The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

1988

“YOUR PAJAMAS ARE INSIDE OUT,” Paul remarked.

“Whatside who?”

“Late to be roaming, Tooly.”

She checked the wall clock. “It’s only sparrow past gull.”

“You’re sleeping in your socks.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Need to take your socks off before bed, Tooly.”

“Why?”

“Well.” He contemplated this at length. “Well, no good reason — leave them on.”

“I was thinking before.”

“Hmm?”

“Was feeling worried.”

“About?”

“Not really worried.”

“You’re the one who said worried.”

“I got stuck thinking about—” She pointed to the empty cabinet, walked over to it as if drawn along by her forefinger, pressed the tip hard into the varnished wood surface, just above her sight line, yanked away her finger and scrutinized it, dead white from pressure, then regaining its blood flush. She did this again, pressing harder, and—

“What, though?” he interrupted.

“What what?”

“What were you worried about?”

“That I was going to die, and turn ten.”

“Die? Why would you die?”

“In the end, I will.”

“Not for a long time.”

“And turn ten.”

“Can’t do both, Tooly,” he said. “Well, you can. But there’ll be a long gap in between.”

As if to illustrate the notion of a long gap, she went quiet, her cheeks swollen till a breath puffed from her. “When I die, I’ll be dead for infinity.”

“When you’re dead, there is no infinity. When you’re dead, there’s no such thing as anything.”

“Nothing happening forever?”

“You could say that.”

“Oh, but one thing else I was wondering,” she said, unperturbed by this talk of eternal nothingness and buoyed by her ability to engage him in conversation and thereby delay bedtime, that nightly trip to infinity. “Mr. Mihelcic was saying how when—”

“Who’s Mr. Mihelcic?”

“My science teacher. Who I said the hippopotamus looked like.”

“Not to his face?”

“I said it to you. But I like hippopotamuses.”

“Hippopotami.”

She shivered at her mistake. “Hippopotami.” Then, resuming, “Mr. Mihelcic said when you fall into a black hole you get stuck and it’s impossible to get out. Like quicksand.”

“Black holes are to be avoided, Tooly. As is quicksand.”

She pressed her finger white against the cabinet, watching it slowly regain life, pressing it bloodless again.

He opened his mouth to speak, then frowned at a software manual in his lap, to which his full attention now returned.

She made three laps around the coffee table, stepping over his legs each time, and wandered down the dark hallway to her bedroom. Hippos had yellow teeth that zookeepers needed brooms to clean, using giant tubes of toothpaste. What was it like inside a hippo’s mouth?

After less than a year in Australia, this was their final night. Every surface in her bedroom was bare, only dust silhouettes where her possessions had been. She dragged the suitcase from her room, wiping her forehead in mime, though no one was present to see. Taking a run-up, she slid back down the polished hardwood floor to the threshold of the living room.

“You’ll get splinters.” He put down his work and folded his arms awkwardly. “Can you go to sleep now?”

She flopped into a pile, as if finger-snapped into slumber. Her closed eyelids flickered.

“Go to bed, please.”

Tooly slouched away, stumbling on a suitcase strap in the hallway, banging her shin against the doorframe to her room. She leaped onto the bed, rolled to her back. Reaching under the covers, she drew out a book but left the bedside light off for a minute, pausing at the sound of Paul speaking from the hall.

“The next place,” he said, “the next place is going to be better.”