‘It’sh hot,’ Hans-Pieter says.
It’s the kind of thing Hans-Pieter will say — the kind of fascinating conversational gambit he comes out with.
Murray just grunts.
Hans-Pieter is probably about ten years younger than Murray — somewhere in his mid-forties. He is unusually tall, obviously shy.
‘I suppose,’ he says, taking a quick, almost furtive, sip of his lager, ‘it’sh global warming.’
Murray, sweating, scoffs. ‘What the fuck you talking about?’
‘Global warming,’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘What — you believe in that?’
Hans-Pieter looks worried, as if he might have made some elementary mistake. Then he says, ‘You don’t believe it?’
‘Do I fuck.’ With the hem of his white T-shirt Murray towels his face of freely flowing sweat. ‘Don’t tell me you believe in that?’ he says, resettling his glasses on his nose.
‘Well.’ Hans-Pieter looks down at his flip-flops. ‘I don’t know. It’sh October,’ he points out.
People are eating ice creams. Pigeons are wetting their wings in the fountain.
Murray is still staring at him. ‘And?’
‘Well.’ Hans-Pieter sounds doubtful. ‘Is this normal? This…this weather…?’
‘There is no evidence,’ Murray tells him, ‘for global warming.’
‘Well, but I thought…’
‘There’s no fucking evidence.’ Murray takes off his glasses to towel his face again. The front of his T-shirt is sodden.
Hans-Pieter’s pale eyelashes flutter humbly. ‘I thought there was,’ he says, ‘some evidence.’
Murray laughs again. ‘You’ve been had.’
Shyly Hans-Pieter says, ‘What about the Shtern report?’
Murray makes an exasperated sound.
‘It says if there’s no action taken on emissions…’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Murray shouts at him. ‘There’s other reports, there’s reports that say just the opposite.’
‘Aren’t they paid for by dee oil companies?’
Murray sighs. He has heard this shit before, and he won’t have it. The fact is, Murray feels a profound sympathy for ‘the oil companies’. He feels, somehow, that he and ‘the oil companies’ are on the same side. That is, they are the successful ones, the winners of this world, and therefore envied no doubt by losers like Hans-Pieter — Hans-Pieter, who still lives in a youth hostel, while Murray, like some fucking oil company, occupies a well-appointed flat in one of the most elegant Habsburg-era streets of the town. It is his understanding, in fact, that Hans-Pieter is on the Dutch equivalent of the dole, which stretches a lot further here than it does in Amsterdam or wherever he’s from.
‘Do you not understand,’ he says, taking a more indulgent tone with his slow-witted friend, ‘that the whole thing’s a plot against the oil companies? A left-wing plot. Against the market economy. Against individual freedom.’
‘You think that?’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘I know that, pal. They lost the Cold War,’ Murray explains. ‘This is their next move. It’s fucking obvious when you think about it.’
A large drop of sweat falls from the end of his nose.
Hans-Pieter says nothing. He turns his head to the hot square. He has a little earring in his left ear.
‘Anudder one?’ he asks, noticing Murray’s empty glass.
‘Go on then,’ Murray growls.
—
Surprisingly, after that one, only their second, Hans-Pieter makes his excuses and leaves Murray there on his own, to have another half-litre of Pan, the local industrial lager, and survey the square in unexpected solitude.
That Hans-Pieter has something else to do is a surprise. The underlying premise of their friendship is that neither of them ever has anything else to do. No one else to see. There is no one else. That’s why they are friends. Take that away, and it’s not obvious what would be left.
Actually, it’s not quite true that there is no one else. There’s Damjan. An acquaintance of Hans-Pieter, a native. Damjan has a job though — he works at a tyre-fitting shop next to the train tracks. He has a family. He has, in other words, what passes for an ordinary life.
Murray meets him later in the bar of the Umorni Putnik.
Murray is disappointed, arriving there, that Maria isn’t around. Inasmuch as Murray has a purpose in his life now, that purpose involves Maria, who serves drinks in the youth hostel. She is not, he feels, out of his league. For one thing, she is not very attractive. She is young and friendly, and her English is excellent — she even understands Murray when he speaks. He has had his eye on her for some time, since last winter. All year he has been planning to make his move.
He was particularly hoping to find her there this evening. He feels down. Outside, it is already dark. The evenings are shortening now. The nights, as they say, are drawing in.
He sees Damjan arrive.
‘Damjan, mate,’ Murray says, standing eagerly to shake the tyre-fitter’s hand.
Damjan is short, muscular, untalkative — the sort of man that Murray instinctively defers to.
Damjan, while still shaking Murray’s hand, looks around. ‘Hans-Pieter?’ he asks.
‘Not here,’ Murray tells him. ‘I dunno where the fuck he is. Lemme get you a drink.’
‘So,’ Murray says, when they are sitting down. ‘What you been up to then?’
‘What you been up to?’ Murray asks again when Damjan says nothing. ‘What you been doing?’
Damjan, perhaps still not understanding, shrugs, shakes his head.
‘You’re okay, though?’ Murray asks.
‘Okay, yes.’
This is in fact the first time they have had a drink together without Hans-Pieter being there. It turns out to be surprisingly hard work.
They end up talking about tyres.
‘So what about Pirelli?’ Murray finds himself asking. ‘How do they compare? With Firestone, say.’
Increasingly, there are long silences, during which they separately survey the room, trying to find a woman worth looking at.
Then Murray asks another question about tyres, which Damjan dutifully answers.
They have been talking about tyres for almost an hour.
‘I had Mitchell-in on the Merc,’ Murray says, after a long pause. ‘Top quality.’
Damjan just nods, drinks.
‘D’you think we’re going to see Hans-Pieter tonight?’ Murray asks.
Damjan shrugs.
‘You don’t know where he is?’
Damjan, lifting his drink, shakes his head.
Which, it turns out later, is a sort of lie. He knows more or less where Hans-Pieter is. Hans-Pieter is at Maria’s flat, naked, watching an episode of Game of Thrones dubbed into Croatian on Maria’s squat little TV.
3
In the morning, autumn has arrived. The temperature has fallen twenty degrees overnight. Surveying it from his window, in pants and vest, Murray is triumphant. He looks forward to shoving this turbulent autumn day, full of wet leaves, in Hans-Pieter’s face and saying, ‘So what about this then? You fancy an ice cream now, ya fucking parasite?’ He starts to smile, until an eruption of coughing knobbles him and he turns from the window trying to force out the word Fuck as he doubles over and the veins in his temples swell and throb.
‘FUCK!’