Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“Can I try out my camera on you two?” She stood and focused it on them, much to his unease. When the print issued from the Polaroid, the young woman flapped it till the image appeared, holding it out for them to see. Paul took the photo, thanking her for the gift, which it hadn’t been, and slid the snapshot into his book.

To block sight of such embarrassing scenes, Tooly shook out her hair and reached into the seat-back pocket, pulling out her novel and sketchpad. Each of her drawings began with a curl intended to resemble a nose. However, other facial features were beyond her, so noses accumulated page after page. She contemplated adding a few more, then opted to read instead, opening The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby , one of many volumes Paul had picked up during this never-ending voyage of theirs. He himself had no interest in novels, but bought them for Tooly whenever he found English-language sections in airport bookshops. He purchased indiscriminately, therefore she read that way: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Cujo by Stephen King, I’ll Take Manhattan by Judith Krantz, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, White Fang by Jack London, Shōgun by James Clavell, plus many works by Dickens, including this volume, which told of a dignified nineteenth-century Englishman compelled to teach at a brutish school for outcasts. Tooly had read the book already but, as with all her favorites, she’d stopped before its ending. It was dispiriting to witness her printed companions concluding their lives with a blank space at the bottom of the final page, so she halted earlier, returning months thereafter, flipping back several hundred pages to find them as they had been, deep in conversation, conceiving dastardly plans and sharp retorts.

She slipped from her seat, crouching in the floor space. Between strands of her hair, she contemplated these lowered surroundings: the carpet, filthy seat frames, carry-on luggage, castaway shoes. An old Indian lady behind her, who earlier had fought to open the tray table and shuddered Tooly’s seat, extended her bare feet, rings on two toes. Impulsively, Tooly patted one. The toe twitched, shifted grumpily, then went back to sleep on a crumpled newspaper that was headlined with talks between Reagan and Gorbachev, alongside a photo of monkeys in South Korea employed to pick pine nuts and, the caption claimed, “working the equivalent of 100 men.”

“What are you doing down there?”

She looked up, eyes dry with fatigue. “What?”

“I’m going to use the facilities,” Paul said. “Stay put.”

Tooly obeyed just long enough to watch his knees excuse themselves into the aisle. With him gone, she took a proper look at the woman in their row: blond hair in a ponytail on the side of her head, acid-washed jeans with ankle zips. The mysteries of the adult female — all sophistication and bewildering toiletries — intrigued Tooly. She’d had scant exposure to women besides teachers, maids, other children’s mothers. The story of her own mother — that is, the account they told outsiders — was that she remained behind in the United States dealing with personal matters but would join them soon. Such a woman never did arrive. Another year passed, Tooly and Paul moved again, and repeated the tale anew.

“A bird!” Tooly fibbed, to draw the stranger’s attention to the window. “Look, it’s keeping up with us.”

The woman leaned over, shading her eyes, finding only blackness out there.

“It’s cold up this high,” Tooly said, more softly now, since they were close.

The woman rolled a pink scrunchie off her wrist, gathering Tooly’s chaotic hair and producing a side ponytail that matched her own. “Don’t birds freeze outside?”

“That’s why they wear trench coats.”

The woman smiled. “Won’t the belt straps hang down and get in the way of their wings?”

“They tie the straps.”

“Imagine if they’re flying this high and they get tired all of a sudden!”

“They probably glide to the ground. Paul would know.”

“You call him by his first name?” the woman asked, amused, though her expression shifted. “Or, wait — is that not your dad?”

A sniffle alerted them to Paul’s return. He stepped back to the middle seat and frowned at Tooly’s ponytail. He viewed fashion with bemusement. The purpose of clothing, as best he could tell, was to keep one unembarrassed and at the right temperature. If an outfit served that purpose for a respectable period — twenty years, say — and at the lowest price available, then it was successful. He dressed identically every day: a polo shirt tucked into khakis, Velcro-fastened black shoes. “Your hair looks like a pineapple that fell over,” he told Tooly. The woman in the aisle, with the identical style, blushed and turned away, ignoring them for the rest of the flight.

Only upon landing did Tooly close her eyes and drift off, longing for three more minutes. But time was up. Passengers crushed up the aisles, laden with bags, squinting at the queue ahead, sighing at each delay. Leaving the cabin finally, they stepped in a single stride from icy airplane chill into the sweltering tropics.

“Slightly humid,” Paul commented, wheezing.

Despite the late hour, it didn’t seem night in the airport, the dazzling overhead lights whitening all, with barefoot workers squatting on the floor, eating. Policemen watched the new arrivals: briefcase businessmen rushing for taxis; a backpacking couple chewing gum, jaws flexing in unison; fish-faced old men in Bermuda shorts, waddling down the hall, mouth-breathing.

“Landing cards,” Paul said, thinking aloud, and grabbed two as they waited in line at the border control. “When were you born?”

“You know that.”

“I know that,” he acknowledged, filling it in. He looked around, startled at the slightest noise — he was rigidly tense in public with Tooly. A Velcro strap on his shoe had come unstuck, so she knelt to attach it. “What are you doing?” he asked irritably. “It’s nearly our turn.”

The immigration officer summoned them. Paul was a man who followed rules — indeed, their absence unnerved him. Yet whenever he addressed authorities his mouth became audibly dry. “Good morning. Evening,” he said, sweat budding on his upper lip.

The officer looked down at the girl, at Paul again — then drove vicious stamps onto their passports, dismissing them. Paul hurried Tooly along, scanning left and right as they quit the terminal, his knuckle jabbing her forward, as if they might otherwise be dragged back.

In the taxi, she rolled down her window, reading illuminated highway billboards that rushed past, ads for Sanyo with curly foreign script, White Lion toothpaste, Johnnie Walker.

“Who’s Johnnie Walker?”

“It’s a drink. For grown-ups.”

“Is it nice?”

“Makes you drunk.”

“What’s it like being drunk?”

“Like being awake and asleep at the same time.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was meant to sound terrible,” he said, looking down his glasses at her. “You get sick and stagger around. People actually vomit sometimes.”

The expressway fed into a multilane city street, clogged with traffic until the vanishing point. The sidewalks teemed with locals eating at stalls, cooks shaking iron pans, noodles hissing. Generator lights burned above a night market that sold watches, videocassettes, Vietnam War paraphernalia. Neon signs advertised go-go dancers and Ping-Pong shows, a blinking phantasmagoria past which foreign men lumbered, draped over tittering bargirls.

Tooly had no memory of falling asleep, of being carried from the cab or placed in bed. Paul woke her the following morning by parting the bedroom curtains a smidgen, producing a column of sun across the foot of the bed where she lay, still dressed from the flight. Only her deck shoes had he plucked off, while the pink scrunchie had been lost in the bed, her hair now a black octopus splayed across the white pillow. She pretended to sleep still, peeping through a half-opened eye. Every five minutes, he tiptoed back into her room, opening the curtains a fraction more, sunlight expanding in increments up her covers. When it reached her eyes, she draped her hair over them, nibbling a strand that fell into her mouth.