All That Man Is (2 page)

His pen hovered.

Then he did it, he wrote the word.

Didcot.

Her name, more potent still, he has never summoned the nerve to form.

Now, when Ferdinand says it Simon just nods and pours more sugar into his coffee.

He longs to talk about her.

He would like nothing more than to spend the whole afternoon talking about her, or just hearing her name spoken aloud again and again, those four syllables that seem to hold within them everything worth living for in the whole world. Instead, he starts to talk, not for the first time, about the impossibility of achieving any sort of satisfaction as a tourist.

Ferdinand lowers his eyes and, stirring his coffee, listens while his friend holds forth ill-temperedly on this subject.

What was the tourist trying to do? See things? See more of life? Life is everywhere – you don't need to traipse around Europe looking for it …

the only where I want to be

Withdrawing from even the pretence of listening, Ferdinand starts to write a postcard. The picture: Kraków Cathedral, black and jagged. The postcard is to a girl in England with whom he is involved in a vague flirtation, who he quite likes sometimes – who he thinks, anyway, he ought to keep in play. He smiles and feels the bristle of his strong chin as he writes,
We're both growing beards
– it sounds pleasingly manly. When he has finished, he reads out what he has written for his friend's approval. Then he stands up to look for the loo.

He is away for some time and sitting in the sun-filled restaurant Simon watches the smoke climb from the tip of his cigarette.

It is the tiredness, maybe, that makes him feel like crying.

What am I doing here?

The feeling of loneliness is immense as a storm front. His friend, after ten days of travel, he finds irritating most of the time. He struggled to muster a smile when he read out that postcard, and showed him the little sketch he had done in green ink of a bearded man. And the way he had sprayed himself with his Joop! before putting his pack in the locker at the station. The way he had ostentatiously lifted his T-shirt to spray the Joop!, to show the world the whorl of hair on his chest … At that moment … And this is supposed to be his
friend
he is with. As immense as a storm front is the feeling of loneliness that overcomes him.

As he watches the smoke climb from the tip of his cigarette.

In the sun-filled restaurant.

*

In the evening, they present themselves at the flat again and find Otto's sister there with two male friends in leathers, one small with a faceful of piercings – Lutz – the other much taller with a walrus moustache – Willi. Otto's sister has no idea who Simon and Ferdinand are, but when they explain she suggests they make themselves at home and wait for Otto – he is sure to turn up eventually. She and her friends, she says, are just leaving.

Left alone, Simon and Ferdinand do make themselves at home. The flat is surprisingly large and they wander through it taking minor liberties, helping themselves to some expensive-looking whisky, and opening drawers. In one drawer Simon finds an odd pack of cards. They must be tarot cards, he thinks. Idly, he turns one over – a picture of a hand holding some sort of stick.
As der Stäbe
, it says. Ace of Staves? A phallic symbol, obviously. Not exactly subtle. Whatever. Nonsense. He shuts the drawer.

*

It is about two o'clock in the morning when Otto storms in and finds them in their sleeping bags on the living-room floor.

He switches on the light and screams.

Then he notices Ferdinand, who has just lifted his head and is squinting up at him, and shouts, ‘Fuck, man, you
made
it!'

‘Otto …'

‘Fuck!'

‘I hope you don't mind …' Ferdinand starts.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?' Otto screams at him.

‘I hope you don't mind that we're here …'

‘Do you think I mind?' Otto shouts.

‘I don't know …'

‘I was waiting for you.' Someone else is standing there, at Otto's shoulder, peering over it.

‘Listen, we tried to phone you …'

‘Yah?'

‘You weren't here.'

‘I wasn't here!' Otto explains, still shouting.

‘And you weren't answering your mobile …'

‘I lost it!'

‘Oh.'

‘Yeah, I lost it,' Otto says, suddenly in a quiet, dismal voice. ‘I lost it.'

Having sat down on one of the sofas, he starts to make a spliff, disappointing Simon who had hoped he would immediately turn off the light and leave.

Otto is wearing a silly hat and his jacket sleeves stop well short of his wrists. His Adam's apple goes up and down as he works on the spliff. It turns out that he and his friend have jobs all week serving drinks at an event somewhere outside Berlin. While he makes the spliff, Ferdinand thanks him again and again for letting them stay.

‘Listen, again, thank you
so
much,' Ferdinand says, sitting up in his sleeping bag.

‘Hey, fuck, forget about it,' Otto says, with lordly indifference, from the sofa, still wearing his hat.

‘What, er, what about the policeman?' Ferdinand asks.

Otto doesn't seem to hear the question. ‘What?'

‘The policeman. You know.' Ferdinand indicates the spliff that is taking shape in Otto's lap.

Otto is dismissive. ‘Oh, fuck that man!' Then he adds, ‘He doesn't care.'

‘What's he doing there anyway?'

‘My father,' Otto says. ‘It's bullshit.'

‘Your father?'

‘Yeah, it sucks.' Putting the finishing touches to the spliff, applying saliva with the tip of his little finger, Otto says, ‘He's in the government. You know …'

‘In the government?' Simon says suspiciously, speaking for the first time.

Otto ignores him and sparks the spliff.

Simon has taken an immediate dislike to Otto. He wishes Ferdinand would stop thanking him. For his part, he says almost nothing and when, after the first spliff has been smoked, Otto encourages him to make another, he takes the materials without a word. Otto keeps telling him to use more ‘shit'. He and Ferdinand are talking hysterically about people they know in London. Later, Otto says Simon should make another spliff, and again keeps pressing him to use more shit. They are all quite stoned. Someone has turned on the TV and found something possibly pornographic – some naked women in a wheatfield, it seems to be. Simon ignores it. The others are laughing at it. Otto's friend, Simon suddenly notices, has left. Simon has no memory of him leaving. He has an unpleasant feeling that he imagined him, that no one else was ever there. The others are laughing at the women in the wheatfield, Otto staring eagerly at the screen, his eyes shining, his tongue half-out, transfixed.

Simon himself feels very shaky. Without saying anything he stands up and wanders off to find the bathroom. There, forgetting where he is, he spends a long time staring at some shampoo bottles and a windup plastic frog on the tiled edge of the bath. He just stands there for a long time, staring at them. He is staring at the wind-up plastic frog, its innocent green face. The hum of the extractor fan sounds more and more like sobbing.

When he sits down on the living-room floor again, about twenty minutes later, Otto asks him, ‘How much shit is left?'

‘None,' Simon says. The living room – all beige and cream and Oriental art – seems unfamiliar, as if he is seeing it for the first time.

‘You
finished
the shit?'

Ferdinand, in spite of himself, starts giggling, and then keeps saying, ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry …'

‘You finished the shit?' Otto says again, still in the same tone of disbelief.

Ferdinand giggles and says he is sorry.

‘Yes,' Simon says. He has also hot-rocked the pale, lustrous carpet but he decides not to mention that now.

‘Fuck,' Otto says. And then, as if it might have been a joke, ‘Really, you finished it?'

‘Really.'

‘I'm so sorry,' Ferdinand says, suddenly with an extremely serious expression on his face.

Otto sighs. ‘Okay,' he says. He has not quite come to terms with it though. ‘Fuck,' he says a few seconds later, ‘you finished the shit …'

Slowly, Simon inserts himself into his sleeping bag and turns away from them. They are still talking when he falls asleep.

*

The next day he and Ferdinand visit Potsdam. It is the one thing Simon seems to want to do while they are in Berlin – see the Palace of Sanssouci.

From Potsdam station, an ornate green-painted gate. Then an avenue of small trees, and the palace on the summit of a terraced hill. At the foot of the hill a fountain flings high into the air, and white stone statues dot the park – men molesting women, or fighting each other, or frowning nobly at something far away, each frozen in some posture of obscure frenzy, frozen among quiet hedges, or next to the still surfaces of ornamental pools.

Simon wanders through this landscape – the long straight tree-lined walks, the fountains where they intersect, the facades where they end – with a kind of exhilaration.

There is a place to have tea and they sit on metal outdoor furniture and he talks about how the whole landscape, like the music of J. S. Bach, is expressive of the natural order of the human mind.

Ferdinand, eating cake, complains about the acne on his back, that it stains his shirt.

Simon has a similar problem but does not mention it. (He is fastidious, also, about concealing his body from his friend.) Instead, he puts down
The Ambassadors
, and tells Ferdinand about Frederick William, Frederick the Great's father, and his obsession with his guardsmen – how they all had to be extremely tall, and how he fussed over the details of their uniforms, and how he liked to watch them march when he was feeling unwell. The story makes Ferdinand laugh. ‘That's brilliant,' he says, using his finger to take the last smear of cream from his plate. Complacently, Simon finishes his tea and picks up his book again. It is late afternoon – they had trouble finding the place. The shadows of the statues stretch out over the smooth lawns.

‘What should we do this evening?' Ferdinand says.

Simon, without looking up from his book, gives a minimal shrug.

Otto's sister, who was in the flat when they woke up, had suggested they join her, and her friends Lutz and Willi, for a night on the town. Ferdinand now alludes to this possibility. Simon, once again, is studiedly non-committal. The prospect of spending the evening with Otto's sister and her friends fills him with something not unlike fear, a sort of fluttering panic. ‘They're twats, aren't they?' he says, still in his book. He and Ferdinand have spent much of the day laughing at Lutz and Willi – their leathers, their piercings, Lutz's shrill laugh, Willi's morose moustache.

‘They seem okay,' Ferdinand says wistfully. For ten days, he has had only Simon for company. ‘And Otto's sister's nice.'

‘Is she?'

‘Isn't she?'

‘She's okay,' Simon pronounces, turning a page, ‘I suppose.'

‘Anyway, what else are we going to do?' Ferdinand asks, with a sort of laugh.

‘Don't know.'

‘I mean, let's just have a drink with them anyway,' Ferdinand says. ‘They can't be that bad.'

‘What time is it?'

‘Time we were getting back.'

‘Really?' Simon says, turning his head to look at the shadow-filled park. ‘I like it here.'

In the end, they do spend part of the evening with Otto's sister and Lutz and Willi. Simon seems determined not to enjoy himself. He just sits there with a solemn expression on his face while the others talk until Ferdinand is almost embarrassed by his presence – a detached unhappy figure, sipping home-made wine. They are in a hippyish place in Kreuzberg, sitting outside, under some trees whose blossoms have a spermy smell.

‘What's the matter with your friend?' Lutz asks Ferdinand, leaning over to whisper it with a jingle of piercings. ‘Is he okay?' Lutz is sandy-haired and ugly.

‘I don't know,' Ferdinand says, loud enough for Simon to overhear him, though he pretends not to. ‘He's always like that.'

‘Then he must be fun to travel with.'

Ferdinand just laughs.

Lutz says, ‘He's just shy, no?'

‘Maybe.'

‘I'm sure he's okay.'

‘Of course,' Ferdinand says. ‘He's very intelligent.'

‘I'm sure.'

‘And very funny sometimes.'

‘Yah?'

‘Really.'

‘I can't imagine it,' Lutz says.

His friend Willi, however, is almost as taciturn as Simon, and smiles as little, and for the most part the evening is a matter of Ferdinand, Lutz, and Otto's sister. They talk, inevitably, about the places Ferdinand and Simon have already been to, and what they have done there – the tourist sites they have visited, mostly ecclesiastical. This outrages Lutz. ‘You can do all that shit when you're older!' he protests. ‘You don't need to do that
now
! What do you want to do in
churches
? That's for when your hairs are grey. How old are you boys?' he asks.

They tell him – seventeen.

‘You're so young still,' Lutz says feelingly, though he is at most ten years older. ‘Have fun, okay? Okay?'

Have fun.

An overnight train to Prague. There is not a single empty seat, and they spend the night lying on the floor outside the toilet, where they are frequently kicked by passing feet.

Some time after dawn they stand up and look for something to eat.

Outside, the undulating landscape skims past in lovely morning light.

Pine forests wrapped in smoky mist.

Simon is still thinking of a dream he had during one particular snatch of sleep on the floor. Something to do with something under a lake, something that was his. Then he was talking to someone from school, talking about Karen Fielding. The person he was talking to had used a strange word, a word that might not even exist. And then he had passed Karen Fielding herself in a narrow doorway, and lowered his eyes, and when he looked up she had smiled at him and he had woken saturated, for a moment, with indescribable joy.