Spring

by David Szalay

  Katherine’s lack of interest in the travails of little birds should not have surprised him. A week or so earlier, he had told her the story of the hatchling thrush—­another one set on the terrace of his old Islington flat. One spring morning he had looked out through the French windows and seen a dead hatchling thrush on the decking. It must have fallen from a nest somewhere higher up. That in itself was sad, but what made it so memorably so—­what in fact pierced him with a sorrow he has never been able to forget—­was the way its parents spent the whole morning offering it worms. With worms in their beaks, its mother and father would frequently land next to it, where it lay lifelessly still on the decking, and wait there for a few moments, turning their heads in the way birds do, unable to understand why it wasn’t taking them.

  She said, ‘Aaww.’

  Though she was trying to sound sad, she didn’t. It was obvious, anyway, that she was not being pierced by a sorrow she would never be able to forget.

  He was irritated that the story had flopped. He wondered, in his irritation, if this meant that she was just not a very nice person. Was she just not a very nice person? Was that it?

  No, she was just not as sentimental as he was. He was sentimental. She made him feel sentimental.

  The train pulled into Ghent station at noon. They had lunch, then walked to Sint Baaf’s cathedral to see van Eyck’s altarpiece. That was why they were in Ghent. That was what she wanted to see. One of the Masterpieces of Western Art. It was a strange image. In the middle, an important-­looking sheep stood on a table with blood flowing in a neat stream from a hole in its front into a metal cup. The sheep did not seem to be in pain, or even to have noticed what was happening. There was a subtly painted suggestion, too, that it was shining with light. In the field around it were lots of expensively dressed people, mostly men, some with wings… Yes, it was very strange. He knew that the sheep was a symbol of Jesus Christ—­he knew about the angels and saints. He was familiar with the iconography. What made it seem strange, and this was what she was explaining to him as they perambulated around the altarpiece in its perspex house, was the way it was painted. The familiar symbols of medieval art had been painted as if they were real things. That was what made them seem strange. The sheep looked like a real sheep, like a photo of a sheep. That was what was strange. And she drew his attention to the swallows or swifts flitting about in the luminous evening sky near some palm trees—­very small, to indicate their distance from the spectator—­and not one of them the same as the others, each painted in a specific position in flight, obviously observed from nature—­one swooping, another soaring, another spiralling—­escapees from a world of symbolic and stylised art.

  When they had seen the masterpiece she said, ‘Should we get totally pissed?’ They were leaving Sint Baaf’s. It was not something he normally did. Pensively, he stroked his jaw. Then he said, ‘Yeah, okay,’ and they went and drank a lot of Duvel, and Westmalle Tripel, and Piraat, and Sint Bernardus Abt 12, with its laughing monk on the label. It was still just about light when they stumbled out into the Grote Markt several hours later, and presumably freezing though they were insensible to it now. Looking for the station, they quickly found themselves lost in the streets of a disappointingly twenty-­first-­century town—­plastic trams, ATMs… A taxi… A stiflingly overheated Merc. When James addressed the driver in slurred French, the man answered in unfriendly English. The fare for the two-­minute drive was €6. At the station, they struggled with the question of which platform to wait on. A well-­insulated local told them to take the next train to Zeebrugge.

  And Zeebrugge, very tediously, was where they woke up. They spent two whole minutes on the platform there in a knifelike wind that whipped in off the North Sea, then took another taxi—­another overheated Merc—­all the way to their hotel (the fare was €80), where they went straight upstairs and fell asleep.

  The next morning, their final morning in Flanders, hungover and eating hot frites from a paper cone, she snuggled into him as they walked under the frozen copper-­sulphate sky and said, ‘I feel nice with you.’ Things seemed okay then.

  *

  On Friday, towards the end of the afternoon, he takes Hugo for a walk. The St Bernard dislikes the subterranean flat. He usually spends the day lethargically filling the sofa, or when James is sitting on the sofa, the whole vestibule—­a huge, sad-­eyed harlequin.

  Under the sky-­scraping London planes of Russell Square, which are just starting to venture forth their leaves, James throws a tennis ball for him; and if he is throwing it with more than usual vigour it may be an effect of what she said to him on the phone as he walked to the square from Mecklenburgh Street. She said she was tired. She did not want to meet tonight. Someone was off sick, she said, and she had to work an extra-­long shift. Then, perhaps hearing the disappointment in his voice, she said, ‘Let’s do something tomorrow.’

  He perked up slightly, said he’d try to think of something special…

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing special. Let’s just go to the cinema or something.’

  He asked her what she wanted to see.

  ‘I don’t know. What is there?’

  He said he’d have a look.

  And then, just when that seemed settled, he said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to do something tonight?’

  And she sighed and said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s do something tomorrow.’

  He slings the tennis ball in the twilight under the trees, slings it with all his strength, twisting his torso and whipping into the throw, trying to find the trajectory that will send Hugo furthest over the still-­wintery lawns. His excitable voice as he pursues it punctures the low moan of the traffic endlessly orbiting the square. Something is not okay. He is thinking again of that strange moment on Monday afternoon at the poolside. Something happened in Marrakech, something he does not know about. When they leave the square it is evening and the signs on the hotel fronts are illuminated.

  3

  On Sunday there is this lunch at Isabel and Steve’s. ‘No Katherine?’ is the first thing Isabel says, opening the door to see her brother standing there on his own. He wishes she hadn’t mentioned her. Everything is pretty fucking far from okay.

  He spent Saturday morning under the skylight in the living room, seeing what films were on, interrogating the Internet in his seldom-­used spectacles. Surveying the listings he felt lost, ill-­equipped to find something that she would like. He does not yet have any sort of instinct for her taste. It is not easily predictable. Miriam, for instance, only touched unimpeachably art-­house films, made him sit through the plotless offerings of French and Russian men, whose names still affect him the way memories of lessons at school do—­a trapped mind-­numbing feeling, a surly sense of personal insufficiency, and a quiet thankfulness that he is not in the experience now. Though Katherine sometimes shows an interest in such films too—­he has noticed some DVDs lying around her flat with titles like Andrei Rublev and Tokyo Story—­she is more omnivorous, more promiscuous in what she enjoys. This does not make working out what she will enjoy any easier. Quite the opposite.

  He had just finished making an eclectic shortlist when she phoned. Almost as soon as he started talking about what films were on and where, she interrupted him. ‘James…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Um.’ She seemed stuck. She said, ‘I don’t…’ then stopped again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not going to like this,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want to see you today.’ Silence. ‘I just… I need to spend some time on my own. Is that alright?’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ he heard himself say.

  ‘Phew,’ she said. She sounded less nervous. ‘I was worried you’d be angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry. I’m…’

  ‘Disappointed?’

  ‘I wanted to see you.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why… ?’ he said. ‘Why
don’t you want… ?’

  ‘I just need some time on my own,’ she said. ‘I need a weekend on my own. I need to get my head together. I haven’t stopped moving since we got back from Marrakech. I haven’t had any time to myself. I still haven’t finished unpacking… I’m sorry.’ Then she said, ‘Thanks for understanding. Thanks for making it easy for me.’

  Later he wondered whether he had made it too easy for her. What should he have done though? Made a scene? Tried to force her to see him? Even if he had wanted to do that, he just didn’t seem to feel enough at the moments when it might have been a possibility. He felt only a kind of numbness, and the infantile frustration of not getting what he wanted. And then the moment had passed and she was saying, ‘What are you going to do tonight?’

  ‘Well… There’s this party. You know—­the one I told you about.’

  Yes, there was this party.

  And now, on Sunday, he is hungover. There is a painful-­looking sty, Isabel notices—­a vivid purple, like a Beaujolais nouveau—­just under the lip of his left eye.

  ‘No,’ he says, in answer to her question about Katherine. ‘She couldn’t make it.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Isabel says. ‘When are we going to meet her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hi.’

  She kisses him. ‘Hi.’

  He hands her a bottle of wine wrapped in tissue paper and follows her in. She and Steve have the lower half of the house, with their own entrance at the side—­97A—­and what is by London standards a huge garden with (they are widely envied for this) a wooden door leading directly onto Hampstead Heath.

  ‘How are you?’ she says.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He takes off his jacket in the pale grey entrance hall next to the pair of Banksy prints in white maple frames which match the white maple floor. It sounds like there are quite a few people in the living room—­more than he expected. The whole event is on a larger scale than he expected. He knows the sort of people they will be. Some lawyers from Isabel’s firm—­Quarles, Lingus—­and their spouses. A selection of her university friends, mostly media types now. A few friends of Steve’s perhaps, smoking in the garden in jeans and trainers. Probably that vegetarian architect who always seems to be at things like this. There will be some pregnant women. A smattering of noisy toddlers. A shocked-­looking, marble-­eyed baby.

  Entering the living room—­long and high-­ceilinged, with a large sash window at each end—­he wishes he had stayed at home. He feels like he has only just woken up and, in spite of the Nurofen, he has a nagging headache. He has not even surveyed the room to see who is there when he finds himself face to face with Steve.

  ‘Alright, mate,’ Steve says. ‘How’s things?’ Though he is smiling, Steve seems nervous. He is wearing a brown T-­shirt with a technical-­looking drawing of an open-­reel tape player on it and holding a glass of prosecco. Without waiting for James to answer his question, he says, ‘I hear you got a new lady-­friend.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘That’s fantastic. How’s it going? I hear you took her to Morocco.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘That must have been brilliant. I love Morocco. Do you want a drink? What do you want? Prosecco?’

  ‘Uh, just a glass of water actually…’

  ‘Sure.’

  James follows him through the talking people towards a table on the other side of the room. Halfway there, he squeezes past the vegetarian architect, whose name he has forgotten, and who is earnestly listening while a middle-­aged woman lectures him about something. ‘Oh alright, mate,’ the architect says, with a sudden smile.

  ‘Alright, mate,’ James says, also momentarily smiling.

  Steve is pouring him a glass of Perrier. When he has poured it he looks up and hands it to him. James thanks him. Steve smiles. He is a head shorter than James and wears glasses with heavy oblong frames. ‘So,’ he says. ‘You took the lucky lady to Morocco.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where… where was that exactly?’

  James is about to tell him when Steve, whose eyes immediately wandered, sees his four-­year-­old son, Omar, looking lost in the forest of legs. ‘Sorry mate, just a sec,’ he says, and leaves James standing there while he sweeps Omar up and takes him out of the room.

  While he waits, James turns to the sash window overlooking the street and has a sip of prickling Perrier. It is a quiet, tree-­lined street, on a steep slope—­and he sees, walking up the slope, looking slightly lost, just as Omar had a few moments earlier, a smartly dressed man, probably in his seventies. At the sight of this man, James wishes, even more than before, that he had stayed at home. The man is obviously looking for a specific house. Finding number ninety-­seven, he first walks up the steps at the front. The door there, however, is only for the two flats on the upper floors, and after peering puzzledly at the nameplates for a few moments, he looks around—­as if hoping to see someone who will be able to help him—­and then returns to the pavement. He looks up at the house. Then he notices the sign saying 97A, and pointing to the path at the side.

  Though the sharp trill of the doorbell is hardly audible over the hubbub of voices, James’s pulse quickens at the sound of it and he looks for someone to talk to. There, standing near the fireplace, is Miranda, an old friend of Isabel’s. Isabel once tried to set them up in fact. They went out once or twice. Without hesitation he walks over to her, interrupting the man she is talking to. Though he tries not to show it, this man—­Mark, a singleton from Quarles, Lingus—­is obviously put out by the way Miranda seems positively to welcome James’s interruption. He was just telling her about his planned skiing holiday to Norway with ‘some mates’, hoping to work around to suggesting that she might like to join them, when she turns away from him while he is in mid-­sentence—­‘Most people don’t know how fantastic the skiing is up…’—­and says, ‘James! Izzy promised me you’d be here.’ She puts her hand on James’s shoulder and kisses him. She has to stand on tiptoe. He leans forward to help her. ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how are you?’

  ‘I’m okay. You?’

  ‘Fine,’ James says. He is about to say something else when Mark stops looking impatiently off to the side and thrusts out a hand. ‘Mark!’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I was just telling Miranda about…’ He starts on Norway and skiing again, and James’s eyes move to the door, where, smiling nervously, the smartly dressed older man has just entered with Isabel. She is entirely focused on him. From the way she is treating him, he seems to be some sort of VIP. With his eyes on them, James is not listening to what Mark is saying—­‘And they all speak English, which is—’

  Following James’s stare, Miranda says, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Oh, he’s—’

  ‘They all speak English,’ Mark insists, ‘which is—’

  ‘He’s my uncle.’

  Isabel has ushered him to the drinks table, and is pouring him a glass of prosecco—­with his thumb and forefinger he indicates that he does not want much. Then, with a slightly worried look, she scans the room. James knows she is scanning it for him. She sees him, and says something to their uncle, and they start to move towards him.

  Miranda has just turned distractedly back to Mark, who says, ‘So, yes, they all speak English, which is—’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ says Isabel. ‘I need to steal James for a minute. Is that okay? James, look who’s here,’ she says, with her hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Ted,’ James says, smiling pleasantly. ‘It’s been a long time. A very long time. How are you?’ As they step towards an empty patch of white maple, he hears Mark say, with a sort of wearinesss now, ‘So, yes, um, they all speak English, which is…’

  Ted is tall—­the same height as James, more or less—­and has the same high forehead, the same long face and squarish jaw. These are all things that flow to James from Ted’s side of the family, his mother’s
side. Ted, though, is losing his white hair. The tightening skin is turning transparent on the prominences of his skull, while the skin of his neck has lost its hold entirely. Isabel has left the two of them to talk, and the first thing Ted says is, ‘The last time I saw you, you were doing very well.’

  James smiles. ‘Was I?’ This was one of the things he had feared having to talk about when he saw Ted in the street.

  ‘You had some sort of Internet firm.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to that?’

  When James tells him, Ted seems sincerely surprised. ‘Oh?’ he says. ‘Did it? That’s a shame. Um… I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘No. No, I suppose not. There were lots of them, weren’t there? What happened with all that? I never really understood what that was all about.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ James says. ‘I’m probably the wrong person to ask.’ Then, seeing that his uncle is hoping for a proper answer, he stops smiling and says, ‘There was massive over-­investment, essentially. I suppose there was this idea that whole sections of the economy were about to move en masse onto the Internet. I thought so at the time myself. Lots of people did. That’s why there was so much over-­investment, which pushed up share prices so much. Then there was the herd mentality too. That took over. These things have their own momentum. Nobody wants to be left out.’

  ‘Of course not!’ Ted says emphatically.

  ‘Even if you think it’s all nonsense, if you see people doubling and tripling their money in a few months, even if you think they’re total fools—­maybe especially if you think they’re total fools—­you might be tempted to get involved. Ideas of value go out the window. Then it’s not even speculation. It’s just… a sort of pyramid scheme. Alan Greenspan called it “irrational exuberance”, I think.’

  ‘Alan Greenspan? Wasn’t he…’

  ‘The Federal Reserve.’

  Ted nods. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘In a sense I didn’t lose anything,’ James says with a smile. ‘I had nothing at the start, and nothing at the end.’