The Autograph Man

by Zadie Smith

  The Joke about the Pope

  and the Chief Rabbi

  Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to leave Italy. There was, of course, a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal. He would have a religious debate with a leader of the Jewish community. If the Jewish leader won the debate, the Jews would be permitted to stay in Italy. If the Pope won, the Jews would have to leave.

  The Jewish community met and picked an aged rabbi, Moishe, to represent them in the debate. Rabbi Moishe, however, could not speak Latin, and the Pope could not speak Yiddish. So it was decided that this would be a “silent” debate.

  On the day of the great debate, the Pope and Rabbi Moishe sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Rabbi Moishe looked back and raised one finger.

  Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head. Rabbi Moishe pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope then brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine. Rabbi Moishe pulled out an apple. With that, the Pope stood up and said, “I concede the debate. This man has bested me. The Jews can stay.”

  Later, the cardinals gathered around the Pope, asking him what had happened. The Pope said, “First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that there was still one God common to both our religions. Then I waved my finger around me to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and the wafer to show that God absolves us of our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything. What could I do?”

  Meanwhile, the Jewish community crowded around Rabbi Moishe, asking what happened. “Well,” said Moishe, “first he said to me, ‘You Jews have three days to get out of here.’ So I said to him, ‘Not one of us is going to leave.’ Then he tells me the whole city would be cleared of Jews. So I said to him, ‘Listen here, Mr. Pope, the Jews . . . we stay right here!’ ”

  “And then?” asked a woman.

  “Who knows?” said Rabbi Moishe. “We broke for lunch.”

  “Oh, mate,” says Alex, kicking the door, pushing tears away. “Oh, Ads . . . now that’s why I love you. That’s really beautiful. Really.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Gevurah

  POWER • Anita versus Grace • Fingerprints • Modern life is rubbish and lonely • Eliot was goyish (He was also a prophet) • Artists versus workers • Kafka was Jewish • America • What do women want? • At the movies

  1.

  “Look,” said Alex, to his downstairs neighbor, Anita Chang, “I’m not disagreeing with you. My cat, my responsibility. But I can’t control everything Grace does. She’s really her own person.”

  Anita Chang bit the inside of her cheek, giving her lovely face something of a cold look. This evening she seemed all twisted out of shape. Why one shoulder up like that, and the arms crossed at such an angle and so tightly, the right ankle bent out of skew—why that high heel attacking the doormat?

  “Cat,” said Anita, her mouth quick as a camera’s shutter. “Not a person.”

  A long, white, basically good-hearted coil of fluff twisted itself around Anita’s peaceful ankle, speculated on the other one, thought better of it and slunk behind Alex in the doorway. He bent down and scooped Grace up in his arms.

  “Right. Cat.”

  “And I don’t want your cat,” said Anita, blinking rapidly, “in my house. Anymore.”

  “O-kay,” said Alex, very slowly. “What. Ever. You. Say.”

  He tried to kiss Grace on the nose as a sort of seal on the deal, but Grace whipped her head round, flattened her ears, and gave Anita the evil eye.

  “And I don’t want,” continued Anita, smacking her rolled-up evening paper on his kitchen windowsill, “to come home to any more of your cat’s mess.”

  As she said this, the pink financial pages escaped the paper and landed on the floor between the two of them. In her business skirt (but what business? He had always been too scared to ask), she bent down in a businesslike fashion and inserted them back into the body of the newspaper, maintaining the overall crease. She was fantastic. Oh, Anita!

  “And what I really don’t want,” said Anita, clicking open her attaché case and thrusting a sheet of paper at him, “is to be treated like a fool on top of everything else. You might think this contract is a joke, but I took some time drawing it up, to solve precisely this problem, and everyone else in the building has signed it. Flats B, C, D and my own. It’s just you left. My feeling is, if we all abide by certain rules regarding pets, then no one need lose the things they love. So. Please sign it properly.”

  “Sign . . . ?”

  “I pushed it under your door three weeks ago, with a note explaining the urgency, and then finally you push it back under my door like this? I don’t find,” said Anita, underscoring with a pearl fingernail a line of strange doodles—a table, two longhaired sprites, another table on its side, a broken twig, “this sort of thing funny. Please amend it, and then put it back through my door.”

  Grace stretched out a paw of reconciliation, but Anita was gone.

  IN ONE ECONOMICAL MOVEMENT, Alex closed his front door, kicked off his shoes, removed his trousers, caught the back of Grace on the front of his foot and lightly drop-kicked her into the kitchen.

  “I don’t know why,” he said in answer to a quizzical miaow. “I don’t know what she has against us. We like her.”

  Grace leapt up on to the kitchen counter, where Alex was preparing to heat up some soup. She put the wrong end of herself in his face.

  “Well, I like her. You’re weird about women.”

  Anita Chang replaced Fat Roy (nice enough, obese), downstairs, two years ago. Upon hearing her name in a leaseholder’s meeting—even before his first sighting—Alex got carried away. Like a teenager, he shopped: new trousers, posh kettle, Chinese wall hanging, impressive books. As the moving van pulled up, he wrote reams of inkless fiction, fantasy scenarios: cups of sugar, lent and returned; Well, since we’re both stuck indoors tonight; Oriental synergy; gentle ways to break the news to Esther . . .

  It had not turned out that way, though. Anita wasn’t sentimental like him, or interested in shared race, or coincidence, or shared racial coincidence (“Yes, that is correct. Both Year of the Dog. Is it a reason for celebration? Shall we break out the Pedigree Chum?”) Sometimes he bumped into the boyfriend, a strapping South African who had that charming habit of asking a question and then looking elsewhere. So it goes.

  OBJECTING TO THE BITTER smell from the stove, Grace now made a big show of leaving the kitchen in disgust (tail up, piteous backward glance), only to return a minute later and slink back and forth in front of the cat food cupboard. There are many Jewish cats in the world: his mother’s somber and simpatica tortoiseshell, Shoshana, had kittens constantly. He could have had one of those. What perversity, then, made him live with this goyish, humorless, pink-eyed fluffball?

  Mre-surch, said Grace, sort of, while washing her face.

  Yes, research. And now research had turned to love. He took two breakfast bowls out of a cupboard, put Grace’s chosen gunk in one and his own soup in the other. His was medicinal and disgusting. So was hers. Three weeks earlier she had been on a cat drip in some sort of cat hospital with suspected cat AIDS. Not cat AIDS, as it turned out. Something else. He never saw the cat drip, but was assured by his vet that it had been used. He had the image of the tiny bed, the tiny tube, the tiny bag. Three hundred pounds he’d paid, for the treatment. Twenty pounds for the cat gunk. Fifteen pounds for his own gunk. Grace’s gunk had side effects. It loosened her bowels and made her vomit, sometimes in Anita’s flat (she came in through the window), or outside her door, left like a package she wasn’t home to receive. On this very subject, Alex had once written: The practice of medicine is at its most goyish when sympt
oms of a disease, and the side effects caused by medicines given to counter those symptoms, are indistinguishable. The side effects of Alex’s gunk seemed to be confusion, depression, forgetfulness, anger, weepiness, violence, feelings of worthlessness, dread of women and muscular aches. The medicine itself was meant to ward off the activation of what he believed was his genetic time bomb, his cancer gene. Two goys they were—Grace and her owner—trying to stave off the inevitable. Ug, said Alex, as he spilt a bit of Grace’s gunk into his own bowl.

  Mrawh, said Grace, mwroo-euew.

  No one said anything about living alone. Or what it does to you. Outside, another man who lived alone in the same building tapped amiably on Alex’s window but did not pause. By the time Alex had lifted a hand to wave, he was gone. Slowly, Alex brought his hand back to the counter. A clean, slicing sound, like a guillotine, told him that Anita Chang’s contract had just been nudged into the hair’s;-width chasm between washing machine and cooker. He bent over. He could see it down there. There was a whole gross world down there. Hello. He could also smell—

  Alex lunged to switch the gas off and stayed alive. He leant against the counter, breathless. Thought of the other outcome had he not (you live alone, you light a cigarette, BOOM! A modern sort of tragedy). Then he put the lid back on the boiled soup, deposited the empty cat gunk can in the bin under the sink. He wiped down the surfaces of the front of the washing machine, the edges of the shelves. He got a sponge and soaked up the week-old gunge in the fridge. He swept something somewhere else where it couldn’t be seen. He got on his hands and knees and scrubbed at a mound of red wax on a floor tile. After the greater part of it was gone, he got a cheese knife and worked at the grooves in between the tiles. Grace mooched by and knighted him with her tail. Once. Twice. Third time he grabbed her by the head, examined her teeth and cleaned those with the tip of his house key. Satisfied, he stood up. Switched off the light, and then switched it back on. The other man who lived alone had left two fingerprints on his window, visible from here. Reminiscent of murders, alibis.

  2.

  In his bedroom, Alex sat at his desk and put Grace on his lap. He scratched her behind the ears, and switched on the box of tricks.

  Weialala leia went the music.

  Alex drummed his fingers, waiting—

  Only fifteen seconds but it feels so long—

  (Teach us to care and not to care. . . . Teach us to sit still)

  Wallala leialala

  A month or so ago, while Alex was drinking in a bar, a man claiming to be an artist projected this world-famous interface, this window, with its tinkly opening music, onto the wall. It was followed by other inanities, but nothing else had quite the effect of this. For a moment, everyone in the bar was reminded, compelled to remember, the work undone. Documents unfinished. Letters half-written. That game of suspended solitaire which sits at home, waiting for Alex-Li and his entire generation to return and finish it (and lose).

  Wallala leialala.

  la la

  Slowly Alex’s window jerks into life. It has been designed, he knows, with the intention of ordering his thoughts and conserving his space. Thinking of this, Alex touches his fingertips to the plasma (concentric rainbows!) and takes some pride in how successfully he has thwarted these intentions. Icon overlaps icon after icon, crowding out the wallpaper (the popular singer Madonna, naked, thumbing for a ride), pressing at the edges of the screen. All files incompetently named: ThisOne, ThisOne2, Alex1, AlexLi2, AlTandem4, Alexi3, Tandemimportant. He has a file called RUBINFINEPHNENMBER which contains Rubinfine’s phone number and nothing else. Important, he feels, not to let these interfaces have the power, not all the power.

  And now Alex opens a folder called KITTYLETRS that represents the only evidence he has of thousands of words he has written over many years.

  THE KITTY LETTERS. They begin life as standard Autograph Man fare. They are fan letters and at the same time, autograph requests. The letters come with self-addressed envelopes, interesting facts about their author and glossy 12 x 14’s of Kitty herself.

  A sample letter from this period, from when Alex-Li was only fifteen:

  ALEX-LI TANDEM

  37A HUMBOLDT AVENUE

  MOUNTJOY

  LONDON N23

  Dear Miss Alexander,

  I am your biggest fan. If there is a more beautiful vision than you as you appeared in the movie The Girl from Peking, then I have yet to see it! As an avid Autograph Man, who is himself half-Chinese and interested in the cinema, your signature would take pride of place in my collection. I am the kind of person who thinks of autographs as historical documents, and any museum of cinema would be deprived if it did not have you in it. I hope and pray that you might find the time to sign this photograph for me and return it in the self-addressed envelope enclosed within.

  I remain your devoted admirer,

  Alex-Li Tandem

  p.s. May you rot in hell, Krauser.

  Max Krauser being president of the KAAA (Kitty Alexander Association of America) and therefore Alex’s nemesis. It is Krauser whom Alex holds responsible for denying him the true, the only, postal address. It is Krauser who sends him, on occasion, those humiliating form letters that open with the odious phrase we thank you for your interest. Krauser is the wall of Jericho between Alex and what he wants, which would be fine if Alex’s trumpet worked.

  A few months after his seventeenth birthday, desperate at the silence from New York, Alex changed tactics. He felt the autograph guides had misled him when they advised that an Autograph Man should talk interestingly about himself, show that he is more than just a fan, more than one of the hoy polloy [sic] . . . Rather, try to show the celebrity of your choice that you are a unique individual! (The Autograph Adventurer, no. 197).

  To Kitty, clearly, he was just like the rest of them. One day, he wrote the following line into a letter that was itself only three lines long: From now on, I am going to tell you about yourself. And that is what he is about to do now, in this new document he has opened. The same thing he has done for ten years. There are hundreds and hundreds of them and not one has ever been answered.

  Dear Kitty,

  She walks into the store and winces at the age of the boy serving her. Even his knuckles have no lines. He should be in school, she thinks.

  Love,

  Alex-Li Tandem

  Dear Kitty,

  While sitting on a bench in the park, she sees a man her own age doubled over as if in the middle of a painful crisis. She is alarmed (How can she help? What should she do?) but then she is freed from making a decision: he is only picking up a coin. She feels a sneaky relief and thinks of the old Zen joke: Don’t just do something! Sit there!

  Love,

  Alex-Li Tandem

  Dear Kitty,

  When behind a young man on a bus, she finds herself staring at his neck. The urge to touch it is almost overwhelming! And then he scratches it, as if he knew.

  Love,

  Alex-Li Tandem

  Dear Kitty,

  She visits an area of town full of secondhand-clothes stores. She smiles stupidly in a bakery, unable to suppress the thought that everyone is wearing everyone else’s clothes.

  Love,

  Alex-Li Tandem

  Over the years he has learnt that some of these letters come to him instantly, while others take longer to brew. Today, with the fake white page lit up in front of him, he doesn’t know how to thank her. He reaches down to the floor, to his bag, and takes out the autograph. He rests it against the screen. And then the words come with no struggle at all.

  Dear Kitty,

  It is pointed out to her at a family party (by someone she hates) that she crosses her legs as her father did. She protests, but then when she looks down, she can see for herself that it is true. A second later she remembers playing horse-and-rider on her father’s boot. Smiling, she jiggles her own boot up and down.

  Love and thanks,

  Alex-Li Tandem

  (Your
greatest fan)

  3.

  Kitty Letter done, Alex presses a button and the box of tricks begins to sing. With its screech. With its jug jug. With its dirty-bird song. In a few seconds he will be connected to the world. The world! One day he will take advantage of this incredible resource. He will find out about ancient Babylonia and gain a working knowledge of Estonian. He will learn how to make a bomb. One day. For now, he means to head straight for his corner of the world, an imaginary auction room where each day he checks on the progress of items he has put up for sale. That’s his aim this evening—he is very serious and determined about it. This is his real business, after all, his bread and butter. And he will in no way be tempted by that friendly, clumsy woman, falling in and out of her bikini, beckoning to him from the corner of the screen. . . .

  “Look, five minutes only,” Alex said to Grace, who humored him by nodding. She purred. He clicked. It opened. Grace brushed her paw down a list of she-males, plastic people, the elderly, the pregnant, the damaged, the tirelessly gynecological, the twisted and restrained. Poor Alex; he only really wanted to see two young people, naked, together. Near the bottom he found something that would do. He unbuttoned himself and waited. Grace gave him her superior look. She disapproved. He disapproved, too—but what were his options? He was lonely. In preparation, the muscles of his right arm flexed. Go on, he whispered, and one female leapt off his knees and crawled under the bed. The other pulled some strange potbellied man towards her and opened her legs.

  Wallala leialala, cried the woman, after a while. Oh baby!

  Ug, said Alex, after a while. Oh, yeah. Uuug.

  In six minutes it was all over. The second after the ecstasy came the transformation. It was just one hairless animal stabbing another repeatedly through an open wound. Then it was gone, as if it had never been. Tissues in the bin, Grace reinstated, fag rolled. Back to business.

  AT THE AUCTION, Alex quickly and expertly raised the price of his own items with fake bids, and then swooped to claim a Mickey Carroll, one of the original Munchkins from the 1939 film. He meant to sell this to Rubinfine’s wife, Rebecca, who had recently taken such a strong interest in the restricted nature of some people’s growth. Rebecca’s sudden charitable urges represented a significant market for Alex. He had sold her three Helen Keller letters the month she was raising money for the deaf and dumb. When she became engrossed in the sufferings of Native Americans she relieved him of a very expensive chief. And when her father died, Alex took the opportunity to clear out his Judaica, and sold her everything: Israeli statesmen, Jewish humorists, postcards of synagogues, actors, inventors. All of which she made Rubinfine pay for in cash. Yes, the job had small pleasures in it, for the man who bothered to find them.