All That Man Is

by David Szalay

  ‘So is like football?’ she asks, waving away some smoke, after several minutes of detailed explanation.

  ‘Uh. Sort of,’ Ferdinand says. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And girls?’ she asks. ‘You like girls?’

  The question embarrasses Ferdinand less than it does Simon, and he says, after a short pause, ‘Of course we like girls.’

  She laughs again. ‘Of course!’

  She is looking at Simon, who is staring at the table. She says, ‘You will find lot of girls in Prague.’

  Standing on the Charles bridge with its blackened statues, its pointing tourists, Simon pronounces the whole place to be a soulless Disneyland.

  In St Vitus cathedral, wandering around in the quiet light and the faint smell of wood polish, he sees a poster for a performance of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor there later that afternoon which marginally perks him up, and when they have acquired tickets, they sit down on the terrace of a touristy pub opposite the cathedral’s flank to wait.

  Unusually for him, Ferdinand is smoking a cigarette, one of Simon’s Philip Morrises. While his friend tells him how much he hates Prague, Ferdinand notices two young women sitting at a nearby table. They are not, perhaps, the lovelies their landlady had promised – they are okay, though. More than okay, one of them. He tries to hear what they are saying, to hear what language they are speaking. They are not locals, obviously.

  ‘How can you be happy as a tourist?’ Simon is saying. ‘Always wandering around, always at a loose end, searching for things …’

  ‘You’re in a good mood.’

  ‘I’m not in a bad mood – I’m just saying …’

  The girls seem to be English. ‘What about them?’ Ferdinand says quietly.

  ‘What about them?’ Simon asks.

  ‘Well?’

  Simon makes a face, a sort of pained or impatient expression.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Ferdinand says. ‘They’re not that bad. They’re alright. They’re nicer than the ones in Warsaw.’

  ‘Well, that’s not hard …’

  ‘Well, I am, if you know what I mean.’ Ferdinand laughs. ‘I’m going to ask them to join us.’

  Simon sighs impatiently and, his hands shaking slightly, lights another cigarette. He watches as Ferdinand, with enviable ease, slides over to the girls and speaks to them. He points to the table where Simon is sitting, and Simon quickly looks away, looks up at the reassuring blackened Gothic bulk of St Vitus. He is still looking at it, or pretending to, when Ferdinand’s voice says, ‘This is my friend Simon.’

  He turns into the sun, squints. They are standing there, holding their drinks. One of them is wearing a sun hat. Ferdinand gestures for them to sit down, which they do, uncertainly. ‘So,’ Ferdinand says, taking a seat himself, with a loud scraping noise and a sort of exaggerated friendliness, ‘how do you like Prague? How long have you been here? We only arrived this morning – we haven’t seen much yet, have we, Simon?’

  Simon shakes his head. ‘No, not really.’

  ‘We had a look in there,’ Ferdinand says. ‘Simon likes cathedrals.’ The girls give him a quick glance, as if expecting him to confirm or deny this, but he says nothing. ‘Have you been in there?’ Ferdinand asks, directing his question particularly to the one in the sun hat, who is much more attractive than her friend.

  ‘Yeah, yesterday,’ she says.

  ‘Quite impressive, isn’t it.’

  She laughs. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, as if she thinks Ferdinand might have been joking.

  ‘I mean, they’re all the same, I suppose,’ he says. ‘We’ve been to pretty much every one in this part of Europe, so I can say that with some authority.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘So where else have you been then?’ she asks.

  And so they start talking – where have you been, what have you seen.

  Simon is irritated by Ferdinand’s manner. He thinks of it as a sort of mask that his friend puts on for encounters with strangers, as if there were somehow an intrinsic hypocrisy to it, and thinks of his own silence as a protest against this hypocrisy. And also against the tediousness of it all – when Sun Hat’s plump friend asks him what kind of music he likes, he just shrugs and says he doesn’t know.

  Ferdinand is telling the story of the Japanese couple they saw – he in linen suit and panama hat, she in turquoise dress with sparkles – dancing in the main square of Kraków. Then he tells the story of how he and Simon were hauled off the train at the Polish–German border to be searched by moustached German officials. ‘I think they were particularly suspicious of Simon,’ he says, with a smile, successfully provoking mirth in the ladies, and Simon also smiles, palely, without pleasure, accepting the part that has, he feels, been forced on him.

  ‘Full-on strip search,’ Ferdinand says.

  Sun Hat squeals with shocked laughter. ‘What, seriously?’

  ‘No,’ Simon says, without looking at her. And then he announces, speaking very specifically to Ferdinand, as if they were alone, ‘It’s nearly five.’

  ‘Is it?’ Ferdinand asks, as if he doesn’t understand why Simon is telling him that.

  ‘Yes,’ Simon says. There is a short silence. ‘You know, the …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ferdinand says. He seems to think for a moment, while the others wait. Then he turns to Sun Hat. ‘Listen, there’s this concert at five. It should be quite amazing. Why don’t you come with us?’

  She looks at her friend, who shrugs. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s here!’ He points to the stone edifice that looms over them. ‘In there. It’s Mozart or something. Mozart, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Simon says, without enthusiasm.

  ‘Simon’s really into that shit,’ Ferdinand explains.

  The girls look at each other again – something unspoken passes between them.

  Their excuse is they don’t have much money.

  Ferdinand says, ‘Well, why don’t we meet afterwards?’ He is still smiling. ‘It won’t be that long, I don’t think. How long will it be?’ he asks Simon, as if he were his secretary.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Simon says. ‘Not more than an hour, I wouldn’t have thought.’

  ‘We could just meet here when it’s over,’ Ferdinand suggests. ‘In an hour or so?’

  They agree to this, and Ferdinand and Simon set off.

  ‘She’s really quite nice, the one in the hat, isn’t she?’ Ferdinand says.

  ‘She’s okay.’

  ‘She’s more than okay – she’s hot. What about her friend?’

  ‘What about her?’

  Ferdinand laughs delightedly. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ he says.

  He is humming happily to himself as they take their seats in a pew.

  ‘So what is this again?’ he asks.

  ‘Mozart’s Mass,’ Simon says without looking at him, ‘in C Minor.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ And as if wanting to extract everything he can from the experience, Ferdinand folds his hands in his lap and shuts his eyes.

  The music starts.

  The music.

  Later, when they return to the pub terrace, swamped by the cathedral’s shadow now, they find that the girls have gone. Simon still seems to be hearing the music while his upset friend asks the waiter whether anyone has left a message for him, still seems to be hearing the voice of the unseen soprano, somewhere far up at the front, filling the high stone space. And while they wait on the terrace in case the girls come back, while his friend stands at the edge of the terrace peering into the tourist-filled dusk, Simon sits there smoking and hearing it still, that voice. Something holy about it.

  Ferdinand, turning from the edge of the terrace, looks distraught.

  Something holy about it.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Ferdinand says.

  Summoned holiness into the high stone space, that luminous music.

  ‘They’re not coming back.’

  That luminous music, the voice of
the unseen soprano.

  Filling the high stone space.

  ‘No,’ Simon says.

  His friend sits down and takes, without asking, one of his Philip Morrises. He tries to seem okay. ‘What shoul’ we do?’ he says.

  They leave the terrace and look for somewhere to eat.

  Lost, they wander through little streets.

  Ferdinand stops at a stall selling magazines to ask for directions.

  While his friend is trying to make himself understood, Simon notices that some of the magazines are pornographic – his eyes find enormous nipples, naked skin, open mouths. The entire stall in fact is devoted to porn. The stallholder, a tired-looking little man, speaks no English and, indicating that Ferdinand should wait there, disappears into a shop with an empty window display.

  He emerges a few moments later with a middle-aged woman in a simple blue dress. Simon feels sorry for her, that she has to put up with a stall of filth in front of her shop. ‘Yes?’ she says, smiling shyly as she approaches them.

  Ferdinand explains that they are lost and looking for somewhere to eat.

  She tells him how to find their way back to the places they know, and says, apologetically, that she does not know of anywhere to eat nearby that would be open. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  ‘No, no, don’t be silly,’ Ferdinand tells her. ‘Thank you so much for your help …’

  ‘And you buy magazines?’ she asks.

  The question seems to be mainly for Simon, who is still standing near the stall, smoking a cigarette. He looks at her as if he does not understand it.

  ‘Sex,’ she says, indicating the stall.

  She starts to smile and her face, when she does, suddenly seems hideous to him – like some evil little animal’s, with tiny yellow teeth.

  ‘No,’ he says quickly.

  ‘You have a look,’ she says, still smiling, and, freeing one of the magazines from the string that holds it, she offers it to him in its plastic sleeve. ‘Have a look.’

  ‘We’re not interested, thank you,’ Ferdinand says.

  ‘Why not?’ she asks with a little laugh.

  ‘We’re just not,’ Ferdinand says, following his friend who is already halfway down the street. ‘Thank you.’

  They eat at Pizza Hut, and then take the metro all the way out to its suburban terminus.

  *

  Spread out on the foam mattress on the floor of the room where they are staying, under an orange-and-khaki floral-pattern sheet, Simon struggles to focus on his diary. Ferdinand is showering. Simon is able to hear the hiss of the shower, and while it goes on he knows that his friend will not return. He is also able to hear the shouts from the kitchen as their landlady and her husband argue. He has time – it would not take long. It has been nearly a week since he last … That was in the noisy, swaying train toilet as it made its way from Warsaw to Kraków. His fingers have just taken hold of the thrilling solidity under the sheet when he hears the shower stop with a squeaky jolt of the pipework and, pulling up his shorts, he starts to write again, or seem to, is holding only his pen when Ferdinand enters wrapped in a small towel.

  ‘They still at it?’ Ferdinand says, of the shouting.

  Something smashes, they hear, in the kitchen.

  Simon, holding only his pen, says nothing.

  ‘Not a happy bunny,’ Ferdinand says. Standing near a small mirror, he is trying to look over his own shoulder at his seething, scarified back. ‘It’s worse,’ he says. ‘Have a look. It’s worse, isn’t it?’

  Simon looks up momentarily from his diary and says, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s worse,’ Ferdinand says.

  He sighs and takes his place on the bed with his heavily annotated volume of Yeats. After only a few lines –

  The young

  In one another’s arms

  – he sighs again and stares for a minute or more at the whitish ceiling.

  The young

  In one another’s arms

  He puts the volume of Yeats on the shiny yellow parquet. He pulls the thin quilt over him, and turns to the wall.

  Having written nothing, Simon sets aside his diary and switches off the light, a table lamp on the floor next to the mattress on which he is lying.

  3

  ‘My husband,’ she says the next morning, taking things from the fridge and putting them on the table where they are sitting, ‘is in Brno. Football. He will be in Brno three days.’

  ‘Some sort of tournament?’ Ferdinand asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is he in Brno for a tournament?’ She doesn’t seem to understand. ‘A match?’

  ‘Match, yes. Important match. Football.’

  There is no slivovice. There is coffee and cigarettes. Stale bread if anyone wants it. She is cheerfully hungover. She asks Simon, sitting down next to him in her knee-length yellow dressing gown, ‘You find some girls?’

  He looks embarrassed, unsure what to say. ‘Uh …’

  ‘No?’ she asks, in a tone of surprise. ‘It should be easy for you, I think.’

  ‘Well, we did meet some,’ Ferdinand says.

  ‘You like girls?’

  Though the question was addressed to Simon, it is Ferdinand who answers. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘very much so.’

  She is still looking at Simon, smiling. ‘And you?’

  He takes a worried pull on his cigarette. ‘Yes,’ he says.

  She studies him, his long frowning profile, as he in turn seems to study the table, as if trying to memorise all the objects that are on it –

  a carton of milk – mléko – of very simple design

  his Philip Morrises, the health warning in German

  her Petras, in a paper packet with a red sash

  a Cricket lighter

  ‘You are very handsome boy,’ she says.

  a glass ashtray, full

  a plastic bowl with a few slices of stale bread in it

  ‘When I was young,’ she says, ‘I would like very much to meet handsome boy like you.’

  a small plate with a piece of whitish butter on it

  When I was young …

  She tells them about her own youth.

  And it turns out she is not Czech at all. She is Serbian. She and her husband met in Yugoslavia, as it then was – he was there playing football. She was a tall member of the local sports club that was looking after the arrangements for his team. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, talkative, lively, she would shepherd the team to and from meals, travel on the bus with them to matches.

  Her husband was one of the stars of his team, she proudly explains. They first made love in a park, at night. Well, she still lived with her parents. He slept in a dormitory with his teammates. Where else could they go?

  ‘We were young,’ she says. ‘When you are young … Yes.’ She lights a cigarette. Sighs. Then says more briskly, ‘I was young, but it was not first time for me.’

  ‘No?’ Ferdinand seems interested.

  She starts to tell them about how she lost her virginity with a swimming coach, in a hostel in Italy, when she was fifteen.

  ‘He was older than me,’ she says. ‘That was nice, you know.’

  Simon sits with hunched shoulders, not seeming to hear, smoking.

  ‘It is nice, first time, with someone older,’ she says to him.

  And Ferdinand tells her how he, at the same age, was seduced by his sister’s nanny, who was ten years older than he was, and how nice that was.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, with a serious look in her deep-set eyes, ‘is nice.’

  ‘It was nice,’ Ferdinand says, looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Is always the best way,’ she says, ‘with someone who is older, more experienced. Someone who is nice.’

  Simon sits with hunched shoulders, not seeming to hear, smoking. ‘You understand me?’

  The question is for him. She wants to know whether he has understood her.

  They are waiting for him to say something, to indicate that he has unde
rstood, that he has heard what has been said.

  And then the telephone rings, somewhere else, in some other room. The telephone rings and she stands up and hurries out through the eddying smoke in her knee-length yellow dressing gown, and they hear her answer it and start talking to somebody.

  They spend the morning looking for Sun Hat. Looking for Sun Hat in the sun. Ferdinand puts some thought into where she is likely to be, into which tourist spots to loiter at, primed to seem surprised if she should make a sudden appearance. It soon seems hopeless. The city is huge, sprawling – even the tourist parts are all jumbled up into cobbled alleys and little hidden squares. He tries to think the way she would think, tries to put himself in the position of a young woman, his own age or a year or two older, not particularly intelligent, frequently lusted after, with turquoise-painted toenails, about to start secretarial school … An Australian pub? They spend two hours there, sinking lagers, hardly speaking.

  Simon, too, seems preoccupied.

  Sitting there in the Australian pub, he pictures to himself human interactions as the pouring together of liquids. Violent explosions, he thinks, pleased with the way he is elaborating his initial idea, or instant freezing were the worst forms of reaction. A simple failure to mix perhaps the most normal. And love?

  Karen Fielding

  Well, love, he thinks, would be something like this – a flicker in the middle of the liquids, which mingle so that they seem to be only one transparent liquid

  Karen Fielding

  the flicker steadying to a point, which strengthens slowly until the whole mixture emits a soft, steady light.

  Karen Fielding

  Yes, he thinks, that is love.

  And the day slips away.

  Soon it is late afternoon.

  Ferdinand stands on the Charles bridge, in the hard wind, looking at the wide sweep of the banks, the roofs and spires stacking up away from the water. Sun Hat, somewhere, somewhere … Unless she has left the city already. And then how foolishly he has wasted the day, he thinks, while Simon waits for him, facing away from the view.

  Simon takes up the subject of tourism’s pointlessness again in the next pub, a subterranean variation, vaulted, with lots of Gothic script.