The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

by Tom Rachman

  To avoid provoking this distressing reaction, Tooly hid in her bedroom much of that first week, bounced on her bed, and read. When she needed food, she listened until the sounds of Shelly—the slop and slurp of rags squeezed into the water bucket, the scuff of flip-flops, her surprisingly sweet singing—had passed before darting into the kitchen to eat pomelo segments. When Tooly returned, her bed had been made, dirty clothes removed from the floor, pencils lined up on the dresser table beside her sketchbook of noses.

  Minutes after Paul returned from work each evening, Shelly tinkled a brass bell in the living room, calling “sir and madam” to dinner. Tooly bounded from her room, and the maid ran away into the kitchen. During the meal, Paul studied software manuals or lists of birds. Tooly tried to think of something to say.

  He looked up. “A man from the embassy invited himself over. He’s considering a move around here and wants to see the building. I couldn’t get out of it. He’s here for dinner Wednesday.”

  “I can’t come, can I?”

  He shook his head.

  But on the day of the dinner Paul tried to compensate by returning home early with a special treat for her, a videotape of WrestleMania III. Owing to a misapprehension, Paul believed her to be a pro-wrestling enthusiast. She was not. But Tooly couldn’t find a way to say otherwise without disappointing him. So they spent hours watching the TV spectacles together, always with the sound off, since he considered the commentary biased.

  “Can you remind me,” he asked, slotting the tape into the VCR, “is George ‘the Animal’ Steele on André the Giant’s side?”

  “He isn’t on anybody’s side,” she answered. “He’s part animal and helps whoever he wants.”

  “Where’s he from, Tooly?”

  “Parts unknown.”

  They watched in silence, Paul wincing whenever a wrestler slammed a folding chair into the forehead of a rival. “It’s said to be fake,” he remarked. “What do you make of that whole controversy?”

  “The whole what?”

  “Do you think it’s fake?”

  She shook her head, watching the screen.

  After a few bouts, Paul consulted his watch, rose, and strode to the television, depressing the knob with his kneecap, a scene of walloping pandemonium sucked into the center of the screen, leaving a white mark for a second, then glassy gray. “Nice?”

  She nodded, thanked him, went to her room. Tooly was supposed to stay out of sight if ever he had visitors, but she left her door slightly ajar to eavesdrop.

  The guest was a sun-leathered former U.S. marine with a blond mustache. Bob Burdett had fallen for Thailand eighteen years earlier when sent from the Vietnamese battlefront for seven days of R & R (rest and recreation) or, as the troops called it, I & I (intoxication and intercourse). After the war, he’d stuck around rather than return to Arkansas, and sought work at the U.S. Embassy. But foreign-service postings were above his pay grade, and, anyhow, lasted only two to three years; if they went longer, the theory went, American personnel risked identifying with the natives, an ailment known as clientitis. Anyone determined to remain long-term could always apply for a local-hire gig, which was what Bob Burdett had done, ending up as head of the car pool, a position with low status and low pay that reinforced his distaste for the Ivy League diplomats who sailed in and out every few years. “Don’t suppose you got a beer for me?” he asked.

  “Oh,” Paul responded, glancing at Shelly—when it came to drinks, they kept only Fanta, milk, and water in the house. She dashed downstairs, returning breathlessly with six bottles of Singha as Paul concluded his abbreviated tour of the apartment, bypassing Tooly’s room altogether.

  Bob Burdett inquired into the building and its services, commented on the city and the characters at the embassy, mused on expatriate life in Bangkok. Most expats, he explained, fall prey to the three-year itch. “By which I mean hating the locals and bitching about the help—how you can’t find a good mechanic, how everything’s better back home, how people actually work stateside. Don’t matter how good-intentioned folks are on arrival, they turn mean within three years. In my opinion? People are the same all over God’s earth. Just the food is different.”

  As if on cue, Shelly entered with dinner. Conversation stopped, only scratches of cutlery on plates, Bob Burdett’s beer bottle clunking on the table. “Might I ask that pretty maid of yours to kindly bring me another of them beers?” By dessert, he’d downed five, and either alcohol or tedium had turned his talk to politics. “Quite a situation back home, wouldn’t you say?”

  Paul murmured agreement.

  “My concern is that we backslide,” Bob Burdett continued. “We’re a strong, prideful nation under Reagan. Like he told Mr. Gorbachev, the most important revolution in the history of mankind began with three words: ‘We the people.’ Don’t need another Jimmy Carter apologizing for who we are. Without the United States of America, this world falls on dark times. The Europeans? They’d be talking German now, weren’t for what our daddies done. Am I right? Same for the Koreans.”

  “The Koreans would be speaking German?”

  “You drunk on Fanta, son? I’m saying that, without us, Korea would be nothing but a bad neighborhood of Red China today. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Okay, I see.”

  “I’m a student of history, and I can tell you one thing about these Soviets. You look at the great powers in history, you find there’s only one way to defeat an evil empire: on the battlefield. The Spaniards and their empire? Brits knocked out the Armada, and that was it. Napoleon? Overextended in the Russia campaign. Ottomans? Beaten down in the Crimean War, finished off in the Balkans. Austro-Hungarians? Kaput because of the First World War. You eliminate evil through war, not peace. Trust me. I’m a marine, and nobody hates war more than a man who’s seen it. But it’s a fact. We overcome these Soviets with force. I’m telling you now, you’ll hear all manner of hooey at the embassy about perestroika and glasnost. By God, I hear a lot of it. But now is the time to act. You strike when your adversary is weakened. That’s right now. Can’t sit around and wait for the Communists to build back up. Goddamn term limits—what we need is Reagan for four more years. You with me?”

  “I don’t know that much about—”

  “Don’t say you’re voting Dukakis. Do not tell me that.”

  “Uhm, actually, I probably won’t vote.”

  “Not for nobody?”

  “Just, I haven’t lived in America for so long now,” Paul said, sniffing. “Seems wrong for me to pick who’s in charge.”

  “Ain’t you alone doing the picking, son—rest of us get a say, too! It don’t matter how long you been overseas. We’re always Americans, wherever we end up. And you’ll move back sooner or later. Plus, I bet you go stateside pretty regular on home leaves.”

  “I don’t really take home leave. I have too much work.”

  “Don’t take it ever? Your momma and daddy back home, they don’t mind?” he asked, adding hastily, “Excuse me—I’m assuming your folks are living. That’s impertinent of me.”

  “No, they are.”

  “And they’re good with that?”

  Paul said nothing for a moment. “Actually,” he said, “I heard some troubling news about my father’s health a few days ago. Something serious. I …” He cleared his throat.

  Tooly held her breath to hear better.

  “He’ll be in my prayers,” Bob Burdett said. “That’ll take you home quick, I guess.”

  “I’ve got things here. It’s not possible right now.”

  They ate in silence.

  “I never asked if you served,” Bob Burdett remarked.

  “Served?”

  “The armed forces.”

  “I didn’t really consider it, to be truthful.”

  “Where’d you go to college?”

  “Berkeley.”

  “Hell’s bells. You mixed up in them protests?”

  “I was just studying computers.”

  �
��Guys studying computers can’t be subversives?”

  “I never really knew those people.”

  Bob Burdett slurped his beer. “Your housekeeper’s a little cutey.”

  “Maybe don’t say that so loud, please.”

  “Don’t matter if she hears—probably likes it. You stay out here a while, son, you’ll find everything’s for sale in that department.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Paul stated softly.

  The conversation stalled; rain pattered outside.

  “I was going to ask you,” Paul resumed, as if working up to something crucial, “about the rainy season.” He cleared his throat. “Do you know when it formally ends?”

  “Formally?” Bob Burdett chuckled. “Not sure they got no official ceremony.”

  “Humidity’s bad for my asthma.”

  “You picked the wrong city, son. All we got out here is humid. Maybe you ought to turn right round and go back to the U.S. of A.—except, kind of seems you don’t like the place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Heck, if my daddy was ailing and—”

  “I have things I’m trying to deal with here,” Paul said. “Doesn’t matter what I’d like to do. This is what I have to do.” He took a breath from his inhaler.

  “Guess you got a real important job,” the guest conceded. “That’s top priority for people these days. I’m from another era. If my people were in need, I wouldn’t be out here doing no car pool, I promise you that.”

  “It’s … it’s … it’s not like I’m out here for fun,” Paul said. “Okay?”

  Tooly—hearing his unsteady voice, his dry mouth—clutched the hem of her T-shirt.

  Bob Burdett persisted. “Maybe that’s what they teach you in college: put yourself first. You can wait out here till your daddy’s funeral, I guess. Or you not going home for that, even?”

  “I have a duty to be here right now, and if I—”

  “You don’t know the first thing about duty. You don’t care about your own blood. Don’t care about your country. Don’t know how you’re going to vote. Don’t know if you’ll vote. Thank you kindly for supper. But, Lord above, what is wrong with you, son?”

  “Nothing’s the matter,” Paul snapped. “Okay?” Tooly recognized from his tone that he’d lost his temper. He repeated himself shakily—“Nothing’s the matter”—saying that he couldn’t care less about voting, about politics, about empires, about who ran what, who succeeded Reagan, who led the Communists.

  Bob Burdett reminded Paul to act like a representative of the United States out here, then recalled that his host wasn’t an embassy officer, just a contractor. “Another mercenary,” as he put it. “Going around for a paycheck and a piece of tail.”

  “Can you leave my home,” Paul said, voice trembling, knocking over his chair as he stood. “Get out of my home. Okay? Scolding me like I’m an idiot! Like I’m here for a good time! This is my home. Not for you to come in and lecture. Any duties I have, I’m aware of. Fully aware of. Okay? I don’t need you to tell me. What I do concerns nobody.”

  “Don’t concern nobody?”

  “Can you go, please?”

  Bob Burdett’s chair squeaked as he rose. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “there’s things that are bigger than you in the world.”

  “Are you being threatening now?”

  “Sometimes,” the guest repeated, voice hardening, “there’s things in life that’s bigger than you.”

  There were smaller things, too, and one emerged from her bedroom.

  “I can make my eyeballs vibrate,” she said.

  Bob Burdett—looming over Paul—turned at the sight of the little girl and stepped back, cocking his head. “Well,” he said, “hello there, little lady. And who might you be?”

  Paul, voice choked, answered hastily, “My daughter. She’s my daughter.”

  “Well, howdy, little girl. Nobody told me we had young folk on the premises. Do excuse my profane words. I enjoy firing off the occasional political firecracker—keeps things lively out here in the tropics. No harm intended. None taken, I trust.” He nodded at Paul, then smiled at Tooly. “Didn’t hear me say no cuss words, did you, sweetheart?”

  She looked at each man in turn, unsure if she was in big trouble. “I can make my eyes vibrate.”

  “I’d be most appreciative, young lady, if you’d provide a demonstration.”

  She opened them wide and performed her trick, eyeballs moving fast from side to side, to the approval of Bob Burdett. “I seen it all now,” he exclaimed. “Yes, I have.”

  “And I can count a minute exactly,” she said. “You can time me.”

  Bob Burdett readied the stopwatch function on his watch. “Go right ahead.”

  All fell quiet, but for the fizz of Fanta. Finally, she raised her finger.

  “Fifty-eight seconds,” Bob Burdett said.

  “Sometimes I get it exactly.”

  “Darn good.” He ruffled her hair, which made Paul wince. “You all should come around to my place sometime, meet my dog. This young lady’s got a momma? Bring her, too.”

  “My wife’s in America,” Paul said. “She’s busy at the moment.”

  Bob Burdett looked at Tooly. “You don’t prefer staying there, with Momma?”

  She glanced at Paul, then at the guest, then back at Paul.

  “All righty, then,” Bob Burdett said. “Thank you both for the hospitality. And your momma gets here, you all come over and meet Pluto.”

  “What kind is he?” Tooly asked.

  “Good old mutt, like his daddy.” He smiled thinly at Paul, broadly at Tooly, and left.

  As soon as Paul and Tooly were alone, she asked, “Am I in trouble?”

  He shushed her, hastening to the window to watch until the guest had departed Gupta Mansions and could be seen walking up the soi. Paul closed his eyes, shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “Damn.”

  “If your father’s feeling sick,” she ventured, “should we go there?”

  “Yes,” he shot back. “I should be there helping. Right now.” He pinched his thigh. “But we can’t go. And you know that.”

  1999

  TOOLY LOITERED OUTSIDE the building, seeking a pretext to return. She figured it out.

  “I have a question,” Tooly said, when Duncan opened his front door. “Can you introduce me to the pig?”

  “Hey. You again.”

  “The one that lives here.”

  “Despite appearances, no pig lives in my actual apartment.” Though studying, Duncan welcomed any distraction from case law. Plus, he rarely had female company, and tended to do whatever it commanded.

  He also happened to know the animal’s owner, Gilbert Lerallu, having provided advice in his dispute with city authorities over whether the Vietnamese potbellied pig, Ham, should be defined as “livestock” and thus banned from residential premises. Gilbert was a composer of harpsichord music, his latest self-released album, Moonharps, having sold eight copies worldwide, including those purchased by his aunts. They tried his door.

  Taking a walk was entirely Ham’s decision, according to Gilbert. Since the pig failed to communicate opposition, they borrowed a leash and led the porker outside. It was near freezing. Duncan wore only a hooded Eddie Bauer sweatshirt, but insisted he was fine. Ham’s bristly back steamed. When Tooly touched the pig’s nose, he snorted—and prompted her to hop back in fright and pleasure.

  They crossed the Columbia campus, the snuffly pig waddling between them, his snout beaded with condensation. The neighborhood had never acclimatized to this swine in its midst, so students stared as Ham promenaded past Low Library. Duncan seemed at a loss for what to say, their only common reference being her previous visit. They’d talked for a while then, and with seeming freedom, yet she had revealed nearly nothing. “Is walking a pig different from walking a dog?” he said finally. “Do you think?”

  “I have the impression Ham wouldn’t fetch like a dog.”

  “Would he sit?�
��

  “Sit!” she commanded.

  Duncan looked at her—indeed, he appeared the more likely to obey. They tried other commands and, upon reaching Riverside Park, toyed with taking Ham off his leash to let him run free, as were several dogs, a couple of which sniffed the air near the swine, then bolted.

  “Maybe let’s keep him on the leash for now.”

  They resumed their walk. He asked what had brought her to these parts again. “I thought you were passing through town.”

  “I’m passing through again.”

  Before he could pursue this, Tooly had questions of her own. As a method of self-concealment, hers was powerful: few people, when presented with the possibility of discussing themselves, preferred to hear of another. From sincere curiosity, she asked him about law school. “I imagine everyone doing mock court cases where you stand up and cross-examine hostile witnesses, and they deny being there on the night of the murder.”

  “That has not been part of the curriculum,” he said, shivering, hood up, the cords yanked tight, leaving a pale oval of face peeping out. Law school, as he told it, was largely a matter of poring over judicial opinions. “Basically, you read these things without any understanding of what the topic is, or why it’s relevant. Then it all boils down to one exam. And those grades determine a hundred percent of what you do for the rest of your life.”

  “Sounds highly stressy.”

  “It is highly stressy.”

  “Are the teachers horrible?”

  “Depends. A lot never practiced law—law schools don’t like to sully themselves with professors who’ve done stuff. It’s like most of these professional schools—a matter of paying your fees and surviving. We’re not learning how to practice law,” he concluded. “We’re learning how to be lawyers.”

  As for which legal discipline to pursue, he was leaning toward something noble, because the NYU do-gooder ethic pushed students that way. Public defender was a possibility. Still, he wasn’t sure. If you had brains, they said, you did international corporate law.