The Autograph Man

by Zadie Smith

  “We in a hurry?” asked Adam, getting his breath.

  “You—follow—” said Alex, starting to run again. “She’s in the house. She’s in the house.”

  Now they were jogging, the three of them, and the rain was preparing to get serious.

  “Who’s; in the house? Why are we running?”

  “She. Kitty,” said Alex, and accelerated, his trench coat billowing capelike behind him.

  “The video?” called Adam, as Alex took a healthy lead. “Just return it to me tomorrow. It’s no big deal.”

  “NO. SHE. KITTY. IN THE HOUSE.”

  “Alex,” cried Adam, as they passed the video store and Alex vanished behind the curved wall of the bank that began his street, “Alex. Don’t be mad.”

  At this hour Alex’s street was sepulchral, residential, and Adam and Joseph turned its corner in silence, fearful of waking the parents of people they knew, not to mention the people they knew who were now parents, for these boys were getting old.

  “Alex, please,” said Joseph, flinging himself finally at the gate, and addressing the Rasputin presently conducting a furious search for his keys. “Slow down. Take it easy.” With a yell of victory Alex retrieved his keys from deep within the broken seams of his coat.

  “What’s this about, Tandem?” asked Adam, dripping up the path.

  “She. In there. Kitty. She’s in my house. Right now.”

  He opened the door and made the International Gesture of requested silence. “She’s in the living room,” he said in a loud, artless whisper. “With Esther. They’re chatting, they like to chat.”

  He tiptoed through the hallway, opening the lounge door with ceremony, and as it swung on its hinge, bowing low. In this position he gagged. Joseph got him by the elbows and led him to the nearest place, the kitchen sink, where he was ponderously sick, in wave after wave. It was a long ten minutes before the expulsions slowed down, dwindling into a painful reflex cough from which nothing came, not even air. When he was completely done, Joseph lovingly washed his face for him with damp kitchen roll, and tried to give him a sleeping pill from his own prodigious collection of home-use pharmaceuticals. He drew a little aluminum pillbox from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and opened it—sweets in a safe. But Alex refused. He had sleep. If there was one thing he had, it was reserves of sleep.

  Adam came in, sighed, held his friend’s shoulders and walked him back to the lounge.

  “I made up the sofa bed. Esther must be upstairs—her bag’s in here—she won’t want you up there, though, you smell terrible. Sleep it off down here.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “There’s no obit,” he said, pointing to the evening paper on the coffee table. “It’ll be in tomorrow, I’m sure. You have to try and sleep now, not think about it.”

  “Hnng . . . ug.”

  “Now look, you’ve got a ten ’o’ clock appointment with Rabbi Burston tomorrow, just to go over things. And then it’s six o’clock for the service. Okay?”

  “Adam . . .”

  “Go to sleep, Al. We’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Later, man.”

  And they left. They left. He passed out. The men didn’t believe him. And the women, the women had closed ranks against him.

  3.

  He had a dream. In real time, in real life, it lasted only a minute or two. But it went deep, as the short ones often do. It went like a knife dive into a swimming pool. He was in a fabulous garden. The garden was in the old French style, that is, it was a pastiche of many things. It had beds for English roses, it had a pseudo-Indian scene, a circle of cypresses, tamarinds. It had formal European hedgerows molded in soulless imitation of animals and trees, and a Japanese corner where stones made patterns on stones. Bamboo trellises framed the wide walkways, and as Alex made his way through an intricate arrangement of flowers he realized this would all be best viewed from the top windows of a great house—and then there it was, the great house, a trice after the thought, white and stately behind him. But now he was elsewhere. A maze had been waiting for Alex to discover the secret at its center: naked Diana, pulling back her bow. Over there, an artificial lake sat between two artificial hills, in imitation of a Tuscan valley. The final touch was the ha-ha, that cunning trench dug to give the impression that the garden went on as far as one could see, or rather, that the garden did not exist at all. That it was simply at one with the surrounding country. That all of this was the work of accidental design, of streams following their course and flowers blooming wherever they wished to. . . .

  Alex was in this garden. Nobody else was. The windows of the great house were alive with sunlight, and somewhere in that direction he could hear a string quartet, the tinkle of glass and laughter, the usual counterpoint of a pleasant lunch party. But the garden itself was completely empty, and this troubled him. He was earnestly looking for the gardeners. He wanted to speak to the men who had dug the lake and planted the trees and trimmed the hedges. He knew, somehow, that they weren’t at the party. Where were they? He became frustrated, treading the same paths again and again, knowing this was a dream, wanting to wake up. Then, between two sentry-like fir trees, the scene changed. It was the garden still, but some new, secret section of it, a water paradise, with pool after pool laid out in a line, and monuments—monoliths of white stone—placed here and there between them. In every pool and in synchronization, naked men were leaping from the water like seals, performing disciplined, improbable turns, showy flips and poses, before going under again. It was beautiful. Alex, crying, approached the nearest pool. He could see Esther at the other end of it, sitting nude in a hybrid of a lifeguard’s chair and a director’s, her name across the back. She did not move or speak. Alex turned his attention back to the men. Men? Half of them were young, seventeen, eighteen, and Adonises, but for one feature. A film of skin, like a closed pouch, covered their genitals. The rest were very old, with this same area unintelligible beneath sagging stomachs. But they were jumping! They were all jumping! Higher than before, an additional spin, an impressive extension of an arm or leg. Sometimes even a whoop, a clear note sung and then abruptly sunk as they broke the water’s skin. Joyous Alex took off his clothes, and walked to the end. Here, Esther (without speaking, without moving) let it be known that no man entered this pool without reading the inscription. Inscription? Naturally, Alex was now nose to stone with a monument, trying to understand a few lines of verse carved upon it. What was this script? The Hebrew, Latin, Coptic, Russian, Japanese, Gobbledygook script . . . the lines of it going one way, then another, looping, curling, dashing, dotting . . . The men laughed when he said he couldn’t read it. Esther would not speak or help. The men didn’t believe him. And the women, the women had closed ranks against him. . . .

  HE AWOKE WITH A single breathy phoneme and the feeling he was going to die. He tried to throw the cover off, but instead became involved in a protracted entanglement, kicking at the blanket until it agreed the best thing was for the two of them to go their separate ways. He could smell himself. He reeked. Though we are all of us attached to our own stench, this was turning chemical. Hydrogen sulfide was involved. And mucus had become circular, working a trail through the three holes in his face, eased in its passage by mute tears. Why had the women closed ranks? What had he done? Alex and his fug left the room and began on the stairs. But the stairs were not as he recalled. The stairs, it turns out, don’t help you get any higher up. It’s not like an escalator. You have to do all the legwork yourself; they just sit there. And there is no warning, either, of when they will come to the end (it is dark and the blanket has custody of the Tandem glasses); there is only Alex, feeling his foot propel itself violently into space; for a long second he is toppling forward into a cloud, until the floor returns, unbending and unamused. The hallway’s not too bad. It’s straight and it has two walls and he had the good sense, years ago, not to put anything in it that might only be tripped over later. Most decoration is future obstacle.

  The door. His heart is doing its s
cattershot routine, beating whenever, wherever: his toe, his thumb, his thigh, his chest. He doesn’t want to wake anyone. He eases the door. A light tap with the foot and it’s off, the slow swing. There they are. He can hardly see them. Just shapes, really. They lie next to each other—top-to-toes, is it called? Each set of toes poking free from the duvet at different ends, like two children at a sleepover. No. He’s still too drunk to get away with that. Like two women on a beach? No, no. That won’t do. His brain is absolutely resolute in its intention to mess with him. Like two bodies in a morgue. Almost. Like two bodies in a morgue in a film. All that’s missing is the tag (name, birth and the other) tied to that digit most unpresuming during life—the big toe. Is that what it was? The toe detail?

  You watch too many films is one of the great modern sentences. It has in it a hint of understanding regarding what we were before and what we have become. Of few people has it been more true than Alex-Li Tandem, Autograph Man extraordinaire. And therefore suitably, rightfully, his first thought was: They’re dead. That’s it. They’re dead. That idea (though it passed through him quicker than the sentence can be said) hollowed him out. It wrestled him and won. And then in the next second: No, no, of course they’re not. Parents will know this feeling, the before and the after. The horror, the climb-down from horror. But after this, at least for Alex, there is the extension. The extension is lethal. It understands that this is just a time lapse. Because there was nothing wrong with that diagnosis except time.

  They were not.

  But they would be.

  All his people, all his loves.

  The dead walk. He was with them on the train. He had drunk with them, this evening. They carried him home; he was looking at them now. On the walls in black and white, but also in this bed, in full Technicolor. A child knows this, and is told to get over it. A famous Irishman knew it and made peace with it and said all that needs to be said on the matter. But it was still really messing with Alex. He was having trouble with it, basic as it may be. Ten years ago, Sarah’s sister had visited with her young children and Alex’s cousin Naomi refused to sleep in this room because she was scared of the dead ones on the walls. Everybody laughed, over breakfast. He had laughed. Everybody had laughed. Because it is wrong, says everyone, to take it so personally—and so he hadn’t, he was a grown man (this is probably what everybody means, he thought, by this stupid phrase; they mean Don’t take it personally, don’t take growing personally, being grown). He hadn’t taken it personally, not for years. He took it cinematically, or televisually—if he took it at all. But here it came—he tried to grab the top of the door frame to keep himself up—here was the death punch, the infinity slap, and it was mighty. He wheeled away from the spot, clutching in his hand something he had accidentally ripped from the wall; his mouth was open as if someone had kicked a hole in his face. But he made no noise. He didn’t want to wake the dead. He had control, still. He found some spot where he could not be heard, hot and dry and full of towels, and said his Kaddish without gesture or formality—just a wet song into his hands.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the World

  1.

  The doorbell rang. Alex crawled down the stairs. Literally crawled down the stairs. Terrified by the heady forward momentum but unsure about standing, he crawled, and when that grew weary on the knees, he flattened himself out and slid down. He opened the front door on all fours, one arm stretched out for the knob.

  “Mornin’,” said Marvin.

  “Marvin,” said Alex, getting to his feet.

  “How was New York, man?”

  “Big. Tiring.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I slept on the landing.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Marvin, and took out his pad.

  Somewhere a bird sang the first four notes of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” The light was white, the street overexposed. Nobody likes to talk about the first day of spring any more; it is seen as willful sentimentality on the part of nature. But it seemed like spring to Alex today. You could feel Passover and Easter and a long, sluggish, sofa-bound weekend of bad films round the next corner, coming with the sun. The whole day was in bloom.

  “Tandem?” said Marvin, lifting his head and following Alex’s gaze, which went straight upwards to the bleached sky.

  “Hmm?”

  “You gonner order or what?”

  “Hell of a day, no?”

  “Every day is a hell of a day.”

  “What do you want to do, Marvin?” croaked Alex, and then coughed the frog out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Apart from being a milk operative. I mean, what do you want to do with your life?”

  Marvin eloquently groaned, like a disappointed academic, and slapped his own forehead.

  “I tell you something, yeah? Das an idiot’s question, yeah? Life is going to do things to me. And that’s all there is. And it’s all good. Yogurts?”

  “No, no . . . just milk.”

  Marvin made that same sound of disappointment. He put his hands on his hips.

  “Look. I saw you in the paper, yeah? I wasn’t even gonner mention it, ’cos that stuff don’t jangle with me, not at all. I got mine—I’m not after anyone else’s. I’m not like these other bredrin, always envious. But at the same time, I have to say, I was gently assumin’ you might be a bit more adventurous in your dairy needs from now on. Now dat the situation has changed. Though we would like it otherwise,” said Marvin, somberly, “the world is a marketplace to a degree, bro. Now I got to be all unsubtle ’cos you’ve got me forcing the issue somewhat, you get me?”

  “I will have,” said Alex, looking over Marvin’s shoulder to his float, “one each of the milkshake things, some yogurts, the weird Italian cheese you tried to sell me that time, and whatever else you think I might like.”

  “Boo-yah. Return of the prodigal son,” said Marvin with a whistle, and pimped down the path, clicking his fingers.

  A few minutes later, carrying a cardboard box containing various degrees of fermented milk, Alex stepped back into his house feeling something like renewed hope. He closed the door with a jaunty nudge of his backside. Esther was in the hallway. A black silk Chinese dressing gown of his hung from her, open. She brought the two sides protectively together and hugged them shut with folded arms.

  “There you are,” he said and walked towards her, but she stepped back from him. Her face knew no false economy: it always gave out only what had been put in. Right now it was a picture of pain.

  “Let me put this down,” he said, nodding at the box. He walked into the kitchen and put it on the sideboard. When he turned back round, there were two women standing in the doorway.

  “I’m tired,” said Esther. “I’m pretty angry as well, very, actually, but mostly I’m just really . . . I’m tired. You need to listen. And you need to shut up while you’re doing it.”

  Alex began his favorite noise, the first-person pronoun, but she reached out one arm to stop him.

  “I think you need to listen to Kitty first, Alex, okay?”

  “Good morning, Alex,” said Kitty, quietly. She was, of the three of them, the only one fully dressed.

  Alex tried again with that noise, that insistent I, but Esther shook her head.

  “You know what I do this morning?” said Kitty, unfolding a newspaper she had in her hand. “I wake up very early, and I step over you. And I go downstairs and I pick up the newspaper from the mat. And I read my own obituary. Now,” she said, smiling half-heartedly, “this I think is a very harsh way to start the day.”

  “Kitty, I—”

  “In which it says, among other things, that in the end my career was something of an insignificance, and that—here it is—her chief interest in cinematic history was for collectors, for whom her autograph held an almost mystical fascination. This is very prettily put, no? This is my whole life, apparently, in a sentence.”

  “Oh, Kitty, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought—it was just for a day—I thought i
t made sense . . .”

  “It says here also,” said Kitty, wiping away a tear, “that although a natural talent, I wasted my ability in frivolity. . . . It goes on to outline various frivolities in the most vulgar manner possible—and then, where it is—yes, that I became more noted in Hollywood for the men and women I had slept with than for the films I made. Silly, to be upset by it,” said Kitty, bringing both hands now to her eyes, dropping the paper. “I am too old for such vanity. . . . I don’t know. It is not that I ever thought I was Joan Crawford, do you understand? But can you imagine? Reading this? Can you?”

  Alex opened his mouth and shut it again.

  “And the worst thing is, it is written by a supposed friend of mine, this filth, would you believe.” Kitty threw the paper on the sideboard with a little noise of disgust. “One always hopes that other people . . . well, that they will think better of you than you do of yourself.”

  “All I can do,” said Alex, slowly, “is apologize. That’s all I can do.”

  Kitty nodded. Esther put a protective arm round her, but Kitty, after a moment, moved from underneath it.

  “It was dishonest, Alex,” she said, looking squarely at him, taking a step forward.

  “I told him it was a terrible idea,” said Esther, vehemently. “The worst possible karma.”

  “And rather unfair to me,” said Kitty more gently, as if talking to a boy.

  “Completely unfair, that’s what I said,” agreed Esther, with a fury (Alex realized now) clearly stretching to another matter. “That money should be returned immediately.”

  “Oh, one minute, please,” said Kitty, tutting delicately, and placing a finger on Esther’s raised hand. “We do not have to be completely crazy, now.”

  Now Alex stepped forward to meet Kitty and held her by her shoulders.