The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (36 page)

With no sign of anyone retrieving Tooly, Humphrey soon took on her education, loading her down with reading material. Each time she returned to her tent, she found a fresh volume at its entrance.

“You have read Spengler yet, darlink?”

“What is Spankler?”

“You are ten years old, and you not read Oswald Spengler? How this is possible?” He placed a copy of
The Decline of the West
by the tent.

Humphrey had no friends at the parties, just a few trading partners.
Their dealings were mostly in expired pharmaceuticals and medical prosthetics, such as a pair of flesh-colored plastic legs he was constantly trying to sell, each wearing a scuffed black dress shoe and a red sock. “How much I get for this?” he asked Tooly, placing one before her.

“Just one leg?”

“I give half price if you buy two.”

“A hundred baht?” she guessed.

“Not even left shoe without sock do I sell for hundred baht! This is high-demand product.”

Nevertheless, the legs sat around (stood around) for days before he found a buyer in a cuddly Cameroonian named Lovemore Ngubu, who planned to paint the legs brown and ship them to Yaoundé for sale at his uncle’s electronics-repair shop. It was Lovemore who told Tooly that Humphrey had served time in jail.

“Not jail,” Humphrey clarified, when she asked about this. “It was Gulag. That is like jail but made by Russians, so worse.”

“What did you do?”

“Communists say I am social parasite, which is big exaggeration.”

“What was it like in jail?”

At first, they kept him awake for days in complete isolation, he said. To stay sane, he tried to recall his life, framing recollected events as if they were photographs, looking at each in detail. Talking with prisoners in adjacent cells was forbidden, but he and a neighbor had a sewer pipe in common, so they communicated with a tapping code used in Russian prisons since tsarist times. It was at this point that Humphrey started playing chess seriously—different taps connoted different moves. The man in the next cell had been there for eight years, and each day paced back and forth, counting his steps to calculate the distance, mapping in imagination the walk back to his hometown, thousands of miles away on the other side of the Soviet Union.

“What happened to him?”

“They let him out, but his body is ruin; he dies. After this, they send me north for chopping wood.”

“What was that like?”

“Hungry every day. They tell us when to eat—little soup with grains—and when to sleep. Very cold. Everybody dreaming of food all night. One prisoner, he is crazy, kills friend—they find him eating.”

“Eating what?”

“Eating friend. They mix me with common criminals. This is where I become corrupted. Before, I am honest man,” he said. “It is so cold up there all time. Even here and now, where it is so hot and sweating, I am cold in my bones. Yes, it was bad in Gulag. Another man, he puts ground glass in his eye just to get to hospital. Other politicals, they try hunger-strike.”

“What’s that?”

“You stop eating as protest. But only works in country where they care you are not eating. In Soviet Union, they stick tube in you with boiling soup, and this destroys stomach right away. There is saying in Gulag: ‘Only first life sentence is hell. After that, everything gets better.’ You want Coca-Cola?”

His resentment over those six years of detention had expanded into a generalized hostility toward his birth nation. If one mentioned anything to do with the Soviet Union, he remarked contemptuously, “Typical Russian! This is typical Russian way of behave.” As for the language, he refused to speak it even when his countrymen approached him—a provocation that would have led to violence had Venn not intervened. Humphrey even spurned Russian in written form, saying that English was more beautiful than the ugly Cyrillic script. There were many people who had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place. He was one of them.

“How did you get out of Gulag, Humphrey?”

“I run away hundred miles. At Black Sea, I get boat to Turkey, through Greece, bottom of Sicily, into Portugal. I meet man at dock and say, ‘Mister, where this ship is going?’ He tells me, ‘England.’ I am thinking, Very nice—land of Samuel Johnson, Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill. I say, ‘I can come? Is all right?’ He says, ‘Yes, why
not.’ Then, halfway into sea, someone asks, ‘Why you are going to Africa?’ I say, ‘No, I go to England.’ He says, ‘We go to South Africa on this boat.’ So, that is where I end. Years, I am stuck there. Why? Because trivial being tells me wrong boat. It is example of Moron Problem. If not for moron, I have different life, write many books, have nice fat wife and children. But no. This idiot”—Humphrey pronounced the word as if it contained only two syllables: EED-yot—“this idiot, he has been highly—how should I put to you?”

Remembering one of his favorite words, she said, “Detrimental?”

“Yes, highly detrimental. But there is important fact I learn: half your life is decide by morons,” he explained. “Does not matter how brilliant you are. You can have intellect big as John Stuart Mill. Even
he
probably has many difficulty from idiots.”

“I have difficulty from idiots,” she told him. “My old school in Australia sent the wrong information to the place I go to now, and they’re making me do a whole year over.”

“Why they let this happen? It is like something from Soviet Union. Just because moron sent wrong papers?”

“I
told
them.”

“This makes me fury. Quite fury. Why they do this to you? They do not realize you are high-quality intellectual?”

“I’m supposed to be in fifth grade.”

“You should be in sixth! In seventh! Better, I put you in medical school. That is how intellectual you are.”

“I hate trivial beings.”

“I hate them also. But careful; it is trivial beings that run the world.”

So went their days—talking, reading, commending each other’s forbearance in a world bedeviled by the Moron Problem. Whenever it suited them, he cooked a meal. His specialty was anything potato-based: potato sandwiches, potato pie, and his favorite, smashed-potato pizza.

“What’s your favorite food, Humphrey?”

“Me? I like all things eatful.”

That was daytime. When night fell, all changed. Some evenings, Venn kept her near. Other times, he entertained associates, and she watched from a distance until he summoned her. “Little duck!” he said, scratching his thick beard, lines crinkling around his eyes. And she walked away from Humphrey as one might from a classroom friend when a fancier after-school companion arrives. She was ashamed of him, and he knew this, so let her go. Yet he watched from afar. When she was tired, it was he who asked Venn to banish the revelers upstairs, a trick that Humphrey, despite his pleas to the crowd, had no power to effect.

2000

A
COUPLE OF DAYS PASSED
before Tooly noticed that the students’ apartment was less populated, and that the missing person was Noeline. She and Emerson had broken up. Without her there, he walked around shirtless, stroking his blond ringlets, and inserting his opinions everywhere. That is, he hadn’t changed at all.

But Noeline had, as Tooly witnessed when they ran into each other on Broadway. She appeared jollier, slimmer, and was startlingly affectionate, insisting on a hug. Neither had eaten lunch, so Noeline proposed Chinese. Tooly loved the idea; it was exciting, a professor inviting her for a meal. Since she couldn’t afford to dine out, Tooly pretended to have no appetite, but agreed to sit and watch. Noeline falsely attributed this abstention to dieting and insisted that Tooly was thin enough to eat whatever she wanted—who cared, anyway! She requested an extra plate and extra chopsticks, making the case that it wasn’t a diet violation if you hadn’t ordered it.

Noeline chose General Tso’s chicken and white rice—not brown rice, which was the only kind she’d been allowed during her year with Emerson, who was a nutrition hard-liner. Tooly sampled the food, then laid down her chopsticks, took up her napkin, dabbed her lips, trying not to look famished.

“What’s your opinion,” Noeline inquired, “of thongs?”

“The sandals?”

“No, no. Thong underwear. The kind that goes up your butt.”

“Don’t think I have a strong opinion about it.”

“Okay, can I just tell you something? The thong is why Emerson and I broke up.”

“You found him wearing yours?”

“I wish. No, he wanted me to wear one, which—if you have any familiarity with my butt, there’s just no cause to expose more of it. He called it ‘a point of principle.’ ”

“Your butt, or the thong?”

“The one in the other.”

“So did you?”

“It’s a long-standing credo in my life that dental floss is not for covering one’s nether regions.”

“And this was an ongoing issue?”

“You have no idea. Once he fixates on something, you can’t pry him off it. Anyway, why don’t
men
have to wear a goddamn thong?”

“It wouldn’t work,” Tooly said. “They’ve got stuff to hold up.”

“They wear boxer shorts, and those don’t support anything.”

“Maybe they need an underwire thong.”

Noeline loved this and clapped her hands. “That’s a totally disturbing image.” As she continued her review of the Emerson relationship, squirmy details emerged, including sexual quirks and small cruelties. “When you see what looks like an ideal relationship from outside,” Noeline remarked, “you don’t realize how much crap is going on inside.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just that your relationship didn’t seem all that ideal to me. You guys argued a lot.”

“How do you know that?”

“Thin walls.”

“Well, that’s kind of embarrassing.”

“And he was rude to you, I thought.” Tooly took a sip of water. “Are you offended if I say this stuff? Is it better that I keep my mouth shut?”

“The more awful things you say about him, the better. Badmouthing
this jerk is my favorite sport right now. But wait—you didn’t like Emerson?”

“Noeline, I don’t think
anybody
likes him. There’s a saying: ‘Every cockroach looks beautiful to its mother.’ But when Emerson calls his mom she lets the answering machine get it.”

“That is fantastic!”

“I can keep going?”

“Yes, please!”

“He’s arrogant. He’s pushy. Constantly showing off. What is it with taking his shirt off all the time? Yes, we know he works out. Congratulations, you have abs. But it’s winter in New York, not July in Malibu. And I don’t doubt that he knows a lot, but it’s—”

“He doesn’t know one-tenth of what he claims,” Noeline interrupted. “He thinks he’ll do what I did and go from postgrad straight to teaching at Columbia. Dream on.”

“Really?”

“They like us to make our bones on the mean streets of rural academia. I got insanely lucky.”

“You were good, probably.”

“Lucky. Anyhoo, back to insulting the loser. I just used the guy for his body. I’m joking. Whatever. I’m pretty cynical about relationships. And I blame my parents. Even though they live on different continents, they keep up this amazing relationship. They’ve allowed each other to pursue separate careers. And they love each other still. So they’ve ruined me. Because that is not the rule. Most guys cannot deal with a smart woman. Male-female relationships are basically incompatible with mutual dignity. But society mounts all this pressure on heteros to mate for life or be outcasts.”

“How does society do that?”

“Like, consider the romantic comedy. That whole genre is intended to guilt us into breeding. Women are made to look lonely and pathetic if they ever dare be independent. ‘Fear not, loser girl—here’s dimple-cheeked Hugh Grant, who will save you with his mumbly bullshit!’ It’s social engineering to make us make babies.”

“Did Emerson want babies?”

“I could never procreate with a guy as stupid as him. Okay,” Noeline said, smile rising. “I’m going to tell you something. But don’t pass this on to anyone.”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“Seriously, it could bounce back on me. Get this: I basically wrote half his doctoral thesis. Not even kidding. You have no idea what shit he had in there before I looked at it.”

“What’s his subject again? Something about roller coasters?”

“ ‘The Sign, the Signified, and the Cyclone: Lacan Goes to the Fairground.’ ”

“What does that even mean?”

“Who knows. But fine, I worked with it. And then
he
goes and fucking breaks up with
me
! Like, what is up with that?” She took a big mouthful of food, talking and chewing together: “Good to vent … My friends all hated him, so now they’re, like, I told you so…. Anyway. Duncan? How’s stuff with him?”

“Fine.”

“You in love?”

“Me? Gosh, I don’t know that I have that emotion. I like people,” Tooly said. “But there’s not a separate emotion involving stardust and harps. Nobody’s convinced me such a thing exists. What exists, I think, is liking to a greater or lesser degree. But this idea of a magical separate thing is sort of a swindle—like you were saying about romantic comedies.”

“I never said I didn’t fall in love. I do constantly. That’s my problem. You must not have met the right person.”

“I don’t think there are ‘right people,’ ” Tooly said. “Just variations on types.”

“How did you get so cynical at such a young age?”

The answer, which Tooly failed to give, was that these views were not necessarily hers. They belonged to Venn, and he was the most convincing person she knew. “It’s complicated.”

“Is this the part where you get all mysterious and clam up?”

“Probably, yes.”

The camaraderie cooled. “I don’t really fall in love, so I’m not with Duncan, no,” she said, trying to make reiteration sound like disclosure. “I do
like
Duncan. He’s a nice guy. And I feel sad for him.”

“Ouch.”

“Not in a bad way.”

“No, no—most men want to be pitied,” Noeline said sarcastically. “Actually, maybe they do. Holy shit! Maybe that’s the key to everything!”

“I don’t pity him. I’m just saying I don’t get sentimental about people.”