The Autograph Man

by Zadie Smith

  Now he pushed back through the curtain of colored plastic strips that marked the partition between his surgery and his home.

  “Young lady. Your name is?”

  “Boot. My name’s Boot.”

  “Boot? Like shoe?”

  “It’s actually Roberta, but everyone just says Boot. Boot’s fine.”

  “Well, Miss Boot,” said Dr. Huang, sharply, “you friend of Alex. Very well. So you have money to pay?”

  Boot, who had grown up in the countryside, had an instinctive, inherited fear of the Chinese in any situation other than food delivery. She shifted back a step.

  “Why on earth should I pay when Alex just gave you that check?”

  Keeping hold of Alex’s nose with one hand, Boot reached out for what Dr. Huang was trying to show her.

  “He not very well,” said Huang quietly.

  It was a check. Where a signature should be Boot saw a shaky table, a catcher’s mitt, the bottom half of a chair.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Binah

  UNDERSTANDING • Everyone in England has been on a quiz show • Identifying objects • A Bogart/Henreid situation • Wittgenstein was Jewish • Rubinfine carries things forward • Typing letters • Marvin explains • Anita

  says no • Adam says yes • Who cut the plants?

  1.

  Alex’s fifth-year maths teacher was on television. He had 184 points. He needed only one more answer to get on the champion scoreboard and guarantee a place in the quarter-finals. Keeping his eyes on the screen, convalescent Alex tried to dip and eat a nacho without using his hands. He secured himself by hooking his feet round the far curl of the sofa. He began leaning towards the floor.

  The quizmaster said: “Which philosopher was delighted when he heard that his student had given up philosophy to work in a canning factory?”

  Alex said the answer eight times very quickly, and then said it once in slow motion and then sang it. The maths teacher gave an answer that revealed alarming beliefs regarding food production in fifth-century Greece. Alex dipped his sore nose in salsa and let it stay there for a while. The sorrow was upon him. The doorbell rang.

  “DOOR!” screamed Boot from the kitchen. “DOOR. DOOR. DOOR!”

  This is a door. Here is some salsa. That was my maths teacher. This is a door.

  “CAN I HELP YOU?”

  “Other way round,” said Rubinfine, making the International Gesture of reversal. He was wearing a puffy, salmon-colored sweater that had written across it TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO REALLY •??!@# UP TAKES A COMPUTER.

  Alex stood firm in the doorway. “If it’s Torahs you’re selling, I’ve got one.”

  “Hullo, Alex,” said Joseph. “Can we come in? We just want to talk.”

  “What happened to the shnozz?” asked Rubinfine, pushing past him into the hall. “You have an argument with someone’s fist? Somebody not like the cut of your— Hello.”

  Boot had just emerged from the kitchen looking both strident and coquettish, a combination she had perfected in childhood to get her way.

  “And your name is?”

  “Boot.”

  “Of course it is. A friend of Esther’s;?” asked confused Rubinfine, whose last female friendship ended when the girl in question micturated in his sand pit. “Or . . . ?”

  “Alex’s, actually. I mean we—we—that is, we have business together.”

  Even for Boot, Alex thought, this B-movie guilty voice, this stuttering Other Woman shtick—it was all a great disappointment.

  “Boot, this is Rabbi Rubinfine, an old friend, and this . . .”

  Alex quickly understood that his next introduction was unnecessary. Boot and Joseph were moving clumsily towards each other (a gauche ballet of elbows and soft places as a coat was removed) and now converged in an awkward kiss, where neither the cheek nor the proposed quantity could be settled upon, another B-movie convention. Alex felt a fury rush through him as he put the last piece in an offensively simple puzzle. He had not ever imagined that they knew each other.

  “You two already . . . ?” said Rubinfine as they progressed to the lounge. Here he smiled and dropped into a chair, indifferent to both the end of his own question and the scarlet flush traveling up Joseph’s neck, engulfing his pointed ears. Rubinfine picked up the first book to hand—a popular history of the scallop—and flicked to the central photos.

  “For at least, what, three months?” said Boot, perching on the edge of the sofa. “I never thought that you two might be friends too. But of course you would. It’s not a very big world, ours, is it, really? I s’pose everyone who comes into the shop knows each other, really. Isn’t this funny! Joe and Alex! It’s like a bad play. Gosh. Joe, by the way, I’m glad you didn’t buy that Nicholas Brothers. It is a nice piece, but it isn’t worth half of what Cotterell’s trying to flog it for. He’s just too pig-headed to bring it down, admit the mistake. . . . He thinks the market in musical stuff’s about to explode, you see. . . .”

  Boot was no fool; she sensed the astonishing tension in the room. With disgust Alex watched her silently conclude that it was desire for her that must have caused it.

  He pressed his thumbnails into the soft of his palm, as she prattled on, shaping her body into a deliberate echo of the famous silhouette, the Marilyn hourglass. Back arched, abdomen retracted, turning out the lips like blushing petals, tilting the head low but looking to the ceiling—what an incredibly powerful gift! The ultimate in International Sexual Gestures: the metamorphosis from woman to vase.

  “You just wouldn’t think it possible,” said Rubinfine, lifting an eyebrow but turning his eyes back to the book that lay open on his knees. “Two hundred and something pages about the scallop. About a shellfish. You have to admire the writer. Where does he get the will?”

  “Joseph,” said poor Alex, shaking with rage. “Tea—could you? Help me? Carry some things in? And some drink—maybe we’ll have some drink—rabbis excepted.”

  “Rabbis included, thank you very much. The day I’ve had.”

  Joseph, who had not yet sat down, began to move forward with the pigeon steps of a condemned man. Alex hustled up behind him.

  “Well,” Alex heard Boot say, as he gave Joseph a little surreptitious jab in the back on the way out, “you don’t look much like a rabbi to me. . . .”

  In the kitchen, Alex found Grace and picked her up, clutching the reluctant cat close to his chest so that he might not throw a punch.

  “I understand,” he said, darkly.

  “Alex,” said Joseph, glancing at the door to check it was shut, “I’m not sure you do.”

  Alex reached a hand from under Grace to thrust out a finger. “You informed on me. For your own advantage.”

  “That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?” said Joseph, fiddling with his tie. With downcast, pretty eyes, he reached out for the kettle and put the water on. “That’s a little bit sub-Garbo, isn’t it?”

  “You told Esther about Boot,” said shrill Tandem. “Not Adam. You. It’ll probably be the end of us. That’s a ten-year relationship you’ve just destroyed. Ta very much.”

  “Alex—”

  “And I’m standing here trying to figure out why. Do you really think, Joe, do you really think Es would leave me for you?”

  Joseph looked alarmed—his head shot up, he seemed amazed. He laughed, rather desperately.

  “Esther? No, Alex, you’ve got the wrong—what are you talking about—Esther’s like a sister to me.”

  “You’ve always been competitive with me,” said Alex, talking over him. “Was that the point? Were you just going to take her for the sake—why are you laughing? What’s so bloody funny?”

  “Nothing!” shouted Joseph, stamping his little foot. “Look, just give me a second to get myself . . . I want to explain—this has got nothing to do with Esther—I mean, not in that way.”

  Alex shook his head, as if trying to straighten out an idea. “Boot? Is that it? Are you having a laugh? Look, Joe, you can bloody have B
oot, mate, you don’t have to screw my life up in the process.”

  “No, look, wait, this is going too fast,” said Joseph, taking both hands and pushing downwards, the International Gesture for calm. “I just thought—she’s my friend, Esther’s my friend too—and I just thought she deserved to know, that’s all. Really, I’m sorry—I just—she kept asking and she suspected something—Please, let’s just forget the whole thing. I’m sorry. I made a mistake, obviously.”

  Alex swore viciously, and Joseph vibrated and put one hand to the sideboard.

  “It’s really not actually what you think,” began Joseph, and this made Alex laugh—the awful movie phrasing.

  “Joseph,” he said, “I don’t believe you. You’ve always been competitive with me. You can’t stand to see me—wait a bloody minute, wait.” Alex dropped Grace to the floor. “God, I’m an idiot. You told Cotterell to expect me with that Alexander, right? Am I right? You told him I was wandering round town with a forgery. You bastard. Well, for your information, I was selling one for Brian Duchamp. Who actually really needs the money. So well done there. Joseph, what’s wrong with you? You’re trying to mess me up—”

  Joseph choked a little, attempting a scornful laugh.

  “Come on, now—I can’t take all the credit for that—not at the moment.”

  Alex punched an overhead cupboard.

  “You told Esther. And I treated Adam like crap today, because of you. You informed on me.”

  Joseph bit his lip. He seemed ready to cry. “I gave her,” he began unsteadily, “the information she deserved and would have received anyway, in the end. Everyone knew. Really, Al, it shows such contempt for her, as if she didn’t exist—”

  “Look, mate—one thing I don’t need is relationship advice from you. When you actually manage to have a relationship, Joe, then get back to me.”

  “Contempt, really,” continued Joseph quietly, taking a step back. “And bloody hell, you know . . . as far as Boot goes, as you so nicely remind me, I’m a single man. You’re not. Look, I don’t even . . . I don’t think I’m seriously interested in her anyway, and . . . Alex, this really isn’t the issue. This is uncivilized. We came here tonight, Rubinfine and I, as your friends, to try to—”

  Alex picked up a huge bottle of Polish vodka from the sideboard, grasped it by its neck and pointed it at Joseph Klein. Inside floated a yellow thread of bison grass, bobbing at the neck. “See this? Starter for ten. What’s this?”

  “It’s Polish vodka. What? What am I meant to say? What—it’s a drink? What?”

  “Yes, but not only. It’s a drink, yes. But think again. Let’s remember our university degrees. Let’s remember our Wittgenstein. Tell me about the nature of a proposition.”

  “Alex—get a grip—no, no, all right—calm down—okay, okay, the meaning of a proposition is in its use.”

  “So?”

  “So it could also be a weapon.”

  “Ten points! We’re going to drink this until we get uncivilized. And then when we are uncivilized I’m going to beat the air out of you. With this. My friend. My dear childhood friend. Do you understand? Do we understand each other? We’re going to have a sort of wrestling match. That’s a note promise, Joe. That’s a commandment.”

  “Alex . . . you don’t understand. You don’t.”

  “But first we’re going to drink. We’re going to get tight. Middle-of-the-movie stuff. We’ll drink to Esther—she’s having an operation on Sunday, did you know? There’s a fact for you. Now, I’ll take this, and this—there’s some more down there, there we are. You open that cupboard. Get some munchies. There’s mixers in the fridge. Hold that. And that. No, give me that one. Get a tray for those. . . .”

  “Ooh la la!” said Boot a few minutes later, now perched on the arm of Rubinfine’s chair. “Look at you two. Is all that for me?”

  “We’re having a party, in inverted commas,” said grim Alex-Li.

  “IT’S FUNNY,” SAID BOOT some time later, and more loudly than she knew, “I actually wanted to be an actress. But we can’t all be actresses. I mean, not everyone in the world can be an actress. It’s like in the end it’s just the luck of the Irish, no, sorry, what do I mean? Oh, you know, wotsit—of the draw.”

  She was leaning against the fake fire with its glowing plastic coals, a glass of red wine, her third, cupped in both hands. Rubinfine kept nodding even after she had finished, and continued to pick up personal greeting cards from the mantelpiece to read their inscriptions.

  “Did you ever want to be anything, Rabbi? I mean, apart from, you know, a rabbi?”

  Rubinfine lifted up a tiny Mexican idol by the penis for the fifth time. He began to turn it over in his hands. “Here’s an interesting fact,” he said brightly, jerking his head up. “I went to talk to some schoolchildren recently about the meaning of Purim—turned out my presentation didn’t fill the whole hour, had problems with the PowerPoint presentation and there were other complications—that’s not actually relevant to this story—anyway, to fill time I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, and—”

  Boot laughed suddenly and then looked tearful. Rubinfine frowned but pressed on.

  “—Yes, and in a class of thirty-five, nine wanted to be models, four wanted to be actors, two wanted to be pop stars, ten wanted to be footballers, and the remaining ten wanted to be ‘entertainers,’ just ‘entertainers.’ I tried to get some specifics out of them—nothing doing. You never saw so many ambitious little—just a touch more, thank you, that’s fine—ambitious little human beings.”

  Boot gulped the end of her glass and began to pour herself another. “Rabbi, honestly, I have to tell you—I’ll know you’ll understand—but when I was at school—”

  “You’ll excuse me for a moment, won’t you?” said Rubinfine, who abhorred confessions. He had to call Rebecca about the arrangements, now that a third of the midgets (the term had become lodged in his brain, there was no shifting it) had proved to be vegetarian.

  “And how are you two?” said Boot rather desperately, hitching her elbows on the mantelpiece, turning to the sofa. Here, Joseph and Alex had sat since the beginning of the festivities, drinking vodka shots, locked in a morose discussion of their childhood acquaintance. They had wiped out good times and distorted the order and severity of personal slights according to each man’s taste. Now they turned to Boot like a hostile, woozy matinee crowd.

  “Never been better,” said Joseph, dropping his head.

  Boot bit her thumbnail, “This isn’t much of a party, is it? I keep feeling I want to cry. It’s rather like a whatdyacallit—a wake, or something. It’s as if somebody died but no one really knows who. I always think there’s only so much Leonard Cohen a party can stand. Actually,” she said, swigging her wine and taking a stumbling step forward, “I think I might go, actually, Alex, if that’s okay. I might just toddle home.”

  “Don’t go, Boot,” said Joseph flatly, still looking at the low coffee table in front of him. “It’ll just be boys left if you leave. No good if it’s just boys. Let’s watch a movie or something. Be fun.”

  “Thanks, Joe, but I think I better . . .”

  Alex licked the joint he was rolling and looked around him. “Where’d the rabbi piss off to, then?”

  Boot shrugged. “Don’t know. Upstairs, I think.”

  “Missing,” said Joseph. “Presumed dead.”

  “You leave,” said Alex in the drawl of the popular actor John Wayne, “and the rabbi gets it.”

  UPSTAIRS, RABBI MARK RUBINFINE contrived to go missing for some time. He had phoned Rebecca, but the conversation proved short and ill-tempered thanks to his inability to take the phrase novelty chicken swizzle sticks in the serious spirit in which it was meant. He had drunk a little too much wine, possibly. And he had reached that point which anyone who has organized even so much as a four-person dinner party reaches in the end: Why can they not cook their own food, hire their own DJ, eat and dance in their own damn homes? For Rubinfine this f
eeling was now magnified exactly forty-eight times, once for each of these miniature troublemakers he was being railroaded into entertaining.

  He’d replaced the receiver with Rebecca still talking. Now, instead of returning downstairs, he found himself sitting aimlessly on Alex’s bed. Reaching for the chocolate coins, he got a good quantity in his palm and began the fiddly process of relieving them of their metallic skins. Imagine living like this! Rubinfine shuddered and placed his free hand into the yellow hand-shaped stain on the wall. His fondness for Alex had never stopped him from being frank with himself about the inherent superiority of his own situation next to poor Tandem’s. Rabbi Mark Rubinfine had a patio and a wife, curtains and carpets, a power shower and a twelve-seater dinner table. As soon as Dr. Guy Glass cured Rebecca of her tokophobia, the place would be full of children. See? He had collected things in his life, which is what you’re meant to do, placing them carefully between you and death, as on an obstacle course. Alex’s room was like a student’s bedsit. There was no discernible difference between Alex’s room when he was sixteen and Alex’s room now. Pants still formed a mountain. Socks still cried out for their fellows.

  Rubinfine leant forward to look out at Mountjoy. Out there, that was his world. He couldn’t conceive of having no power in Mountjoy, no audience. Alex and Adam, like Akiva, hiding in their caves! Rubinfine smiled affectionately at the eccentricity of his oldest friends. He turned and looked up at the famous note, Blu-Tacked above the door. It had been torture for Rubinfine, remembering not to spend his note. And then they discontinued pound notes altogether, and relieved him of the responsibility.

  NOW HE KICKED OFF his slip-on shoes, grabbed his right foot and brought the hard skin on his heel up for inspection. He peeled off a thick ridge and flicked it in the direction of an overflowing bin. Will you look at this place! Some of the posters were fifteen years old. Still there, above the bed, the fake advertisement that promised four young matadors—Mark y Joseph y Alex y Adam—against a huge Spanish bull. Gulping down his last chocolate coin, he walked over to peer at a reproduction of a sixteenth-century Mantuan Kabbalistic text, a single page from the Zohar, maybe, or the Sefer Yetzirah. Rubinfine, to himself at least, did not pretend to be an expert. The text was written inside a pair of hands with pointed thumbs. Birds in rosebushes fluttered up the margins on either side. God’s name, circled by flowers, sat at the top. It was delicate, superb. And what things we have done, over the ages! murmured Rubinfine’s happy heart, for no matter what Mountjoy thought, he had not become a rabbi solely to please his father. In his own small way he had wanted to carry things forward. Like the continuity man on a film set. At the time, this was an analogy that had not satisfied Adam, who thought the call to the rabbinate should be entirely pure, a discussion a man has with God. But God had never spoken to Rubinfine, really. Rubinfine was simply, and honestly, a fan of the people he had come from. He loved and admired them. The books they wrote, the films they made, the songs they had sung, the things they had discovered, the jokes they told. This was the only way he had ever found to show it, that affection. His childhood therapy had pinpointed the Rubinfine problem; personal relationships were not his strength. He was always happiest dealing with a crowd. The people of Mountjoy! The people! He never expected to add anything to them, to the people, never imagined he could offer any great rabbinical insight—he hoped only to carry them for a short time. Between the rabbi who came before him and the one who would come after.