The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (46 page)

“Because of the sun,” Tooly explained, touching the hot crown of her head, sandwiching his fingers there and holding them for the entire walk to the main road.

The traffic—buses and tuk-tuks and motorcycles, fumes tickling her nose—overloaded her senses after weeks inside that house. He hailed a taxi and helped her into the backseat, flopping in after her and giving her address. Odd to hear him say “Gupta Mansions,” as if a character from this version of Tooly had wandered into the previous version. She watched him looking out the car window, his old eyes following each vehicle they passed, focus dragged along with it, then the next.

The taxi stopped at her street. “Very soon,” Humphrey said, opening the door on her side, speaking differently than he had, more seriously, “very soon you will grow up. Being small is hard bit of life. But you are nearly done with it. When you are grown, Tooly, you can be boss till the end. You are someone who must be boss of your life, not pushed around. So be careful.”

“I’ll be careful of trivial beings,” she suggested, to please him.

He smiled sadly. “Yes. Of trivial beings.”

“And the Moron Problem.”

“This also.”

She stepped from the taxi, watching him, unsure what was happening. “Are you going?”

“Good luck for your life,” he answered through the window.

The driver turned the cab around. Humphrey’s head was visible in the rear window as the taxi drove away.

She stood beside a pothole, looking into it, then stepped over and continued down the
soi
, past the fruit stall, past the tailor pumping his foot-pedal sewing machine, past the construction workers in bandannas.

It was Shelly who answered the door. She backed away to let Tooly in, bowed, hastened to her quarters. Paul was still away at work. Tooly found her bedroom tended and tidy, bed made, sheets tight. The apartment was air-conditioner cold, its thrumming units rippling the curtains. On the desk, her schoolbooks were lined up. She opened her book bag, looking for
Nicholas Nickleby
, but had left it behind. She took out her sketchbook of noses instead, yet couldn’t bring herself to draw more than a line, so left it on the desk. She jumped onto the bed, landing on her knees, mattress jiggling—her first proper bedding after weeks in the tent. She let herself fall flat on her face and lay still, her mouth dampening a patch of bedspread.

At the sound of Paul arriving home, she awoke with fright but did not move for several seconds. Finally, heart racing, she walked into the living room.

“Tooly.” He gaped at her, absently putting down his briefcase. “Tooly.”

She held still.

Paul reached out, and she extended her hand to shake his. He’d only meant to touch her arm.

“Did Sarah bring you?”

Tooly shook her head.

“Are you okay? You look so thin. Are you hungry?”

As they ate, he asked if she wanted to stay with him and that she could—he’d figure it out somehow. They could leave right now, move again. Did she want that? But these questions were too direct coming
from Paul—she expected him to be otherwise, so didn’t know how to answer.

All fell quiet, like their meals of old. Just the tremors of his desire to speak. So strange after days of free discussion with Humphrey and everyone there, after all she’d done—drinking coffee each morning! cheating at chess! debating one of the Great Thinkers!

She asked to get down from the table, and went to her room. She hadn’t had a door for so long, and was unsure whether to use it now, if it would be rude. From the other room, he cleared his throat, as if to call her back. She knew where he’d be: seated stiffly on a chair, work folder in his lap, willing her to join him.

However, she found him otherwise than imagined. He lay on the couch, arm draped over his eyes. She stood beside him, looking at his shielded face. He reached over to draw his daughter nearer. But she turned, spiraling away.

On her balcony, Tooly gazed down at the lit swimming pool in the courtyard, a pane of blue glass. The shacks on the other side of the wall were dark. Lights from distant skyscrapers dotted the night.

She slipped out, ran down the stairs, passed under the jacaranda trees, beyond the saluting porter, up toward Sukhumvit Road, into the first tuk-tuk.

The destination she gave was Khlong Toey Market—she and Sarah had passed it that first night. Upon arrival, she handed the driver all her money, the tips from helping tend bar. She was on her own in a swirl of strangers, and looked for the alley. She tried one, but it was wrong. She walked up the next. All grew darker as she went. She closed her eyes, the better to listen for music and crowd noise. She heard only traffic, far behind her now. Tooly turned a blind corner. And there it was: the house. She crossed the concrete patio and tried the front door, which opened immediately.

All three of them stood there, their conversation interrupted. The way they regarded her—Venn smiling slowly, Sarah reaching for her cigarettes, Humphrey compressing his lips—it seemed that the discussion might have been about Tooly herself.

“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?”

2000:
The Middle

A
FTER 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.

He fetched his Ping-Pong paddle. “Game before you are going?”

She shook her head, but made two mugs of instant coffee.

He tasted his. “Where’s sugar?”

“I put in two heaping tablespoons already.”

“Must be more heaping.”

“Humph,” she said, “we’re always going to have lots of conversations. Okay?”

He smiled. “But, Tooly, I’m not really alive—I am already with my friends,” he said, pointing to his books. “I died already and I’m only watching now. You can go on with this twenty-first century. I am staying in number twenty. It is nicer for me.” The concerns of his century—inspiring millions, swindling them, murdering them—had once amounted to everything, then expired, as the species repeated itself in different generations, in different bodies, uniquely animated in each person, yet united by one fear: that upon their own deletion the world went extinct, too. The times to which he had peripherally belonged—a world war, the ideological battles thereafter—had ended, but his physical powers had not exhausted themselves, nor had the organism stopped. “I know what twentieth century has for breakfast,” he said. “It is too much work getting to know new century.”

“We’ll let everyone else test number twenty-one,” she suggested. “What do you think? If it looks nice, we’ll join them.”

“Is good idea.” He rose as if to give an after-dinner speech, then sat back down and patted her hand. “You so sweet, darlink. I go get fresh air.” He spent twenty minutes locating his coat and roll-up chess set in case he wanted to study positions, plus a few dollars in loose change. All this he narrated loudly. Farewell unstated, he closed the front door after himself. Even then, he muttered on the landing for a minute before clomping downstairs, the building door squeaking open, crashing shut after him.