Hammer by Joe Mungo Reed

Author:Joe Mungo Reed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

SHE MET Oleg at an event organized by her company. It was a panel discussion on the theme of “The Work of Tomorrow.” People listened to a talk by a Dutch intellectual in a bow tie who spoke with a mix of dread and rapture of the coming of a robot workforce. People drank wine and drifted around the firm’s grand meeting room. Oleg stood looking at the view of St. Paul’s. Marina introduced herself. He had some investments with the firm, but most of what anyone knew of him was hearsay. It was a coup to have him at the event, and she thanked him for coming. “I needed a reason to leave the house,” he said. He shrugged. “I’m getting divorced.”

“I’m sorry to hear,” she said.

“Maybe it’s better,” he said. “I’m a hard man to be married to.”

There was something true about him, she thought. He was a person acting as he would ideally wish to. She stayed close to him that night. The two of them moved between groups of other people, joining conversations and drawing off. She studied his way of answering questions, meeting people. She sensed he was studying her also.

“Did you like the talk?” she asked him.

“Of course,” he said.

“Really?”

He sighed. He looked at her for a moment. She felt herself to be judged worthy of frankness. He said, “Do you really think that anyone who knows what will happen in the future is traveling around giving talks?”

She smiled. “His fee was quite big.”

Oleg spat air. “The fee is not it. The interesting thing isn’t talking. What is important is to do.”

He spoke sparingly. He had a reticence she hadn’t observed in other successful businesspeople, who tended to dominate conversation. Later, when she knew him better, he’d tell her that impatience was a sign of weakness. It was not that he wasn’t as hungry as others, but rather that he was sure of satisfying that hunger.

That night, he asked her to go for a drink with him after the event. It should’ve been awkward to be asked something like that by a client. She wanted to go, though.

They went to a cocktail bar near the old Smithfield meat market. He spent a lot of time chatting with the waitress about the composition of the drinks. This man is diligent, Marina thought. He had a heavy face, a striking solidity, as if he were some grand bronze statue of himself. Yet when she studied him, she noticed that he had faint freckles around his nose. His eyes were strikingly blue. His English was good, but he talked very slowly. In Russian he was more expansive. His Manhattan came and he sipped it and said, “Seven out of ten.” She felt a compelling ambivalence.

He knew of her father, he said. He hadn’t met him. She waited for him to give her more, but he didn’t. They talked about Russia, about the diaspora in London. He seemed concerned that Russians were not regarded well, torn between joining criticism of his countrymen and frustration with the prejudices of the British.

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