David Szalay - All That Man Is

She sits at the table, taking the seat facing the wall, the histrionic Jesus tapestry. On her left, her daughter’s oversized, smiling head. On the other side, Murray, asking if he can smoke.

He can.

He lights up while Vletka shuffles the cards.

And in fact she is smoking too, letting a cheap cigarette hang whorishly from her lip — the mid-afternoon dressing gown is part of the effect as well — as she skilfully shuffles the old pack. The air in the room, already somehow grey and dim, is soon harsh and blue with smoke.

She puts the pack face down on the tabletop. Then, with a single practised movement, spreads it into a perfectly symmetrical fan.

The instruction arrives, as always, via the daughter: ‘Please, take one.’

Murray looks furtively at Vletka. She is looking the other way, drawing tiredly on her fag, waiting for him to take his card. His hand ventures out into the middle of the table. It hovers for a moment over the fan and then his index finger lands on a card and tugs it free of the others. As if she is in a hurry, Vletka snatches it up and looks at it. ‘Prošlosti,’ she says, placing it face up on the table.

‘The past,’ the daughter tells him.

The card shows a man, seated, facing out, hugging a large coin. He also has a coin on his head — as well as something that looks like a simple crown — and his feet seem to hold two further coins in place on the floor. His posture is hunched, tense, defensive. He is staring straight out of the card and his expression is grim. There is something about him that suggests exhaustion. Blood-saturated eyes, strangers to sleep. Behind him, some distance away, is a city.

‘Please,’ the daughter translates, smiling at Murray across the table, showing him her large yellow teeth, ‘take another one.’

Murray does.

When he has pulled it free of the fan, Vletka turns it over and says, ‘Prisutna.’

‘The present.’

A tower against a black sky. A huge zigzag of lightning has just struck the top of the tower, violently dislodging the crown that was there. Flames leap out of the broken summit. Two figures tumble down through the dark air, as if the force of the explosion has thrown them out of their tower, which seemed so secure. Their faces are open with terror. One of them is wearing a crown.

The daughter tells Murray to take another card.

He presses his cigarette into the notch of the ashtray and does so.

Vletka adds it to the other two and says, ‘Budućnost.’

‘The future.’

Murray, having reclaimed his cigarette, is staring at the three cards.

The guy hugging his coins.

The shattered tower.

The greybeard with his lamp.

—

The final card shows an elongated figure in a monkish habit. Hooded. White-bearded. Holding in one hand a lit lamp, in the other a long staff. His head is bowed and his eyes might be closed, even though he is holding the lamp up as if to illuminate something. He seems to be standing in a frozen or snowy wasteland. There is, anyway, nothing there.

Vletka studies the cards for a minute, finishing her cigarette. Then she stubs it out with a few gentle, thoughtful movements. She seems bored, actually. She says, indicating the first card, ‘Ovo je tvoja prošlost.’

‘This is your past,’ the daughter says to Murray, who has taken a position with his hands knitted on the table in front of him, his shoulders slumped. He feels tired. ‘Yeah?’ he says.

Still indicating the first card, Vletka starts saying words. It sounds like a list. Her daughter translates, her words overlapping with her mother’s. ‘Materialism,’ she says, ‘acquiring material possessions, only interested in wealth, power, status, winning your share, and keeping what you have, ownership, jealousy, wanting to impose your will, denying weaknesses.’ She is smiling at Murray. She is always smiling, despite the fact that most of her hair has already fallen out, and her voice sounds slurred and stupid, and she needs help to walk even a few steps. She says, ‘This is your past.’

‘If you say so,’ Murray says, with some sarcasm. His mouth makes those strange munching movements. His eyes flit fearfully between the two women.

With her finger on the lightning-struck tower, the shattered phallus spilling fire, the plummeting victims, Vletka is now telling Murray about his present.

‘This is your present,’ the daughter says. ‘Upheaval, turbulence, plans destroyed, disorder, pride humbled, humiliation, violence even…’

His eyes narrowing, Murray unknits his fingers to find his cigarettes.

The daughter says in her silly voice, ‘The destruction of a way of living. The impact of things over which you have no control. The final end of a…a part of your life. This is your present.’

With the lighter that is there on the table — a souvenir lighter from a Macedonian health spa or place of pilgrimage or something — Murray lights his cigarette.

Vletka’s finger moves to the final card.

‘This is your future,’ her daughter says.

And Vletka says sternly, ‘Ne — to može biti vaša budućnost.’

‘This might be your future.’

‘Moguća budućnost.’

‘A possible future.’

‘Moguće,’ Vletka emphasises.

‘It is possible.’

Vletka starts on the final list, and her daughter says, still with a stupid smile on her face, ‘Solitude, introspection, stillness, quiet, seclusion, withdrawing from the world, silence, submission, meditation…’

Fuckin’ wonderful , Murray thinks.

‘That it then?’ he asks.

‘That’s it,’ the daughter says, still smiling at him.

—

He is putting his jacket on. The daughter, leaning on Vletka and on a walking stick, has lurched out of the room in her old woman’s knitted shawl. It’s like one of her legs is six inches shorter than the other, Murray thinks, pretending not to notice, finishing his cigarette at the table on his own.

The cards are still there.

He ignores them.

Still, the stuff she said about his present wasn’t so wrong.

Fuck though, she knew he was in a bad way — people only show up here when they’re in a bad way.

And his past?

The smouldering end of the cigarette crackles, the cheap tobacco, as he inhales strongly.

Ah, bollocks.

That was everybody’s past, what she said. We all think we’re special — we’re all the fucking same.

That’s how they operate, people like her.

Five hundred kuna. Fuck’s sake.

He is putting on his jacket, looking forward to leaving, when the women are there again. The daughter is holding a plate of sticky-looking cakes.

Murray is just shrugging his shoulders into his jacket — a sensible thing with a hood, elasticated wrists, lots of pockets.

‘You would like a cake?’ she says, smiling as always.

He looks, for a moment, at the things on the plate — lumps, each with a layer of sugary frosting. They are misshapen, sad-looking.

‘A cake? Uh…Yeah, okay. Thanks.’

He takes one. They are watching him as, after a pause, he lifts it to his mouth. In his other hand the cigarette is still going. He puts the cake into his mouth. The first thing is: it hurts his teeth. A lot. It’s shocking, how much it hurts. Sharp lines of pain lance down into his jaw, up into his skull. He forces himself not to wince, his miserable teeth working on the stuff. It has a weird texture — it seems to melt away in his mouth, melt into something sandy, muddy almost. It tastes of sugar, and something else, something foul. They are still watching him. The daughter still smiling, her upper lip downy, her lower lip glistening. He tries to smile back as he swallows, his Adam’s apple forcing the thing down. ‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’