Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

Grinning, they crouched beside Tooly and begged, “Come on, little girl. Please, please, show us!”

Tooly pressed her lips tightly together, breathed through her nose, hurrying alongside Sarah.

“Hey, I can hear music,” one of the Germans said.

A disco beat pulsated in the distance. The buzz of conversation grew louder. They entered a concrete garden with high walls on either side, and behind it a house in near-ruins. Revelers stood outside, drinking from plastic cups, shouting to be heard.

Sarah pushed through the crowd, greeting acquaintances as she went, then stopped before the front door, waving to two huge bouncers.

“Is this music your fault?” she asked the one with the skinny leather tie.

“It’s Venn who wants this sappy shit.”

“You can’t let Venn pick the music!”

The other bouncer shrugged. “He’s the boss.”

The crowd inside — mainly foreigners, but Thais among them — swayed, flirted, anticipated punch lines, stared glassy-eyed, fixed cleavage and looked down it, searched for toilets, lined up at the bar. Amid the mass of bodies was an aluminum stepladder against which drinkers propped themselves. An upright piano by the far wall served as a makeshift table, and a disk jockey with headphones bobbed before Technics turntables. Light from a twinkling disco ball sprinkled white dots and, every few seconds, a gust pushed through the crowd as the floor fan rotated, clothes rippling, cigarette ends glowing. Tooly held tight to Sarah’s bangles, bumping into strangers’ hips, elbows, behinds. At the turntables, Sarah greeted the deejay with a kiss to his cheek, then raised the needle off the record, prompting both jeers and cheers. She flipped through a crate of records. “Guess I should have found something before I did that,” she remarked, amused by the discontent. “What do you want to hear, Matilda?”

Tooly knew nothing of music. Paul never listened to it, so her awareness revolved around what she had encountered at school: sheet music from band, where she played the ukulele, her specialty being “Three Blind Mice”; plus the horrible pop cassettes Mr. Priddles put on.

“This one?” Tooly asked, pointing to the only familiar album cover.

“I adore you and will do nearly anything you ask,” Sarah said. “But Ghostbusters is where I draw the line. Actually — fuck it. Ghostbusters it is.”

The record crackled, loudspeakers hissed, and the first eerie notes kicked in. The crowd groaned, causing Tooly to look around in fear. But Sarah was greatly entertained and hurried her toward the bar, looking back as a mob converged on the deejay, who rapidly put on Def Leppard.

A long table served as the cash bar, buckling under all the sticky booze bottles. The bartender, a Uruguayan named Jaime, raised both arms in greeting. “ ¡Hola, chica!¿Qué tal? You good?”

“ Muy good,” she answered, helping herself to a Singha. As Sarah and he chatted, Tooly considered the grown-ups everywhere. She had never been the sole child among this many adults. It was so muggy in here, and her shirt stuck to her, the book-bag strap cutting into her shoulder. She took Sarah’s icy beer bottle in both hands, tilted it, froth spurting just as her lips arrived, liquid dribbling down her chin. “Sorry,” she said, looking up.

“I’ll check if he’s there,” Sarah was telling the bartender, and took Tooly by the hand, chasing her up the stairs, sending her into giggles. Tooly burst onto the upper floor into another boisterous crowd. Sarah peered out the windows up there — that is, four large holes in the second-story wall — scanning the back patio, where partygoers hung out before a wall fresco of a dolphin. “Nope,” she muttered, turning on her heels, slapping away the fug of smoke. “Anyone seen Venn?”

They came upon a sixtyish man sitting alone at a card table, a vinyl chessboard laid out, his hand lingering over a knight, then pulling back. He scratched his sideburns, which were like strips of burned toast. A handwritten sign hung from his table, fluttering each time anyone passed. IF YOU WIN ME, it read, YOU WILL BE VERY STRONG CHESSPLAYER. In a storage room behind him were piles of boxes, videotapes, fax machines, broken televisions.

“Humphrey!” Sarah said.

This man — the oldest person at that party by decades — continued to stare downward, his eyes hidden under a dark balcony of eyebrows. He wore a polyester dress shirt, tie yanked to the side, blue tennis shorts over a modest potbelly, laceless white sneakers.

“I can’t find Venn,” she said. “Where is he?”

Still the old man contemplated the chessboard.

Sarah touched his arm and Humphrey flinched, then — perceiving who it was — his face lit up, transforming with pleasure. “My dear darlink!” he said to Sarah in a strong Russian accent, plucking out earplugs made of balled-up toilet paper.

“Who’s winning?” she asked. “You or you?”

“Yes, sure — you making fun of me.”

“Meet my personal bodyguard.” She parted Tooly’s hair to bare her face.

“Hello, bodyguard. Nice to meeting.” He took her hand, sandwiching it between his. “I can tell only from looking that you are intellectual. Large ears, high on head. When high up, this means ears holding heavy brain.”

Doubtfully, Tooly asked, “Do ears hold up your brain?”

“Of course,” he replied. “This why I have famous large ears. This means intellectual. One day, if you very lucky, you have big ears like me.”

The prophecy was not entirely auspicious, for the old man’s ears were not only large but prodigiously hairy. Nevertheless, she thanked him.

He released her hand and turned to Sarah. “ Nyet . I do not see Venn. But I keep my eyes plucked.”

“You’ll keep your eyes peeled,” Sarah corrected him.

“How I can peel my eyes? No, no — I am not doing this.”

“What else do you have to tell me, Humph? Things good?”

“How are things? Just look,” he lamented, indicating all the boxes behind him. “This is out of control. How I can live here? He just take over. I cannot allow. These items — you know where they come from? If authorities find, they say I am responsible. Is no good.”

“You going to talk to him about it?”

“Talk? What is purpose? I leave.”

“No! You’re going? When, Humph?”

“Tomorrow, first thing.”

“You couldn’t bear to leave me,” she teased. “Listen, if you see Venn, say I’m on the prowl, okay? And don’t dare leave Bangkok without saying goodbye.”

Humphrey nodded, inserted his earplugs, and returned to the chess problem, his features resuming their dour configuration.

“Well, then. Think I’ll let you explore a bit,” Sarah told Tooly, kneeling to kiss the girl’s forehead. She turned toward the steps down. “Now, where is he?” Through the banisters, Tooly watched Sarah disappear into the crowd below.

Tooly was unsure even where to look now, where to place her hands, how to stand. She gripped her book bag and stared down the staircase in case Sarah sprang back up. After an incredibly long time (four minutes), Sarah had not returned, so Tooly went downstairs herself and stepped into the crowd, dodging gesticulating hands, lurching knees. She stood on her tiptoes, leaning one way and the other, but could not spot Sarah. She pushed ahead, catching snippets of speech as she went.

“Must say,” a man remarked, sipping from a straw plunged into a coconut, “must say I find it more than a little galling, having been locked in bamboo by the Japs, to take orders from them now. We beat the fuckers, didn’t we?”

“The ones I deal with are harmless enough,” his friend replied. “Stupid, but harmless.”