Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  The garbage man growled, and repeated the same words, slowly, and louder, at me. “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s begging.”

  “How much does he want?” A stupid question.

  “He’s not begging for money.”

  “What’s he begging for?”

  “He’s begging for time.”

  “Why does he do that?”

  “He thinks you’re wasting yours, so you must have plenty to spare.”

  My tongue was parched. I hadn’t drunk for hours … since that bowl of water at breakfast. Usually, I only ever drank coffee and whisky. An old farmer was burning something that popped like firecrackers. Bamboo? Grainy mauve smoke drifted across the road. My eyes were watering. I was under a vast tree that fanned out across the sky and hid it incompletely as words will hide whatever is behind them.

  Red roses grew wild up the brick wall crumbling back to sand. A roped-up dog went hysterical as I walked past. A flurry of fangs and barks. It thought I was a ghost. Futons, airing. A Chinese pop song. God-awful and tinny. Two old people in a room devoid of furniture, steam rising from their teacups. They were motionless and expressionless. Waiting for something. I wish I could go into their room and sit down with them. I’d give them my Rolex for that. I wish they would smile, and pour me a cup of jasmine tea. I wish the world was like that.

  I watched the cars, people, and stories trundle up and down the night road. In the distance a giant bicycle pump was cranking itself up and hissing itself down. I watched the neon signs intone their messages, over and over. The Japanese kid and his girl had disappeared fuck knows where, and Lionel Richie had dissolved in his own saccharine bathtub. My second burger had gone cold and greasy; I couldn’t finish it. A version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” was playing, unbelievably sung in Cantonese. I should be getting back to Mr. Wae’s briefings or Avril will start the Sacred Martyr Act. One more song; and one more megasugar coffee, then I’ll go back like a good boy. It was “Blackbird” by the Beatles. I never listened to this one properly before. It’s beautiful.

  “Neal Brose?”

  A Welsh voice, unknown and familiar. A short, Mr. Mole-ish bloke, with horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Yeah?”

  “My name’s Huw Llewellyn. We met at Theo and Penny Fraser’s New Year party.”

  “Ah, yeah, Huw … Sure, sure …” I didn’t know him from Adam.

  “Mind if I pull up a pew?”

  “Sure … If you can say that about molded plastic seats bolted onto cast-iron frames. You’ll have to forgive my frazzled memory, Huw. Who are you with?”

  “I used to be with Jardine-Pearl. Now I’m at the Capital Transfer Inspectorate.”

  Fuck. Now I remember. We’d talked about rugby, then business. I’d dismissed him as a born compromise candidate. “Poacher turned gamekeeper, eh?”

  Huw Llewellyn smiled as he unloaded his tray, and wriggled out of his corduroy jacket, with leather pads on the elbows. So fucking Welsh. A veggieburger and a styrofoam cup of hot water, with tea bleeding out of its bag. “People usually say, ‘It takes a thief to catch a thief.’ ”

  Dad used to say that. “I’ve read about your raids on—who was it? Silk Road Group?”

  “Yep. Would you pass me a sachet of ketchup, please?”

  “I’ve heard some interesting rumors about them money laundering for Kabul’s biggest drug exporter. Is it true? Go on, I won’t tell a soul.”

  Huw bit into his veggieburger, chomped a few times, smiling, and swallowed. “I’ve heard some interesting rumors about Account 1390931.”

  Fuck. I suddenly wanted to vomit my shitburger. I laughed lightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Fuck. That’s exactly what liars say.

  Huw squeezed the tea bag with a plastic fork. “Go on, I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Is it a bicycle combination lock?”

  “No, it’s a Cavendish Holdings account that only you have the keys to.”

  He had upped the stakes. “Is this a fishing expedition, or do you have a warrant for my arrest?”

  “I prefer to see this as a friendly chat.”

  “Mr. Llewellyn, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  “Mr. Brose, I know far more about Andrei Gregorski than you. Believe me. You’re being set up. I’ve watched him do it before. Why do you think neither his name—nor Denholme Cavendish’s name—appears on not one single document, not one single computer file? Because they like you? Trust you? You are their bulletproof vest.”

  How much did he know? “It’s just a hush-hush hedge fund for—”

  “I don’t want to watch you zip yourself up in lies, Mr. Brose. I know your personal life is in tatters. But unless you cooperate with me, by the weekend things are going to take a sharp turn for the worse. I am your last way out.”

  “I don’t need a way out.”

  He shrugged, and swallowed the last morsel. He’d put that away without me noticing. “Then our friendly chat has come to an end. Here is my business card. I strongly recommend a change of mind, by tomorrow noon. Good night.”

  The door swung. I was left looking at the wreckage of my shit-burger.

  I went back into Cavendish Tower, but changed my mind in the lobby. I asked the night watchman to wait five minutes, then tell Avril I’d gone home. I waited twenty minutes at the harbor for the next ferry, looking across the black water at all the shining skyscrapers. Back on Lantau Island—just as a precaution—I emptied three quarters of my account from the bank’s cash machine, in case my cards got frozen. There wasn’t another bus for thirty minutes, so I walked back to Phase 1 through the chilly night.

  She was waiting in the apartment. The air conditioner was belting out frigid air.

  “For fuck’s sake, I’m sorry! I had a lot of work!”

  Resentful silence.

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind! Okay? I’m going to bed.”

  I hid the money in a shoe box at the bottom of Katy’s dressing table. I’d think of a better hiding place before the maid came. She might be a necessary drug, but she was still a thieving bitch.

  ————

  I came to a shrine, and the sound of running water. There was a fountain guarded by two dragons. Hygiene be fucked, I was thirsty. I drank until I heard the water sloshing about in my belly. At least I wasn’t going to die of dehydration. I wanted to dunk my arms and face into this cool, clear water, so I unstrapped my Rolex, perched it on the nose of a dragon, stripped off my shirt, and immersed as much of my torso in the fountain as I could. I opened my eyes under the water, and saw the underbellies of wavelets, with the sun beneath.

  Where now? There was an easy path and a steep path. I took the easy one, and twenty meters later arrived at the cesspit. I came back to the dragons and started climbing sharply. I was feeling much, much better. As though my body had stopped fighting the flu, and was submitting to its will.

  The path steepened. At times I had to use my hands to scramble up. The trees were growing dense, scaly, and damp, the pinpricks of light that got to the path sharp and bright as lasers. I took off my jacket and gave it to a blackberry bush. It was already ripped. Maybe a passing monk or escaped refugee will take a shine to it. The air was busy with out-of-tune birds and their eyes.

  Time lost me.

  I looked at my Rolex, and remembered that I’d left it on a dragon’s nose.

  Grabbing a root to pull myself up, it came off in my hand and I tumbled down the path a few yards. I heard a crack, but stood up right as rain. I felt fabulous. I felt immortal.

  Higher up loomed a rock as big as a house, but I scaled it like a teenager, and was soon surveying my domain from the top. A slow-moving 747 made its stately descent, skinning the afternoon with its jagged blade of noise. I waved at the people. The sun glints off the tail. She is with me, waving too, jumping up and down. It’s good to make somebody feel good, even if she doesn’t exactly exist.

  “She likes me.”

  The
maid was standing in front of the mirror, naked, holding up Katy’s summer frocks against her body. If she liked one she’d try it on. If it fit, she’d put it into Katy’s Louis Vuitton bag. If she didn’t, it joined the others on the reject pile.

  I was floating, anchored to the bed by the deadweight of my groin. “Who likes you?”

  “The little girl.”

  “What little girl?”

  “Your little girl. Who lived here. She liked me. She wanted sister to play with.”

  The wind blew the curtains gently. These Chinese are fucking crazy.

  The last time Katy called, she wasn’t drunk. I took that as a bad sign.

  “Hello, Neal’s Answerphone. This is Katy Forbes, Neal’s separated wife. How are you? You must be rushed off your feet, considering how Neal has forgotten how to pick up receivers and dial. I want you to tell Neal that I am now the proud owner of a palatial residence in northeast London, that we’re having the rainiest summer since a very long time ago, and all the cricket is being rained off. Tell him that I’m having sessions with Dr. Clune twice a week, and that they are working wonders. Tell him that Archie Goode is going to be my lawyer, and that the divorce papers should get to him by the end of the week. Tell him I’m not going for his jugular, I just want what’s rightfully mine. Lastly, tell him it would prepare the ground for an amicable settlement if he gets off his lazy arse and ships me home my Queen Anne chair. He knows it’s the one heirloom I give a damn about. Good night.”

  The key to understanding Neal Brose is that he is a man of departments, compartments, apartments. The maid is in one, Katy is in another, my little visitor in another, Cavendish Hong Kong in another, Account 1390931 in another. In each one lives a Neal Brose who operates quite independently of the neighboring Neal Broses. That’s how I do it. My future is in another compartment, but I’m not looking into that one. I don’t think I’ll like what I’ll see.

  Weird thing was, the maid was right. When I came back and the maid was there, the atmosphere in my apartment was palpably different. Muted Sibelius rather than thunderous Wagner. If she’d been real, I imagined her sitting under the table, chattering away to her dolls. She’d leave us alone, and the curtains would stay where I left them. Maybe I’d hear the kiss kiss kiss of her feet running across the marble floor in the living room.

  If the maid wasn’t there, there’d be this air of reproachment and neglect. It was the same when I went away on business—I went to Canton once, a right fucking shithole it is too—and when I got back she was so pissed off with me that I had to stand there apologizing to the thin air.

  The path stopped climbing, and crested the ridge. I saw Buddha’s head above the camphor trees, almost close enough to touch. That was one Big Buddha. Platinum, spun on a wheel of deep blue. The trees were dream trees, now. A shadow cat, a cat shadow.

  My skin buzzed. My immortality was ebbing away. In this sun it must be turning to bacon. I think I had broken a toenail, I could feel something wet and warm in my shoe. I could feel my organs sag against each other, still functioning, but slowing like tired swimmers.

  Why is the moon up there, up above you, Lord Buddha? White, blue, roaring in its silent furnace of sunlight. The moon, the moon, in the afternoon.

  I stepped into a once and future century. People, coach tours, a car park, souvenir stands, advertisement hoardings, people crowding around ticket booths—only the British and the Slavs know how to queue—motorbikes … Here and not here. They were on the wrong side of a wall of bright liquid. A babble of languages from the room next door.

  Lord Buddha’s lips were full and proud. Always on the verge of words, yet never quite speaking. His lidded eyes, hooding a secret the world needs.

  The moon was in on the joke. New, old, new, old. If I met the old garbage man now, I’d say, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any spare time to give you. Not even a minute. Not even a spare ten fucking seconds.

  I wondered if that Japanese kid was playing his saxophone in a bar somewhere, over in a bar in Central or Kowloon. I would like to hear him. I’d like to watch his girl watching him. I would like that very much. I don’t think it’s going to happen now. I’d like to talk with them, and find out how they met. I’d like to ask him about jazz, and why John Coltrane is so famous. So many things to know. I’d like to ask him why I married Katy, and whether I was right to sign and return those divorce papers. Was Katy happy at last, now? Had she met someone who loved her, someone with a respectable sperm count? Would she be a tender, wise mother, or would she turn out to be a booze-soaked saggy fuck in her middle age? Would Huw Llewellyn nail Andrei Gregorski, or would Andrei Gregorski nail Huw Llewellyn? Would Mr. Wae the shipping magnate take his business elsewhere? Would Manchester United win the premiership? Would the Cookie Monster’s teeth fall out? Would the world be over by Christmas?

  She brushed nearby, and blew on the back of my neck, and a million leaves moved with the wind. My skin was so hot it no longer seemed my own. A new Neal inside the old opened his eyes. Platinum in the sun, blue in the shade. He was waiting for my old skin to flake off so he could climb out and walk abroad. My liver squirmed impatiently. My heart was going through its options. What’s that organ: the one that processes the sugar?

  What led me here?

  My dad would describe Denholme Cavendish—Sir Denholme Cavendish—as a man educated beyond his intellect. “Now, Nile.” D.C. pursed his lips together in the manner of the old general he believed himself to be. The traffic of Barbican, twenty floors below us, punctuated the pompous old fuck’s dramatic pauses. “A key question to understanding the role we’re projecting for you in Hong Kong is this: what is Cavendish Holdings?”

  No, D.C., the key question is: what answer do you want to hear?

  Play it safe, Neal. Let him feel intellectually on top. And don’t tell him he’s too fucking stupid to get my name right. “A top-line legal and investment corporation, Sir Denholme.”

  Good. He had an insight coming on. “We’re a corporation. A top-line corporation. But that’s not all we are, Nile, my word no. We are a family! Isn’t that so, Jim?”

  Jim Hersch smiled his “you’ve put your finger on it!” smile.

  “Sure, we have our family squabbles. Jim and I have had some fine old catfights in our time, haven’t we, eh, Jim, eh?”

  Same smile. “Sure have, Sir D.” You smooth American fuck, Hersch.

  “You see, Nile? No quarter given to yes-men at Cavendish! But we pull through in the end, Nile, and let me tell you how! Because we understand the value of cooperation. Mutual reliance. Mutual trust. Mutual assistance.” He lit his cigar like Winston Churchill and gazed at the portrait of his grandfather, who gazed back. I wanted to snigger. The man was a walking cliché. How could this fuck-for-brains run a law firm with offices in five continents? The answer was obvious: he only thought he ran it. “Playing the Asian markets requires a certain … how did I put it to Grainger, Jim, the other day?”

  “I believe you said ‘flair and verve in the strategizing stages,’

  Sir D.”

  “Flair! And verve! That’s it, you see. Flair! And verve! In the strategizing stages! Now in London, New York, everyone knows what’s what. The playing field is even, the goalposts are fixed. But Asia is the last wild frontier, eh? The bandits of corruption live in the Chinese hills, and make lightning raids! Regulators? Forget ’em! Paid off. Every last man. No, for our townships to prosper in Asia, we have to play by their rules, but play better! I’m talking about originality in capital manipulation! About reinterpretation! You have to recognize the real but invisible goalposts when you see them! And use whatever means are at your disposal to score. You with me, Nile?”

  “One hundred percent, Sir Denholme.”

  What was the old fuck on about?

  “I want to add a special account to your Hong Kong portfolio. It’s for an ally of mine. A Russian chap, based in Petersburg, you’ll meet him one day. You’ll be hearing from him soon enough. A splendid fellow. Chap
by the name of Andrei Gregorski. A real mover and shaker. He’s done a few favors for us in the past.” He leaned forward over the desk, tapping his cigar into an intricate ashtray inlaid with jade and amber, and etched with lotus flowers and orchids.

  “He’s asked me to set up an account for his operation with our Hong Kong branch. I want to put you in charge of it.”

  “What do I do with it?”

  “Whatever he tells you to. However much, wherever, whenever. Child’s play for a trooper of your experience.”

  We’d come to the clincher.

  “I think I can manage that, Mr. Cavendish.”

  “Keep it hush-hush. Just between you, me, Jim, and grandfather here, eh?”

  I get it. The old fuck’s asking me to bend the law.

  “One thing matters and one thing only.” I’d always assumed it was his leather chair that creaked, but now I wondered whether or not it was really him. He prodded each word at me with his cigar. “Do—you—have—the—balls?” The blackheads on the tip of his nose urgently needed squeezing. “Eh? Eh?”

  I’m a financial lawyer. I bend the law every day.

  “They were firmly attached when I last used them, Sir Denholme.”

  D.C. was deciding whether or not he liked my answer. Then his laughter ignited, sending a projectile of saliva hurtling between my eyebrows. Jim Hersch smiled too, a photo smile of a manager in a local newspaper. And I was smiling the same smile, too.

  Do I go back further?

  How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn’t want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we’re at it, okay? Thanks very much.” Hong Kong became the trading hub of the biggest, most populated continent in the world. This led to one big burping appetite for bent financial lawyers.