All That Man Is Read Online Free Page B

table. They are not, perhaps, the lovelies their landlady had promised – they are okay, though. More than okay, one of them. He tries to hear what they are saying, to hear what language they are speaking. They are not locals, obviously.
    â€˜How can you be
happy
as a tourist?’ Simon is saying. ‘Always wandering around, always at a loose end, searching for things …’
    â€˜You’re in a good mood.’
    â€˜I’m not in a
bad
mood – I’m just saying …’
    The girls seem to be English. ‘What about
them
?’ Ferdinand says quietly.
    â€˜What
about
them?’ Simon asks.
    â€˜Well?’
    Simon makes a face, a sort of pained or impatient expression.
    â€˜Oh, come on!’ Ferdinand says. ‘They’re not that bad. They’re alright. They’re nicer than the ones in Warsaw.’
    â€˜Well, that’s not hard …’
    â€˜Well, I
am
, if you know what I mean.’ Ferdinand laughs. ‘I’m going to ask them to join us.’
    Simon sighs impatiently and, his hands shaking slightly, lights another cigarette. He watches as Ferdinand, with enviable ease, slides over to the girls and speaks to them. He points to the table where Simon is sitting, and Simon quickly looks away, looks up at the reassuring blackened Gothic bulk of St Vitus. He is still looking at it, or pretending to, when Ferdinand’s voice says, ‘This is my friend Simon.’
    He turns into the sun, squints. They are standing there, holding their drinks. One of them is wearing a sun hat. Ferdinand gestures for them to sit down, which they do, uncertainly. ‘So,’ Ferdinand says, taking a seat himself, with a loud scraping noise and a sort of exaggerated friendliness, ‘how do you like Prague? How long have you been here? We only arrived this morning – we haven’t seen much yet, have we, Simon?’
    Simon shakes his head. ‘No, not really.’
    â€˜We had a look in there,’ Ferdinand says. ‘Simon likes cathedrals.’ The girls give him a quick glance, as if expecting him to confirm or deny this, but he says nothing. ‘Have you been in there?’ Ferdinand asks, directing his question particularly to the one in the sun hat, who is much more attractive than her friend.
    â€˜Yeah, yesterday,’ she says.
    â€˜Quite impressive, isn’t it.’
    She laughs. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, as if she thinks Ferdinand might have been joking.
    â€˜I mean, they’re all the same, I suppose,’ he says. ‘We’ve been to pretty much every one in this part of Europe, so I can say that with some authority.’
    â€˜Yeah?’
    â€˜You know what I mean.’
    â€˜So where else have you been then?’ she asks.
    And so they start talking – where have you been, what have you seen.
    Simon is irritated by Ferdinand’s manner. He thinks of it as a sort of mask that his friend puts on for encounters with strangers, as if there were somehow an intrinsic hypocrisy to it, and thinks of his own silence as a protest against this hypocrisy. And also against the tediousness of it all – when Sun Hat’s plump friend asks him what kind of music he likes, he just shrugs and says he doesn’t know.
    Ferdinand is telling the story of the Japanese couple they saw – he in linen suit and panama hat, she in turquoise dress with sparkles – dancing in the main square of Kraków. Then he tells the story of how he and Simon were hauled off the train at the Polish–German border to be searched by moustached German officials. ‘I think they were particularly suspicious of Simon,’ he says, with a smile, successfully provoking mirth in the ladies, and Simon also smiles, palely, without pleasure, accepting the part that has, he feels, been forced on him.
    â€˜Full-on strip search,’ Ferdinand says.
    Sun Hat squeals with shocked laughter. ‘What,