Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“This trip is boring,” Mac said. “It’s taking forever.”

“Sorry,” she responded. “I was selfish to take you with me. I wanted company, and thought you might enjoy it.”

She reminded Mac that he had agreed to say a quick hello by phone to Humphrey, which would be so welcome, particularly since she’d been unable to make her daily visit there.

Mac said the old man “smelled gross,” at which Tooly fell quiet and drove.

The sun was low when they arrived. She had phoned Bridget to say she’d taken Mac out, claiming it was just to look at birds. Tooly asked Mac to stick to that account, and infiltrated his belongings and medications back upstairs. She overheard him in the TV room, talking to Duncan.

“I’m doing an email right now, Mac.”

“We went to Maryland.”

“Good for you guys.”

It wasn’t for her to intrude on this family, or to alter anyone’s life. I’m not made to be a mother, she thought. Anyway, not to Duncan’s child.

THE NEXT DAY, Humphrey looked around upon waking, anxious, then soothed by the sound of her voice. She helped him stand and led him down the hallway to the communal toilets. Yelena had been unable to come that morning, so Tooly sponged him down in the shower stall, dried him. “You’ll feel better after a shave.”

“Everything keeps going on so long.”

She stood him before the mirror and lathered his cheeks with hand soap, which made him sniff shyly.

“Well, you’ve been around for a while, Humph. You’re eighty-three now.”

He turned to her, jaw soapy. “Am I? It’s almost indecent.”

“Hold still, my dear Humphrey.” She ran the safety razor gently down his jaw, then helped him brush his remaining teeth, a white bubble of Colgate on his lower lip. Another resident walked in, spat in the toilet, then pissed with the stall door open.

She led Humphrey back to his bedroom, helped him into fresh clothing, brushed his hair. “Done.”

Once returned to his armchair, he glanced around quizzically.

“Nice and comfy?” she asked.

“I was on a ship,” he said, “and we wore black armbands the whole way.”

“You’ve told me this story before.”

“Had to hold mine because my arm wasn’t thick enough,” he continued. “They were made for a man’s arm.”

“Where were you going, Humph? Where was the ship going?”

“Then they sewed my armband smaller, so it fit me.”

“I remember you telling me that.” She wondered if all this rummaging through his past interfered with a merciful process of forgetting. These retold snippets of his childhood returned with diminishing pleasure, it seemed. “Know where I took Mac? To see my father. He told me all sorts of stuff about how Sarah used to be. Said he used to send her money for me.”

“Who did?”

“My father, Paul, sent Sarah money.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I think that might be right.”

“You remember this?” she said. “But wait — Sarah was always borrowing off me . What the hell was she spending it on?”

“I was on this ship, a liner,” Humphrey continued, “and I had to wear a black armband.”

“Humphrey? What was she doing with all that money?”

“But the armband was too big on me.”

“I know this story.”

“What happened was …” His was cable-car conversation: you could get on or you could get off, but you couldn’t divert it from its track. Didn’t really matter who was listening, she or a stranger. Except that Tooly was the last person who listened to him at all.

He fell silent, pensive. “There are things,” he said, as if preparing her for a shock, “that people claim happened to me, and it’s completely blank. I think I’m getting away with it for now. But if people start noticing — I don’t want people looking after me. That’s undignified. I need you to tell me if you see I can’t manage anymore. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I understand.” She sat on the edge of his bed, watched him, wondering how direct to be. “Humph, I will be honest with you.”

“All right,” he said rigidly.

“You asked me to say if I thought you couldn’t manage anymore. I think that’s the case now.”

“Most ridiculous thing I ever heard!”

They sat in silence.

“When I get to that stage,” he continued, “I’ll jump out a window. But I’m not at that stage. So you can damn well shut up about it.”

She didn’t recall his ever having spoken to her so aggressively. Such words were not shocking in themselves, but from his mouth they wounded her. “Sorry,” she said.

He shifted in his armchair, pressing the TV remote, unable to produce any effect.

“Can I help you, Humph?”

“No, you cannot. Television’s broken.”

The push of a single button would have lit it up as he wanted. Yet she couldn’t think of a tactful way to take it from him. He closed his eyes, clearly not sleeping, hands twitching with rage.

Since her arrival in New York, his condition had only worsened. It was as if he’d been clinging on, and her presence had allowed him to release.

“It’s okay, Humph. I’m making sure everything’s all right.”

He spoke again of his exhaustion with being alive, of his desire to be gone already. She struggled for a response — she might have felt the same in his position, into the ninth decade of life, blind and deaf and trapped in this miserable room. “Dear Humph, I know it’s rotten, this situation you’re in. It is. But you’ll be free from it soon.”

“I’m impatient,” he said. “I want to be done.”

She took his hand, but it remained limp in hers.

“You’re here now,” he said, “and I’m afraid of you going away, me being alone again.”

“There are other people. There’s Yelena.”

“But you are Tooly Zylberberg.”

“I am,” she said, smiling sadly.

“The favorite person of my life.”

Her eyes welled up. “I’m not going away,” she promised, fighting to maintain a steady voice. “I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

“When my father died,” he said, “his breathing went very slow.”

“Do you remember that, Humph? Where was it?”

He recalled looking out a window at a big tree. And imagining himself seen from space, a miniature dot of a human being, there at the southern tip of the African continent.

“This was in South Africa, was it? Can you tell me more about your life there?”

“At my age, you can either have time or you can have dignity.”

“How do you mean?”

“If you’re not careful, it gets too late to do anything about it, and …” He gazed at the convex reflection in the switched-off TV, then around the room. “I don’t want you staying. It’s horrible here — that awful bitch next door with her loud music and those little boys of hers that she treats so horribly. I can’t bear it. I don’t think I should have to keep going forever. It’s enough now. I’ve had an interesting time. I’ve seen many things. I had friends. Not many. I’ve had friends. Not many.”

“Have you been lonely in your life, Humphrey?”

“The people who liked me are all in books. I would’ve loved to meet a woman who took an interest, but it didn’t happen. When you and me kept each other company, I wasn’t lonely then. We were friends.”

“We were; we are.”

“I’m glad I didn’t stop my life earlier. I wouldn’t have known Tooly Zylberberg.”

“And I wouldn’t have known you,” she said. “Think how different I would’ve been. I wouldn’t have read John Stuart Mill!”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “My old friend.”

“Who knows how I’d have ended up without you.”

“I didn’t let that happen.”