Tom McCarthy: Remainder

“I should like…” I started. “Naz…”

Naz wasn’t paying attention to me. He was standing quite still, looking out across the runways. Luckily Samuels turned up just then, put his arm around my waist and held me upright.

“You should go home,” someone said.

I was driven back to my building. Naz came by a few hours later, in the middle of the night. He looked dreadful: sallow-cheeked and gaunt.

“What have you found?” I asked him.

“There’s just one way…” he began.

“One way to what?” I said. “What’s this got to do…”

“Just one way to stop information leakage. To be absolutely certain.”

“Yes, but what about ‘recidual’?” I asked.

“No: this is more important,” Naz said. “Listen.”

“No!” I said. I sat up on my sofa. “You listen, Naz: I say what’s important. Tell me what they found.”

Naz’s eyes rested on a spot vaguely near my head for a few seconds. I could see him running what I’d just said past his data-checkers, and deciding I was right: I did say what was important. Without me, no plans, no Need to Know charts, nothing. He turned his head sideways, reached into his pocket, took his mobile out and said:

“They found similar words, but not that one. They looked in the complete twelve-volume dictionary. Do you want me to read you what they found?”

“Of course I do!” I told him.

“Recision,” he read; “the act of rescinding, taking away (limb, act of parliament, etc.). Recidivate: to fall back, relapse-into sickness, sin, debt…”

“Matthew Younger thinks I’m too exposed,” I said. “But exposure is good. How could it all have happened in the first place if I hadn’t been exposed?”

“Recidivist: one who recidivates; recidivous, of or pertaining to a…and so on. But that’s all,” Naz said. “No recidual.” He put his mobile back into his pocket and continued: “I have to discuss a matter of the utmost…”

“I think it might be something to do with music,” I said. “A recidual. Hey! Call my pianist up. He’ll know.”

“I’ll do that after we’ve been through this matter I have to discuss with you,” he said. “It’s absolutely vital. I’ve realized there’s only one way to ensure that…”

“No. Call him up now!” I said.

Naz paused again, then realized he had no choice but to comply, stood up and made the necessary call. Five minutes later my pianist was in my living room. One of his two tufts of hair was flattened, while the other sprouted outwards from his temple. His eyes were puffy; one of them was caked with sleep. He shuffled slowly forwards, then stopped three or so yards from me.

“What’s a recidual?” I asked him.

He stared glumly at my carpet and said nothing. I could tell he’d heard my question, though, because the top of his bald pate whitened.

“A recidual,” I said again. “It must be something to do with music.”

He still didn’t say anything.

“Like capriccioso,” I continued, “con allegro-all those things that they write in the margins. The composers. Or a type of piece, its name, like a concerto, a sonata: a recidual.”

“Therz a rosotatof,” my pianist mumbled sadly.

“What?” I said.

“There’s a recitative,” he said in his dull monotone. “In opera. Recitatif. Recitativo. Half singing, half speaking.”

“That’s good,” I said, “but…”

“Or a recital,” he continued, his pate whitening still more.

“A recital,” I said. “Yes.”

I thought about that for a while. Eventually my pianist asked:

“Can I go now?”

“No,” I said. “Stay there.”

I stared at his bald pate more, letting my vision blur into its whiteness. I stared for a long time. I don’t know how long; I lost track. Eventually he was gone, and Naz was trying to grab hold of my attention.

“What?” I said. “Where’s my pianist?”

“Listen,” said Naz. “There’s only one way.”

“One way to what?” I asked.

“One way to guarantee there’ll be no information leakage.”

“Oh, that again,” I said.

“The only way,” Naz went on, his voice quiet and softly shaking, “is to eliminate the channels it could leak through.”

“What do you mean, ‘eliminate’?” I asked him.

“Eliminate,” he said again. His voice was shaking so much it reminded me of spoons in egg-and-spoon races, the way they shake and rattle-as though the task of carrying what it had to say were too much. It still shook as Naz continued: “Remove, take out, vaporize.”

“Oh, vaporize,” I said. “A fine mist, yes. I like that.”

Naz stared straight at me now. His eyes looked as though they were about to burst.

“I could organize that,” he said, his voice a croak now.

“Oh, yes, fine, go ahead,” I told him.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

I looked at him, trying to understand. He could organize for channels to be vaporized. Channels meant people. He spoke again, more slowly:

“I…could…organize… that…” he croaked again.

Beads of sweat were growing on his temples. Vaporize, I thought: Naz wants to vaporize these people. I pictured them again being fed through a tube and propelled upwards, turned into a mist, becoming sky. I thought first of the re-enactors who’d be with me in the bank, pictured them dematerializing, going blue, invisible, not there. They’d be the first ones to be vaporized. But then the other ones, the ones who’d been stood down: they’d have to be vaporized as well. And then-

“How many channels would you need to vaporize?” I asked.

He looked back at me, sallow, manic, ill, and croaked:

“All of them. The whole pyramid.”

I looked at him again, and tried to understand that too. The whole pyramid meant not just the re-enactors: it meant all the back-up people-Annie, Frank, their people and the people that liaised between their people and the other people’s people. The sub-back-up people too: the electricians, carpenters and caterers.

“The whole lot of them!” I said. “Everyone! How would you…”

“When they’re in the air,” Naz said, his voice still croaking. “We get them all up in the air-all of them, every last member of your staff-and then…”

“Every last member! That means my liver lady and my pianist! And my motorbike enthusiast and my boring couple and my concierge as well!”

“It’s the only way,” Naz repeated. “We get them all up in an aeroplane, and then…”

He stopped speaking, but his eyes still stared straight at me, making sure I understood what he was telling me. I looked away from them and saw in my mind’s eye a plane bursting open and transforming itself into cloud.

“Wow!” I said. “That’s beautiful.”

I saw it in my mind again: the plane became a pillow ripping open, its stuffing of feathers rushing outwards, merging with the air.

“Wow!” I whispered.

I saw it a third time-this time as a puff, a dehiscence, a flower erupting through its outer membrane and exploding into millions of tiny pollen specks, becoming light. I’d never seen something so wonderful before.

“Wow! That is really beautiful,” I said.

We sat in silence for a while, Naz sweating and bulging, I running this picture through my mind again and again and again. Eventually I turned to him and told him:

“Yes, fine. Go ahead.”

Naz stood up and walked towards the door. I told him to put the building into on mode; he left; then I got into my bath.

I lay there for the rest of the night, picturing planes bursting, flowers dehiscing. I felt happy-happy to have seen such a beautiful image. I listened to the pianist’s notes run, snag and loop, to liver sizzling and the vague electric hum of televisions, Hoovers and extractor fans. I listened to these fondly: this would be one of the last times. My pyramid was like a Pharaoh’s pyramid. I was the Pharaoh. They were my loyal servants, all the others; my reward to them was to allow them to accompany me on the first segment of my final voyage. As I watched steam drifting off the water and up past the crack, I pictured all my people lifted up, abstracted, framed like saints in churches’ stained-glass windows, each eternally performing their own action. I pictured the liver lady bright-coloured and two-dimensional, bending slightly forward lowering her rubbish bag, her left hand on her hip, the pianist sitting in profile at his piano practising, the motorbike enthusiast flat, kneeling, fiddling with his engine. I pictured the back-up people framed holding bright walkie-talkies and bright clipboards in bright, colourful Staff Heaven, the cat putter-outers reunited with the cats they’d posted there before them while extras hovered round the edges like cherubic choruses. I pictured this all night, lying in my bath, watching steam rising, vaporizing.