory, a memory of a hand on his forehead, feeling for his temperature perhaps.

Sunlight throws shadows on the terminal floor.

Ma , says a small, frightened voice in his head, his own voice.

Ma, where are you now?

And finally, sitting there in the departures lounge, staring at the planes moving in the weak October sunlight, he finds the tears in his eyes.

Actually, the ‘Croatian Riviera’, the Adriatic seashore, even its least fashionable stretches, had turned out to be too expensive for Murray. He had ended up some way inland, over the hills and far away, in a town on a fairly arid plain, surrounded by dusty vineyards and fields of sunflowers and maize. The Turks had once been defeated there, in fifteen-something, and a monument in the main square memorialised the event. It was the last thing of any importance to happen in the town. In one of the streets leading off the square, there was a youth hostel, the Umorni Putnik, and it was there that Murray had lodged for a while when he arrived.

More than a year ago now.

The first person he had met, on the stairs, that first day, was Hans-Pieter, a Dutchman, and a long-term inmate of the hostel.

Hans-Pieter, Murray had immediately thought, was obviously a total fucking loser.

He was also, these days, his only friend.

The day after Murray’s return from the UK, the two of them are passing the afternoon at a pub called Džoker. They are sitting outside, where there are a few tables under umbrellas advertising a local marque of mineral water — though already October, it is very hot. Murray is wearing white shorts that fall to just below his knees, overhanging his violet-veined and hairless lower legs which in turn taper down to dark office socks and large white trainers. Sweat oozes out of his manly face.

‘It’sh hot,’ Hans-Pieter says.

It’s the kind of thing Hans-Pieter will say — the kind of fascinating conversational gambit he comes out with.

Murray just grunts.

Hans-Pieter is probably about ten years younger than Murray — somewhere in his mid-forties. He is unusually tall, obviously shy.

‘I suppose,’ he says, taking a quick, almost furtive, sip of his lager, ‘it’sh global warming.’

Murray, sweating, scoffs. ‘What the fuck you talking about?’

‘Global warming,’ Hans-Pieter says.

‘What — you believe in that?’

Hans-Pieter looks worried, as if he might have made some elementary mistake. Then he says, ‘You don’t believe it?’

‘Do I fuck.’ With the hem of his white T-shirt Murray towels his face of freely flowing sweat. ‘Don’t tell me you believe in that?’ he says, resettling his glasses on his nose.

‘Well.’ Hans-Pieter looks down at his flip-flops. ‘I don’t know. It’sh October,’ he points out.

People are eating ice creams. Pigeons are wetting their wings in the fountain.

Murray is still staring at him. ‘And?’

‘Well.’ Hans-Pieter sounds doubtful. ‘Is this normal? This…this weather…?’

‘There is no evidence,’ Murray tells him, ‘for global warming.’

‘Well, but I thought…’

‘There’s no fucking evidence.’ Murray takes off his glasses to towel his face again. The front of his T-shirt is sodden.

Hans-Pieter’s pale eyelashes flutter humbly. ‘I thought there was,’ he says, ‘some evidence.’

Murray laughs again. ‘You’ve been had.’

Shyly Hans-Pieter says, ‘What about the Shtern report?’

Murray makes an exasperated sound.

‘It says if there’s no action taken on emissions…’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Murray shouts at him. ‘There’s other reports, there’s reports that say just the opposite.’

‘Aren’t they paid for by dee oil companies?’

Murray sighs. He has heard this shit before, and he won’t have it. The fact is, Murray feels a profound sympathy for ‘the oil companies’. He feels, somehow, that he and ‘the oil companies’ are on the same side. That is, they are the successful ones, the winners of this world, and therefore envied no doubt by losers like Hans-Pieter — Hans-Pieter, who still lives in a youth hostel, while Murray, like some fucking oil company, occupies a well-appointed flat in one of the most elegant Habsburg-era streets of the town. It is his understanding, in fact, that Hans-Pieter is on the Dutch equivalent of the dole, which stretches a lot further here than it does in Amsterdam or wherever he’s from.

‘Do you not understand,’ he says, taking a more indulgent tone with his slow-witted friend, ‘that the whole thing’s a plot against the oil companies? A left-wing plot. Against the market economy. Against individual freedom.’

‘You think that?’ Hans-Pieter says.

‘I know that, pal. They lost the Cold War,’ Murray explains. ‘This is their next move. It’s fucking obvious when you think about it.’

A large drop of sweat falls from the end of his nose.

Hans-Pieter says nothing. He turns his head to the hot square. He has a little earring in his left ear.

‘Anudder one?’ he asks, noticing Murray’s empty glass.

‘Go on then,’ Murray growls.

—

Surprisingly, after that one, only their second, Hans-Pieter makes his excuses and leaves Murray there on his own, to have another half-litre of Pan, the local industrial lager, and survey the square in unexpected solitude.