The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

by Tom Rachman

  “Not always a condition,” she responded. “Isn’t that the point with stuff like marriage and children? It’s supposed to be unconditional.”

  “ ‘Supposed to be’ is just a way of saying ‘isn’t.’ The reality is that people marry and procreate because of pressure from friends, from family. But there’s something vital lost the moment couples define themselves by an achievement anyone—good, bad, bright, or boring—achieves with the same simple act. For me, starting a family would be capitulation. Not least because it’d force me to have lunch with uninteresting people whose only point of reference is that our kids take the same dance class.”

  They walked on in silence. “I don’t want kids, either,” she said, looking at him.

  “Why would you? Children are not remotely interesting till they grow up,” he said. “Even then, few turn out to be.”

  “I was interesting, wasn’t I?”

  “But you weren’t much of a child. Like I never was. We were hanging around in kids’ bodies, waiting for time to rectify the mixup.”

  “Some children must be nice.”

  “How many did you like when you were one? I defy anyone to tell me that having them is meaningful,” he said. “It’s supposed to make you more loving and nurturing. But those are things I aim to be irrespective. People who must have a child to be kind are missing something in their emotional setup; they require someone’s neediness to give their lives meaning. Life has enough meaning and beauty already. Discovering that is a proper pursuit. Not just making helpless little organisms. Or marrying whoever once turned you on. Bonds between people form in particular circumstance and times, and ought to end once those pass. But people are so frightened of being left alone that they collect all these malformed relationships. Accepting loneliness is everything.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, laughing.

  He chuckled. “I’m challenging my crazy self,” he said. “Testing my limits and getting stronger in the process. Can I go without friendship, pleasures, warmth? Can I walk for twenty-four hours straight through the night? Can I challenge a tyrant? If yes, what have I achieved? An insight? A vanity? A change somewhere in me? To pursue my own life satisfies me in the way that parenthood must for mothers and fathers. Most of them would find my views offensive. But later they’ll find themselves attracted to me.”

  Rounding the corner, they confronted a peculiar scene. At the entrance of a closed office building across the street, a bum stood, tottering over a sleeping bag, which he jostled with his foot before unzipping his filthy black jeans and, right there, urinating on it.

  “I think there’s someone in that sleeping bag,” Tooly said. “He’s pissing right on them.”

  “Stay here.”

  “Wait a second.” But he was already crossing the street.

  The bum—knuckles covered in blue tattoos, face inked, too—zipped his fly, cursed the sleeping bag and kicked it, provoking a howl from within. He grabbed the end of the nylon bag and dragged it, a body flailing within. Noticing Venn, the bum paused, glaring from under a scabby brow. “Guy’s a faggot,” he said, by way of explanation. “He’s blocking my house.” He hammer-fisted the sleeping bag, prompting another muffled wail.

  Venn pointed down the street. “Go that way. Now.”

  “It’s my motherfucking door, man.”

  A toothless face jutted from the sleeping bag, nose bleeding, greasy comb-over flopping in the wind. “Aren’t you just Mr. Sunshine,” he babbled. “I think we’re in love now.”

  “See?” the bum told Venn. “Guy’s a fag.”

  “Leave it.”

  “Tell the fag to leave.”

  “Now,” Venn said. “Or I rip your ears off.”

  “What you say?”

  Venn didn’t repeat himself.

  As the bum unleashed another kick at the sleeping bag, Venn rammed him against the building. The bum struck the wall with a thud and fell to the snowy pavement. Venn dropped atop, knee in his chest, pinning him, muscles straining as he pushed downward.

  “Hurting me, asshole!” the bum hollered. “Can’t fucking breathe!” After futile squirming and howling, he went limp. When Venn dragged him to his feet, the bum lunged for a head-butt. Venn caught him by the throat and eye socket, jutted a leg behind his, thrust forward his shoulder, knocking the man to the pavement, against which he bashed his face twice, before pulling him to his feet and frog-marching him a short distance away. “You’re done.”

  Bleeding, the bum stumbled off, stopping at the corner to shout back curses.

  Tooly knelt before the madman in the sleeping bag: a little person, sweet-faced, effeminate, and so damaged that he could have been thirty or seventy. “You okay?” she asked.

  “Why,” he answered, “why don’t you go screw yourselves.” He cackled and pulled his head back inside the urine-drenched sleeping bag.

  “A lunatic,” Venn said calmly, and turned to Tooly. “Ready?”

  He resumed their walk as if nothing had happened. She hastened to match his pace, shaky but determined to exude nonchalance. “Look.” She held up her hand. “I’m trembling and I didn’t even do anything! You’re completely calm.”

  “Does no good to get frightened in a situation like that.”

  “I don’t get frightened because I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Always best to keep your wits about you—a big man like that could have fallen and cracked his head, especially on a snowy day. Anyway, nobody walked past.”

  “You were watching for bystanders during all that?”

  “Well, I can’t count on you to be my lookout,” he said cheerfully.

  “Venn,” she said, “did you tell that guy you’d rip his ear off? Please tell me I misheard that.”

  “I never said that.” He paused. “I said ‘ears,’ plural—there’s no point taking just one.”

  “How do you even think of a thing like that?”

  He threw an arm around her, pulled her over, knuckled her ribs, earning a squeak.

  To witness violence but be spared—to stand behind his shield—always left her giddy. It made her talk and talk. She boasted lavishly of all she’d gathered for him about the students. Venn listened intently—he’d always shared her curiosity about the lives of strangers. Indeed, he was the one who first stirred that interest in her.

  “This Duncan likes you?”

  “He does.”

  “He’s in love with you, duck!” Venn said. “How could he not be! How could he not be.”

  “But wait—listen.” She returned to Xavi, detailing his idea for the online currency. Venn knew all sorts of business guys. Could he make something of this?

  “Are you saying take his idea?”

  “No,” she responded. “Would you want to?”

  “Much rather get him involved. Could fit beautifully at the Brain Trust.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “But there’s the fee to join, plus the monthly rental,” Venn reminded her. “The kid has that kind of cash?”

  “He’s on scholarships, I think, and gets help from friends.”

  “Plus, he’s buddies with your boy-lawyer, who has funds.”

  “Don’t know,” she said, hoping to move this away from Duncan.

  “Dear me. What are you doing up there?” he teased. “You don’t know if the boy-lawyer has funds? I know already, and I never even met the guy! His father’s an architect in Connecticut. His folks are covering his law school and lodgings comfortably. Is he getting student loans?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Tooly, Tooly,” Venn said affectionately.

  “What?” she replied, amused.

  “These are things you should know by now!” Delighted, he told her, “What would I do without you, duck? You’re still the only person who makes me laugh.”

  “You’d be a wreck without me.”

  “Exactly right. I was saying before how I test myself by going without, right? Doing that shows me what I do need.” />
  “Which is?”

  “Just walks like this. Conversations like this. Humor like ours.” He looked at her, earnest now. “I depend on you.”

  She nodded fast, heart racing. He walked on, and she kept in stride. “But Venn,” she asked, “do you like this Wildfire idea?”

  “I’d give your African friend a cubicle at the Brain Trust for nothing. Unfortunately, they’re not mine to give. I only look after that place.”

  “For your venture-capitalist guy, right? Maybe he’d be interested.”

  “Mawky is looking for companies that are ready to launch—not looking to hand-hold, as he puts it. But if your friends are serious, if they can rustle up basic funding and get this moving, it might be interesting.”

  “You like the idea, then?”

  “Listen, send me the African kid. We’ll have a chat. Then if you and your friends raise enough for membership and a few months’ rental, I’ll find a place for you. And if you get that far I’ll put you together with Mawky.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’ll always help you, Tooly.”

  “But not if you’re just being nice. Not as a favor. I want us to do a proper project together.”

  “My project with you, as far as I’m concerned, is our friendship.”

  “Who cares about your lousy friendship.”

  “I know, you want glory. Why not? You’re in New York. Ambition is the municipal pastime. If you want, just keep tickling those boys uptown. It’ll produce something.”

  “You think?”

  “The lawyer’s parents must be shelling out fifty thousand a year for NYU already. If their son loves you, they’d be open to funding your future.”

  “Don’t know if going through Duncan is a good idea. The father is a massive lump of jerk.”

  “That part, duck, is up to you.”

  Alive to the tremors of her mood, he patted her cheek, which made her smile. “Tooly, neither of us is interested in stuff like this. You won’t find anybody who cares less about money than me. How much do I need for a year of living well? How much do I spend? Nothing. Money is totally uninteresting. What you and me want is freedom from fools. The less cash, the more you have to deal in fools. Money is dull. But independence? That is interesting.”

  Her life among the students seemed so distant and frivolous when she was with Venn. Those kids had no clue—all their debates about the left and the right, as if ideology mattered anymore. Despite their dinner-table bravado, none of them would have stepped in to help that battered man back there, though all would have wanted to. But Venn intervened. He didn’t act for praise; he cared nothing of what people thought. Nor did he fear spittle or punches, if suffering them was necessary in order to live as he intended.

  They reached Times Square, where the glittering ball drop and the fireworks installations were in place, vendors hawking Year 2000 paraphernalia, tourists stumbling around in sensory overload. She and Venn passed unnoticed through the crowd. They could have chosen almost any of these strangers and spun them in knots within minutes. Venn and she had engineered many people in the past. It was intoxicating, the unholy control of another human. They never did so with cruel ends, however—engineering another’s fate was not necessarily destructive. Often, Venn knew better than they what was best. After all, he had been engineering her for years.

  2011

  AFTER HER ANZIO TRIP, Tooly phoned Duncan. She wanted to see Humphrey again and was coming back. Duncan was relieved—“Got worried you’d left me with this situation,” he said—and insisted that she save on New York hotels by staying in their basement. She, in turn, insisted on helping out while there.

  This proved timely because Bridget was about to start her new part-time job, which left a gap in the ferrying of Mac to his summer courses at the YMCA each morning. Thankfully, the triplets didn’t require a driver to their day camp, enjoying transportation courtesy of various peer admirers, whose moms shuttled them everywhere. “Abi, Mads, and Chlo are the rockstars of third grade,” Duncan explained. Mac enjoyed no such fan base. He had not even been invited to a birthday party in several years.

  That first day, Tooly dropped him outside the Y and parked the family minivan at the train station, commencing her two-hour commute to south Brooklyn. She intended to get Humphrey reading again, out of that room, out of his torpor. He still had moments of clarity, according to Duncan.

  “Hello,” she said, closing the door after herself. “I came back.”

  “Okay,” he replied from his armchair.

  “Not pleased to see me?” She stood at his window, daylight silhouetting her. “I flew back over the ocean so we could spend a few days together and talk. I’d like to discuss some things with you, Humph. Okay? And we can go out, too—fresh air, walks, chess possibly. When you’re ready, we’ll talk.”

  “Don’t know what you’re saying.” She found his hearing aid by the sink and helped him insert it. He stuffed his hands between his thighs, blinking toward the convex reflection in the switched-off television. “Is there coffee?”

  “Let me make you a cup.” She did so in the communal kitchen, returning with two mugs of Nescafé, his abundantly sugared. He raised the coffee, lips twitching to meet the mug.

  She looked into her own cup, stared at the black liquid. Hearing him speak—Russian accent gone—incensed her anew. She mentioned her visit with Sarah. “You know who I’m talking about,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  “Frankly,” he responded, “I find your questions strange.”

  She left him for a few minutes to finish his drink and occupied herself by organizing his books by subject. Yelena had lined them up by size—tall with tall, short with short—creating peculiar neighbors: Plato’s Republic beside The Ultimate Food Processor Cookbook beside Selected Cautionary Verses by Hilaire Belloc, each a long-lost acquaintance of Tooly’s (“The Chief Defect of Henry King/Was chewing little bits of String”).

  Humphrey mumbled something.

  “What?” she asked, arms laden with volumes.

  “Relieved to see you again.”

  “What’s that?” she said, stalling because the remark upset her.

  “I’m relieved to see you.”

  “That’s nice, Humphrey.” She spoke louder than intended.

  “I have a problem with my memory,” he said. “It’s uneven. Depends what cells are attacked. Blood doesn’t flow in that direction. But I don’t want to exaggerate the problem.” His lips smacked together; he took a breath.

  Her pocket rang. She took out the cellphone: Bridget calling, with an apology and a plea. Starting her new job was requiring nightmarish admin, and the tech guy still hadn’t set up her laptop. As an exceptional favor, could Tooly pick up Mac this afternoon?

  So, all the way back to Connecticut she went. Outside the main doors of the Y, the pudgy boy waited. She tapped the horn of the minivan, opened the passenger door. He failed to notice, so she parked and walked over. Mac recognized her only when she was three steps away. “Oh,” he said shyly. “Hi.”

  “Were you waiting long?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Went well today?”

  He nodded, and she handed him a banana, having bought two from a grocery store outside the Sheepshead Bay subway. Mac peeled his oddly, not like a blooming flower but removing a single strip all the way down, then finding nowhere to put it. He looked for a garbage can, as if one might materialize amid the parking spaces. In distraction, he dropped the rest of the banana on the tarmac, then crouched and resumed peeling, one strip at a time, right there on the ground. How odd, this boy. “Come on,” she said gently. To spare his evident embarrassment, she kept walking toward the vehicle.

  Mac hurried after, catching her hand, but only for a few strides. “Whoops—I’m not supposed to do that.”

  “Why not? You’re allowed to with me.”

  When Bridget arrived home, she changed into civvies and debriefed Tooly on her first day at the law firm. While she c
hatted, the long-faced triplets yanked at their mother’s jean pockets. “There’s going to be a revolution,” Bridget warned, and stepped away for a bit of blender-grinding and oven-checking, then returned to the conversation. Talk of the job shifted to her anxieties about Mac, who was being left behind at this new school, already his third. “But boys are always slow to get going. He seems smart to you, right?” she suggested. “Was he being good when you picked him up?”

  “Absolutely fine.” She recounted the banana anecdote, thinking it endearing.

  But Bridget looked so disappointed.

  The triplets scowled at Tooly, then at their mother, who detailed Mac’s troubles and his diagnosis of TDD (temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria), which his psychiatrist was managing with Seroquel, Azaleptin, and Lamictal, a cocktail that left the boy sluggish and dissociated and had doubled his weight—but otherwise seemed as if it might be working. Bridget was so connected to her son, tortured by anything that afflicted him, yet powerless to suffer it on his behalf. It didn’t occur to her that it could be unwise to speak openly of one child’s flaws before his siblings, who were likely to report it back, possibly with malice. At least Mac wasn’t present, having disappeared downstairs to snoop at Tooly’s things, which was fair game as far as she was concerned. She’d have done the same had a strange grown-up invaded her home.

  When the tuna melt was served, Tooly excused herself, claiming to have eaten earlier. In truth, she just needed a break—wasn’t accustomed to so many people at once. And she had resolved to intrude as little as possible during her stay, planning to skip their meals (only partly because eating with a YouTube soundtrack made her want to scream into her sleeve). But, as soon as dinner ended upstairs, Mac came down to the music room and watched her tune the ukulele. “Want to try?” she asked.

  “I’m supposed to be doing piano,” he said, pointing at the Yamaha keyboard in the corner.

  “Oh, sorry—I’m in your way.”

  “You want to play with me?”