by David Szalay
1
Yesterday. In the afternoon, he left the house in Lowndes Square, the huge house still holding the shock of what had happened. Chelsea, seen through the window of the Maybach. Sloane Street, its familiar shops – Hermès, Ermenegildo Zegna. Cheyne Walk. Traffic heavyish at four. Dark November day. Low tide, the Thames, dull mudflats. That park, on the other side, the south side. Then small streets, and the heliport. The windy platform over the water. The loud, leather-trimmed pod of the Sikorsky. They were about to fly upriver, over the western districts of London. As the helicopter turned over the water, wavelets fleeing from the downdraught, he looked back at it, at London, the place that for some years had been his home. Then it was dropping away, to something merely schematic, a monochrome expanse spread out in the light of the late-autumn afternoon. He would never see it again.
The decision had been made standing at a window in Lowndes Square, staring out. The decision to jump into the sea. To drown himself. It had seemed like some sort of solution.
Farnborough airport.
A two-hour flight to Venice.
From Venice airport, a hired limousine.
Venice itself hidden in darkness and drizzle. It was there, somewhere, on the other side of the water, an eroding monument to lost wealth, to lost power.
The harsh, tall light of the docks. The hum of the pump as the yacht took on fuel. The smell of the fuel. Someone holding an umbrella.
And Enzo, the first officer, waiting for him at the end of a strip of drizzle-wet carpet: ‘Welcome aboard, sir.’
Enzo told him that they would be all set in half an hour, wanted to know where they were headed.
A pause.
He had not thought about it. It made no difference.
‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Corfu.’
Enzo nodded, smiled.
And Mark, the head steward: ‘Will sir be dining this evening?’
‘Just a snack,’ he said to him. ‘Thank you.’
It arrived, later, with a half-bottle of Barbaresco. He did not touch the food. He had a glass of the Barbaresco.
It was from his own estate, a property he had acquired some years ago. An impulsive thing. He has only been there once. He finds it hard to picture the place. They had flown over it in the helicopter, he and the previous owner, a Piedmontese or Savoyard aristocrat, a youngish man, pointing things out to him, shouting over the shriek of the machine …
Silence.
He was lying on the bed, waiting for the yacht to start moving.
He did not mean to fall asleep. He meant to jump into the sea. He meant to drown himself. And yet, for the first time in many days, he simply fell asleep.
2
In the morning, the yacht is at anchor, a kilometre or two from the Croatian shore. Enzo has phoned to say there is a storm out in the Adriatic. He has apologised for the delay, and said they will be on the move again at some point in the afternoon, when the storm out at sea has passed.
Nearer the shore, where the yacht is anchored, it is a windy, unpleasant day. Sometimes rain.
He turns down Mark’s suggestion, in the middle of the morning, to take the launch and visit the little seaside town that they can see.
Instead, he picks at his lunch in the small private dining room – a single table, able to seat only eight – on the middle deck.
He feels like an imposter in the world of the living, still in the same clothes he fell asleep in, still carrying the stale, days-old scent of Cartier Pasha.
When he woke up this morning, grey light was gathering at the windows. Lifting his head, he looked at it, puzzled. Then he understood. One more day.
It would have to be done at night. No one would notice then, and try to save him. No one would notice – just, in the morning, his quarters empty, and all around the inscrutable sea. The long, dissolving wake.
He is a man in his sixties, with a heavy paunch. A hard handsome face. He has lost much of his hair. He is wearing a shirt with an exaggeratedly large collar, black silk. White leather shoes.
The sea is blue like flint and cold and unforgiving. Squally rain speckles the tall windows of the private dining room, and across the restless grey water, the Croatian town huddles on the coast. Stony hills loom above it, collide with clouds.
He puts down his fork and summons Mark. When he appears, he asks him for a cigar, and Mark addresses himself to the humidor.
Mark presents him with the cigar and asks whether he would like a digestif. A shake of the head.
‘Will that be all then, sir?’ Mark asks. Mark is from Sunderland.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
With the laden tray, Mark leaves.
Some minutes later the cigar is still unlit.
He lets himself out onto the terrace and stands there, looking down at the surface of the sea, which moves with smooth, heavy movements.
Smooth, heavy movements.
Heavy shapes finding the light and losing it as they move.
Heavy, more than anything.
Heavy.
And he wonders, half-hypnotised by the heavy shapes finding and losing the light: How much does the sea weigh? And then, his logical mind working on the question: What is the volume of the sea? And then: What is its average depth? What is its surface area? Those two facts, he thinks, must be easy to find out – and then you would have the answer, since the volume of water is effectively the same thing as the weight.
He steps inside, out of the wind, and summons Mark.
When the steward appears, he says, ‘Mark, I want you to find out two things for me.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What is the average depth of the sea.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Mark says.
‘And what is the surface area.’
‘Of the sea, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll find out for you, sir.’
‘Thank you, Mark.’
Alone, he waits impatiently for the numbers, and sitting at the dining-room table, finally he lights the cigar.
A few minutes later there is a little tap on the door.
‘Yes.’
‘I have that information for you, sir,’ Mark says.
‘Yes?’
‘The average depth is three thousand, six hundred and eighty-two metres,’ Mark says.
‘So deep …?’ he murmurs, writing it down. ‘Okay …’
‘And the surface area is three hundred and sixty-one million square kilometres.’
‘You’re sure?’
Mark hesitates. He googled the questions. His employer, though, only vaguely knows what Google is and probably thinks that Mark has spent the last few minutes phoning marine experts at the world’s leading universities – people who would be happy to be interrupted in order to help him with his important work.
‘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?
&nbs
p; 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.
3
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.’
‘We can make you one just like it,’ the smiling Lürssen’s man said, standing next to him. They were both wearing high-visibility vests, helmets.
‘How long will that take?’
‘Two or three years,’ the Lürssen’s man said, proudly watching the end of the demonstration.
‘I don’t want to wait that long. I want this one.’
The Lürssen’s man’s orange moustache twitched as he laughed.
‘You don’t understand,’ Aleksandr said. ‘You think I’m joking. I’m not joking. I want this one.’
The man tried to explain that this yacht was someone else’s, had been made for someone else …
‘How much is he paying for it?’
The man looked doubtful for a moment. Then he said, ‘Two hundred million euro. More or less.’
‘Offer him two fifty,’ Aleksandr said. ‘Phone him now and offer him two fifty. I want an answer today.’
Hearing the whine of the hatch shutting on the waterline, he pads unhurriedly inside, into the vast oval of the owner’s quarters.
When he meets Lars, twenty minutes later on the pool deck, he is dressed and doused in Cartier Pasha.
It is pleasantly warm on the sheltered pool deck, in the November sunshine.
Lars stands when he sees Aleksandr coming towards him.
‘Good morning,’ he says.
Aleksandr says nothing, just pats the lawyer’s shoulder and sits down at the table.
Lars also sits. He is wearing linen trousers, a blue T-shirt, leather sandals. He was semi-holidaying at his villa on Corfu when Aleksandr phoned last night to say he was in the area, and asked for a meeting. He has not finished eating the omelette he was served.
‘Finish it,’ Aleksandr tells him.
Lars presses on with the omelette.
‘How are you?’ Aleksandr asks.
‘I’m okay,’ Lars says tactfully. ‘You?’
‘Not so good,’ Aleksandr admits.
Lars wipes his mouth with a stiff linen napkin.
‘The case in London?’ Lars asks.
Aleksandr shrugs, looks depressed.
The major legal action on which he embarked a year ago has just failed. He had sued a fellow Russian and former protégé in a London court. He maintained that this man, Adam Spassky, had swindled him, many years earlier, out of an enormous amount of money. He was suing him for that money, a ten-figure sum. The judgment, issued only last week, was emphatically in favour of Spassky. Not only that, it had explicitly questioned Aleksandr’s own integrity. ‘It’s not just that we lost it,’ he says. ‘It’s what the judge said. That … whore.’
Lars nods. He says, ‘Yes, that was harsh.’
‘And totally untrue!’
‘Of course.’
‘How much do you think he paid her?’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ Lars says, privately doubtful that an English judge would be so easily for sale.
‘How much, do you think?’
Lars shrugs, unwilling to speculate.
And Aleksandr says, excitedly, ‘I was thinking – we should investigate her, find the money. Eh? It would destroy her. And then the whole thing would have to be heard again. And this time we would win, maybe. What do you think?’
‘It’s up to you,’ Lars says.
‘You think we should do that?’
Pressed, Lars says, ‘I’m not sure it would help.’
‘He paid her, fuck!’ Aleksandr shouts.
‘It’s possible.’
‘Did you hear what she said?’
‘Yes …’
‘She said I was a liar, fantasist …’
‘She didn’t use the word “liar”.’