All That Man Is by David Szalay Page A

He could search all night, he thinks, and not find her.
    Holding his expensive Beck’s, he scans the place with increasing desperation. For the first time it occurs to him that she might not actually be there.
    He has a nervous pull of the lager and pushes his way through a hedge of partying anonymity.
    Some girls, on heat, are flaunting on a platform.
    At their feet, a pool of staring lads in sweat-wet T-shirts. He watches for a moment, up-skirting with the other males, and then, with a shock of adrenalin, he sees someone, a face he sort of knows – one of her friends from this morning, he thinks it is, moving away from him.
    He follows her. His eyes stuck to the skin of her exposed back, its dull shine of perspiration, he tears a path through interlacing limbs.
    And she leads him to Iveta. She leads him to Iveta. He sees her in a pop of light as the music winds up. She does not see him. Her eyes are shut. She is in a man’s hands, mouths melting together.
    And then the hit crashes into its chorus.

5
    The Hotel Vangelis, the next afternoon. Waist deep in water he is at the in-pool bar, drinking Cypriot lager and absorbing sunburn. He still smells of Ermenegildo Zegna Uomo. He had welcomed the arrival, about an hour before, of Sandra and Charmian. They are stationed next to him now, huge on their submerged stools, and Sandra is talking. She is telling him how the man she always refers to as ‘Charmian’s father’ died horrifically after falling into a vat of molten zinc – he worked in an industrial installation of some sort – and how heartbroken she was after that. Tasting his Keo, Bérnard appreciates the parity she seems to accord that event and his finding a girl he had only just met snogging someone else in a nightclub.
    Already quite drunk, and exhausted by a night spent wandering the litter-strewn streets of Protaras, he had told them about that. He found he wanted to talk about it. And when he had finished his story, Sandra sighed and said she knew how he felt, and told him the story of her husband’s death.
    It was awful enough to be on the news – she is telling him how upsetting it was to see strangers talking about it on the local TV news.
    â€˜And the worst thing,’ she says, ‘is they think he was
alive
for up to twenty seconds after he fell in.’
    â€˜When did it happen?’ Bérnard asks her morosely.
    â€˜Nine years ago,’ Sandra says, sighing again. ‘And I miss him every single day.’
    Bérnard finishes his Keo and hands the empty plastic pot to the barman.
    â€˜What do you do, Bernard?’ Sandra asks him, pronouncing his name the English way.
    He tells her he was working for his uncle, until he was sacked.
    â€˜Why’d he sack you then?’ she asks.
    â€˜He sounds like a tosser,’ she says, when he has told her what happened.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he says. ‘What is it, a tosser?’
    â€˜A tosser?’ Sandra laughs, and looks at Charmian. ‘How would you explain?’
    â€˜Sort of like an idiot?’ Charmian suggests.
    â€˜But what’s it mean literally?’
    â€˜Literally?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well, it’s like wanker, isn’t it?’
    Sandra laughs again. ‘How do we explain that to Bernard?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    Sandra says, turning to Bérnard, ‘Literally, it means someone who plays with himself.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    â€˜You know what I mean?’ Sandra is smirking.
    Charmian seems embarrassed – her face has turned all pink, and she is urgently sucking up cider and looking the other way.
    â€˜I think so,’ Bérnard says, smiling slightly embarrassedly himself.
    â€˜But really it just means an idiot, someone we don’t like.’
    â€˜Then he is a tosser, my uncle.’
    â€˜He sounds like it.’ She turns to Charmian again. ‘Imagine sacking your own nephew, just because he wants to