Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“Do you have a patronymic?” she asked. “Like those characters in Russian novels.”

“We also exist in real life, not only in Dostoyevsky books.”

“I’m becoming aware of this. But is your proper name something like Vassily Petrovich?” she speculated. “I like the sound of that. Makes me feel like there’ll be a droshky waiting outside.”

“Only the el train.”

He put his hand on her knee, then, with the next shot, moved it to her thigh, then her hip, then her shoulder. “Are you climbing?” she asked.

She enjoyed his kiss, though it was slightly odd, given that he was probably seven years younger than she. “You are a cougar,” he declared.

“Am I? Not on purpose.”

“Now what?”

“Now what what?”

“I still live at home,” he informed her.

“Do you know that Chekhov story ‘The Kiss,’ ” she went on, “where this unlucky officer mistakenly—”

“Not everything we Russians do comes out of Chekhov.”

“Or Dostoyevsky.”

“More Dostoyevsky, perhaps.”

A BEER BOTTLE SWEATED on the café-terrace table. Beside it sat an extra glass for Tooly, so the ten-year-old could taste alcohol for the first time. Her deck shoes skimmed the pavement as she swung her legs back and forth, the plastic chair edge impressing a sweaty line under her knees.

It was late, and she hadn’t returned home. Her heart sank at the thought of Paul. But if she mentioned him Sarah might take her back. Tooly closed her eyes, clutching the strap of her book bag.

“No one will take that, I promise,” Sarah said.

“Just, I’m famous for forgetting stuff.”

“Are there valuables inside?”

Tooly, normally private about her bag, opened it for Sarah to see: ring binder, Nicholas Nickleby , gym shorts and T-shirt, specks of grit mysteriously accumulated, her sketchbook. “You want to see my drawings?”

“Are you a good artist?”

Tooly shook her head. She handed over the sketchbook, watching for Sarah’s reaction, the woman’s eyes smiling first, lips joining in.

“It’s all noses,” Sarah remarked.

“I can’t draw a whole face.”

“They’re very nice noses.”

“Can I see in yours, Sarah?”

“In my nose?”

Tooly laughed. “In your bag!”

Sarah opened its clasps, baring the scents and treasures of the adult female: a compact, tissues, lipstick, cigarette pack, disposable lighter, a pair of underwear and a toothbrush, sunglasses, tampon, nail polish, chewing gum.

“What’s that little hammer for?”

“In case I get locked in somewhere and need to break a window.”

“Sarah?”

“Hmm?”

“Is your bubble gum nice?”

“Want to try? Take anything you want,” she said. “Are you liking that beer, by the way?”

“It’s a bit sour. Not sour but … I heard once,” she said, “that if you get drunk it’s like being awake and asleep at the same time. Is that true?”

“It’s lovely, being drunk.” Sarah swigged from their beer, arm draped over her chair, cigarette tip grazing the sidewalk, legs extended, crossed at the ankles.

How odd that, a few hours earlier, Tooly had been in the school microbus, blocks from home, then swept off to Khlong Toey Market, now here. She took another frothy sip. “Can I ask a question?”

“They’re the best thing to ask, my dear.”

“You didn’t like school when you were little, did you?”

“Hated it! Awful. Hardly went.” She had spent far more time with her father, Ettore, an Italian immigrant who moved to Kenya after the war to open a game park for his wealthy compatriots. Lacking capital and land, he’d married someone with both, a well-off English girl. Ettore and Caroline—“Now, they knew how to make cocktails on a hot day,” Sarah said — produced three daughters, of whom Sarah was the youngest and, to her father, the favorite. A handsome tanned man with a repository of bawdy jokes in six languages, he took Sarah everywhere, making her the official safari photographer at age eleven. Her sisters remained at the house, mastering domesticity and waiting until suitable gentlemen arrived to determine the course of their lives. Ettore considered his eldest daughters unseriously, an attitude Sarah absorbed, exchanging wry glances with him at dinner. Most of his clients were men, but it was their wives whom he bedazzled. By adolescence, Sarah found herself gaining charms of her own, appraised by men now, which both appalled and addicted her.

“The English colonists hated our operation,” she recalled. “Now and then, one of our clients insisted on a submachine gun, or used nail boards to hunt the elephants, which was considered terribly uncouth.”

“Did you live in the jungle?”

“We lived in a house. A big house, full of junk. My mother collected pointless bits of furniture. We were in the middle of nowhere. Not ideal for young people. They’d hit a button at nine P.M. and everyone over the age of forty fell asleep.”

“And how long have you lived in Bangkok?”

“I’m just visiting, Matilda. Only got here a few weeks ago.”

“Are you leaving soon?”

“Don’t know yet. Depends.”

“Why did you come?”

She tucked Tooly’s long frizzy hair behind her ears. “Because of you.”

Confused but shy about asking more, Tooly sipped her glass of beer, looked at the street, turned back. “Where do you live, normally?”

“I don’t live normally. I’m on vacation from now till forever. The world is too interesting to pick one place and stick to it. Don’t you think? When you meet people like my sisters, who never move, who still live in the town where they were born — I’ll never understand it. They’re a different species. In life,” she stated, “there are people who stay and people who go.” She scrunched her empty pack of Kools, depositing it in Tooly’s palm. “Wait here, my dear. Must replenish.”

Tooly watched Sarah disappear into the café. Were there people who stay and others who go? If Tooly could choose, she wanted to be someone who went. A hand stroked her face from the other side. “Success,” Sarah said, unwrapping the new pack, taking her seat.

“I’m feeling asleep and awake at the same time,” Tooly said.

“Put your head down, if you like.” Sarah laid her open hand on the tabletop, a pillow for the girl. Tooly released the book-bag strap and rested, closing her eyes.

She awoke sharply, frightened by the noise, the neon. Two more empty beer bottles sat on the table. “I have to go,” Tooly said. “Is it late?”

“It’s supposed to be late. Where we’re going doesn’t start till after dark.”

“I was thinking about those kingfishers you let out of the cage.”

“Lovely, wasn’t it?” She kissed Tooly’s hand. “So,” she said, standing. “Ready?”

“Maybe I should go home.”

“Do you really want to?”

Their tuk-tuk buzzed down the road, bouncing over each pothole. Car headlights streaked past. Taillights peeled off left and right before them, and faces on the sidewalk whooshed by. “That’s the market where we were before,” Tooly noted. They drove down a deserted soi , and the tuk-tuk stopped. A shadowed alley lay ahead.

“You won’t get in trouble,” Sarah said, rightly guessing Tooly’s thoughts. “I’m looking after you. Okay?”

As they walked into the dark, a trio of young guys appeared. One approached Sarah, saying they were on vacation from West Germany and had heard about an underground bar around here. Without breaking stride, she claimed ignorance — but not without a flicker of a smile that dragged the three boy-men in her wake. She cupped her hand behind Tooly’s head as they walked, telling the guys, “ This is the person you should be talking to. She’s the one in charge.”