by David Szalay
And she just nodded, and moved her hand up his leg.
‘Okay then,’ he said.
‘A minute,’ she said, squeezing his leg. ‘Wait.’
‘Okay then,’ he said. And waited, feeling pleased with himself. And then starting to worry about whether he’d be able to do it, the state he was in. And he looked for her and saw her talking to two men near the toilets. And something about the way she was talking to them made him understand. He just wanted out of it then. He slid off the stool, trying to keep his footing, and started to move towards the door. And then she was holding his arm. Holding it hard. ‘Okay?’ she said, ‘we go?’ ‘Look, I’m tired,’ he told her, trying to pull his arm free, ‘I’ll see you another time.’ ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, her hand on his trousers, feeling for something. ‘I’m fucking tired,’ he snapped, shoving her away. Outside, the cold night air. Haloed street lamps. He started to walk quickly, not knowing where he was. And yes, those were footsteps following him, and as soon as he started to jog, hands seizing him. Threw him against the side of a parked van. The two men. Faceless in the shadows. His voice emerging as an effeminate squawk: ‘What d’you want?’ There were various issues. He had, they seemed to be telling him, entered into an agreement. So he owed them money. And he had hit her, they said. They wanted more money for that. ‘I did not hit her’. Everything he had on him, seemed to be what they wanted. ‘I never hit her …’ He took a punch to the face. Then, from a position on the pavement, handed over his wallet, and they emptied it of kuna and threw it on top of him.
And then he was alone, lying on a wet pavement, wondering if he was in fact dreaming. Please, let me be dreaming
His mouth seemed to be the wrong shape. Near his eyes, something … What was that?
Hubcap.
Fuck.
Hubcap of a …
Toyota Yaris?
Dizzy when he stood up.
And sick. Suddenly he felt very sick.
*
Two days later, when his mouth has deflated, he emerges and finds Hans-Pieter in the Umorni Putnik.
‘I heard about your night out,’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘Yeah, that. It was quite a night.’
‘I heard it,’ Hans-Pieter says.
It is some time in the afternoon. Maria is working, is there.
‘Oh, yeah?’ Murray wants to know, smiling worriedly. ‘What’d you hear?’
‘Damjan said it was a good night.’
Murray’s smile turns less worried. He says, ‘A fucking massive night, actually.’
‘You’ve been recovering,’ Hans-Pieter asks, ‘since then?’
‘That’s right. In the recovery position. If you know what I mean.’ Murray himself isn’t sure what he means. He tastes his lager, the first that has passed his lips since then.
Yesterday he experienced a sort of dark afternoon of the soul. Some hours of terrible negativity. A sense, essentially, that he had wasted his entire life, and now it was over. The sun was shining outside.
As it is now, igniting the yellow of the leaves that still cling to the little trees in front of the hostel.
He sees them through the dusty window.
‘How about you?’ he asks Hans-Pieter. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m okay,’ Hans-Pieter says.
Murray sees one of the leaves detach and drop.
Hans-Pieter says, ‘Damjan says you were sort of on the pull, the other night.’
‘What – I was?’
‘That’s what he said.’
Murray does something with his mouth, something uneasy. ‘Don’t know about that.’
‘Well,’ Hans-Pieter says, ‘I know a very nice lady, you might be interested in.’
‘Who’s that then?’ Murray asks snootily.
‘A very nice lady,’ Hans-Pieter says again. Then he whispers, ‘Maria’s mudder.’
In a savage whisper Murray says, ‘Maria’s mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘No fucking way.’
‘Why not?’
‘Fuck off,’ Murray scoffs.
‘Why not? She’s quite young …’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Forty-eight, I tink. And she’s in nice shape,’ Hans-Pieter tell him.
‘You’ve seen her, have you?’
‘Sure.’
Maria, having no one to serve, has ventured out in search of empties. She stops at Hans-Pieter’s shoulders, puts her hands on them. Her substantial hip is smack in Murray’s line of sight.
‘I was just telling Murray,’ Hans-Pieter says to her, half-turning his head, ‘about your mother.’
‘Yeah?’ she smiles. She seems to have forgiven Murray for the way he tagged along to Iron Man 3 with them the other day. It occurs to him, in fact, that the way he tagged along that day might actually have suggested to her the idea of fixing him up with her obviously lonely and desperate mother.
‘Just take her out for a drink,’ Hans-Pieter … what? Suggests? Orders? Murray is still wondering what to make of this development – fucking Hans-Pieter telling him what to do – when Maria says, ‘She’s really pretty. And much thinner than me.’
‘We won’t hold dat against her,’ Hans-Pieter says, almost suavely.
‘She’s always telling me I should lose weight.’
‘Don’t listen to her.’
‘It’s true – I should.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Hans-Pieter tells her. And then says to Murray, ‘So will you do it? Take her for a drink?’
It’s awkward, saying something like, ‘Not on your life, no fucking way,’ with Maria standing there, still smiling at him, a piece of pink-dyed hair falling over her eye.
‘You got a picture?’ he asks her after a few moments. ‘I mean, on your phone or something?’
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘Yeah, here.’
Leaning forward over Hans-Pieter’s shoulder, she passes Murray her phone.
He looks.
A woman holding a cat. Not very easy to make out. Thinner than Maria, yes. Okay? Maybe.
‘What about your father?’ he asks, handing back the phone without saying anything about the photo, and smirking. ‘He won’t mind?’
‘He lives in Austria,’ she says. ‘And they’re divorced. Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Murray says. It had been a joke. He had assumed that her father wasn’t still on the scene. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll give it a go.’
‘Do you want her number then?’ Maria asks.
‘She speaks English, does she?’
‘Of course.’
‘Or why don’t you call her?’ he suggests, suddenly nervous. ‘Set it up.’
Leaning on his shoulder, she looks at Hans-Pieter, wanting his opinion, perhaps even his permission.
‘Sure,’ Hans-Pieter says. ‘Set it up.’
Without warning, another leaf detaches itself from one of the trees outside and drops down to the pavement.
On his way home, a few hours later, Murray stops at Oaza to pick up a kebab. The plastic sign – palm tree, smiling camel – is illuminated in the gloom. One of the Albanian twins is standing around near the entrance, keeping an eye on things. He does not acknowledge Murray, and Murray, after a moment’s hesitation, says nothing to him either. Having ordered in English, he just waits there for his kebab, eyeing the slices of baklava as if wondering whether to have one. He wishes more than ever that the twins would offer him some sign, some little sign, that they looked on him as an equal – as an equal, no more than that. Damjan had been honoured with a nod, a few words, had been thereby elevated in Murray’s estimation. He thinks more highly of Damjan now. The baklavas shine, sodden with honey. Yes, Damjan seems in some way superior to him now.
Seemingly unaware of Murray’s presence the twin exchanges a few words, in some language Murray does not know, with the kebabist, who is shoving tongfuls of shredded salad into a pitta. He spoons on the sauces and hands Murray his supper, tightly wrapped in tinfoil, warm to the touch.
‘Thanks,’ Murray says.
The man just nods.
And then, as he leaves, Murray does it. He looks the twin straight in the eye. He says, in a loud firm voice, ‘See ya, then, pal.’
And then he is outside, in the night air.
The twin had said nothing to him. Nothing.
Maybe he was just surprised.
That night Murray has a dream. He is lying on his bed. Outside, rain is falling – falling heavily and steadily. The window is open. He is lying on his bed, listening to the rain. It is like rain he might have listened to somewhere else, long ago. The room is strangely empty. There is nothing in it except the bed on which he is lying with his head at the wrong end, where his feet should be. He lies there listening to the rain and from the darkness of the bathroom, a large dog emerges – an Alsatian. Panting quietly, the dog lies down on the floor next to the bed. As it lies down it knocks over a glass that is there – the sound of the glass falling and then rolling a little way across the floor. With a tiny whimper the dog yawns, and then starts to pant again. The rain is still falling. Without otherwise moving, Murray has stretched out his hand and is stroking the dog’s neck, the deep fur. The dog pants quietly. The rain falls and falls, making a puddle on the floor next to the open window.
On Sunday afternoon he takes Maria’s mother out for a drink.
He was relieved, when they met outside the Irish pub, not to fancy her at all. Not at all. She was a tallish middle-aged woman, ungainly in a pair of jeans, her short hair dyed a deep purple like the outside of an aubergine.
When they shook hands, her hand felt frozen and knobbly in his.
The Irish pub was just about the poshest place in town, where the top people from the town hall went, and the senior members of the local mafia. A Guinness in there was almost as expensive as it would be in London. The interior was like a transients’ pub near a large British mainline station. Very tired and heavily soiled. To that extent, it was authentic. The table service was not.
They sat in a padded booth facing each other and Murray asked the waiter for a half-litre of stout. Maria’s mother had a white wine.
Not fancying her at all, Murray was less nervous than he had feared he might be. Her English was excellent, and soon he was telling her about London and telesales and, less forthcomingly, about Scotland. She seemed interested in Scotland, kept asking him questions about it. He didn’t much want to talk about that. As darkness fell outside, he was telling her about the Mercedes S-Class he had once had, and the top-of-the-range Michelin tyres he had put on it. ‘Top top quality,’ he told her.
She nodded. She was drinking her second glass of wine.
He was on his third stout. ‘Makes a big difference, the tyres,’ he told her, encircling the stout with his hands.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Huge difference.’
She was a schoolteacher, an English teacher. And maybe, he thought, he did fancy her slightly after all.
She’d seemed as interested in the S-Class as any woman ever had, he’d say that for her. She’d wanted him to explain what an S-Class was, for a start. So he’d walked her through the entire Mercedes range, from the 1.8 litre A-Class through the C- and E-Classes, the various engine options available for those, all the way up to the S 500 L.
It took about half an hour.
Then he said, ‘What sort of car do you drive?’
Some Suzuki, she said.
He said he didn’t know much about Suzukis.
‘Never mind.’
‘Happy with it?’ he asked.
She nodded, smiled. ‘It’s fine.’
‘What … What size engine’s it got?’
She seemed to find something funny about the question. She laughed anyway. ‘I don’t know. I’m so happy about Maria and Hans-Pieter,’ she said. ‘He’s such a nice man.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Murray agreed vaguely, looking out of the window for a moment. He didn’t want to talk about Hans-Pieter, that was for sure.
‘I wish Maria would lose some weight,’ her mother said earnestly. ‘Don’t you think she should lose some weight?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Will you mention it to her? She doesn’t listen to me.’
‘Me?’ Murray said, not knowing quite what to make of this. ‘Sure. I’ll have a word wi’ her. D’you want another drink?’
‘I’m okay. Thank you.’
Starting on his fourth stout he decided that he definitely did fancy her, quite a lot.
He was telling her about his business – the airport transfer thing. He had finally managed to get hold of Blago – ‘my local partner’ was how he described him to Maria’s mother – and Blago had told him that the money had arrived safely. They would drive down to Osijek next week, was the idea, to have a look at the ex-police minibuses. Make a decision on that. It was moving forward. He told her it had the potential to turn into something ‘fairly major’. Looking her intently in the eye, he said, ‘The transport sector’s woefully underdeveloped in this part of Croatia.’
She agreed.
It was then that he tried to take her hand. She quickly withdrew it, but with a little smile that was open to misinterpretation.
So he went to the gents and promised himself to have another try later. He zipped himself up and washed his hands. ‘Death,’ he said to his preened, sickly image in the mirror, ‘or victory.’
*
The Wednesday of the following week.
Maria is working, so Hans-Pieter and Murray are having lunch together. They walk to the Chinese place, Zlatna Rijeka. It’s in a melancholy little square, cobbled, and full of drifting leaves.
Inside, they confront the buffet.
Hans-Pieter chooses a heap of beansprouts and carrot slices bright with MSG.
Murray starts with a plate of dark shreds of meat, also very shiny.
They sit in the window and watch the world go by. There is an old bookshop opposite. Some bicycles chained to a metal frame.
It’s obvious what Hans-Pieter, shovelling beansprouts into his wide mouth, will want to talk about.
He must already know what happened. He must have heard from Maria. Still, he says, ‘How’d it go on Sunday?’
Murray concentrates on his glossy meat mixed with pieces of onion and green pepper. ‘You tell me,’ he murmurs.
‘Well,’ Hans-Pieter admits, pursuing the last slippery beansprouts on his plate with the tines of a cheap fork, ‘not too good, I heard.’
‘I don’t know what happened,’ Murray protests quietly. ‘I don’t know how that happened,’ he says again.
Hans-Pieter watches him for a moment. ‘The police?’
Murray seems very low.
‘Maria still not talking to me?’ he asks, his eyes down.
Hans-Pieter says, ‘She wants an explanation. From you. About what happened. She doesn’t understand.’
‘About what happened?’
‘Yah.’
‘When we left the pub,’ Murray says, ‘I took her hands. She let me do that.’
Hans-Pieter nods and swigs from his Sprite.
‘She let me do that,’ Murray says again.
‘Yah.’
‘So I thought, Okay. You know …’
Hans-Pieter indicates that he does.
‘So I was holding her hands …’
Her hands were icy, knobbly. He was in a fog of Guinness at the time. She was smiling. He sees it now, that fearful rictus.
‘… and I tried to kiss her,’ Murray says. He meets Hans-Pieter’s pale, blonde-lashed eyes. ‘And then. And then. She sorta scRReeemed.’
‘She screamed?’
‘Aye.’
‘Why did she scream?’ Hans-Pieter asks. He seems to put the question to his Sprite – he is not looking at Murray, anyway.
‘I was just trying to kiss her,’ Murray says.
‘And then what happened?’
‘Then some fucker was holding me down, someone else was phoning th
e police.’
‘And what was she doing?’
‘What was she doing? I don’t know.’
‘So then the police arrived,’ Hans-Pieter prompts.
‘Aye,’ Murray says. ‘They arrived. And I suppose I musta given one of’m a shove or something.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I don’t know … The way they were treating me …’
‘I understand,’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘So then they took me to the station. With the fucking siren going and everything.’
Hans-Pieter just nods sympathetically.
‘And I spent the night,’ Murray says, ‘in a fucking cell.’
‘They let you go in the morning.’ Hans-Pieter obviously knows the story already.
‘They said Mrs Jevtovic didn’t want to make a case against me. And I thought, Who the fuck is Mrs Jevtovic?’
‘That’s Maria’s mudder.’
‘Yeah, I know. I just wasn’t thinking straight that morning.’
That morning. Not nice. One of the very lowest points. Emerging into the daylight …
‘I just tried to kiss her,’ he says, almost tearfully. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Okay.’
‘What does she say I did?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Hans-Pieter says, evasively.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Murray tells him.
Hans-Pieter says nothing. He has finished his lunch.
Murray picks up his fork and sets about finishing his own, those strings of meat in dark, sticky sauce.
His teeth encounter something. ‘What the fuck,’ he says. He spits the object, small and hard as a shotgun pellet, into a paper napkin.
