David Szalay - All That Man Is

And he envies the way one of them nods at Damjan as they leave, and offers him a few words of farewell. He wishes the twins would acknowledge him like that. He has been eating their kebabs for over a year, and he has always felt that he and they share something, something that sets them apart from the other people in this place, a superiority of some sort. And yet they never speak to him, as one of them just spoke to Damjan, or acknowledge him in any way.

On the spur of the moment Murray decides that he will be the first to speak. The twin who spoke to Damjan is standing there, near the door, slouching against the jamb, and poking about in his mouth with a toothpick.

‘Al right ,’ Murray says to him, forcefully he hopes, as he passes him on the way out.

And the twin just looks slightly surprised — in his collarless shirt, his tan leather jacket — and watches Murray leave.

And how the fuck did that happen?

Safely in his mausoleum, hugging the toilet, Murray weeps. Drops tears onto the filthy floor.

How did that happen?

He has never been so intimate with the root of this toilet, with the rusty bolts that hold it to the old linoleum.

He sits up, after a while, and dries his eyes.

He inspects, in the mirror, his fat lip.

This mirror always gives the impression of fog. His face looms out of it, damaged. He stares at himself with contempt.

There was a woman. Aye, there was a woman. There were lots of women. With Damjan and his friend he had trawled through the nightspots of the town — two or three of them, there were. Nightspots. Full of students, kids. No success there, though he had tried, God knows. He had tried in the noise of the new music to have it off with a few of them. Kids with dyed hair. And Murray leering over them, trying to make himself understood. Shouting about the S-Class he had once owned. Shouting, ‘You been to London?’ Shouting, ‘I’ll show you round, okay?’ He had offered her a job, that one. And she was about to give him her number, he thinks, when her friends pulled her away. (Later, seen her being sick in the car park. Was it her?) Damjan’s friend disappeared. So just him and Damjan went on to the all-night place. ‘I know one place,’ Damjan said, speaking more fluently than usual. ‘I know one place is open all night.’ Taxi. Yes, taxi. And then tumble out into the raw air again. Damjan paying. ‘You got any smokes?’ Murray asking him. And then the place. The woman, perched up there on her stool. Not a kid, this one. Or maybe he was perched on the stool and she was there, suddenly, talking to him. And he was telling her about the S-Class he had once owned. Asking her, ‘You been to London?’ She was, what? Forty? Fifty? And no oil painting. Even then, in the state he was in, he knew that. She kept touching him. Hand on his leg. (And where was Damjan?) Hand on his leg. And he said to her, straight out, ‘You wanna come back to mine?’

And she just nodded, and moved her hand up his leg.

‘Okay then,’ he said.

‘A minute,’ she said, squeezing his leg. ‘Wait.’

‘Okay then,’ he said. And waited, feeling pleased with himself. And then starting to worry about whether he’d be able to do it, the state he was in. And he looked for her and saw her talking to two men near the toilets. And something about the way she was talking to them made him understand. He just wanted out of it then. He slid off the stool, trying to keep his footing, and started to move towards the door. And then she was holding his arm. Holding it hard. ‘Okay?’ she said, ‘we go?’ ‘Look, I’m tired,’ he told her, trying to pull his arm free, ‘I’ll see you another time.’ ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, her hand on his trousers, feeling for something. ‘I’m fucking tired,’ he snapped, shoving her away. Outside, the cold night air. Haloed street lamps. He started to walk quickly, not knowing where he was. And yes, those were footsteps following him, and as soon as he started to jog, hands seizing him. Threw him against the side of a parked van. The two men. Faceless in the shadows. His voice emerging as an effeminate squawk: ‘What d’you want?’ There were various issues. He had, they seemed to be telling him, entered into an agreement. So he owed them money. And he had hit her, they said. They wanted more money for that. ‘I did not hit her’. Everything he had on him, seemed to be what they wanted. ‘I never hit her…’ He took a punch to the face. Then, from a position on the pavement, handed over his wallet, and they emptied it of kuna and threw it on top of him.

And then he was alone, lying on a wet pavement, wondering if he was in fact dreaming. Please, let me be dreaming

His mouth seemed to be the wrong shape. Near his eyes, something…What was that?

—

Hubcap.

Fuck.

Hubcap of a…

Toyota Yaris?

Dizzy when he stood up.

And sick. Suddenly he felt very sick.

—

Two days later, when his mouth has deflated, he emerges and finds Hans-Pieter in the Umorni Putnik.

‘I heard about your night out,’ Hans-Pieter says.

‘Yeah, that. It was quite a night.’

‘I heard it,’ Hans-Pieter says.

It is some time in the afternoon. Maria is working, is there.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Murray wants to know, smiling worriedly. ‘What’d you hear?’

‘Damjan said it was a good night.’

Murray’s smile turns less worried. He says, ‘A fucking massive night, actually.’

‘You’ve been recovering,’ Hans-Pieter asks, ‘since then?’

‘That’s right. In the recovery position. If you know what I mean.’ Murray himself isn’t sure what he means. He tastes his lager, the first that has passed his lips since then.

Yesterday he experienced a sort of dark afternoon of the soul. Some hours of terrible negativity. A sense, essentially, that he had wasted his entire life, and now it was over. The sun was shining outside.

As it is now, igniting the yellow of the leaves that still cling to the little trees in front of the hostel.

He sees them through the dusty window.

‘How about you?’ he asks Hans-Pieter. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m okay,’ Hans-Pieter says.

Murray sees one of the leaves detach and drop.

Hans-Pieter says, ‘Damjan says you were sort of on the pull, the other night.’

‘What — I was?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Murray does something with his mouth, something uneasy. ‘Don’t know about that.’

‘Well,’ Hans-Pieter says, ‘I know a very nice lady, you might be interested in.’

‘Who’s that then?’ Murray asks snootily.

‘A very nice lady,’ Hans-Pieter says again. Then he whispers, ‘Maria’s mudder.’

In a savage whisper Murray says, ‘Maria’s mother ?’

‘Yes.’

‘No fucking way . ’

‘Why not?’

‘Fuck off,’ Murray scoffs.

‘Why not? She’s quite young…’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Forty-eight, I tink. And she’s in nice shape,’ Hans-Pieter tell him.

‘You’ve seen her, have you?’

‘Sure.’

Maria, having no one to serve, has ventured out in search of empties. She stops at Hans-Pieter’s shoulders, puts her hands on them. Her substantial hip is smack in Murray’s line of sight.

‘I was just telling Murray,’ Hans-Pieter says to her, half-turning his head, ‘about your mother.’

‘Yeah?’ she smiles. She seems to have forgiven Murray for the way he tagged along to Iron Man 3 with them the other day. It occurs to him, in fact, that the way he tagged along that day might actually have suggested to her the idea of fixing him up with her obviously lonely and desperate mother.

‘Just take her out for a drink,’ Hans-Pieter…what? Suggests? Orders? Murray is still wondering what to make of this development — fucking Hans-Pieter telling him what to do — when Maria says, ‘She’s really pretty. And much thinner than me.’