The Autograph Man

by Zadie Smith

  “Come on. Out with it. Mum, tell him to come out with it. What?”

  “It’s just . . . I was on that train, the Free Train. Just now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And this guy walks on with a bike missing a wheel. And then at the next stop, this other guy gets in, in the same carriage, with a bike wheel but no bike. Everybody noticed, everyone in the carriage. It was driving us all crazy. Except these two gaylords. They didn’t even look at each other.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing!”

  The radiance of the laugh came back to Alex now. The repeated dawn of the smile. He was thoughtful, Adam, and knew even then that one person’s capacity for joy can pinch those people who can’t manage it. Sarah and Alex, still shot-through, still heart-whacked by grief, could only look back at him blankly. Adam had tried hard to force that smile to lie flat, but it only rose again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Reaching the Source

  1.

  Men who don’t want to go home go to a bar. Alex knew this because he’d seen it in the films. They go to a bar, and the barman, who is an American, who is a New Yorker, makes a certain gesture of reluctance—a frown, followed by a gentle, tolerant shrug—as he is asked to pour another glass of whiskey. Alex wanted a bar like this, but Mountjoy could not provide one. If people drank here they ate Chinese food with it and sat at a table with napkins on their knees.

  There was only Bubbles at the top of the high street with its blacked-out windows and frequent name changes. You could effectively date the inhabitants of Mountjoy by the way they referred to this bar. It was Bubbles, The Mount, Ben’s, or Follies to the under-thirties, it was Bar Zero to the new arrivals, and there were a few ancient souls who remembered eating cakes at this location or posting letters. It had a bad reputation, Bubbles. There were murmurings about drugs. The people who drank there didn’t know when to stop. And on most weeknights, Mountjoy’s sole celebrity could be seen stumbling from its doors, lavender-faced and plum-nosed. (A “national treasure,” this man: an ursine, physical, marvelous actor who had spent thirty years bringing the tragic gestures of Antony, of Brutus, of Othello, to a series of small-screen policeman, doctors and farmers. A Thursday night found him doing his raging Lear down the high street, gripped on either side by two unsmiling television producers, sent by the soap opera to get him out of Bubbles and onto the set, sober.)

  Like most people in Mountjoy, Alex had never been in Bubbles. He had no idea what it looked like inside (outside, its sign famously struggled to light up, and failed, at each pulse, in a different way: now no stem on the glass, now no pink bubbles gurgling over the edge, now no luminous red cherry). He had no more idea, really, once he opened the door. It was so dark. It was five in the afternoon on the pavement, perpetual midnight inside Bubbles. There were four or five people moving in the shadows. No music. A small glum disco ball revolved, its million little searchlights climbing the walls, vainly seeking those dancers it had sprinkled with stardust twenty years ago. Elsewhere, an attempt had been made at a painted beach scene; a topless brown beauty was colored in only as far as her navel. Her legs were empty, sketched. The palm tree’s eight wide leaves shimmered with green sequins, sadly depleted. In another corner, a hole in the wall for a DJ, now boarded up. Something that looked like a barman and a bar. Alex walked towards this and began.

  WHOSE IDEA WAS IT to drink alphabetically? Alex did not come to Bubbles with that intention. He merely came to have a drink, maybe drinks, maybe drinkseses. After five swift whiskies, though, the idea just sort of presented itself. And Roy, who was the barman and must take some of the blame, Roy did no frowning, no reluctant shrugging. Oh, no.

  Roy said: Go for it, my son.

  And Tommy, a pregnant Irishman, whose idea it may have been, said: Twenty says you don’t get beyond fookin’ haich.

  Which was a dare. And drunk men take dares like they take breaths.

  Absinthe, then, set it off with a bang. Alex felt a mulberry cloud envelop each eyeball, and had an abortive conversation about famous artists and their absinthe.

  “ ’Cos in a way, Roy, you see, the art and the absinthe were sort of inextricably intertwined, weren’t they? It brought the muse on, it got them all fired up—”

  “Got ’em bloody shit-faced is what it got them.”

  Beer and Cointreau passed like a heavy orange brick through his system. At this point, cautious Roy reached over the bar, looked into Alex’s wallet and shook his head. A few minutes later, Alex found himself round the corner, swaying impatiently in a queue for a cash machine. It was daytime still, out here, and he was not ready for it and fell over. Two women, a mother and daughter, watched him do it and nodded at each other. Back in Bubbles, scuffed but rich, he whacked his wad on the bar.

  “D . . .” ruminated Roy, fully in the spirit of things now. “D, Phil? Got any ideas for D?”

  Phil, an older man with a leather jacket and glasses on a chain round his neck, came very slowly out of the fruit-machine corner, took a lingering look out the door at his neglected black taxi, and then, finally, approached the bar.

  “D? No, no ideas, Roy. No ideas on D.”

  “Daiquiri,” said Alex, thumping a fist into a palm.

  “Draft beer,” corrected Roy gently.

  Beer turned up again in brand-name form for F, then spiteful, familiar Gin followed by a volcanic Hot toddy, made by Tommy, who (with unguessed-at athleticism) vaulted over the bar to make it.

  I gave them pause. I stuffed them, for a while.

  “Iberia . . . Iberian . . .” began Phil, who was doing a crossword.

  “I could make something iced,” offered Roy. “Iced something. Or another.”

  But it was Irish whisky, a warming candle in the throat. Another beer with a German name served for J, and Kahlúa, sweet and thick, painted itself in a coating on his tongue, not to be removed. Lager and Muscadet were poured into the same glass in the spirit of a spritzer. And then things got messy. Tommy, who had been drinking whisky all along, matching Alex shot for shot, started talking about the problem with these bloody Jews is they always want to run everything. Alex swung a punch at Tommy, missed and lay on the floor a while, impugning his Catholicism. After a bit of back and forth, Tommy agreed there were none more evil than nuns and personally he hated God anyway. Roy gave a quite moving speech about tolerance (“Well, it’s all fahkin’ bollocks, isn’t it, I mean, really”) and Tommy bought Alex an Irish whiskey and Alex bought Tommy one, too. And then a woman walked in. She was forty-something, and not much flesh on her, but what was there (as the actor Spencer Tracy said of his love) was choice. Her haircut was historical, and all her many denim items resolutely tight and stone-washed. She looked to Alex like a tall blue felt-tip pen, low on ink, topped by the wrong cap (yellow).

  “Thasserwo . . .” confirmed Alex, and hobbled to the bathroom to make himself respectable. When he came back, his hair was wet and he looked like Rasputin. The woman was behind the bar.

  “Stella, Alex, Alex, Stella,” said Roy, while Stella lugubriously dried a glass as if this were the first of five thousand. “She comes in for the rush.”

  Half an hour later the rush—four men from the betting shop across the street—were cheering Alex on from one end of the bar as Stella lined up a Rum, a Sherry and a Tia Maria in front of him.

  “Why you doin’ this, exactly?” asked Stella.

  None of the men present had thought this worth asking.

  “I mean,” said Stella, propping herself up on one sharp pink elbow, “why don’t you just go ’ome?”

  “ ’Cos,” said Alex, standing on the raised edge of the bar, pointing a lot, “I don’t wanna go home. NORRINNERSTED IN GOWEEHOME TO GEJUSBOLLKT BYIMMIN LIE KEUW.”

  “Please yourself,” said Stella.

  The argument about U weaved in and out of things, like a loose-stitch in the conversation. It was forgotten finally when Phil made the jukebox work, and Alex tormented Stella until she danced with him,
or, more accurately, until she allowed him to fall unconscious on her shoulder blade while she shifted quietly from foot to foot.

  “Dad’s yaar-zite tomorrow!” he said, waking without warning, his head springing up.

  “Last night doing what?” asked Stella, and then stepped away with the speed of a woman who’s seen it before as Alex slipped to the floor.

  He had his pride; he got to the bathroom without assistance and threw up there in the quietude of a cubicle. When he returned, Roy was standing in the middle of the floor, holding Alex’s mobile.

  “Adam,” said Roy stiffly, reading from the little screen. “Boot? Carl. Dr. . . . Hu-wang? Look, which one of these do I call to take you away?”

  THEY CAME, THEY CAME. Somewhere, beneath the drink, he understood what it meant, them coming. That they would always come. That this was godly. He felt a great swell of feeling, and like most young men, he feared it, and converted it into aggression.

  “Friends!” he cried, as Joseph took his left leg, Adam his right. “Romans! Autograph Men! Lend me your money.”

  They carried him like this, like a man on an invisible chair, out on to the street.

  “Don’t call me an Autograph Man,” said Adam, gruffly. “That’s your game. That’s his. Not mine. You got any idea what time it is, friend?”

  “Ri-ight, yes, yes, yes, of course—no, ’cos you’re superior—you just want God’s; autograph. ’Scuse me, can I just trouble you, jusforramo . . . You want Him to turn up with His wotsit—his lightning finger, finger with lightning in it, like a bolt—WHAM! Zzzzzz! Ha! Hahahahahaha! Write it on your forehead!”

  “No,” said Adam, patiently bringing back Alex’s lolling head as it swung backwards towards the ground, “that’d make me a golem. Alex, stand up. Stand. Up.”

  “Alex,” said Joseph. “Help us to help you. All right?”

  “Help us,” repeated Alex, “to help you? Help us to help you? Does that, like, come with the job like, you learn it, like, and they say, Right, learn this, in a Heller Insurance . . . handbook or something? Guide to speaking like a cretin? We can literally change your life. We want you to sleep easy knowing that your loved ones are protected. Help us to help you.”

  “You’re the cretin.”

  “Oh, I’m the cretin?”

  “Yes, Alex, right now you are the cretin.”

  “Me.”

  “You.”

  “I may have to ask you to step outside.”

  “We are outside.”

  Alex swiveled round until he was facing Adam, gripping him by the neck with both hands, for balance as much as intimacy.

  “Shall I fight him?”

  “To what end?”

  “To the end of breaking his stupid face.”

  “Do you think that’s likely?” said Adam, moving his face out of the range of Alex’s breath. “That outcome?”

  Alex’s head dropped, and his brain slipped forward to rest on his eyes. He closed them. The hour was late.

  “Probably go home now,” he said tenderly, reaching out one arm for Joseph, who took it with equal tenderness and wrapped it round his own shoulder.

  “So,” said Adam, as they started down the high street, “what was the occasion, anyway?”

  “Fear, and . . .” said Alex, and then thought for a while.

  “Loathing?” offered Joseph.

  “Yes. Definitely that. Definitely loathing, yeah.”

  The high street was dead and unfamiliar, although the new restaurants and the textile shops and the disappearance of Levinsky’s Bakery were all tragedies of five years’ standing. It was not quite Alex’s suburb anymore. Only the ground was unchanged, and he had not stopped finding these things inexplicably beautiful: the green shoots pushing up between paving stones, the names and footprints of past chancers who had dared wet cement. Also the irregular surfaces, back to back, testament to the contrariness of successive councils: black and stippled, red and yellow cobbles, solemn gray flagstones, getting old, cracking up. And Alex’s favorite: knitted Z’s, in a rich burgundy patina, like a path leading to sleep. Ug. Was everyone asleep? Mountjoy’s great flat-fronted houses could be seen a mile down the way, lights out. They seemed to sleep, but Alex knew there to be a spotlight in every driveway ready to go at the slightest intrusion by man or leaf. Inside, each house was pleached by those invisible lasers, criss-crossed through the landings and the stairs. A kind of trap for any fifteen-year-old trying to sneak—

  “Remember that?” asked Alex, snorting, following the drunken delusion that his thoughts had been heard, “When Rubinfine was seeing that Hindu girl—Bal-something . . .”

  “Baljit,” said Adam, smiling, “She was gorgeous.”

  “Baljit. And he’d come through the window, Rube had—and he was gonner leave the same way—but they’d just done the deed . . . first time, wasn’t it?”

  “Think so, yeah.”

  “And he was all loved up, so—ug . . . Actually, I can’t tell this, too pissed. . . . Adam, tell this—”

  “All right, all right, so, he thought: I’ll just go to the loo, get rid of this, the condom, but there’re lasers all over the house—of course, he doesn’t know that. Two minutes later: alarm, then police, fire engine, father of Baljit holding a knife—”

  “Holding a knife!” repeated Alex, in case Joseph had missed it.

  “And there’s Rubinfine in his kippah,” said Adam, laughing so loud it echoed through the street, “with a handful of sperm and rubber . . .”

  Alex gurgled with pleasure and gave up talking; it was a joy to hear the ancient story retold so well.

  “. . . and trying to assure Mr. Baljit that despite this rather embarrassing mishap, there was no reason why he, the father, shouldn’t keep doing his accounts with Rube Senior. In his pants, he was saying this. With a knife at his throat and the police coming up the stairs.”

  “I have actually heard this one,” said Joseph, and lit a cigarette. Because he had not grown up in Mountjoy, and only moved there in his twenties, it was often assumed he did not know or did not remember the old Mountjoy legends. As a consequence he heard them more often and knew them better than anyone.

  “Shush,” said Alex, putting his finger to his lips. “Carry on, Ads, carry on, mate.”

  “Well, you know what that was about . . . that was because of what his dad was like,” said Adam patiently, as they reached the monument and paused underneath it. “He was always terrified of his father, man. He was more scared of Jerry’s tongue than of Baljit’s dad with a knife. Jerry was, I mean, he still is, an incredible bully. You just can’t imagine.”

  “Try my dad on for size, mate,” said Joseph, blowing smoke.

  “Well, yeah. And Jerry’s the same way. He bullied Rubinfine into rabbi-hood, knowing it wasn’t for him—but he just wouldn’t back down. And Mark would’ve spent all his time with your dad, Al, if he could’ve. He loved Li-Jin, that’s what he wanted, that’s what he needed, a father like that, you know? He wouldn’t have been such a freak, maybe, if he’d just been given a little—”

  “Yeah, well,” said Alex, and felt exhausted.

  “I’m sorry that—” Joseph broke off, casting a wary look at Adam.

  “No, go on, what?” said Alex, standing for the first time unaided.

  “Nothing . . . just . . . I’m sorry I never knew him, your dad. I mean, I wish I’d had more of a chance to . . .”

  “Well,” said Alex, and sat on the lip of the momunent, taking from his trench coat the materials necessary for a joint, “you knew him the day he died. He was on good form that day.”

  The world is made out of letters, words. Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence, that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived. This was theirs.

  2.

  A Mond¯o Joke

  Q. What did the inflatable headmistress say to the inflatable boy

  who came into the inflatable school with a pin?

  A. You’ve let me down, you’ve le
t yourself down—you’ve let

  the whole school down. . . .

  This joke, told timidly and without expectation by Joseph, was now being hailed as the greatest joke of the century. Even taking into account the delirious effects of alcohol mixed with weed, Alex stood by this laugh—the one presently racking his chest—as quite unprecedented. He had been laughing for four minutes, and every time he thought he was finished with the laugh, it came burbling up again, like water in a blocked plughole. And then abruptly it was over. He breathed out, thoroughly. Realized he was cold. It was going to rain.

  “You okay?” asked Adam, noting the shiver.

  Alex nodded. He tried to stand. Nothing doing. He took the hand that Adam offered.

  “I’m sorry about Kitty,” said Adam, sensing it was safe to say this now. “I’m sorry to hear about it. I know you met her. . . . I know what she meant to you. I tried to call this morning when I heard—I thought you might do something stupid. Just wish I’d caught you earlier. I really think . . . you should’ve kept those things, Alex, man. . . . You shouldn’t have sold them. They were precious. You’ll miss them.”

  “Huh?”

  “We saw the paper,” said Joseph. He stood and stretched and yawned. “Look—ignore Adam, he thinks you collect religious relics or something—they’re just autographs. It’s all right. That’s your job. You don’t have to feel bad—that’s what you do. You just pulled off one of the great autograph coups of the decade. Bloody enjoy it, I say.”

  “Nnng?”

  Adam hooked an arm around Alex’s shoulders and squeezed.

  “You made the evening edition, friend, page eight. Can I ask—I mean . . . what’re you going to do with the money? It’s a hell of a lot, man. Because the shul . . . I mean, no pressure, but, well—we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Even you couldn’t drink it all—though you gave it a fair old—”

  Alex had started running down the street. At least, he had instructed his legs to run but the message was poorly transmitted. It did not contain the idea of balance, of poise, of staying upright. He came to grief at the corner and tried to gather himself in a doorway. Joseph and Adam were upon him in a second, holding their knees and looking up, for the rain had started.