All That Man Is (34 page)

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 the 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.

‘What the fuck is that?'

Hans-Pieter peers down at the wet napkin, the tiny object.

Murray is eating again.

After examining it for a while, Hans-Pieter says, ‘Shit, you know what I think it is?'

‘What?'

‘I think … I mean, I'm not sure … I think it's one of those microchips.'

‘What microchips?' Murray says, with his mouth full.

‘They use to identify animals.'

‘Animals?'

‘Yeah, like dogs,' Hans-Pieter says.

Murray, after a moment, spits out what is in his mouth.

‘What are you saying?' he pants, distraught. ‘Are you saying I'm eating a fucking
dog
?'

‘I don't know,' Hans-Pieter says.

‘Am I eating a dog?' Murray shouts at him. ‘Is that what you're saying?'

‘I don't know …'

‘Am I eating a fucking dog?'

‘I don't know,' Hans-Pieter says, shocked and embarrassed by the shouting, and by the tears that are so unexpectedly now welling out of Murray's eyes, that are starting on their way down his strong, flushed face.

Preposterously he tries to hide it, his face, with a scrap of paper napkin.

‘I don't believe it, I don't believe it,' he mumbles.

Hans-Pieter looks helplessly at the Chinese woman overseeing the buffet.

With his face in his hands, Murray is sobbing openly now. He says something it's hard to make out through the sobs, the wet fingers, the fraying paper napkin.

The Chinese woman has made eye contact with Hans-Pieter. She wants him to do something, to stop his friend upsetting her other patrons.

So Hans-Pieter puts a timid hand on Murray's shoulder and suggests, in a low voice, that they leave.

Knocking. Knocking.

And voices.

        
Murray?

Murray?

Then silence, again.

Shame.

They meet at Džoker. Hans-Pieter and Damjan are already there. A few weeks have passed. Murray has not been seen much in that time, though Maria has sort of forgiven him – will let him sit quietly in the Umorni Putnik, even if she is still not speaking to him. He has not seen much of Hans-Pieter either. Hans-Pieter has been painting Maria's flat, painting out the fluorescent orange with something less oppressive, less like living inside a migraine.

Murray fetches a Pan from Matteus, and joins Hans-Pieter and Damjan at the table near entrance, under the mirror.

‘
Živjeli!
' It is the only Croatian word he knows.

He takes off his scarf. A cold front is moving across the flat land, laying down frosts in the morning, frosts that quickly melt to leave everything shining wet. ‘So,' he says, sitting.

‘So,' Hans-Pieter echoes, his face stippled with paint.

Damjan says nothing. There is a TV showing a Champions League match, with the sound off, and he is watching it.

‘We've not seen much of you, Murray,' Hans-Pieter says.

‘No,' Murray says. ‘I've been staying in.'

‘Okay.'

‘End of the month,' Murray says. ‘You know.'

End of the month, money tight. Hans-Pieter knows. He nods. He says, ‘How are you?'

The question seems loaded. Murray looks at him suspiciously. ‘Okay. I suppose.'

‘You've not been out much?'

‘No. I
said
. I've been staying in.'

‘Okay.' Hans-Pieter seems tense about something. He says, ‘I told Damjan about your situation.'

‘My situation? What situation?'

‘Your … Your life situation.'

‘What's that mean?' Murray looks at Damjan, who is watching the football. ‘What's this about?'

‘Damjan thinks,' Hans-Pieter says. He stops.

‘What's he think?'

‘He thinks that maybe … Maybe …'

‘Maybe what?'

‘Maybe you are cursed,' Hans-Pieter says.

Murray emits a strangled laugh. ‘What?'

Hans-Pieter appeals to Damjan, who is still staring at the TV, Real Madrid against someone. ‘Don't you think that?'