The Autograph Man (4 page)

“Joseph, this is my Alex. And he’s here with friends. You boys should probably all sit next to each other. You might find you have things in common.”

The boy looks horrified. Li-Jin tries to retract.

“I mean . . . of course, I suppose Alex is quite a bit older than you. And Ru—Mark certainly will be. Mark, stop that. The spitting. Stop it.”

“HOW OLD?”

Klein the elder wants to know. He lunges towards Alex once more, index finger raised in the air, twitching. Alex shrugs and tells Klein that he is twelve, like what’s the big deal, but Klein laughs at this, tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. He pokes his son a few times in the ribs in what looks to Li-Jin like a painful manner.

“Ha! Twelve! Joseph is
thirteen
! Didn’t I tell you he’s a weed? Small when he popped out and small to this day. At the time, I said to his mother:
I could tear him apart like a fish! Send him back! Get another one!
Ha! You want to know something? He chews his food twenty times a bite, thinking it will build him up. He read it somewhere. Fat bloody chance! Ha ha! Hey you!” Klein has spotted an ice cream seller two rows below and, lifting himself out of his seat, leans forward until the iron-rail barrier that rings their seats is impaling his belly.

“Hey you down there! Don’t you want to know what I want?”

“I collect things,” says Joseph Klein in a tiny voice.

“What’s that?” asks Li-Jin, leaning towards him. He is not sure he heard right, and now Klein the elder is huffing and puffing in an effort to get out of his seat and push past them all (“Who do they make these seats for? Are they for the Munchkin people?”), so as to get to the end of the aisle and down towards the ice cream. Nimbly, Joseph bounces from his own seat into the one his father has just vacated.

“Things, stuff. Autographs sometimes,” says Joseph, very quickly. It feels like he has a lot to say and no time. “I collect stuff from things that I like and then I keep them. In albums. I file them. I find it extremely worthwhile.”

Jesus.
Alex smiles openly, but Rubinfine, to his credit, does not turn to Adam open-mouthed, screw his finger into his forehead or repeat the last sentence through a tongue obstruction, although this would be standard procedure as set out in The Code of Being Fifteen and he is well within his rights given the scale (“extremely worthwhile”?) of the offense. Instead he just opens his mouth and closes it again, partly because Li-Jin’s look says,
No, not today,
and besides, even for Rubinfine, there is no sport to be had in stepping on what is truly small and beetle-like.

“That sounds . . .
fun,
” says Li-Jin.

“Just anything,” asks Alex, trying his best, “or . . . ? Sort of
types
of things?”

Li-Jin smiles. Now, that’s
better.
Normally, if Alex doesn’t like the neighbor’s boy, because of a squint, maybe, or a lisp, or if he fears the sunburnt, freckled devil who squats opposite him on the tennis court, shifting his weight from foot to foot in that ominous way, well, Li-Jin will not interfere. They have much the same taste in boys, he and Alex. Sports fanatics are no good. Neither of them can find real sympathy for a certain type of fat-faced redhead with running nose and broken skin. They hate show-offs. But sometimes their guts tell them different things, and that’s what happening now. Li-Jin’s gut is saying,
Yes, we like him,
while Alex’s is in two minds, if such a thing can be said of a gut. “So, er . . .” he says, pouting, pushing his messy fringe back off his face, “do you just collect programs from things or something?”

Now Joseph opens his mouth to explain, but first he makes himself neat in his seat, crosses his little legs, straightens his spine.

“Famous things,” he says, carefully, giving equal weight to each word. “That’s why I’m here. I like wrestling. I’m a wrestling fan.”

Li-Jin has seen it before. Rich Hong Kong children in uncomfortable suits called up to the edge of the adults’ dinner table and asked to explain themselves for the benefit of guests: interests, achievements, hopes for the future. Joseph is like this. There is nothing natural about him.

“One of my collections,” he says, “is called European Wrestlers, except now there’s Kurutawa so I may have to change the name.”

“Okay,” says Li-Jin. “That’s very interesting. Alex, that’s interesting, isn’t it.”

And straight after he says this, the five of them sit in silence for too long.

“He started off doing sumo, Kurutawa,” says Adam, eventually, to help things along, “He’s Japanese.”

Joseph’s face is all gratitude. “Yes, from Japan! He’s been in Yorkshire now for six months and doesn’t like the food much. And in the magazine it said
Who would
? You see, because—because—the food tastes awful there, apparently. He doesn’t need any more food though, because he’s a
man mountain.
He comes from Tokyo. I’ve got a signed picture. Of course, if there was more than just him, that would be better. I could have an album and call it Japanese Wrestlers. But it’s a bit irritating. When it’s just him.”

“Who else you bloody got, then?”

This is Rubinfine, who wants a fight these days every day, whether he really wants one or not, because of hormones.

“Well, that depends in what area.”

“Say, what?”

“All right,” says Joseph. “What.” And then a little sneaky smile. It’s not a good joke but it’s still a joke, and that’s a good sign. Alex laughs and that seems to make Joseph relax. He starts to talk.

“I have an English Politicians folder, a Foreign Dignitaries folder—that is my main area—and then Olympians, Inventors, TV Personalities, Weathermen, Nobel Prize Winners, Writers, Lepidopterists, Entomologists, Movie Actors, Scientists, Assassins and the Assassinated, Singers—Opera and Popular, Composers—”

Rubinfine puts his hand up: “Hold on, hold on, did somebody ask for your life story or something?”

Li-Jin slaps Rubinfine’s hand down. This is back in the days when you could still hit other people’s children.

“Okay, okay—which film stars?”

“Cary Grant.”

“Who?”

“And Betty Grable.”

“Who times two?”

Li-Jin tries to weigh in with a brief account of forties American cinema, but Rubinfine shouts him down.

“No, no, no—I mean somebody
good.
”

“Mark Hamill?”

And that shuts up Rubinfine.

“That’s not really the strongest part of my collection, actors,” begins Joseph cautiously, addressing Li-Jin now. “So many of them when you write to them just send you back secretarials or imprinted things or Autopen stuff, and it’s very hard to get in-person items.”

“I see,” says Li-Jin. He has no idea what the boy’s talking about. “That’s interesting.”

“YAWN,” says Rubinfine, yawning.

“And also, they are not worth as much as you would think.”

“You make money?” asks Adam, bug-eyed. If you make money and you’re under sixteen, as far as Adam is concerned you approach divinity.

And then the boy says, “Oh yes . . . Philography’s very lucrative.”

Alex: “Philawho?”

“It’s the word for autograph collecting,” says Joseph, and it’s clear he isn’t saying this to impress. No, he just wants to tell someone. Still, it’s hard to forgive him for it, and Rubinfine won’t, ever. He suggests that everything Joseph has is worth four pee. He goes on to bet him this same four pee that his collection is actually worth
less
than four pee. Which is when Joseph seemingly without malice explains that he has an Albert Einstein worth three thousand pounds.

And that shuts up Rubinfine.

Alex: “Really? Einstein?”

“My uncle Tobias met him in America so it’s in-person and it’s signed to the lighter portion of the photograph
and
he was kind enough to also write down his super-famous equation next to it, which is where the money is, you see, in the content. But I wouldn’t sell it any more than I would sell my own arm.”

“Einstein-Shminestein,” says Rubinfine. “When’s this match going to start? Bored of all this ugging around.”

But Alex wants to know. Why not? Why wouldn’t somebody sell something worth three thousand pounds? Like, unless they were crazy?

“Because it’s in my most precious folder.”

“And what’s that?” asks Li-Jin, because you have to drag everything out of this boy.

“My Judaica.”

“Your what?”

Maybe for the first time in his life Alex-Li is physically on a seat and truly perched on the edge of it, really wanting to know something.

“My folder of Jewish things.”

“We’re Jewish!” Adam pipes up in that merry way he will lose in about three years.

Exclusive province of childhood: a time when genetic/cultural inheritance feels like this weird but cool thing you just got landed with, like an extra shoe.
Hey, check this out, Tom! I’m Eurasian! Whoa, I’m a Maori! Look, no hands!

“Me, I am, and Rubinfine is, and Alex. We go to cheder together.”

But Alex doesn’t want to be sidetracked.

“And what else is in it? In the Jewish folder.”

“Nothing.”

But he doesn’t mean nothing, he means
“Here comes my father,”
which Alex picks up on immediately but Li-Jin completely fails to get.

“Come on, Joseph—don’t be coy. There must be another thing in there. One autograph can’t make a folder, can it?”

“BORING YOU, IS HE?”

Li-Jin stands up to get out of Klein’s way, and ends up having to stand on the seats with the boys to allow Klein and his belly to get past.

“No, not at all, actually. We were just talking about Joseph’s collection—about the Judaica. It’s very interesting for me. You see, my son is Jewish.”

Klein licks his ice cream and smiles. Without the slightest trace of pleasantness or good humor. Li-Jin realizes that he has inadvertently given the man some material—of what kind he has no idea—from which he means to fashion a missile to throw at this child.

“Oh, his
Judaica.
Is that correct? Is that what you’re working on all night, in the dark, Joseph, ruining your eyes? . . . And there was I thinking he was scribbling some nauseating adolescent nonsense in there, dirty stuff, as boys will—but no. How interesting, Joseph. He can’t finish his homework, but he has time to assemble his
Judaica.
Well. What is the phrase? Yes: you learn something new every day. Well, well.”

Joseph has entirely folded back into his seat and is invisible beside his father, but there is too much noise for the silence between the six of them to be painful. Dramatic music is playing. The precommentary one hears on TV is on loud throughout the hall. In fact, there are the two pundits, sitting on a little shelf of their own talking into their mikes, both bald with a few hairs scraped over, down there, down at the very front.

Alex takes a biro from his jeans pocket, lifts his left foot onto his right knee and proceeds to dig at some dark matter that is trapped in the ridges of his trainer sole. But he doesn’t take his mind off Joseph. Li-Jin leans forward, casually, his fingers not resting on the cold iron rail but clutching it, and also with Joseph on his mind. He feels very sad. Joseph threw a precious thing to Alex and Alex threw it to Li-Jin and then Li-Jin, instead of protecting it, let this great ape shatter it right there on the floor in front of them. Is that what happened? The fight is about to begin. It shouldn’t matter. But these days a boy can’t pass by without Li-Jin wondering whether that might be the boy who phones Alex up after it has happened, makes him go out, takes his mind off things, races him round some corner, splashes him on a future holiday in a strange sea.

SO THE TWO WRESTLERS
come out and instantly it’s pandemonium. The hero stands to the right, accepting his huge cheer. The bad guy stands to the left, hissing whoever hisses at him. There are TV monitors hung high above the audience. Occasionally a sweeping shot of the crowd passes over their screens, and people point and whoop and watch with delight as their pointing and whooping is sent back to them instantaneously, like light bouncing off a mirror. To the best of his knowledge, never in his life has Li-Jin been caught by moving film. He would very much like to be. In terms of permanence, photos will not do for him.

The bell rings!

“Well,” says Li-Jin, shifting around in his seat, folding his arms across his stomach, trying to recapture a sense of occasion, “here we go!”

YHWH

Here we go. Last November, when Li-Jin’s suspicions are confirmed, when he is diagnosed, he is forced to learn the fact that he is ill like a human being rather than like a doctor. At first he takes it as a doctor, studying the scans with another doctor, calmly observing the obstruction of cerebrospinal fluid flow and the resulting pressure on the brain; pointing his finger at the dark mass; tutting with all the impatience of familiarity as the treatment options are outlined. But a few days later it enters him as a terrible human fact and leaves by way of a tiny, strained yelp in the night which Sarah mistakes for the cat. He clutches the duvet and presses his knees into the back of hers as if she could keep him here, just by proximity, by means of her own enviable health. In response to the obvious question he tells her
heartburn
and then turns his eyes to the wall and watches the cornered arcs of light from passing traffic climb from the window over the ceiling and then draw in towards them both like a series of embraces. Sarah goes back to sleep. He watches the arcs for about twenty minutes. After that, still agitated, he gets up and pads down the corridor to Alex’s room, looks in briefly and then progresses to the kitchen, where he puts two processed chicken slices on a single piece of unbuttered bread, calls it a sandwich and switches on the TV. He stands in the middle of the kitchen half naked (bottom half) and manages three minutes of the BBC test card. The girl. The rag doll. Then he weeps, the sandwich over his mouth to suppress the noise, gulping from his throat like an animal. The death punch, the infinity slap, strikes him so hard that he falls onto a stool and has to grip the edge of the breakfast bar just to stay upright. He is thirty-six years old.