Today, however, Hans-Pieter just shrugs.
When Murray suggests a drink in Džoker ‘later’, Hans-Pieter is initially evasive, and then says something about a film he’s planning to see.
‘Oh?’ Murray says. ‘What you seeing?’
Iron Man 3, Hans-Pieter tells him.
There is a silence. Then Murray says, ‘Mind if I come along?’
Another silence. Hans-Pieter says, not particularly warmly, ‘If you want.’
‘If it’s okay with you,’ Murray says.
Hans-Pieter looks down at his Adidas trainers. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Where shou’ we meet then?’ Murray asks.
‘Here?’ Hans-Pieter suggests, without enthusiasm.
So they meet there, in the middle of the afternoon, Hans-Pieter and Maria arriving together.
Maria does not seem pleased to see him — to see Murray, waiting there in his slacks. He tries to be friendly. She isn’t having it. She hardly says a word on the bus out to the edge of town, where there is a tatty shopping mall with a few screens embedded in it.
It is then, strap-hanging, that Murray starts to wonder whether this was really such a good idea. The others seem to be deliberately not looking at him. When his and Maria’s eyes meet, he tries to smile at her. She looks away immediately and he asks her about the film. ‘So what we going to see then?’ he says. ‘Is it any good?’ She pretends not to hear him.
Most of the other people in the ticket queue are kids — lads with faceted glass earrings and sagging waistbands and shrieking ladesses in tiny skirts or tracksuits, slurping sugary drinks and throwing popcorn at each other. Among these high-spirited youngsters, with Hans-Pieter and Maria sometimes snogging next to him, Murray sits for two hours, watching the noisy action film. It is dubbed in Croatian and he understands fuck-all.
Afterwards, while Maria is in the ladies, Hans-Pieter tells him they’re going back to her place, and asks Murray what he’s going to do.
‘I dunno,’ Murray says, just standing there in the foyer.
There is a short silence and Murray has the appalling feeling that Hans-Pieter is pitying him — that fucking Hans-Pieter is feeling sorry for him.
Well, fuck that.
‘Don’t you worry,’ he says. ‘I’ve got things to do. You give her one from me, okay?’ And with an unpleasant smile, he nods towards Maria, who is approaching them.
—
He spends the next few hours in Džoker, drinking Pan lager and thinking, If the likes of Hans-Pieter can sort himself out with a woman, then I sure as fuck can.
Matteus nods.
Without meaning to, Murray had said it aloud. Matteus, tall and austere, possessor of a monastic vibe, is taking glasses out of the dishwasher and putting them on a shelf under the bar.
It is not even eight o’clock, and Murray is already quite drunk.
In Oaza later, he happens on Damjan.
They are sitting at a table together in the kebab shop and Murray is saying, ‘If the likes of Hans-Pieter can sort himself out with a woman, then I sure as fuck can.’ Inelegantly, he is eating a kebab.
Damjan says, ‘Sure.’ He and his friend have already finished, were about to leave when Murray arrived. They talk in Croatian, the two of them — a muttered wry exchange of words. Murray, shoving the last wet mess of the kebab into his mouth, wonders what they are talking about.
‘What you gonna do now?’ he asks, wiping his lips with a paper napkin.
Damjan’s friend, it turns out, speaks perfect English. He sounds like an American.
‘We’re gonna go party,’ he says, grinning. ‘You wanna come?’
‘Fuck, yeah,’ Murray says. ‘Good man. Let’s go.’
As they leave, one of the twins says something to Damjan.
The kebab shop is owned by Albanian twins, identical, of vaguely thuggish appearance. Shaved, spherical heads. Fleshy noses. Strong necks and heavy eyebrows. Murray can never tell them apart. At first he didn’t realise there were two of them; then one day he saw them together. They usually sit out on the terrace in front, under the awning where a water-feature tinkles, puffing at a hookah and drinking tea. Other, more desperate-looking men — often with moustaches — hang out with them there, and any number of women, young and old. A souped-up white Honda Accord EX 2.2 litre diesel is frequently parked in front of the shop, which Murray assumes must be owned by one of them.
And he envies the way one of them nods at Damjan as they leave, and offers him a few words of farewell. He wishes the twins would acknowledge him like that. He has been eating their kebabs for over a year, and he has always felt that he and they share something, something that sets them apart from the other people in this place, a superiority of some sort. And yet they never speak to him, as one of them just spoke to Damjan, or acknowledge him in any way.
On the spur of the moment Murray decides that he will be the first to speak. The twin who spoke to Damjan is standing there, near the door, slouching against the jamb, and poking about in his mouth with a toothpick.
‘Alright,’ Murray says to him, forcefully he hopes, as he passes him on the way out.
And the twin just looks slightly surprised — in his collarless shirt, his tan leather jacket — and watches Murray leave.
And how the fuck did that happen?
Safely in his mausoleum, hugging the toilet, Murray weeps. Drops tears onto the filthy floor.
How did that happen?
He has never been so intimate with the root of this toilet, with the rusty bolts that hold it to the old linoleum.
He sits up, after a while, and dries his eyes.
He inspects, in the mirror, his fat lip.
This mirror always gives the impression of fog. His face looms out of it, damaged. He stares at himself with contempt.
There was a woman. Aye, there was a woman. There were lots of women. With Damjan and his friend he had trawled through the nightspots of the town — two or three of them, there were. Nightspots. Full of students, kids. No success there, though he had tried, God knows. He had tried in the noise of the new music to have it off with a few of them. Kids with dyed hair. And Murray leering over them, trying to make himself understood. Shouting about the S-Class he had once owned. Shouting, ‘You been to London?’ Shouting, ‘I’ll show you round, okay?’ He had offered her a job, that one. And she was about to give him her number, he thinks, when her friends pulled her away. (Later, seen her being sick in the car park. Was it her?) Damjan’s friend disappeared. So just him and Damjan went on to the all-night place. ‘I know one place,’ Damjan said, speaking more fluently than usual. ‘I know one place is open all night.’ Taxi. Yes, taxi. And then tumble out into the raw air again. Damjan paying. ‘You got any smokes?’ Murray asking him. And then the place. The woman, perched up there on her stool. Not a kid, this one. Or maybe he was perched on the stool and she was there, suddenly, talking to him. And he was telling her about the S-Class he had once owned. Asking her, ‘You been to London?’ She was, what? Forty? Fifty? And no oil painting. Even then, in the state he was in, he knew that. She kept touching him. Hand on his leg. (And where was Damjan?) Hand on his leg. And he said to her, straight out, ‘You wanna come back to mine?’
And she just nodded, and moved her hand up his leg.
‘Okay then,’ he said.
‘A minute,’ she said, squeezing his leg. ‘Wait.’
‘Okay then,’ he said. And waited, feeling pleased with himself. And then starting to worry about whether he’d be able to do it, the state he was in. And he looked for her and saw her talking to two men near the toilets. And something about the way she was talking to them made him understand. He just wanted out of it then. He slid off the stool, trying to keep his footing, and started to move towards the door. And then she was holding his arm. Holding it hard. ‘Okay?’ she said, ‘we go?’ ‘Look, I’m tired,’ he told her, trying to pull his arm free, ‘I’ll see you another time.’ ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, her hand on his trousers, feeling for something. ‘I’m fucking tired,’ he snapped, shoving her away. Outside, the cold night air. Haloed street lamps. He started to walk quickly, not knowing where he was. And yes, those were footsteps following him, and as soon as he started to jog, hands seizing him. Threw him against the side of a parked van. The two men. Faceless in the shadows. His voice emerging as an effeminate squawk: ‘What d’you want?’ There were various issues. He had, they seemed to be telling him, entered into an agreement. So he owed them money. And he had hit her, they said. They wanted more money for that. ‘I did not hit her’. Everything he had on him, seemed to be what they wanted. ‘I never hit her…’ He took a punch to the face. Then, from a position on the pavement, handed over his wallet, and they emptied it of kuna and threw it on top of him.