I had an infection once that made me very sick, and I remember thinking I was going to die, and I didn’t care. An infection? She nods. A rare one. I’d been in South America for a few weeks. I caught it from a bird. I’m glad you lived, I say. Me too, she says. Still, it’s strange. You have terrible thoughts about life and death when you are that sick. I was in hospital for a month. Nobody could figure it out, until a specialist came in and said, Have you been in contact with exotic birds? I don’t remember much from then – that was two or three years ago – but I remember the words exotic birds, because I saw nothing but blue and pink and orange and green feathers. I actually felt myself lying on them, and it was very soft, and I thought I had died. But then I said, Yes. And they all nodded. There was no medicine to take. They just kept me in a bed and watched me, and hoped I would live.
I was once really seasick, in the Sea of Japan, I say. We surfaced in a powerful storm, and I had been ill for a few days anyway, with I don’t know what, and the only thing I remember was needing to get off the boat and drown as soon as possible. She nods sympathetically, then she says, Janos thinks you are in the CIA. The CIA? Like a spy? Not like a spy, she says. He thinks you torture people. Good God, I say. Does he really think that? It would be perfect for him if you were in the CIA, she says. But does he seriously think that? She says, Who knows? We come to the escalator that will take us back to the surface. We stand to the right, and two kids run past us on the left. It took me about forty-eight hours after arriving in the city to realize that there was a system for standing and walking on escalators – stand on the right, walk on the left. That was a pretty confusing forty-eight hours. One guy kicked my ankles, and a lot of people shoved me. Now I feel like I ought to shove and kick tourists who don’t understand the routine, not because I’m angry but because I think systems everybody understands are valuable, and I’d hate to see one collapse. We reach the surface, under a large shelter. It’s not snowing any more, but it feels colder. From here you can see how, to the north, the ring road rises high above the buildings. There are billboards all over the place, and some are digital and flashing. There are high-rise office buildings and hotels along it. Inside the loop, and built into the side of a small mountain, is a stadium. It’s where they play soccer, and whenever there’s a game between two particular teams from opposite sides of the city, the streets fill with speeding armoured trucks and ringing sirens and blue flashing lights, and you see riot police all over the place. I had this explained to me one night. I was in a café and saw a bunch of police cars and a paddy wagon that resembled an APC barrel down the street, with flashing lights and loud sirens. I thought it must be something serious, but nobody around me even looked up. Beyond the stadium and the high-rises, about twenty miles away, is the airport. Over the past few weeks, the weather has shut the airport a few times, so people are taking trains to get outside the city now. I’m not in the CIA, I say to Saskia. She gives me a look that says it’s not at all necessary to state the obvious. But I feel the desire to explain anyway, and say: I was on subs for most of my career, then got out of the Navy and tried to make some money. When that failed I joined the reserves, and as a reservist I went to Iraq. I worked with a team in Baghdad that provided intelligence to troops that were fighting, but my work was mostly done at a desk. Saskia asks me what I mean by intelligence, because, perhaps, the word has brought her thoughts back to the notion of spying and the CIA. Information, I say, just information. Tell me about life on a submarine, she says. What do you mean? I ask. What are the people like? Well, I say, there are two kinds of submarine people – there are the boomer people and there are the fast-attack people. Boomer? asks Saskia. Ballistic missile submarines, I say. Oh, says Saskia. Do I sound different saying words like that? I ask. You do, she says, gleefully. I continue: Generally the guys who appreciate boomer culture are older, or guys with families. The deployment is always ninety days. It’s a steady life. The guys who like fast-attack culture are generally younger, and wouldn’t care if they were deployed for ten years, so long as there was action. Only the best officers with the best records get on nuclear subs, and they’re paid more than anyone else, and they train for longer. And that was you? asks Saskia. That was me, I say. So you’re smart, she says. I was ambitious, I say. And that’s why you have so much money, she says. The money isn’t from the Navy, I say. And I say nothing else. The truth is that all the money I’d saved from my first stint in the Navy was wasted on a failed business. I got hazardous pay for my reserve deployment in Baghdad, and with that money I started another business – an intelligence firm, of which I was the sole employee – that I brought to Baghdad as a civilian. And it’s that business that made me a fortune. What’s it like to be on a submarine? she asks. I pause to consider, gratefully, her sense of diplomacy – letting me off easily about Iraq by asking me about a thing she probably has no real interest in. How do you mean? I ask. Do they rock a lot? Oh, submarines rock quite a bit on the surface, but once you submerge, the rocking subsides the deeper you go. Eventually there is no rocking. It is all very still and quiet. The only time you remember you’re underwater is when the ship angles to make depth changes.