The Autograph Man (38 page)

Alex gurgled with pleasure and gave up talking; it was a joy to hear the ancient story retold so well.

“. . . and trying to assure Mr. Baljit that despite this
rather embarrassing mishap,
there was no reason why he, the father, shouldn’t keep doing his accounts with Rube Senior.
In his pants,
he was saying this. With a knife at his throat and the police coming up the stairs.”

“I have actually
heard
this one,” said Joseph, and lit a cigarette. Because he had not grown up in Mountjoy, and only moved there in his twenties, it was often assumed he did not know or did not remember the old Mountjoy legends. As a consequence he heard them more often and knew them better than anyone.

“Shush,” said Alex, putting his finger to his lips. “Carry on, Ads, carry on, mate.”

“Well, you know what
that
was about . . . that was because of what his dad was
like,
” said Adam patiently, as they reached the monument and paused underneath it. “He was always
terrified
of his father, man. He was more scared of Jerry’s tongue than of Baljit’s dad with a knife. Jerry was, I mean, he still
is,
an
incredible
bully. You just can’t imagine.”

“Try my dad on for size, mate,” said Joseph, blowing smoke.

“Well,
yeah.
And Jerry’s the same way. He bullied Rubinfine into rabbi-hood, knowing it wasn’t for him—but he just wouldn’t back down. And Mark would’ve spent all his time with
your
dad, Al, if he could’ve. He loved Li-Jin, that’s what he
wanted,
that’s what he needed, a father like that, you know? He wouldn’t have been such a freak, maybe, if he’d just been given a little—”

“Yeah, well,” said Alex, and felt exhausted.

“I’m sorry that—” Joseph broke off, casting a wary look at Adam.

“No, go on, what?” said Alex, standing for the first time unaided.

“Nothing . . . just . . . I’m sorry I never knew him, your dad. I mean, I wish I’d had more of a chance to . . .”

“Well,” said Alex, and sat on the lip of the momunent, taking from his trench coat the materials necessary for a joint, “you knew him the day he died. He was on good form that day.”

The world is made out of letters, words. Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence, that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived. This was theirs.

2.

A Mond¯o Joke

Q.
What did the inflatable headmistress say to the inflatable boy
who came into the inflatable school with a pin?

A.
You’ve let
me
down, you’ve let
yourself
down—you’ve let
the whole
school
down. . . .

This joke, told timidly and without expectation by Joseph, was now being hailed as the greatest joke of the century. Even taking into account the delirious effects of alcohol mixed with weed, Alex stood by this laugh—the one presently racking his chest—as quite unprecedented. He had been laughing for four minutes, and every time he thought he was finished with the laugh, it came burbling up again, like water in a blocked plughole. And then abruptly it was over. He breathed out, thoroughly. Realized he was cold. It was going to rain.

“You okay?” asked Adam, noting the shiver.

Alex nodded. He tried to stand. Nothing doing. He took the hand that Adam offered.

“I’m sorry about Kitty,” said Adam, sensing it was safe to say this now. “I’m sorry to hear about it. I know you met her. . . . I know what she meant to you. I tried to call this morning when I heard—I thought you might do something stupid. Just wish I’d caught you earlier. I really think . . . you should’ve
kept
those things, Alex, man. . . . You shouldn’t have sold them. They were precious. You’ll miss them.”

“Huh?”

“We saw the paper,” said Joseph. He stood and stretched and yawned. “Look—ignore Adam, he thinks you collect religious relics or something—they’re just autographs. It’s all right. That’s your job. You don’t have to feel bad—that’s what you do. You just pulled off one of the great autograph coups of the
decade.
Bloody
enjoy
it, I say.”

“Nnng?”

Adam hooked an arm around Alex’s shoulders and squeezed.

“You made the evening edition, friend, page eight. Can I ask—I mean . . . what’re you going to do with the money? It’s a hell of a lot, man. Because the shul . . . I mean, no pressure, but, well—we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Even
you
couldn’t drink it all—though you gave it a fair old—”

Alex had started running down the street. At least, he had instructed his legs to run but the message was poorly transmitted. It did not contain the idea of balance, of poise, of staying upright. He came to grief at the corner and tried to gather himself in a doorway. Joseph and Adam were upon him in a second, holding their knees and looking up, for the rain had started.

“We in a hurry?” asked Adam, getting his breath.

“You—follow—” said Alex, starting to run again. “She’s in the house.
She’s in the house.
”

Now they were jogging, the three of them, and the rain was preparing to get serious.

“
Who’s;
in the house? Why are we running?”

“
She.
Kitty,” said Alex, and accelerated, his trench coat billowing capelike behind him.

“The video?” called Adam, as Alex took a healthy lead. “Just return it to me tomorrow. It’s no big
deal.
”

“NO. SHE.
KITTY.
IN THE
HOUSE.
”

“Alex,”
cried Adam, as they passed the video store and Alex vanished behind the curved wall of the bank that began his street, “
Alex.
Don’t be
mad.
”

At this hour Alex’s street was sepulchral, residential, and Adam and Joseph turned its corner in silence, fearful of waking the parents of people they knew, not to mention the people they knew who were now parents, for these boys were getting old.

“Alex,
please,
” said Joseph, flinging himself finally at the gate, and addressing the Rasputin presently conducting a furious search for his keys. “Slow down. Take it easy.” With a yell of victory Alex retrieved his keys from deep within the broken seams of his coat.

“What’s this
about,
Tandem?” asked Adam, dripping up the path.

“She. In there. Kitty. She’s in my house. Right now.”

He opened the door and made the International Gesture of requested silence. “She’s in the living room,” he said in a loud, artless whisper. “With Esther. They’re chatting, they like to chat.”

He tiptoed through the hallway, opening the lounge door with ceremony, and as it swung on its hinge, bowing low. In this position he gagged. Joseph got him by the elbows and led him to the nearest place, the kitchen sink, where he was ponderously sick, in wave after wave. It was a long ten minutes before the expulsions slowed down, dwindling into a painful reflex cough from which nothing came, not even air. When he was completely done, Joseph lovingly washed his face for him with damp kitchen roll, and tried to give him a sleeping pill from his own prodigious collection of home-use pharmaceuticals. He drew a little aluminum pillbox from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and opened it—sweets in a safe. But Alex refused. He had sleep. If there was one thing he had, it was reserves of sleep.

Adam came in, sighed, held his friend’s shoulders and walked him back to the lounge.

“I made up the sofa bed. Esther must be upstairs—her bag’s in here—she won’t want you up there, though, you smell terrible. Sleep it off down here.”

“Mmmm.”

“There’s no obit,” he said, pointing to the evening paper on the coffee table. “It’ll be in tomorrow, I’m sure. You have to try and sleep now, not think about it.”

“Hnng . . . ug.”

“Now look, you’ve got a ten ’o’ clock appointment with Rabbi Burston tomorrow, just to go over things. And then it’s six o’clock for the service. Okay?”

“Adam . . .”

“Go to sleep, Al. We’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Later, man.”

And they left. They left. He passed out. The men didn’t believe him. And the women, the women had closed ranks against him.

3.

He had a dream. In real time, in real life, it lasted only a minute or two. But it went deep, as the short ones often do. It went like a knife dive into a swimming pool. He was in a fabulous garden. The garden was in the old French style, that is, it was a pastiche of many things. It had beds for English roses, it had a pseudo-Indian scene, a circle of cypresses, tamarinds. It had formal European hedgerows molded in soulless imitation of animals and trees, and a Japanese corner where stones made patterns on stones. Bamboo trellises framed the wide walkways, and as Alex made his way through an intricate arrangement of flowers he realized this would all be best viewed from the top windows of a great house—and then there it was, the great house, a trice after the thought, white and stately behind him. But now he was elsewhere. A maze had been waiting for Alex to discover the secret at its center: naked Diana, pulling back her bow. Over there, an artificial lake sat between two artificial hills, in imitation of a Tuscan valley. The final touch was the ha-ha, that cunning trench dug to give the impression that the garden went on as far as one could see, or rather, that the garden did not exist at all. That it was simply at one with the surrounding country. That all of this was the work of accidental design, of streams following their course and flowers blooming wherever they wished to. . . .

Alex was in this garden. Nobody else was. The windows of the great house were alive with sunlight, and somewhere in that direction he could hear a string quartet, the tinkle of glass and laughter, the usual counterpoint of a pleasant lunch party. But the garden itself was completely empty, and this troubled him. He was earnestly looking for the gardeners. He wanted to speak to the men who had dug the lake and planted the trees and trimmed the hedges. He knew, somehow, that they weren’t at the party. Where were they? He became frustrated, treading the same paths again and again, knowing this was a dream, wanting to wake up. Then, between two sentry-like fir trees, the scene changed. It was the garden still, but some new, secret section of it, a water paradise, with pool after pool laid out in a line, and monuments—monoliths of white stone—placed here and there between them. In every pool and in synchronization, naked men were leaping from the water like seals, performing disciplined, improbable turns, showy flips and poses, before going under again. It was beautiful. Alex, crying, approached the nearest pool. He could see Esther at the other end of it, sitting nude in a hybrid of a lifeguard’s chair and a director’s, her name across the back. She did not move or speak. Alex turned his attention back to the men. Men? Half of them were young, seventeen, eighteen, and Adonises, but for one feature. A film of skin, like a closed pouch, covered their genitals. The rest were very old, with this same area unintelligible beneath sagging stomachs. But they were jumping! They were all jumping! Higher than before, an additional spin, an impressive extension of an arm or leg. Sometimes even a whoop, a clear note sung and then abruptly sunk as they broke the water’s skin. Joyous Alex took off his clothes, and walked to the end. Here, Esther (without speaking, without moving) let it be known that no man entered this pool without reading the inscription. Inscription? Naturally, Alex was now nose to stone with a monument, trying to understand a few lines of verse carved upon it. What
was
this script? The Hebrew, Latin, Coptic, Russian, Japanese, Gobbledygook script . . . the lines of it going one way, then another, looping, curling, dashing, dotting . . . The men laughed when he said he couldn’t read it. Esther would not speak or help. The men didn’t believe him. And the women, the women had closed ranks against him. . . .

HE AWOKE WITH A
single breathy phoneme and the feeling he was going to die. He tried to throw the cover off, but instead became involved in a protracted entanglement, kicking at the blanket until it agreed the best thing was for the two of them to go their separate ways. He could smell himself. He reeked. Though we are all of us attached to our own stench, this was turning
chemical.
Hydrogen sulfide was involved. And mucus had become circular, working a trail through the three holes in his face, eased in its passage by mute tears. Why had the women closed ranks? What had he
done
? Alex and his fug left the room and began on the stairs. But the stairs were not as he recalled. The stairs, it turns out, don’t help you get any higher up. It’s not like an escalator. You have to do all the legwork yourself; they just
sit
there. And there is no warning, either, of when they will come to the end (it is dark and the blanket has custody of the Tandem glasses); there is only Alex, feeling his foot propel itself violently into space; for a long second he is toppling forward into a cloud, until the floor returns, unbending and unamused. The hallway’s not too bad. It’s straight and it has two walls and he had the good sense, years ago, not to put anything in it that might only be tripped over later. Most decoration is future obstacle.

The door. His heart is doing its scattershot routine, beating whenever, wherever: his toe, his thumb, his thigh, his chest. He doesn’t want to wake anyone. He eases the door. A light tap with the foot and it’s off, the slow swing.
There
they are. He can hardly see them. Just shapes, really. They lie next to each other—top-to-toes, is it called? Each set of toes poking free from the duvet at different ends, like two children at a sleepover. No. He’s still too drunk to get away with that. Like two women on a beach? No, no. That won’t do. His brain is absolutely resolute in its intention to mess with him. Like two bodies in a morgue. Almost. Like two bodies in a morgue in a
film.
All that’s missing is the tag (name, birth and the other) tied to that digit most unpresuming during life—the big toe. Is that what it was? The toe detail?

You watch too many films
is one of the great modern sentences. It has in it a hint of understanding regarding what we were before and what we have become. Of few people has it been more true than Alex-Li Tandem, Autograph Man extraordinaire. And therefore suitably,
rightfully,
his first thought was:
They’re dead. That’s it. They’re dead.
That idea (though it passed through him quicker than the sentence can be said) hollowed him out. It wrestled him and won. And then in the next second:
No, no, of
course
they’re not.
Parents will know this feeling, the before and the after. The horror, the climb-down from horror. But after this, at least for Alex, there is the extension. The extension is lethal. It understands that this is just a time lapse. Because there was nothing wrong with that diagnosis except time.