David Szalay - All That Man Is

‘I did double-check, sir,’ Mark says doubtfully.

‘Okay. For now this is okay.’

‘Do you need anything else, sir?’

‘Not now. Thank you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mark withdraws.

Excitedly, he is already doing the sums — on paper, as he was taught in a Soviet technical school, long ago.

The surface area is in square kilometres, so the first step is to convert that to square metres, one square kilometre being…being one million square metres…

And then multiply that by the average depth…

There are a lot of zeroes to write.

Which is the volume…

Which is the same as the weight in metric tonnes.

1,329,202,000,000,000,000 tonnes.

One point three million trillion tonnes.

Success!

The weight of the sea.

He throws down the pen, and tugs smoke triumphantly from the cigar. Shoves it out through his nostrils.

Then other questions start to trouble him.

The sea is salt water — does that affect the weight?

And what about the pressure? Does the pressure in the depths of the sea make a difference? Does a cubic metre of water, under the enormous pressure of the depths, weigh more than one metric tonne, perhaps?

More questions, then, for Mark, who is sent to look into them while his employer waits, finishing his cigar, hunched over his own reflection in the varnished tabletop.

Mark takes longer this time.

Nearly half an hour has passed when the little knock sounds.

And he finds, listening to Mark talking at some length about factors affecting the weight of salt water, that he has entirely lost interest in the subject.

The question of the effects of pressure on the mass of water is particularly long-winded, and he stops listening totally. He just sits there, studying the stub of his cigar. Mark’s soft Geordie voice keeps talking for a while. Then it, too, stops.

There is a long silence.

‘Sir?’ Mark says.

He seems to snap out of a trance. ‘Yes?’

‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Thank you , sir.’

—

It is late afternoon. The twin Pielstick diesel engines have started, and the hundred-and-forty-metre-long yacht is on the move again. Light still lies on the open sea. Hard late light on individual dark waves. The distant shore slides very slowly past. It is dissolving in the early twilight, is indistinct now except for the lights that appear, the tiny silent lights of towns.

Enzo, in his smart white uniform, personally delivers the weather outlook — ‘smooth sailing’ — and says that they will arrive at Kérkira in the morning, at about ten o’clock. Will sir wish to dock there? Should he arrange facilities to do so?

‘No.’

And where will we be heading, from Corfu?

‘I don’t know.’

Enzo nods tolerantly. He waits for a moment — sometimes his employer, if he is on his own, as now, invites his Maltese first officer to join him for a drink at this hour. They drink whisky and talk about ships, about the sea. He asks Enzo, sometimes, about his former life as the master of an oil tanker, or lectures him on politics, economics, the state of the world. Not today. He is not in a talkative mood.

He tells Mark he will have his dinner in his quarters.

Mark asks him what he would like to eat.

He just shrugs and says the chef should make him something, whatever he wants.

What arrives on the tray, an hour later, is, Mark explains, a lobster soufflé, a filet mignon with grilled winter vegetables, and a miniature tarte tatin . There is a half-bottle of champagne, and another of Château Trotanoy 2001.

He has eaten hardly anything for twenty-four hours and he is hungry now — a sort of dull emptiness inside him. He eats the soufflé, and the steak and vegetables. He does not eat the tarte tatin . He drinks some of the Trotanoy, none of the champagne.

It is dark outside now, totally dark. Only the lights of the ship lie weakly on the water.

Into that dark water.

Into those frigid depths.

And, actually, how does one jump from a vessel this size? He is standing on the terrace outside his quarters, the owner’s quarters, near the top of the yacht — it faces the stern, and the wind is not strong — looking down at another terrace, much larger, where the swimming pool is. After that there is a still-larger terrace — he is only able to see a small part of it from where he is standing — where there is space for eighty people to eat at tables and afterwards to dance.

There is someone down there on the lower terrace, where the parties once took place, on the part of it that he can see, walking up and down, and smoking a cigarette. A small figure in the dark. He does not know who it is. There are dozens of people on the yacht. He does not know them all, would not know them by sight. There is Enzo and his team. There are the kitchen staff. There is Mark and his assistant stewards. There are the specialist technicians who look after the swimming pool and other leisure facilities, the power systems, the midget submarine. There are always various minor figures mopping the decks. And there are Pierre and Madis, the ex-soldiers, with their weapons. Perhaps it is Pierre down there, smoking. Yes, it is probably Pierre, standing down there and watching the wake spread out on the surface of the sea.

In the darkness, and from up on his terrace near the top of the yacht, it is only half-visible, the wake.

Floating like phosphorescence on the darkness.

Teasingly, half-visible.

From where he is, there is a drop of at least twenty-five metres to the surface of the sea. He would not drown — he would die on impact, possibly with one of the lower decks. Which is not what he had in mind.

He has not fully thought through the practicalities of this.

And with every minute that passes it seems less likely that he will actually do it.

He imagines, with a shiver of horror, himself in the dark wet water.

He will not actually do it.

The feeling that his nerve has failed fills him with despair.

And now what?

If he is to live, what now?

He finds that he is shivering, and steps inside.

—

What now?

—

The question is simplified by the fact that he is, suddenly, extremely tired.

He shuts the terrace door.

‘Lights off,’ he says in a soft dry voice, and the lights go off.

The next morning Lars joins him.

Aleksandr stands there, in the warm morning sunlight, watching the stony coast of Corfu, and from the harbour mouth the motor launch skimming over the sea towards where Europa lies at anchor. The launch is Europa ’s own, and deploys from a hatch on the waterline in the yacht’s side. As it nears the yacht, it slows abruptly.

From the terrace outside his quarters where he is standing in his dressing gown, he loses sight of it.

It is down there somewhere at the waterline, moving into a position parallel to the opening hatch. The launch, like some space vehicle, has small engines that allow it to move slowly sideways. They will be engaged and it will enter the hatch. When it is in position, the seawater in the hatch will drain away and the launch will settle on a steel frame. A lift travels directly from the dock in the hatch to the upper areas of the yacht.

Some years ago, he had watched a demonstration of this manoeuvre at Lürssen’s shipyard on the Kiel Canal.

He was visiting the shipyard with a view to placing an order for a yacht — Europa , which was then undergoing final sea trials, had been made for someone else.

‘I like it,’ Aleksandr said, watching the demonstration. ‘I want it.’