The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

by Tom Rachman

  “You told me before that you met Humph while visiting ‘someone’ at the hospital. Why didn’t you just say it was Xavi?”

  “Because I don’t talk about this normally. He asked me not to.”

  Xavi wanted nobody to learn of his decline, even his family in Uganda. It was better, he decided, that they believe he had abandoned them for glories in America than learn of this. He wanted nothing posted online about his illness, no health updates emailed to business-school classmates or Goldman colleagues, no photos of his dwindling self, in order that he exist only in preceding memories. He made Duncan promise never to hold a memorial service, as if dying before success were a public disgrace. Xavi never did see the end of the Iraq War; he died at the peak of the pandemonium there, though he’d stopped caring, having receded from the world in stages: aware of just the hospice, then just his room, then his bed, then his body, then nothing.

  THE REVELATION HAUNTED Tooly all night, and the following morning, too. For some reason, it made her want Mac nearby. So, for this one occasion, she combined her two obligations, him and Humphrey, taking the boy all the way to south Brooklyn and skipping his dreaded sports course at the Y (wrestling that day).

  As they approached Humphrey’s room, the hallway shuddered at music coming from the adjacent door. After introducing Mac to Humphrey, she excused herself to visit the neighbor. An acrid drug stench came from in there. The woman responded through her closed door. “What you want?”

  “Just wondering,” Tooly called back, “if you could turn it down a bit! My father next door doesn’t hear well!”

  “What?”

  “It’s impossible for him to hear!”

  The music cut out. “Too loud for you?” the woman asked. Then she cranked it even louder.

  This was awful timing, since Humphrey seemed to be relishing his new acquaintance, already showing Mac various books—it was the clearest Humphrey had been since her first day here. Indeed, it was he who shouted into her ear about getting ice cream.

  “Let me go fetch some,” Tooly said.

  “I can.” He hadn’t left the building in weeks.

  “We’ll all go together.”

  So Humphrey and Mac plodded along Sheepshead Bay Road, she monitoring the old man’s equilibrium, ready to lunge and catch him. He barely noticed her, engaged in a marvelous gab with the boy. It occurred to Tooly that each of these two was oblivious to the other’s reputation, therefore took him seriously. Plus, Humphrey was wonderful with kids. And Mac, unaccustomed to such attention, sought to merit it, speaking in full sentences rather than swallowing his meaning halfway.

  At the Baskin-Robbins, Humphrey bellied up to the display glass, peering blindly at the buckets of ice cream. “Can you see all right?” she whispered, but he waved her away, to discuss with Mac the relative merits of mint chocolate chip and pink bubblegum. The boy chose a single scoop, watching wide-eyed as Humphrey took the banana split.

  “What about you?” Mac asked Tooly, which made her smile—he spoke as if he were treating.

  “Very happy to watch.”

  So she was: Mac speed-licking to avoid drips falling on his hand; Humphrey with his long spoon, operating with much concentration, much spillage, and much exercise of puckery lips. Two little boys, she thought.

  “Very cold on my teeth,” Mac observed.

  “Hmm,” confirmed Humphrey, who had few teeth left. “I try not to bite down.” He took pains to compose each bite, a process so fiddly that each took a tantalizing minute, his mouth opening thirty seconds early, theirs watering from suspense.

  Humphrey insisted on paying—absolutely insisted! But he struggled with the indistinct green bills (she had slipped cash into his pocket before they left). He squinted at the pimpled cashier, at the bills, then handed them all over, saying, “Take it.” The cashier proved honest—it always surprised Tooly that most people were.

  The afternoon was a success and, upon their return, even the music next door had stopped. But, despite herself, Tooly felt slightly hurt: around a stranger, Humphrey had pulled himself together and was lucid at times, even making little jokes.

  Back in Darien, she deposited Mac before the Xbox and sneaked downstairs for a moment alone. But Bridget was there, standing by the closed washing machine. She inquired how their jaunt to Brooklyn had gone. Then—without transition—said how unhappy she was in her marriage.

  “Duncan is an old friend,” Tooly interrupted. “I’m not who you should discuss this with.”

  But Bridget couldn’t be stopped. She and Duncan had no romantic life whatsoever, she said, and he was in denial about it. They’d become like bunkmates. Though, even bunkmates interacted. Her eyes filled with tears to hear aloud her piteous state. “And,” she joked, with a plucky sniff, “he sleeps right in the middle of the mattress, so I’m all scrunched up at the edge!”

  “What happens when you talk to him about it? Not about the mattress. Things in general, I mean.”

  “On the few occasions I tried, he changes topic. To his pissed-off politics. Or he goes into conference with his BlackBerry. Does this thing where he, like, angles himself in bed when he’s reading his Kindle, so I literally cannot see his eyes, and he goes, ‘Mmmmmm?’ It’s the present/absent.”

  “The present/absent?”

  “Where someone’s present but they’re absent. Talking to you but looking at the screen.”

  “He’s probably exhausted. He works insane amounts, Bridget.”

  “I know. I know. And I do totally love him still. But I feel like—what’s the word?—like I’m withering. Already after having the kids, I turned into this ogre. It took me, like, four years to regain a familiar shape. And now I … Thing is, I have this feeling if I go full-time at the office—and they’ve asked me to—something bad will happen.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe I’ll meet someone there,” she said, looking up testingly. “I want to be in love with someone again. I so miss that feeling. Thinking of someone when they’re not there—you know? Like you have with Garry.”

  Tooly almost corrected that fantasy, but it was best to end such confidences, which seemed to affect Bridget dangerously. “Nothing’s happened at your office yet,” Tooly said.

  “Heavens, no. How could I even find time for an affair? I haven’t even seen my hairdresser in two months.”

  “That’s your answer—have an affair with the hairdresser.”

  “There’s the dream. Free highlights.”

  Each went her separate way, though Bridget dashed back downstairs a few minutes later to reiterate, “Obviously, I’m never going to do anything.”

  Poor Duncan. Because, Tooly suspected, Bridget was going to stray. She hadn’t sought an opinion; she’d sought to desensitize herself to what already captivated her. If Bridget were to wander, Mac would be crushed. His mother was the only family member who was devoted to him.

  Bridget must have found time for her hairdresser after all, because she came home with a shorter cut, rather like Tooly’s. When Duncan returned that evening, he asked Mac, “What do you think of Mom without hair?”

  “Uhm …” The boy showed both palms, weighing like a scale. He gave a nervous snicker. Whenever Mac found himself in awkward situations, he gave this snicker, which was utterly unconvincing, thereby earning Tooly’s sympathy. The ability to laugh when a joke was not funny had unexpected value; it produced a different life. She’d never had the skill, either. Still, Mac was an extremely considerate young man, and she made a mental note to mention this to Duncan. She was always looking for ways to praise the boy to his father. But it wasn’t her job to mend that relationship. Would Mac even remember this when grown? What would he do when his father needed caring for? He’d dote on Duncan. There was no balance in relationships, much as people sought it.

  In the McGrory household, there was symmetry at least in the basement confessional. For it was Duncan who later cornered Tooly by the washing machine and told her more than she wanted to know, an
admission that had nothing to do with love. “He’s not down here?” Duncan asked, entering the music room, where she sat practicing her ukulele.

  She stilled the vibrating strings. “Mac? Not that I’ve seen.”

  “Grrr.” Duncan stood there, hands on hips, shaking his head at the electric piano. Among the causes of household tensions was Mac’s failure to practice. They paid for weekly keyboard lessons, yet, in Duncan’s view, the kid didn’t make the slightest effort.

  “You don’t practice anymore, either,” she noted.

  “I don’t have time. He has time.” Duncan picked off the floor her copy of Nicholas Nickleby, which she’d been dragging back and forth to Sheepshead Bay, rereading it on the lengthy train rides. “Thing weighs ten pounds,” he exclaimed. “Stop messing around and buy an e-reader. Screens won, my friend.”

  “Are you at a loose end right now, so decided to come and provoke me?”

  “Pretty much,” he said. “It just gets me that he has this opportunity and doesn’t use it. My old Yamaha is awesome. I got them to hook it up to the house network, too, so you can track every practice session. Which is why it’s so dumb when he pretends to practice. I can see on the computer that he hasn’t.”

  “What a pain you must be.”

  “I know,” he said, looking at her. “Am I a total jerk here?”

  “You’re one of the good guys, as far as I’m concerned. You looked after Humph. You’re letting me stay here for nothing.”

  “At the cost of making you chauffeur my kid.”

  “True. You’re a horrible person after all.”

  “Actually, could I tell you something? Not for repeating. I’m serious. Not to anyone. Ever.” Lowering his voice, he said that he should probably do more with his son, that Bridget pestered him to, that he ought to, and he knew it. “But …” He looked away. He exhaled. “Problem is …” He shook his head. “The thing is that I don’t like him,” Duncan blurted. “Just fundamentally do not like this person. Aargh! Makes me sick to say it out loud. But it’s true. I dislike him. Not his fault, poor kid. I feel unbelievably shitty saying this. You can never repeat this. Ever. I mean that.” He paced. “Have I shocked you?”

  “I’m not shocked. You know me.”

  “Isn’t his fault. Really not. I feel sorry for him. But whenever he’s in the room,” Duncan went on, gaining momentum, “I fundamentally do. Not. Like this person.” He turned his back, flipped the pages of her novel. “Never occurred to me, when Bridget and I were trying to have kids, that you might not like your own child. It’s the last taboo.”

  “The last taboo? Still reasonably taboo to be a cannibal or a necrophiliac.”

  “You’re not getting my point.”

  “I am, Duncan. Just avoiding it a bit, I guess. I’ve never been in your position. But I don’t find it that surprising. There are so few people on earth one really clicks with. I know it’s supposed to be biological. But each kid has his own personality, which I suspect parents don’t consider beforehand. They imagine a pet. Some of them do. Not saying you did. But it’d be amazing if one just blindly adored that person. I know that’s what society says parents do. So, no, I don’t find it shocking.”

  “You don’t get it,” he said. “When you have kids, you do automatically love them. It’s biological.”

  “You’re the one telling me that’s not true.”

  “No—I do love him. Just don’t think I like him.”

  “How old is he? Eight? Can you even make that statement yet?”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “If you keep telling me I don’t get anything, it leaves me without much to say.”

  “Will you have kids?”

  “You make such an attractive case for the reproductive plunge. I don’t know, Duncan. Childhood is so exhausting.”

  “As a parent?”

  “I mean as the child. Not sure it’s fair to drop somebody else into life without giving them a choice in the matter.”

  “You’ll find it’s kind of tough to canvass the opinion of sperm.”

  “I prefer asking the eggs—they’re more articulate. Anyway, aren’t you the guy who’s always bemoaning the future of humanity? Saying how the worst jerks always have millions of babies, meaning the world gets worse every generation?”

  “Exactly why decent people need to have kids.”

  “What, a war of demographics?”

  “Thing is, who knows what’ll happen. Maybe the world improves by the time we’re seventy and you’ll regret not having had them. You’ll have missed out forever, and they’ll never get to exist. No need to canvass any sperm and eggs on that—everybody would rather have a life than not.”

  “I mean, yes, of course. I can list the things that make life worth living, now that I’ve been in it for a while. I can also think of what can make it pretty awful.”

  “Like?”

  “One stroke of bad luck. Think of Xavi. (Can’t stop thinking about him lately; feels hard to believe that happened.) And even simpler stuff can warp people, make life bitter.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Such as one’s father not liking them.”

  “I never said I didn’t like anybody.”

  In one regard, Duncan was wrong: Mac did come down to practice the keyboard—she heard him puttering around in the music room most days. That said, he never played for long. He pressed the keys, hummed to himself, hoping she’d appear. She poked her head in, said hello, asked if he’d like company.

  Something bottomlessly sad about the young. Mac—awkward, doped, a loner already—couldn’t be enjoying the shark tank of childhood. Her urge to guard him brought Paul to mind. For years, she had refused to discuss him, tried not even to think of him. Among the names she’d searched for online, his was never one. But, spending all this time with Mac, she contemplated Paul daily.

  That night, she typed his name into one of the laptops. She found her father, only a few hours’ drive away.

  1988

  SUNLIGHT AND A DISTANT WHOOSH of morning traffic came through the holes in the second-story wall. Someone approached up the stairs.

  It was the old chessplayer of the night before, who trudged past her in a rumpled shirt and tie, tucked into sky-blue polyester shorts. He closed himself in the bathroom, faucet gushing, a pee stream audible. Minutes later, he emerged, having brushed his wiry gray-brown locks into submission, only to scratch his head, mussing the hair back into a peppery swirl. He set up his card table and his folding chair. Once seated, he raised a book—The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell—and began to read, dabbing fingers to his lips, flinging aside each page, pointing at the text as if in heated debate, and he not necessarily getting the better of it.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked, eyebrows scrunching together.

  “I’m a bit—” She looked at her bare knees, then up at his book cover, blinking at the daylight coming through the holes in the wall. “A bit worried.”

  Humphrey held still a moment, then slammed the book onto the card table. He stood, walked a lap around the room, laceless tennis shoes clunking with each step. She braced herself, believing he was about to roar. Instead, he stopped, looking at the wall. “I also am concerned.” He turned to face her. “There is something I can get for you? I can help in some way?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just—I woke up a bit worried. My neck hurts. I didn’t go home yet. Do you know if Sarah is here? Did she come back?”

  “Not sure,” he said. “I …” He resumed pacing, working himself into a terrible state over his inability to help.

  Oddly, his worry eased hers; she found herself wanting to make him feel better. “Can we play chess again?”

  He paused—yes, this he could arrange. He helped her onto the folding chair, dragged it to the table, and prepared the board meticulously. Her chess strategy, if it could be flattered with such a term, was to sneak pieces up the board in h
opes of snatching away Humphrey’s queen without his noticing. But each piece only found itself taken. For two hours they played, the sole interruption coming when Tooly rubbed her whiplashed neck, sore from her fall off the ladder the night before.

  “No cheating,” he said, standing. “I go away for minute.”

  “Can I cheat when you get back?”

  “Of course.”

  He disappeared into the storage room, returning with a neck brace, which he attempted to fit for her, though it was far too large. When this failed, he brought her aspirin. Applying utmost discretion, he inquired as to her weight, height, and age, jotting them on a pad to calculate how many milligrams were safe to prescribe. He produced a cup of water, a saucer bearing her half pill, plus a heap of sugar to nullify any bitterness. As the day progressed, this sugar remained her only nourishment. He displayed no signs of hunger himself, prompting her to say something finally.

  “When do you eat breakfast, Humphrey?”

  “I reject concept of meals. Why I must eat breakfast in morning? Then in midday, I must eat lunch? No, no—when it comes to eating, I am freethinker.”

  “You only eat free things?”

  “I only eat when hungry. Any times of day. Yesterday, for example, I eat at night one cereal bowl.” (She pictured him consuming the bowl itself.) “Today, I have cheese sandwich.”

  “You had that already?”

  “No, but later maybe.” He returned to the chess position, belatedly looking up. “Wait—you are wanting cheese-sandwich activity?”

  He hurried her into the kitchen, designating Tooly the assistant chef, her only duty being to approve while he fried a hunk of orange cheese. Once this had melted, he used two knives to scrape it from the blackened pan and laid it across a bed of Triscuit crackers.

  She devoured it.

  “Is nice?” he asked.

  “Really nice.”

  “But something bother you,” he guessed.

  “Just, I’m going to be in trouble. I’m supposed to be at school,” she said. “Are you leaving here soon? You told Sarah you had to go this morning. Will I be on my own now?”