Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“I figured you’d make it back, little duck.”

“Thank God, thank God, thank God — thought I’d lost you,” Sarah said, though she was looking at Venn.

“Look what I got,” Tooly said, taking out her passport.

Venn lifted it from her hand, flipped through, and handed it to Sarah, from whom Humphrey grabbed the document. He appeared uneasy about the girl’s return, lips parting as if to object, though he had no power to dissuade anybody. He had tried. But people didn’t listen to him.

“See,” Sarah told Venn, eyes wide. “She wants to come with.”

“You’re being unrealistic.”

“It’ll arrive in my account every month; he promised. It’ll come to me and I’ll share it with you. I don’t mind.”

“Who’s looking after her?”

“I will,” Sarah said.

“Me, you, and her going around together?”

“We’ll be company for you,” Sarah told Venn. “You can do what you like. With whoever you like. I’m not trying to make some claim on you. You won’t get sick of me. I promise.”

Humphrey addressed Tooly: “They’re not staying here. You know that? They’ll be going some other place. You might not like it. I won’t be there. There won’t be school, probably. It might not be safe.”

Tooly nodded her assent.

He appealed to Sarah and Venn: “You can’t take her.”

“How much are we talking about?” Venn asked Sarah. “And monthly, right?”

Humphrey shook his head unhappily. “Look, look.”

“What?”

“If you do this,” he said, “I come.”

Venn smirked. “What do you have to do with anything?”

“I keep eye on her.”

“Sorry, but I don’t travel like that,” Venn said.

“We don’t need to all go together,” Sarah argued. “Just tell me where you’re headed. I’ll get there on my own. Me and Tooly will join you.”

“And Humph comes along and babysits whenever you wander off?” Venn said.

“I’m not wandering off. It’ll be a decent amount, Venn. It’s yours as far as I’m concerned.”

“Do what you like, Sarah. You, too, Humph. Makes no difference to me.” Venn winked at Tooly, who grinned back.

Sarah lit a shaky cigarette, blew a smoke cloud, and patted her thigh to call the girl nearer, hugging her tightly, kissing her cheek so hard that Tooly’s neck bent from the pressure. “What have you done?” Sarah whispered. “What have you done to your poor, poor father?”

AFTER WAITING AT THE CAFÉ nearly an hour, Tooly acknowledged that Venn was not returning. She walked once around the block, knowing it to be fruitless, then proceeded north. At 115th Street, she stood across from Duncan’s building, uncertain if she wished to be spotted. She studied the building’s façade, the vertiginous fire escape, and distinguished windows at whose other sides she’d stood, the rickety iron balcony where she’d sat, her legs curled beneath her, sharing a damp filtered cigarette, wondering if the bolts in the brickwork would hold.

She walked through Morningside Park, past a guy rolling a joint, his lizardy tongue sliding across the cigarette paper as he watched her. Through East Harlem, she continued, skirting the concrete projects, past adolescents in camouflage and skewed NY baseball caps, stuffing junk food and catcalling. She kept going for hours, crossing the footbridge to Randall’s Island, on to Queens, wending her way south to Brooklyn, reaching her street after midnight, traffic grumbling along the Gowanus Expressway. She entered the building, climbed to their floor, put her key in the front door, but didn’t turn it. She listened to the sound inside: a page crinkling as it turned.

“Tooly?” Humphrey asked through the closed door, then opened it. “Hello, darlink. You are asleep?”

“What do you mean?” she said, puzzled. “I’m standing up.”

“Certain animals sleep standing.”

“I’m not one of them.”

He made for his customary seat at the end of the couch, expecting conversation. But Tooly continued into her bedroom.

Awakening the next morning, she remained under the covers, wishing to escape herself in sleep. She reached for her watch on the floor, opened one eye to read it, daylight streaming around the edges of her bent blinds. A few minutes after noon.

In the shower, she pressed her forehead against the tiles, water whispering down her back, skin goosebumped. A strand of her hair remained stuck to the wall, a black S on the white tile. She wanted nothing for breakfast, took only a few gulps of water from the faucet. She microwaved yesterday’s coffee, hands shivering from caffeine and fatigue, which angered her obscurely. She abandoned her mug in the sink.

“He went,” Humphrey said, meaning Venn. “This is better.”

“We’re meeting up.”

“Where?”

“Haven’t decided,” she said. To avoid his gaze, she looked into her cupped hands.

So much of what Tooly thought, said, her mannerisms, attitudes, and humor, had come from Venn. There was no meaning to “Tooly” without him inside it. The two were akin: living among others but estranged from everyone, recognizing the pretense, forsaking a place of their own for the right, as Venn put it, “to relieve citizens of their transitory property.” He and she had no interest in riches, only in remaining free of the fools who reigned, and always would.

“We have items and activities to discuss,” Humphrey said.

“I’m not interested,” she said. “Not interested in hearing your conversations with the Great Thinkers. Just because you own books by smart people doesn’t make you smart. All you do is sit there. You’re wasting time.”

“I know that.”

“You are,” she said, repeating the charges not from conviction but in distress at her own cruelty. “All you’ve done is sit there, looking at what other people did. You don’t do anything; you never did anything in your life. I know you had a hard time a long time ago in Russia. I’m sorry. But I—”

“This is our last conversation. Can it be nice? Please? We were friends, and now you are sick of me. But everything you say I will think about many times after. And you are right. You are right. But you are going now.”

“Where am I going? I have nowhere to go.”

“You’re leaving.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “I like you to go.” He went into her room, returning with her passport, which he placed on the Ping-Pong table.

She clasped her hands to hide their tremors at what she’d said, what was happening. This was what Venn had spoken of: cutting out the unnecessary, managing alone. She opened the passport, and a bank card fell into her hand. “That’s not mine,” she said.

“There’s money on it. You take it.”

“I’m not taking your money,” she said, unable to look at him.

“No? Well, it’s not money from me. Since when I have money? It is from Venn. He leaves it for you. He says, ‘Tell Tooly that PIN number is her birthday, month and day.’ That is what he says.”

She closed her hand over the card.

“He tells me he is leaving today,” Humphrey continued. “He says you should go, too. You must get on train and go somewhere very interesting, do something you always want to do.”

“It’s not our last conversation.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, leaned forward, eyes stinging, clutching the couch upholstery until her arm went weak.

He sat beside her. She took the book from his lap — essays by John Stuart Mill — turned it over, looked at him. “Don’t look sad, Humph. Please. I can’t bear it.”

“Sad? That is lie — it is complete and utter fabric.”

“Fabrication,” she said, sniffing, smiling.