Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

This was proving to be a disaster. Venn would know what to do about it — he’d even know how to handle those bill collectors. “Do you remember anything about where he went?”

“Those lights,” Humphrey responded. “What are those lights?”

She followed his sight line to the switched-off TV. “Nothing. A reflection.”

“Is it time for dinner?”

“Look. Bright outside.” She pointed out the window, then at the wall clock. “See, twelve-fifteen P.M.”

“You take its word over mine?”

Two weeks passed, and her scheduled return to Wales neared. She had understood nothing here. The mystery of his accent remained, as did the puzzle of Venn’s disappearance, and all the questions about her abduction. She tried not to think of her impending return, and would not have, had it not been for a call from Fogg. Mr. and Mrs. Minton — the academics who’d founded World’s End Books and still owned the property — were raising her rent. Trouble in the stock market had halved their retirement savings; they couldn’t afford to rent at a loss any longer. Nor could Tooly afford to pay more.

World’s End Books would last perhaps three months. She could keep employing Fogg that long, but no more. He needed to find employment elsewhere. Perhaps this was better for him — the shop had been too cozy a niche. She freed him of any obligation to keep it going till her return. After all, it wasn’t even certain when she’d be back.

“Wait, you’re staying? I thought he wasn’t telling you anything.”

“He’s not. But I can’t leave right now,” she said. “I’m sorry, Fogg. You’ll have a great reference from me.”

“Ah, well,” he said, quiet a moment. “Shame, really.”

He’d grown up in that shop. There was no other bookstore in the village. But he might apply for another kind of service job — at the minimarket, perhaps.

For two days, Tooly felt nauseated by all this. But she reminded herself that one mustn’t get attached. Thereafter, if Fogg called with work questions she kept the conversations short. When he asked after Humphrey, she conveyed little, withdrawing her private life from public view again. His calls stopped. The bookshop — indeed, Caergenog itself — faded from reality. The McGrorys were delighted to learn that she was extending her stay. It spared them finding a new driver for Mac.

Among Humphrey’s books, Tooly kept returning to her old copy of Nicholas Nickleby , the same bashed-up paperback she had when they first met. The smell of it recalled so powerfully Mr. Priddles’s vile classroom, where she’d hidden in these pages.

“Can I read you a bit?” she asked Humphrey. “I know you don’t like made-up stories, but this one is nice. You won’t have to worry about your eyes. Just close them and listen. Okay?” Before he could refuse, she began:

There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Eyes closed, Humphrey nodded gravely. She went on, her attention only half on the text, the remainder contemplating her old friend. To her knowledge, he had achieved nothing to outlast his life — no offspring, no legacy. Nor had he believed in anything more than this existence. No afterlife, in the religious sense of harp-strumming on clouds, nor in the secular sense of worldly accomplishment.

What he had done with eighty-odd years was absorb the cleverest minds to translate themselves into print; he’d played chess; he’d pondered. And why not just use life as one pleased? Why spend an existence tormented by alarm clocks? Or did his failure to produce anything amount to tragedy, a waste of the fact that his particular consciousness, among the infinite possible variations, had popped into being?

If he had achieved little, this resembled Tooly’s own path to date. Her twenties had rushed by. Now her thirties were well upon her. She had the sense of never completing any stage, of failing to grab any single year and take hold. In teen years, people yearned to be liked; in their twenties, to be impressive; in their thirties, to be needed. But she had jumbled it, some phases too early, others not at all.

“I like that man,” Humphrey interrupted as she read on. “What’s his name?”

“That character? He’s called Newman Noggs.”

“You feel that you could see him! With the thing about his buttons.”

Before much else could be learned of Mr. Noggs and his buttons, Humphrey was snoring. After an hour, she readied his macaroni-and-cheese dinner on the counter, sticking a sign on the microwave in giant capitals to explain again how it worked. She hesitated in the hallway. The night before, he had dropped his dinner and eaten only a few bites salvaged from the floor. She sighed to picture him on his knees, reaching shakily under the bed for a chunk of dusty chicken.

On her way out, Tooly gazed down the empty staircase. If Venn walked up these steps (she looked to where he’d stand, and she smiled, seeing him grin at her), he could explain everything. Not just the muddle of her past but the muddle of her present, too — what to do now, where, and with whom.

Tooly had no further commitments that evening. No children to drive, no one expecting her anywhere on earth. She walked to the Brighton Beach boardwalk as dusk fell, sat on a bench there; a blustery summer evening. Yelena’s son, who had finally fixed Humphrey’s TV remote, happened to be walking past, an Eastpack day bag slung over his shoulder. She wondered whether to say his name, and if it would carry through the wind.

He noticed her. “Yo,” Garry said. “You’re the daughter of that old man.”

“So they say.”

He asked what she was doing there, just sitting, as if this were an insufficient activity. “The Starbucks is open late, if you’re looking for one.”

She was not. He wouldn’t believe there wasn’t some object she required.

Relenting, she said, “I wouldn’t hate a drink.”

He contemplated this, then snapped his fingers badly. “You won’t like this place — I can show you.”

It was the sort of terrible suggestion that immediately won her over.

She realized as they approached the bar that Garry hadn’t intended to deposit her at its door (in which case she planned to sneak off to the subway) but to join her. The sign promised: “Russian & American nightclub: Live music and dancing every night starting 9 P.M.”

“We’re early for the dancing,” she said.

He opened the door. Eastern European pop music blared, the bartender chanting along. Garry ordered for them, switching impressively to his native Russian—“BOДKa!”—voice deepening as he did so. A carafe of vodka arrived. He waved away Tooly’s attempts to pay for her share.

“Are you supposed to sip each shot?” she asked. “Or down it in one gulp?”

He was inconclusive, so she tried both ways, alcohol seeping into her, pushing back the day.

Would Humphrey be sleeping still? Or plodding around, discovering her note on the microwave, unable to find his glasses. Strange to think of him, so near yet following his own story line, separate from hers.

No point badgering him with questions anymore, she decided. He had no answers for her. Time to erase this. All that matters is now. Nothing before. Stop thinking. Stop.

As Garry drank, his deep voice became less baritone, and he responded to her humor, his distracted blue eyes fastening on her now, looking downward, since he was a tall young man, lean and long-limbed.