Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“I didn’t have breakfast.”

He opened all the cupboards again, ashamed of his oversight and uncertain how to respond. He checked the clock. (In place of numbers, its display had birds; instead of chiming, it twittered on the hour. By now, they could tell time by birdsong.) “It’s blackbird past owl,” he said. “I have to feed you.”

“You shall.”

She described the tree babbler but fell silent when the elevator doors closed after them — he opposed talking in elevators, since outsiders could hear. They crossed the building’s courtyard, which was lined with frangipani trees and flanked by twin fountains, spray misting the hot evening air. “Nothing at all?”

“That spaghetti,” she replied. “When I was on the balcony, I saw places down the road where they have food.”

“We’re not eating things from the street, Tooly.”

“Can I try?”

“There’ll be proper restaurants,” he said. “They probably have Italian in Bangkok. You like spaghetti.”

“Can I see down our street first?”

“You saw from the window.”

“Only from high up.”

“Well … okay. But follow me and stick close.” He stepped from the complex and onto the soi , directly into the path of a motorcycle, which swerved around him, its whoosh fluttering her T-shirt. Walls ran along both sides of the lane, hiding the expat apartment buildings, while electricity cables hung from utility poles like vines. They walked single file toward the main road, Sukhumvit, passing a cart of tropical fruit on ice: papaya spears in plastic bags, skinned pineapples, hairy rambutans. The shopkeeper attacked a mango with a butcher knife, severing it on a tree-stump cutting board.

Gray blotches spattered the dry pavement. It was rain — from specks to a gushing torrent within seconds. They speed-walked for Sukhumvit, where tuk-tuk taxis awaited. “Can we take one?” she asked.

“They’re not safe,” he replied, the downpour plastering white hair over his forehead, rain dribbling down his spectacles. “It’s like a cart — you can just fly out. We need a proper taxi.”

They continued into the deluge, rain overwhelming the grates, water rising out of the gutter.

“Look!” she said. “Rats! They’re swimming.”

“Don’t look at them, Tooly! They’re diseased. Tooly — keep up!” Glancing left and right for a taxi, he hurried onward, inadvertently leading them down Soi Cowboy, a strip of winking-neon bars, with hookers sitting cross-legged on stools, smoothing down miniskirts, gabbing in Thai above tinny pop music. They spotted the farang man and cooed. One waved innocently at Tooly, who waved back. “Don’t!” Paul told her. “Really, don’t.”

She spotted a taxi and flapped her arms at it, then tugged Paul’s shirt so that he might turn and believe he’d discovered it himself.

“Here’s one!” he exclaimed, pushing past, nearly treading on her. “Hurry, I’ve got us a cab!”

Communicating to the driver that they wanted lasagna was beyond Paul, so he allowed the man to drop them outside a place in Chinatown.

A waitress ushered them into No. 2 Heaven Restaurant, past a tank of underbite fish, which glared at each new customer, and with good reason. Framed photos of suckling pig, roast lobster, and shark’s fin soup hung on the red-gold walls. Paul took a metal water carafe and slopped a wave into her glass, which filled with a fast glug and overflowed onto the maroon tablecloth, a dark patch that expanded.

“Do animals get haircuts?” she asked.

“Which animals?”

“Rats.”

“They don’t need them. Their hair doesn’t grow long.”

“It just stops growing?”

“Yes.”

“So why doesn’t people’s?”

“People’s what?”

“People’s hair.”

“Tooly, please. We’re about to eat.” He raised his menu.

She consulted hers. “You don’t like sweet-and-sour, do you.”

“No,” he confirmed. “I want food that can make up its mind.”

“What is ‘cheeking breast’?”

“It should say ‘chicken breast.’ ”

“They have something called Unique Leg of Camel. What’s ‘unique’ mean again?”

“One of a kind.”

“Isn’t every camel leg one of a kind?”

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Please, Tooly, let’s not talk of animals at the table.”

This made discussing the menu difficult. Eventually, she defied him, speaking so fast that he didn’t have time to object: “They have something called ‘lamb without odor’ and ‘slice pigeon.’ ”

“We’ll get the chef’s special noodles,” he informed her, closing his menu. “Plus crab meat with asparagus.” Paul always picked for her. It never occurred to him that this was bossy.

“I shall tell them our order,” Tooly said, swiveling around for a waiter. “Excuse me!”

“Tooly, quiet.”

“Then how do we get them to come over?”

“We wait. That’s why they’re called waiters.”

The staff confirmed his interpretation, chatting at length by the fish tank, then vanishing through the swinging kitchen doors for dishes that sailed past their table. Tooly swallowed hard, suddenly famished.

She folded and refolded her napkin. Paul did the same. Now and then, he refilled their water glasses. Something to say! She wished for a sentence. When they were on flights or at home, there were distractions. But dining, seated opposite like this, there was nothing. Silence sat between them as if upon its haunches on the table. She watched the uniformed doorman, who watched the fish, which watched Tooly. “Is that man a soldier?” Tooly asked, knowing he was nothing of the sort.

“He’s a guard.”

“Why do they have a guard at a restaurant? In case the cheeking escapes?”

He looked at her, uncomprehending, then at his water glass from several angles.

A waitress arrived and food came soon after — a huge bowl of soup they hadn’t ordered. Tooly launched herself at it before Paul could protest. She spooned it in ravenously, while he held her hair out of the way. Plates seemed to emerge from the kitchen at random, dishes served whenever it suited the cook. Presently, another arrived. “Oh, no!” Tooly said. “Fish!”

“It’s not one from the tank,” Paul said unconvincingly. “Anyway, we have to eat it or it’ll be perceived as an insult.”

“By the fish?”

Paul chewed on one side of his mouth, gazing off as if there were something untoward about dining, a necessary embarrassment like toileting.

“Was your job okay today?”

“Was it okay?” he said, the wrinkle tightening between his eyebrows. “I heard that my father is sick.”

“Shall we venture to America to see him?”

“Why are you talking like that?” he said. “I just told you my father’s sick.”

“Sorry.”

“We can’t go back. And that’s that.”

When Tooly was younger, she had met Paul’s father, but had no memories of him, only images from two photographs: one of a cheerful bald man with a mustache and a butterfly collar clowning around; the other of a youth in an army uniform. Burt Zylberberg, a basketball player in college and later an insurance salesman, had converted from Judaism to Catholicism as a young man, and served as a chaplain in World War II. During the Anzio invasion, an explosion shredded his legs. He and his wife, Dorrie, had intended to start a family after the war, but the extent of his wounds precluded that. They adopted a boy, Paul, and settled in Northern California. They were jovial parents, particularly Burt, an indefatigable optimist despite his infirmity. But they were so different from their adopted child, an earnest boy without any spiritual inclination. Yet he was intensely loyal to them. Whenever people asked if he thought of finding his real parents, he grew annoyed — he had no curiosity about those people, and never developed any. Paul went on to study computer science at UC Berkeley, which gave him access to high-end mainframes. In the wee hours, he haunted the computer lab, partly because all the interesting hardware was available then, but also to escape his peers’ cavorting. The hum of mainframes produced in him a conditioned response of tranquillity. During his final year of college, a surprise came: his parents informed him that he had an elder brother. When World War II was breaking out, they’d given up a baby, and that child had grown up and found them. This biological son — having just met Burt and Dorrie — already interacted with them with an ease and warmth that were alien to Paul. Rather than spurring him to seek his own biological kin, the development instilled the sense that he had no origins at all.