The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

by Tom Rachman

  They climbed the winding staircase, passing grimy windows that overlooked the street from ever-higher aspects: cars, then electrical poles, then rooftops. The floor got dirtier as they went, litter everywhere, an abandoned kiddie bike with training wheels, a broken umbrella, cigar ash.

  The place she shared with Humphrey in Brooklyn a decade earlier had been run-down, as had Duncan’s apartment share on 115th Street. But they’d all been passing through; the squalor was transitory. Here no one was going on to better things. They were staying and rotting. It was a flophouse, one person to a room, shared bathroom at the end of each floor, communal kitchen at the other. Most of the inhabitants were men, jobless, addicted, ill. “Your dad has been here a few years now. I thought you should see it,” Duncan said, as if she deserved a little guilt for this.

  Many of the gun-metal doors were dented, as if kicked repeatedly. A torn Tigres del Norte poster hung from one. Another was open, a fat shirtless man with a hair net seated in a deck chair, chewing his hand. From other rooms, conversation emerged in various languages along with the pungent scent of food. “This is him. Door’s always open. I tell him to lock it, but you know what he’s like.”

  “Should we knock?”

  Duncan just pushed in. The door hit an obstacle but he squeezed past, disappearing from sight. Tooly, who hesitated in the hall, heard him asking, “Did I wake you?”

  In response came, “Hmm?”

  Tooly turned her back, closed her eyes, heart pounding.

  Duncan called to her, “You coming in?”

  The door was impeded by a white leather armchair. She turned sideways to edge in, and saw first the back of Humphrey’s head, then his rheumy eyes. The room contained a bed piled with documents and books, a window with blinds down, a small television on a chest of drawers, a bar fridge, microwave, and sink, above which hung graph paper with Duncan’s distinctive handwriting: TURN OFF TAP! Around the room, he had posted further exhortations: LOCK DOOR AT NIGHT!; TOILET PAPER IN DRAWER! A stench, like spoiled stew and floral air spray, filled the room.

  “He just woke up,” Duncan said.

  Humphrey scowled, tangled white eyebrows overhanging his lids, face like a walnut shell. He wore a red sweatshirt and oversized bluejeans—she’d never seen him in leisurewear and it looked wrong, as if he’d been dressed by someone else. He had lost weight, too, his jeans cinched with a rope. Duncan raised the blinds. Humphrey gripped his chair, arms shaking from exertion as he pushed himself to his feet.

  “Humphrey,” she said. “Hello.”

  He blinked, the heavy sacks under his eyes quivering.

  “I walked all the way here from Manhattan,” she went on. “I know you disapprove of physical exercise, but I enjoyed it. Was thinking on the way down that I should’ve brought you some smashed potatoes.”

  He shuffled past her, arm outstretched to feel his route, overgrown yellowing fingernails ticking against the wall. He stumbled on a book, which made her and Duncan lurch forward. But he was fine. Lips pursing, slackening, he turned to Duncan, stating softly, “Go out.”

  “You want a moment alone with Tooly?”

  “Have her go out. I want her to leave the room. Now, please.”

  Tooly went rigid, not just at his statement but at how he delivered it. The man she had known was Russian. This old man—it looked like the same person; surely, it was him—spoke as if English were his native tongue. She looked to Duncan, then to Humphrey.

  She hastened around the armchair and into the hallway, closing his door behind her. From inside came muffled voices. What, what, what was going on here?

  A neighbor burst from her room, shouting “Fuckin’ told you!” and flung before her two little boys, then slammed the door, leaving them in the hall. Giggling maniacally, the brothers—the elder about eleven—pounded on the door for their mother, rattled the handle, screamed for a few minutes, ran at it with karate kicks, looking over at Tooly to see if she was impressed.

  “We’ve all been thrown out,” she told them. From inside their mother’s apartment, music boomed. The older boy sprinted up the corridor, spat at the closed windowpane. The younger kid lay on the floor, finger up his nose, staring at Tooly.

  Duncan opened the door. “You can come back now.”

  Humphrey had changed into a collared shirt, which was tucked into his roped jeans, and he’d put on a tie. His hearing aids were in now and he wore bifocals, whose lenses split his clouded old eyes across the middle.

  “Is there somewhere I should sit?” she said, watching Humphrey. “I’m not sure where to go. It’s a bit cramped.”

  He pointed to the armchair, but she declined—that seemed to be his seat, the white leather darkened in his smudged shadow. Duncan sat on the edge of the bed, so she did the same. Shaking, Humphrey lowered himself into his chair, curled forward, chin against tie, hands compressed between his thighs, as if bracing for a punch.

  “We woke him. Waking is always difficult,” Duncan told Tooly, who nodded brusquely, hating to discuss someone who sat across from them. “Yelena was here this morning,” he said, of the Russian woman who was paid to help out.

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Did you enjoy your lunch?”

  “Didn’t have any.”

  “There’s a pizza box in the sink.”

  Humphrey turned to consider the evidence. “Yes, some pizza. Wasn’t good, which is why I didn’t remember it.”

  Tooly tried to catch his eye, to inquire with a glance, What the hell is going on?

  “I didn’t offer you coffee yet,” he said.

  Tooly stood to make it, but the jar of Nescafé was empty.

  “Was telling Tooly,” Duncan said, “that waking can be difficult for you.”

  “Feels strange,” Humphrey said. “Apprehension. But not about anything. If you fear something concrete, you can do something about it. But I don’t know what I feel frightened of.”

  “His vascular system isn’t working properly,” Duncan continued. “That’s what the memory-clinic guy told us. His brain doesn’t get the blood it needs.”

  “I don’t want to exaggerate the problem,” Humphrey said. “It’s uneven. It depends on what cells are attacked.”

  “You must be happy to see your daughter.”

  Humphrey grunted, laughed uncomfortably.

  “I heard that someone robbed you,” Tooly said, looking at him hard, though he failed to meet her gaze.

  “I was told I was robbed. Don’t remember any of it. Attempts were made to strangle me. This is where my problem stems from, I think.”

  “The attack seems to have affected his memory,” Duncan said. “Short-term, particularly. But there are other problems. He forgets how to do stuff.”

  “I don’t want to exaggerate,” Humphrey said. “It depends on what cells are attacked. Blood doesn’t flow in that direction.”

  “What sorts of things are you forgetting, Humphrey?”

  “I can’t remember to tell you.”

  “Sometimes you come up with ancient memories,” Duncan remarked. “You told me about milking a cow when you were a boy, which must have been eighty years ago. You remember?”

  Humphrey remained silent at length, sniffed irritably. “I find your questions odd, frankly.”

  “I have a feeling you gave those muggers a punch or two,” Duncan said. “Didn’t you. He’s a tough one, is Humphrey.”

  “If only I could get the bastards on their own for a few minutes,” Humphrey said, adding, “with someone holding them down, of course.”

  Duncan laughed. “The problem is that he’s isolated here. Which doesn’t help.”

  “I don’t know these people around me. Don’t know who they are. It’s a lack of community.”

  “At least you have Yelena coming in,” Duncan said.

  “Yes, but we’re like grandfather and granddaughter. Not friends,” he said. “I haven’t offered you coffee. I have a thing of it somewhere.”

  “We’re fine,” Tooly s
aid.

  Nevertheless, Humphrey rose agonizingly to his feet again, muttering about people moving things, and tossed aside piles of clothing and books. He found the empty Nescafé jar.

  Duncan whispered to Tooly, “I need to go. But you stay.”

  “Let me walk you down,” she said.

  For the first time, Humphrey looked directly at her. “I put on my tie because you were coming.”

  “I know.”

  On the street, Duncan asked how it had felt seeing her dad, and hoped that their falling-out, whatever its cause—“None of my business,” he added, not wanting to know—had been shelved.

  “I found,” she said, needing to smuggle this in before he went, “I found that harrowing.”

  “Yup. Well …” he responded, wanting to hand over this problem.

  “But, Duncan, you shouldn’t be the one paying for Yelena,” she said. “You’ve been too generous already.”

  “Hey—I’m a lawyer,” he said, unlocking the BMW.

  “Being a lawyer means you pay? Doesn’t being a lawyer mean everybody else pays?”

  “Means I’m richer than book persons such as yourself.” On his notepad, he wrote the door code to Humphrey’s building and tore off the sheet. “Let him recharge a few minutes, then you can go back.”

  However, she kept walking, unable to return yet. All the time she’d known Humphrey, he’d scarcely spoken a correct sentence in English. Had he been tricking her for years? But what she’d seen upstairs clearly wasn’t a trick. Hard to imagine that Venn could be involved. If only she’d remained unaware of all this, never witnessed that wretched room where at this moment he probably sat, slumped forward in that dirty white armchair.

  The room was messier on her return—clothes dumped, books scattered. It was evening now, but the blinds remained up. He stared at the darkened window, house lights dotting the view.

  “Me,” she said, shutting the door. At the shudder of its closure, he turned, sloshing a glass of vodka in his hand.

  “Don’t need to shout.” He failed to orient toward her voice.

  “Why are you looking over there?”

  He swiveled uncertainly.

  “Humphrey? Can you see me? Point to where I am right now.”

  “I don’t like tests,” he said. “I keep my chair here behind the door. When people come in, they have to stand in front of me, and the outside light makes a shadow around them. But it’s too dark now.” He spoke to her midriff. “Some people were here before.”

  “Me and Duncan.”

  “Was that yesterday?”

  “Today.”

  He harrumphed, unconvinced, and moved the vodka glass to his lips, puckering to meet the splash of liquid, which dribbled down his chin.

  “You’re enjoying that,” she said.

  “I intend to drink myself into oblivion.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “There’s no point in staying. Nothing anybody can do.”

  “I didn’t come here to help you.” She sat on his bed, watching him. “In some ways, Humph, you seem like you used to. But you talk … Maybe it was a joke or something. I’m—were you pretending before? I mean, it was years that we knew each other. But this is you talking now, right?”

  He sipped his drink.

  “So,” she asked, “where are you actually from?”

  “Me?”

  “Who else is in this room? Yes, you.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re not going to say? Why not?” she asked. “How many times did you tell me how you’d been ‘cornered by history,’ that you would have been some great intellectual but your era had ruined everything? That was crap, I guess. Thanks.”

  “I’d tell you,” he said. “But something blocks it out, blots it out. Things that I know very well. These blanks in my memory.”

  “How am I supposed to believe this?”

  His attention roamed. “Can I offer you a coffee? I have a thing of it somewhere.”

  She held up a full container of Nescafé that she had bought while outside.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” he said.

  Tooly excused herself to the communal bathroom down the hall. A fluorescent beam flickered in there. A hole had been kicked in the wall under the hand dryer, baring dusty pipes and insulation. Residents had thrown trash in there: a used tampon, an empty bottle of white rum. She entered a toilet stall, its door hanging by one hinge, a bloated cigarette bobbing in the bowl.

  When she got back, Humphrey was making instant coffee using water from the faucet.

  “Wait, wait. Isn’t there a kettle?”

  He shook off the question, handing her a lukewarm mug.

  She stepped toward the bed, inadvertently toppling a stack of books. “Reminds me of my shop in here. But you had way more books than this. What happened to your collection?”

  He shrugged.

  “You still read all day long?”

  “My eyes don’t work. Someone got me a magnifier with a light on it. Makes no difference. I can’t hold things. Something wrong with my hands.”

  “You don’t read at all?”

  He frowned in disgrace.

  “But, Humphrey,” she asked urgently, “can you talk to me honestly?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “First, where’s Venn? Do you know?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I haven’t heard from him in eleven years now. It makes no sense,” she said. “I’d assume he didn’t want anything to do with me. But even after everything fell apart in New York he kept helping me. Remember the bank card?”

  After parting from Venn, she had used that “magic bank card” only in emergencies, considering it his money. Each time she spent from that account, the balance jumped back up. When the card expired after five years, a replacement arrived at her then-address, an apartment in Caracas—even from afar, Venn was looking out for her. Thereafter, she spent token amounts in every city she visited, so he’d always know her location. Eventually, the balance stopped bouncing back. And when that second card was to expire no replacement came. To safeguard his money, she used the balance to buy an asset: her business. When he returned, she’d sell it and repay his loan. Except that the value of World’s End had only diminished these past two years.

  In any case, Venn never appeared. Had something befallen him? Was he in trouble somewhere and needed her? “Seriously,” she said. “You have to explain. Starting from Bangkok. I was too young to understand it then. And I never wanted to discuss what happened with Paul. But I think about all of that now. A lot.” She looked at him. “Humphrey?”

  He shifted in his armchair, flustered. He ought to understand what she wanted—he recognized that much.

  “Are you and Venn in contact still?” she asked.

  He had no answers. She kept asking but he kept failing, growing increasingly distressed.

  They sat in silence for a minute. No point humiliating him.

  “I own a bookshop now,” she said.

  “Did I make you coffee yet?”

  She prepared it this time, taking their mugs to the stinking communal kitchen, where she scrubbed an aluminum pot left by another resident and boiled water. When she delivered his steaming mug, he perked up, took it from her, splashing coffee on his hands, though not seeming to register pain. “Sometimes I get sugar from the kitchen,” he said. With difficulty—how unsteady he’d become—Humphrey led her back, directing her to a box of sugar with a spoon sticking out. The sugar was crawling, ants marching up and down.

  “That’s infested, Humph.”

  “It’s not mine,” he replied, serving into his coffee a heaping spoonful of wriggling black-and-white sugar.

  “Humph! Don’t!”

  He gulped a fast sip, beaming, by far the jolliest she’d seen him, and went for another scoop.

  “Wait.” Gritting herself, she flicked off ants, adding a clear spoonful to his coffee, stirring.

  He sipped, compress
ed his rubbery lips, exhaled—“Marvelous! Absolutely delicious and delightful!”—then gulped the rest in two swallows. He plunked his mug on the kitchen counter, eagerly accepting her offer of another, which he drained while the coffee still scalded, his words emerging in steam: “Oh, I like you.”

  “You approve of my coffee-making?”

  “I like you as a person, as a human being. I quite love and adore you.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ve known you a long time.”

  “A long time ago,” she corrected him.

  “Was it?”

  “Remember all the crazy stuff you taught me when I was small? Saying there was that explorer who got kidnapped in the jungle and the natives put ice cream on the soles of his feet, then brought in a goat to lick it off—the worst torture ever invented. I used to lie in my tent thinking of goats.”

  “No, no,” he scoffed, though he appeared pleased to have concocted such bunkum. “If you like, you can tell me things I did. There are parts I don’t recall. You can tell me what happened.”

  “What happened when?”

  “What I did.”

  “In your life? Humphrey, I have almost no idea.”

  “But I thought we knew each other.”

  “I came here so you could tell me things. Not the other way around. And I’m not your daughter, and you know that, so stop telling Duncan that.”

  He bowed his head.

  “Is this just a game, Humph? I can’t tell if this is real now.”

  “Nothing, not even dictionaries, can tell you what anything means,” he said. “The reality of things is just sad, for the most part.”

  “What do you mean?”

  On he went, speaking as the snow-blind stumble downhill. She struggled to follow his course, her eyes tightening till she gave in, led him back to his room, her arm tensed behind him in case he stumbled.

  “I’ll fetch you dinner, get it ready, then take off. Okay?”

  But he wanted no food, nor help getting into bed.

  “Anything I have to do before leaving?”

  Humphrey sat in his chair, staring at the dark window, as if he’d flipped the CLOSED sign over himself and there was no further business that day. She made her way around him, and glanced back. This was to be her last sight of this old friend: a tuft of cotton-wool hair above the back of the armchair. She closed the door, stood in the hallway, hand on the knob.