Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

Sarah scooped grounds into the moka coffeemaker. “You know, I wondered about you,” she said, back turned, reaching into the cupboard, clattering through crockery for espresso cups.

“Wondered?”

“I mean, what happened to you?” she said. “Where did you go? You cheap runaway — not even caring about those who brought you up with blood, sweat, and tears.” Sarah was a person who got the tone all wrong, who stood at the threshold of a subject, pretending a lack of interest, then barged in. “I suppose you’re so very angry at me.”

“I’m not angry.”

Sarah shooed away this denial. “And you’re not well,” she said. “You’re clearly not.”

“What do you mean? I’m fine.”

“You look sickly. You look ill. Like you’re starving away.”

“You’re starting to sound like you were my mother.”

“Such a hurtful thing to say.”

They stood there, gazing at the bubbling espresso pot.

“You asked how I spend my time here,” Sarah resumed. “One thing I was embarrassed to say is church. Don’t worry — I don’t try to foist it on people. Just something for me. But I find it comforting. And interesting. A different way of seeing what happened. A way to forgive myself.”

“You blame yourself for things?”

“Of course.”

“Such as?”

Sarah poured the coffee. “Sugar?”

Tooly saw the sugar bowl in Sheepshead Bay, crawling with ants. “What do you regret?”

“But are you staying overnight? You didn’t pick a room yet.”

“I have that hotel booked in Rome,” Tooly repeated, clearing dishes to hide her irritation.

“Don’t bother with the plates. Just leave them, if you so desperately want to get away from me.”

“I like doing dishes. It’s a weirdness of me, one of many. Everywhere I go, I insist on doing the washing-up.” Despite her outward cheer, Tooly bridled at the familiar rigmarole of Sarah. Years of being plunged into unease, years of trying to coax her out of moods. “I was thinking of those stories you used to tell me,” Tooly said, and heard herself appeasing again. “About those animals when you were growing up in Kenya. Must’ve been quite a childhood, out there in the wild.”

“Wasn’t that wild.”

“I imagine leopards leaping out whenever you left the house.”

“We had a garden like everybody else. Could’ve been anywhere.”

“People say if you’re born in Africa you have the place in your veins forever.”

“I don’t say it.”

“Italy’s more like home now?”

“How could it be?”

“Would you ever go back to live in Kenya?”

“I left for a reason. It was small-minded and remote. White Africans talk interminably about how gorgeous it is — the land, the land, the land. Bores me to tears. Kenya does have proper countryside; all other landscapes look wrong when I see them — overgroomed and hacked up. But why would I go somewhere just to look at land?”

“You’ve not got relations left there?”

“None I’d want to know. And Mummy and Daddy are long dead.”

“I don’t remember you visiting them.”

“Why would I? They were otherwise occupied.”

“How so?”

“Sipping,” she responded. “My mother drank to get unhappy. Daddy just soaked.”

Tooly had heard these tales of woe before. Perhaps she should have sat through them all again. But she just couldn’t. “Sarah, I came here to talk to you.”

“Which is what we’re doing.”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“How dramatic.”

“About Humphrey first.”

“The old darling!”

“Sarah, where’s he from? Somewhere in Russia, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well,” Tooly responded, “I’ve seen him recently. You know his accent? It’s gone. Can you explain that?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“He talks like an English speaker now. It’s like hearing someone completely different. Not completely,” she corrected herself. “The voice is the same. It still seems like him.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I invent that, Sarah? What possible reason? I came here for help in figuring things out. Stuff that you know. Stuff that pertains to my life.”

“What on earth could you mean?”

“Tell me about Venn, then. Where did he go?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What else could it mean?” She looked up at the ceiling. “I find it disappointing — extremely, extremely — that you won’t ever be direct with me.”

“I’m the most direct person in the world,” Sarah responded with astonishment.

“Then please try, right now.”

Over the next two hours, Tooly peppered her with questions. Sarah had been there. Could she not just explain ? Rather than doing so, she spun interminable yarns, depicting herself as innocent and kind while flinging blame on everyone else — above all Venn, whom she depicted as the improbable devil in her tale, with Humphrey as the saint.

“That’s not what happened,” Tooly interrupted. “Do you honestly believe what you’re saying?”

Sarah lit a cigarette, flapping at the air to clear the smell. “You know what we should do after you go back to your shop?” she said brightly. “We should try Skype together. No one ever agrees to do it with me. I’ll show you how tomorrow.”

This visit had been folly. Another round of make-believe with Sarah.

“I’m not here tomorrow. I’ve made that clear.”

“You’re being silly — so much I can tell you still.”

“Right now, then. Just one thing.”

“Well,” Sarah said, “you have to ask me a question. Or how else am I supposed to—”

“I’ve done nothing but ask questions for the past two hours!”

“You want to go over Bangkok again? Reminisce about the good times with Paul?” She mimicked him: “ ‘Careful now! Shush, or you’ll scare away the birds!’ ”

“ Don’t do that. Don’t. Okay?”

Sarah sighed, eyelashes fluttering. “Well, I suppose we were a bit rough on dear old Paulie. Both of us were,” she said. “Still, a little hard to discuss Bangkok if I can’t mention him.”

“Fine. Tell me about New York, then.”

“Well,” Sarah answered, “quite devotedly of me, I traveled to that hovel you and Humph were sharing in Brooklyn, all just to see you. I came offering a job for you here in Italy, as you may recall. But you refused to hear me out. Sent me away in the most spiteful fashion.”

“Be serious. You came to see Venn, not me.”

“I was there to protect you,” Sarah protested. “I knew things were going wrong.”

“Not this again.”

“If I was there purely for Venn, why did I never see him on that trip?”

“Because he wouldn’t see you.”

“Did you ever ask yourself why?”

“I know why — because you were unbearable to be with.”

Surprisingly, Sarah failed to retaliate — no hissing fury, no venom. “Each time I turned up,” she responded sadly, “wherever it was in the world, he always met with me. But not that time. I wasn’t worth much anymore, I suppose.”

“You’re the only one who thinks in terms like that,” Tooly said. “And don’t claim you were so very concerned about my well-being. I shudder to imagine what would’ve happened if Venn hadn’t been around when I was growing up. You, disappearing every other day for some personal freak-out, or whatever those were. You weren’t looking after me. He was.” That bank card, a reminder of their bond, in her pocket everywhere she’d traveled alone. “Has he not been in touch at all?”

“Let’s get back to Humphrey. How is he?”

“I told you, he talks completely differently. There’s clearly something I don’t know here. And I think you do.”