Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

His sole source of income was consulting for wealthy book collectors who sought to expand their hoards. He surveyed their shelves and identified which editions were lacking and where they might be found, marshaling his impressive recall of antiquarian bookshops around the world. The collectors (it was almost exclusively men who suffered this acquisitive hunger) viewed him as an idiot savant, a novelty act notorious for smelly clothing, thick accent, and gruff manner, along with rumors of an ancient stint in jail. Humphrey’s consultations were free, but the custom was to give him a volume of moderate value, which he immediately sold to Bauman Rare Books for spending money.

“Hungry?” He fetched a paper bag from the kitchen containing two stale croissants and one bruised avocado. Humphrey rejected the idea of meals, eating whenever he felt it appropriate, not because it was the ordained hour. His sleep followed the same principle: he remained up all night if reading, or slept till dark if the day offered nothing of note. To allow a clock to dictate one’s life was mere conformism. He emptied the bag onto the Ping-Pong table and invited Tooly to join him.

She dipped a croissant into her coffee, losing half the pastry in the mug, flakes floating, as he rhapsodized about his mushy avocado. Humphrey prided himself on the purchase of expired produce, which he talked supermarket stockers into saving for him. Despite moderate indigestion, he kept Tooly and himself going this way on almost no money. And Humphrey wanted nothing more than this existence: nibbles and books, gesticulating and pontificating, with Tooly there to answer back. “Movement is overrated,” he said.

She herself was subject to the laws of Slob Gravity, able to remain inside for days, her nose in books, consuming whatever vittles materialized on the Ping-Pong table. At other times, though, she marched outside, walking tirelessly around the city, marking her map, scanning for building doors left ajar and talking her way inside. Whichever condition — activity or indolence — held sway, Tooly struggled to break its spell. When slobbing around the apartment, she could barely propel herself farther than the bathroom and back. When striding block after block, she required a force of will to return home at all.

“Do you think,” she asked, following an hour of reading on the couch, “that I should get dressed at some point?”

“It’s nearly one P.M. — throw caution out of window.”

“If I threw caution out the window, I’d have to open the window. It’s too cold,” she said. “But I should get ready.”

He knew this meant a meeting with Venn. “Why you should go? Stay here. Is more comfy. You wait and I find you nice job.” Another of his pastimes was writing on her behalf to grand organizations, informing them of a young lady they must employ. She wished he’d stop this, but few of his correspondents answered anyway. When they did, Humphrey claimed it as the nearest miss. Yes, perhaps the U.N. secretary-general hadn’t hired her, but he had answered on proper letterhead.

“It wasn’t Kofi Annan who wrote back,” Tooly noted. “Some person in his office. An intern, probably.”

“Small details,” he said. “I beat you in chess?”

“I really have to go.” She sneezed, and his face lit up. Humphrey kept pharmaceuticals under his cushion, and prescribed to anyone who as much as cleared his throat. He especially loved treating her — he had done so often when she’d been sick in childhood. But Tooly couldn’t oblige with an illness today. “It was only dust.”

“Fine, fine — you must go to meeting? Go,” he said. “Just because I can at any moment fall, and my heart stops, and nobody here to call help? No problem. I wait on floor trying to breathe till you come home.”

“I ban you from falling over and dying while I’m out.”

“I die very quietly. I try not to bother you.”

“I know you’re joking, Humph, but I’m actually starting to feel bad.”

“Do what you like.” He leaned on her, rising unsteadily to his feet. “But I am going out. Cannot sit around all day. I have items and activities.”

“You idiot,” she said, grabbing him for a cuddle.

“Leave me, crazy girl!” He squirmed away, sweeping the mussed gray-black hair off his forehead. “You don’t go to see him. You come with me on book consult. No?”

“Sorry, Humph. And I’m walking there, so I should leave.”

“At least you take subway with me. It’s very colding outside.”

“For a Russian, you’re so whiny about the weather.”

“I am low-quality Russian.”

“I’ll accompany you to the station. But that’s it.”

When they stepped outside, she inhaled deeply and the cold air seemed to awaken her a second time. A burning smell was in the air — welding at the ironworks across the street. Their corner was dotted with industrial workshops, many in red-brick garages inside padlocked chain link fences crowned with razor wire. They cut down Hamilton Avenue, walking against the flow of passing vehicles. A few bereft brownstones gave onto the rusted expressway undercarriage, with the Red Hook projects on the other side.

Outside the station, Tooly stopped. “I have my own things to do, Humph.”

“How you can walk all way to Manhattan?”

“Stop trying to keep me here!” she said, laughing.

“I make law that it is illegal for you to walk today.”

“I veto your law.”

“Who gives you veto power?”

“You did.”

“I un-give.”

“I launch a coup d’état and write a new constitution that says I can go. There, done.” She kissed his wrinkly cheek; he wiped it away.

Striding off, she marched hard up the block, speeding to outpace her guilt. But it caught up, dragged her to a halt. Tooly drummed her lower lip. Couldn’t just leave him. She spun around and went back, fed her token into the turnstile. She found him seated on the platform, leafing through Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political .

“My darlink,” he said. They sat in silence. The low ceilings and joists down here, paint peeling — it was like stepping inside a mechanical object. “You are so capable and clever, darlink,” he told her. “You will do wonderful things in your life.”

“We’ll see.”

“You come back for me — very nice. But you go now,” he said. “You walk. I survive. Muggers don’t dare fight me.”

“You’d hit them with David Hume.”

“Worse: I read it to them.” His old brown eyes reflected her momentarily, then gazed up the tracks. A train rushed into the station, its scratched-up windows etched with gang signs and initials. She watched as he boarded alone.

She resumed her hike, dodging pedestrians and overruling traffic lights all the way up Smith Street, through downtown Brooklyn, across the Manhattan Bridge, her mismatched sneakers moving fast — red, then black, cold air gusting up her corduroys — pace increasing almost to a run, as she tried not to beam too stupidly at the thought of who awaited. On arrival at the Bowery, she looked for him; not here yet. Sweat budded across her upper lip, glittered on her forehead.

To occupy herself, she took out her felt-tip pen — a few new streets to add from this latest hike — and fumbled in her overcoat pocket for the map. But it was missing. Had it slipped out somewhere on the road? Damn! Weeks of effort wasted. Never get attached to objects, Venn always said. Aargh — where was he? She stood at the corner of Hester Street, shivering.

Minutes passed, and she promised herself to leave after just one more. That one passed; another began. She looked to the left, the right, behind her, back again.

“Well, well,” Venn said, cheeks broadening as he swept her alongside him in a one-armed hug. “Why’d you keep me waiting, duck? Come on.”