Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“As for me,” she said, “I’m in hiding. Everyone wants me to make a decision as to what to do. Am I going to take on running this megabusiness or aren’t I?”

“Do you want to?”

“Some of it might be kind of cool. It might be fun to run a movie studio. I produced a short film once, do you remember?”

I remembered. It was a dreadful, pretentious mesh of abstract images and obvious symbolism about a rich man who convinces a poor woman to sell him her breast, and once he’s bought it, he sits with the breast in his favorite armchair, stroking it, kissing it, trying to make the nipple erect, but when the nipple doesn’t rise, in frustration and despair he throws the breast on the barbecue and eats it with tomato sauce.

“What do you think, Jasper? You think I could run a movie studio?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m giving a lot away to friends- the music companies, the bookstores, the restaurants, the hotel chains, the cruisers- and my dad always wanted an island, but I’m going to wait for his birthday.”

“Aren’t you keeping anything?”

“Of course. I’m not a bloody fool. I’m keeping the newspapers, the magazines, the radio stations, the cable and free-to-air TV stations, and the movie studio for myself. Can you believe it, Jasper? The most powerful propaganda machines in the history of civilization, and they’ve fallen into our hands!”

“What do you mean, our?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. What are you going to do now?”

“I want to go to Europe and search for my mother’s family. But I need money. Anouk, can I have some money? I won’t pay you back.”

Anouk suddenly peered up and down the alley, and I thought that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a celebrity or a wanted criminal, excess attention makes you paranoid. She leaned forward and solemnly uttered, “Of course, Jasper. I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“Really?”

“On one condition.”

“Uh-oh.”

“You have to help me out.”

“No.”

“You’ll have lots of power.”

“Power? Yuck.”

“Please.”

“Look. I really just want to leave the country and live the rest of my days floating in an anonymous fog. I don’t want to help you with- what is it you want help with?”

“With the media.”

“What media?”

“All of it.”

“I’m going to Europe. I don’t want to be stuck in some office.”

“This is the twenty-first century, so if you want-”

“I know what century it is. Why do people always tell me what century it is?”

“- so if you want to keep moving, you can. You’ll have a laptop, an assistant, a mobile. You can do it all on the road. Please, Jasper. I don’t trust anyone else. You’ve never seen so many people who want so much so openly. They all have their hands out, all my old friends included. And no one will give me an honest opinion. You’re the only one I can count on. And besides, I think your father was preparing you your whole life for something like this. Maybe for this exact thing. Maybe he knew all along. This feels like fate, don’t you think? You and me, we’re completely the wrong people to be in this position- that’s what’s so great about it.”

“Anouk, this is crazy. I don’t know anything about newspapers or television!”

“And I don’t know anything about being a media mogul, but here I am! How is it possible that I’m in this position? And why? I didn’t claw my way to get here. I fell into it. I feel I’m supposed to do something.”

“Like what?”

She made a very hard and serious face, the kind that makes your own face hard and serious just from looking at it.

“Jasper, I believe that life is based on love. And that orderly love is the fundamental law of the universe.”

“Which universe is that and where is it? I’d love to pop by and say hello.”

Anouk sat on the edge of an empty beer keg. She was radiating pure joy and enthusiasm. Yes, she might have been pretending to hate this strange turn of events which had transformed her into a rich and powerful woman, but I wasn’t buying it.

“I believe that a person’s thoughts often manifest into actual events- that we think things into existence. Right? Well, think about this: one of the illnesses that has become an epidemic in the Western world is an addiction to news. Newspapers, Internet news, twenty-four-hour news channels. And what is news? News is history in the making. So the addiction to news is the addiction to the outcome of history. Are you with me so far?”

“I get it. Go on.”

“In the past couple of decades, news has been produced as entertainment. So people’s addiction to news is the addiction to its function as entertainment. If you combine the power of thought with this addiction to entertaining news, then the part of the hundreds of millions of people, the viewing public, that wishes peace on earth is overshadowed by the part of them that wants the next chapter in the story. Every person who turns on the news and finds there’re no developments is disappointed. They’re checking the news two or three times a day- they want drama, and drama means not only death but death by the thousands, so in the secret parts of himself, every news-addicted person is hoping for greater calamity, more bodies, more spectacular wars, more hideous enemy attacks, and these wishes are going out every day into the world. Don’t you see? Right now, more than at any other time in history, the universal wish is a black one.”

The homeless man in the gutter had woken up and was moving his half-open eyes furtively from Anouk to me, a bored smile on his face, as if to say in response to Anouk’s theory that he’d heard it all before. Maybe he had.

“So what do you intend to do?”

“We have to wean people off their addiction, or else there’ll be hell to pay.”

“We.”

“Yes, Jasper.”

I looked at the drunk in the alley to make sure I wasn’t imagining all this. Did I want to help Anouk in her plan? Sure, I could take control of the newspapers and put in fun headlines like “This Newspaper Makes Independent Thinking Impossible” and pursue Anouk’s aim of combating this addiction to “news” by making news dry and boring- limiting broadcasts and reporting banal and positive events (grandmothers planting new gardens, football stars eating dinner with their families) and not allowing mass murderers their turn on the celebrity wonder wheel.

However, the last thing I wanted was to take on a public role doing anything. The general public was still apt to turn apoplectic with rage at the mention of my father, and thus people would hate me for whatever I did. All I wanted was to melt into vast crowds of non-English-speaking people and taste the many flavors of women filling tight-fitting T-shirts in all the cities of the globe. And Anouk wanted the news division to be under my control?

“Anouk, I’ll tell you what. You start without me. I’ll give you a call in six months, see how you’re getting along, and then maybe I’ll come and help you out. But it’s a big maybe.”

She made a weird sound in her throat and started breathing hard. Her eyes somehow got rounder. I almost weakened. It’s hard enough to go through life disappointing yourself every second day, but disappointing others takes it out of you too. That’s why you should never answer the phone or the door. So you don’t have to say no to whoever’s on the other side.

“OK, Jasper. But I want you to do one thing before you leave.”

“What’s that?”

“Write an obituary for your dad that I can print in the paper.”

“What for? People don’t care.”

“I care. And so do you. And I know you- you probably haven’t let yourself grieve in any way for your father. I know he was a pain in the arse, but he did love you and he made you what you are and you owe it to him and to yourself to write something about him. Doesn’t matter if what you write is flattering or insulting. As long as it’s true and it comes from the heart and not from the brain.”