Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“He just woke up,” Duncan said.

Humphrey scowled, tangled white eyebrows overhanging his lids, face like a walnut shell. He wore a red sweatshirt and oversized bluejeans — she’d never seen him in leisurewear and it looked wrong, as if he’d been dressed by someone else. He had lost weight, too, his jeans cinched with a rope. Duncan raised the blinds. Humphrey gripped his chair, arms shaking from exertion as he pushed himself to his feet.

“Humphrey,” she said. “Hello.”

He blinked, the heavy sacks under his eyes quivering.

“I walked all the way here from Manhattan,” she went on. “I know you disapprove of physical exercise, but I enjoyed it. Was thinking on the way down that I should’ve brought you some smashed potatoes.”

He shuffled past her, arm outstretched to feel his route, overgrown yellowing fingernails ticking against the wall. He stumbled on a book, which made her and Duncan lurch forward. But he was fine. Lips pursing, slackening, he turned to Duncan, stating softly, “Go out.”

“You want a moment alone with Tooly?”

“Have her go out. I want her to leave the room. Now, please.”

Tooly went rigid, not just at his statement but at how he delivered it. The man she had known was Russian. This old man — it looked like the same person; surely, it was him — spoke as if English were his native tongue. She looked to Duncan, then to Humphrey.

She hastened around the armchair and into the hallway, closing his door behind her. From inside came muffled voices. What, what, what was going on here?

A neighbor burst from her room, shouting “Fuckin’ told you!” and flung before her two little boys, then slammed the door, leaving them in the hall. Giggling maniacally, the brothers — the elder about eleven — pounded on the door for their mother, rattled the handle, screamed for a few minutes, ran at it with karate kicks, looking over at Tooly to see if she was impressed.

“We’ve all been thrown out,” she told them. From inside their mother’s apartment, music boomed. The older boy sprinted up the corridor, spat at the closed windowpane. The younger kid lay on the floor, finger up his nose, staring at Tooly.

Duncan opened the door. “You can come back now.”

Humphrey had changed into a collared shirt, which was tucked into his roped jeans, and he’d put on a tie. His hearing aids were in now and he wore bifocals, whose lenses split his clouded old eyes across the middle.

“Is there somewhere I should sit?” she said, watching Humphrey. “I’m not sure where to go. It’s a bit cramped.”

He pointed to the armchair, but she declined — that seemed to be his seat, the white leather darkened in his smudged shadow. Duncan sat on the edge of the bed, so she did the same. Shaking, Humphrey lowered himself into his chair, curled forward, chin against tie, hands compressed between his thighs, as if bracing for a punch.

“We woke him. Waking is always difficult,” Duncan told Tooly, who nodded brusquely, hating to discuss someone who sat across from them. “Yelena was here this morning,” he said, of the Russian woman who was paid to help out.

“I don’t recall.”

“Did you enjoy your lunch?”

“Didn’t have any.”

“There’s a pizza box in the sink.”

Humphrey turned to consider the evidence. “Yes, some pizza. Wasn’t good, which is why I didn’t remember it.”

Tooly tried to catch his eye, to inquire with a glance, What the hell is going on?

“I didn’t offer you coffee yet,” he said.

Tooly stood to make it, but the jar of Nescafé was empty.

“Was telling Tooly,” Duncan said, “that waking can be difficult for you.”

“Feels strange,” Humphrey said. “Apprehension. But not about anything. If you fear something concrete, you can do something about it. But I don’t know what I feel frightened of.”

“His vascular system isn’t working properly,” Duncan continued. “That’s what the memory-clinic guy told us. His brain doesn’t get the blood it needs.”

“I don’t want to exaggerate the problem,” Humphrey said. “It’s uneven. It depends on what cells are attacked.”

“You must be happy to see your daughter.”

Humphrey grunted, laughed uncomfortably.

“I heard that someone robbed you,” Tooly said, looking at him hard, though he failed to meet her gaze.

“I was told I was robbed. Don’t remember any of it. Attempts were made to strangle me. This is where my problem stems from, I think.”

“The attack seems to have affected his memory,” Duncan said. “Short-term, particularly. But there are other problems. He forgets how to do stuff.”

“I don’t want to exaggerate,” Humphrey said. “It depends on what cells are attacked. Blood doesn’t flow in that direction.”

“What sorts of things are you forgetting, Humphrey?”

“I can’t remember to tell you.”

“Sometimes you come up with ancient memories,” Duncan remarked. “You told me about milking a cow when you were a boy, which must have been eighty years ago. You remember?”

Humphrey remained silent at length, sniffed irritably. “I find your questions odd, frankly.”

“I have a feeling you gave those muggers a punch or two,” Duncan said. “Didn’t you. He’s a tough one, is Humphrey.”

“If only I could get the bastards on their own for a few minutes,” Humphrey said, adding, “with someone holding them down, of course.”

Duncan laughed. “The problem is that he’s isolated here. Which doesn’t help.”

“I don’t know these people around me. Don’t know who they are. It’s a lack of community.”

“At least you have Yelena coming in,” Duncan said.

“Yes, but we’re like grandfather and granddaughter. Not friends,” he said. “I haven’t offered you coffee. I have a thing of it somewhere.”

“We’re fine,” Tooly said.

Nevertheless, Humphrey rose agonizingly to his feet again, muttering about people moving things, and tossed aside piles of clothing and books. He found the empty Nescafé jar.

Duncan whispered to Tooly, “I need to go. But you stay.”

“Let me walk you down,” she said.

For the first time, Humphrey looked directly at her. “I put on my tie because you were coming.”

“I know.”

On the street, Duncan asked how it had felt seeing her dad, and hoped that their falling-out, whatever its cause—“None of my business,” he added, not wanting to know — had been shelved.

“I found,” she said, needing to smuggle this in before he went, “I found that harrowing.”

“Yup. Well …” he responded, wanting to hand over this problem.

“But, Duncan, you shouldn’t be the one paying for Yelena,” she said. “You’ve been too generous already.”

“Hey — I’m a lawyer,” he said, unlocking the BMW.

“Being a lawyer means you pay? Doesn’t being a lawyer mean everybody else pays?”

“Means I’m richer than book persons such as yourself.” On his notepad, he wrote the door code to Humphrey’s building and tore off the sheet. “Let him recharge a few minutes, then you can go back.”

However, she kept walking, unable to return yet. All the time she’d known Humphrey, he’d scarcely spoken a correct sentence in English. Had he been tricking her for years? But what she’d seen upstairs clearly wasn’t a trick. Hard to imagine that Venn could be involved. If only she’d remained unaware of all this, never witnessed that wretched room where at this moment he probably sat, slumped forward in that dirty white armchair.

The room was messier on her return — clothes dumped, books scattered. It was evening now, but the blinds remained up. He stared at the darkened window, house lights dotting the view.