Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“I have a duty to be here right now, and if I—”

“You don’t know the first thing about duty. You don’t care about your own blood. Don’t care about your country. Don’t know how you’re going to vote. Don’t know if you’ll vote. Thank you kindly for supper. But, Lord above, what is wrong with you, son?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Paul snapped. “Okay?” Tooly recognized from his tone that he’d lost his temper. He repeated himself shakily—“Nothing’s the matter”—saying that he couldn’t care less about voting, about politics, about empires, about who ran what, who succeeded Reagan, who led the Communists.

Bob Burdett reminded Paul to act like a representative of the United States out here, then recalled that his host wasn’t an embassy officer, just a contractor. “Another mercenary,” as he put it. “Going around for a paycheck and a piece of tail.”

“Can you leave my home,” Paul said, voice trembling, knocking over his chair as he stood. “Get out of my home. Okay? Scolding me like I’m an idiot! Like I’m here for a good time! This is my home. Not for you to come in and lecture. Any duties I have, I’m aware of. Fully aware of. Okay? I don’t need you to tell me. What I do concerns nobody.”

“Don’t concern nobody?”

“Can you go, please?”

Bob Burdett’s chair squeaked as he rose. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “there’s things that are bigger than you in the world.”

“Are you being threatening now?”

“Sometimes,” the guest repeated, voice hardening, “there’s things in life that’s bigger than you.”

There were smaller things, too, and one emerged from her bedroom.

“I can make my eyeballs vibrate,” she said.

Bob Burdett — looming over Paul — turned at the sight of the little girl and stepped back, cocking his head. “Well,” he said, “hello there, little lady. And who might you be?”

Paul, voice choked, answered hastily, “My daughter. She’s my daughter.”

“Well, howdy, little girl. Nobody told me we had young folk on the premises. Do excuse my profane words. I enjoy firing off the occasional political firecracker — keeps things lively out here in the tropics. No harm intended. None taken, I trust.” He nodded at Paul, then smiled at Tooly. “Didn’t hear me say no cuss words, did you, sweetheart?”

She looked at each man in turn, unsure if she was in big trouble. “I can make my eyes vibrate.”

“I’d be most appreciative, young lady, if you’d provide a demonstration.”

She opened them wide and performed her trick, eyeballs moving fast from side to side, to the approval of Bob Burdett. “I seen it all now,” he exclaimed. “Yes, I have.”

“And I can count a minute exactly,” she said. “You can time me.”

Bob Burdett readied the stopwatch function on his watch. “Go right ahead.”

All fell quiet, but for the fizz of Fanta. Finally, she raised her finger.

“Fifty-eight seconds,” Bob Burdett said.

“Sometimes I get it exactly.”

“Darn good.” He ruffled her hair, which made Paul wince. “You all should come around to my place sometime, meet my dog. This young lady’s got a momma? Bring her, too.”

“My wife’s in America,” Paul said. “She’s busy at the moment.”

Bob Burdett looked at Tooly. “You don’t prefer staying there, with Momma?”

She glanced at Paul, then at the guest, then back at Paul.

“All righty, then,” Bob Burdett said. “Thank you both for the hospitality. And your momma gets here, you all come over and meet Pluto.”

“What kind is he?” Tooly asked.

“Good old mutt, like his daddy.” He smiled thinly at Paul, broadly at Tooly, and left.

As soon as Paul and Tooly were alone, she asked, “Am I in trouble?”

He shushed her, hastening to the window to watch until the guest had departed Gupta Mansions and could be seen walking up the soi . Paul closed his eyes, shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “Damn.”

“If your father’s feeling sick,” she ventured, “ should we go there?”

“Yes,” he shot back. “I should be there helping. Right now.” He pinched his thigh. “But we can’t go. And you know that.”

TOOLY LOITERED OUTSIDE the building, seeking a pretext to return. She figured it out.

“I have a question,” Tooly said, when Duncan opened his front door. “Can you introduce me to the pig?”

“Hey. You again.”

“The one that lives here.”

“Despite appearances, no pig lives in my actual apartment.” Though studying, Duncan welcomed any distraction from case law. Plus, he rarely had female company, and tended to do whatever it commanded.

He also happened to know the animal’s owner, Gilbert Lerallu, having provided advice in his dispute with city authorities over whether the Vietnamese potbellied pig, Ham, should be defined as “livestock” and thus banned from residential premises. Gilbert was a composer of harpsichord music, his latest self-released album, Moonharps , having sold eight copies worldwide, including those purchased by his aunts. They tried his door.

Taking a walk was entirely Ham’s decision, according to Gilbert. Since the pig failed to communicate opposition, they borrowed a leash and led the porker outside. It was near freezing. Duncan wore only a hooded Eddie Bauer sweatshirt, but insisted he was fine. Ham’s bristly back steamed. When Tooly touched the pig’s nose, he snorted — and prompted her to hop back in fright and pleasure.

They crossed the Columbia campus, the snuffly pig waddling between them, his snout beaded with condensation. The neighborhood had never acclimatized to this swine in its midst, so students stared as Ham promenaded past Low Library. Duncan seemed at a loss for what to say, their only common reference being her previous visit. They’d talked for a while then, and with seeming freedom, yet she had revealed nearly nothing. “Is walking a pig different from walking a dog?” he said finally. “Do you think?”

“I have the impression Ham wouldn’t fetch like a dog.”

“Would he sit?”

“Sit!” she commanded.

Duncan looked at her — indeed, he appeared the more likely to obey. They tried other commands and, upon reaching Riverside Park, toyed with taking Ham off his leash to let him run free, as were several dogs, a couple of which sniffed the air near the swine, then bolted.

“Maybe let’s keep him on the leash for now.”

They resumed their walk. He asked what had brought her to these parts again. “I thought you were passing through town.”

“I’m passing through again.”

Before he could pursue this, Tooly had questions of her own. As a method of self-concealment, hers was powerful: few people, when presented with the possibility of discussing themselves, preferred to hear of another. From sincere curiosity, she asked him about law school. “I imagine everyone doing mock court cases where you stand up and cross-examine hostile witnesses, and they deny being there on the night of the murder.”

“That has not been part of the curriculum,” he said, shivering, hood up, the cords yanked tight, leaving a pale oval of face peeping out. Law school, as he told it, was largely a matter of poring over judicial opinions. “Basically, you read these things without any understanding of what the topic is, or why it’s relevant. Then it all boils down to one exam. And those grades determine a hundred percent of what you do for the rest of your life.”

“Sounds highly stressy.”

“It is highly stressy.”

“Are the teachers horrible?”

“Depends. A lot never practiced law — law schools don’t like to sully themselves with professors who’ve done stuff. It’s like most of these professional schools — a matter of paying your fees and surviving. We’re not learning how to practice law,” he concluded. “We’re learning how to be lawyers.”