All That Man Is (20 page)

He finds himself thinking about that, about the terminal date of the Middle Ages, as they pass across the Weisenauer Rheinbrücke, the water on either side a sluggish khaki.

Modernity was what happened next.

Modernity, which has never much interested him. Modernity, what's happening now.

It started here in Mainz.

And the Roman Empire ended here – from here the legions tried to outstare the tribes on the other side of the demarcating waterway, where now there is the Opel factory at Rüsselsheim, and a little further on Frankfurt airport, the actual airport, an enormity flanking the motorway for five whole minutes.

And the weather darkens again as they leave the airport behind.

What has been said in the last hour?

Nothing.

Nothing has been said.

Pine forests on hillsides start to envelop them on the east side of the Main. And fog.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

Ché la diritta via era smarrita

Well, here it is. Dark pine forests, hemming the motorway. Shapes of fog throw themselves at the windscreen.

Finally someone speaks. He says, ‘When did you find out?'

‘A few days ago,' she says. ‘I didn't want to tell you on the phone.'

‘No.'

A few more minutes, and then he says, ‘And is it mine? Are you sure it's mine? I have to ask.'

She says nothing.

‘Well, I just don't know, do I?' he says.

*

Sex happens, surprisingly, at the Gasthaus Sonne in Trennfeld. It's what they always do – hurry to the hired space to undress. It's what they always do, and they do it now out of habit, not knowing what else to do when they are alone in the hotel room. This time, however, he makes no effort to please her. He wants her to dislike him. If she decides she dislikes him, he thinks, she may decide that she does not want this pregnancy. He is hurried, forceful, almost violent. And when she is in tears afterwards, he feels awful and sits on the toilet with his head in his hands.

It took them an hour to find Trennfeld in the fog – a village of tall half-timbered houses on a steep bluff above the Main. Every second house with a sign saying
Zimmer Frei.
A few more formal inns – with parking space in front and paths down to the river at the back – in one of which they have a room.

He had told her, as they picked their way through the fog, that she should not assume, should she decide to keep this child, that it would mean they would stay together. It would not necessarily mean that. Not at all. It was only fair, he said, that he should tell her that.

She said nothing.

She had said little or nothing for the last two hours.

Then she said, ‘You don't understand.'

Sliding across a mysterious foggy junction, he said, ‘What don't I understand?'

‘That I love you,' she said drily.

Well, she would say that
, he thought,
wouldn't she
. Still, his hands took a firmer hold on the wheel.

A sign at the roadside told them, then, that they had arrived at Trennfeld.

And there it was, the picturesque street of half-timbered houses. The Gasthaus Sonne. The low-beamed reception area. The narrow stairs with the Internet router flickering on the wall, up which the smiling Frau led them to their room.

She had a shower and found him lying on the bed, on the grape-coloured counterpane, waiting for her.

Later, when he emerges from the bathroom's rose-tiled box, she is still crying, naked except for the coverlet that she has pulled partially over herself. ‘I'm sorry,' he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. It does not sound very sincere so he says it again. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's just,' he says, ‘this is such a shock. To me.'

‘You don't think it's a shock to me?' There is a pillow over her head. Her voice is muffled, tear-clogged, defiant.

He looks from her pale shoulders to the insipid watercolour on the orange wall.

‘Of course it is,' he says. ‘That's why we need to think about this. We need to think about it seriously. I mean …' He wonders how to put this. ‘You need to think about
your
life.'

He knows she is ambitious. She is a TV journalist – pops up on the local Kraków news interviewing farmers about the drought, or the mayor of some nearby town about his new leisure centre and how he managed to snare matching funds from the European Union. She is only twenty-five, and she is sort of famous, in the Kraków area. (She probably makes more money than he does, now he thinks about it.) People say hello to her in the street sometimes, point to her on the shopping-centre escalator. He was there when that happened. ‘What was that about?' he said. ‘You're famous?'

‘No,' she laughed. ‘Not really.'

She is though, and she wants more. He knows that.

‘Do you see what I'm saying?' he asks.

*

They spend a few hours in the dim, curtained room as the afternoon wears on. Nothing outside the room, on the other side of the crimson curtains, which glow dully with the daylight pressing on them from without, seems to have any significance. The room itself seems pregnant, swollen with futures in the blood-dim light.

And the light persists. It is high summer. The evenings last for ever.

Finally, as if outstared by the sun, they dress and leave.

Outside it is warm and humid. They start to walk up the picturesque half-timbered street. There are some other people around, people strolling in the evening, and on the terraces of the two or three inns, people.

She has said nothing. He feels, however, he feels more and more, that when she thinks about the situation, she will see that it would not be sensible to keep it. It would just not be
sensible
. And she
is
sensible. He knows that about her. She is not sentimental. She takes her own life seriously. Has plans for herself, is successfully putting them in train. It is one of the things he likes about her.

He notices that there are cigarette vending machines, several of them, in the street, out in the open. They look strange among the fairytale houses. A village of neurotic smokers. He would like to have a cigarette himself. Sometimes,
in extremis
, he still smokes.

Nothing seems very solid, and in fact there is a mist, nearly imperceptible, hanging in the street as the warm evening sucks the moisture out of the wet earth.

They sit down at a table on one of the terraces.

He wonders what to talk about. Should he just talk about anything? About this pretty place? About the high steep roofs of the houses? About the carved gables? About the long day he has had? About what they might do tomorrow?

None of these subjects seems to have any significance. And on the one subject that does seem to, he feels he has said everything there is to say. He does not want to say it all again. He does not want her to feel that he is pressuring her.

It is very important, he thinks, that the decision should be hers, that she should
feel
it was hers.

They sit in silence for a while, surrounded by soft German voices. Older people, mostly, in this place. Older people on their summer holidays.

He says, desperate to know, ‘What are you thinking?'

‘Why did you choose this place?'

‘Why?' He is not prepared for the simple, ordinary question. ‘It wasn't too far from the airport,' he says. ‘I didn't want to drive too much further today. It was in the direction we were going. The hotel looked okay. That's all. It's okay, isn't it?'

‘It's fine,' she says.

He turns his head to take in part of the street and says, ‘It's not very interesting, I know.'

‘That's why I like it.' They share that too – an interest in uninteresting places.

‘I wouldn't like to stay here for a week or something,' he says.

‘No,' she agrees.

Though after all, why not? He does find a lot to like in this place. It is tidy. Quietly prosperous. Secluded in its modestly hilly landscape. Evidently, not much ever happens. There aren't even any shops – or perhaps there is one somewhere, one that is open mornings only, on weekdays (except Wednesday). Hence, presumably, the cigarette machines. Maybe, with a teaching post at the Universität Würzburg, twenty minutes up the motorway, he would be able to find a way of living here …

As a train of thought it is absurd.

And escapist, in its own weird way.

A weird escapist fantasy, is what it is.

A fantasy of hiding himself in a place where nothing ever happens.

She has another taste of her peach juice. She is drinking peach juice, though that does not necessarily mean anything – she is not a habitual drinker.

‘And now,' she says, ‘we'll never forget it.'

The noises around them seem to slide away to the edges of a tight, soundless space. He hears his own voice saying, ‘Why will we never forget it?' as if it wasn't obvious what she meant. And when she says nothing, he wonders, fighting down a wave of panic,
Is this her way of telling me?

He does not want her to feel that he is pressuring her.

Panicking, he says, ‘Please don't make a decision now that you'll wish later you hadn't made.'

‘I won't,' she says.

They sit there, swifts shrieking in the hot white sky.

‘Just,' he says. ‘Please. You know what I think. I won't say it all again.'

And then a minute later, he is saying it all again, everything he said in the hotel.

About how they don't know each other that well.

About the impact it will have on her life. On their life together.

There is a furtive desperation in his eyes.

‘Stop this,
please
,' she says, turning away in her sunglasses. ‘Stop it.'

‘I'm sorry …'

She starts to well up again; a solitary tear plummets down her face.

‘I'm sorry,' he says again, embarrassed. People are starting to look at them.

He has, he thinks, really fucked this up now. His hand moves to take hers, then stops.

He feels as if his surface has been stripped, like a layer of paint, all the underlying terrors exposed.

‘I just need to know,' he says.

‘
What
do you need to know?'

It seems obvious. ‘What's going to
happen
?'

‘What you want to happen,' she says.

‘It's not what
I
want …'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘I don't want you to do it just because
I
want it …'

‘I'm
not
doing it just because
you
want it.'

It is like waking up from a nightmare, to find your life still there, as you left it. The sounds of the world, too, are there again. It is as if his ears have popped. ‘Okay,' he says, now taking her hand. ‘Okay.' It would not do to seem too happy. And in fact, to his surprise, there is a trace of sadness now, somewhere inside him – a sort of vapour trail of sadness on the otherwise blue sky of his mind.

She sobs for a minute or two, quietly, while he holds her hand and tries to ignore the looks of the pensioners who are watching them now without pretence, as if, in this place where nothing ever happens, they were a piece of street theatre.

Which they aren't.

The motorway is taking them north-east, towards Dresden. In the vicinity of each town the traffic thickens. The sun looks down at it all, at the hurrying traffic glittering on the motorways of Germany. It is Monday.

They woke late, to find the sun beating at the curtains, beating to be let in. Heat throbbed from the sun-beaten curtains. They had kicked off the bedding. She had not slept well. She was, in some sense, it seemed to him, in mourning. He had no intention of talking about it, not today.

Last night, after the scene on the terrace, they had walked for an hour, walked to the end of the village and then along the river – little paths led down to it, to wooden jetties where boats were tied in the green water. Steep banks on the other side, where there were more pretty houses. Clouds of gnats floated over the water. It was evening, then, finally. Dusk.

They walked back to the Gasthaus Sonne. They hadn't eaten anything.

In the harshly lit room, she said, ‘You always get what you want. I know that.'

‘That isn't true,' he murmured. Though even then he thought,
Maybe it is. Maybe I do
.

She was undressing. ‘I should get used to that,' she said. ‘I know people like you.'

‘Meaning?'

‘People that just drift through life, always getting what they want.' She was speaking quietly, not looking at him.

‘You don't know me,' he told her.

‘I know you well enough,' she said.

‘Well enough for what?'

She went into the bathroom with her washbag.

He lay down on the soft mattress. He was still trying to think of a single significant instance, in his whole life, when he did not get what he wanted. The fact was, his life was exactly how he wanted it to be.

It had been his plan to visit Bamberg the next morning, and that is what they did. They stuck to his plan, and spent the morning sightseeing, as if nothing had happened. In the Romanesque simplicity of the cathedral, he pored over the tombs of Holy Roman Emperors.

Heinrich II, † 1024

The middle ages. Yesterday's mad scenes next to the motorway, among the trucks, seemed very far away in the limpid atmosphere of the nave. Their feet whispered on the stone floor. They were walking together, looking at statues. He felt safe there, doing that. He did not want to leave, to step out of the hush into the sun, the blinding white square.

She still wasn't saying much. She had hardly spoken to him all morning.

Maybe this
was
the end, he thought, as they walked in the streets of Bamberg, every blue shadow vibrating with detail.