The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

1988

“DON’T.”

“Don’t what?”

Before Paul had walked in, Tooly was jumping on her bed, watching the view of Bangkok fly up and down through the window. Upon hearing him, she bent her knees and grasped the covers in a breathless crouch, feet flexing on the quivering mattress. “I’m not wearing any shoes,” she said in her defense.

“Don’t be argumentative about everything.”

She took a ballet leap off the bed and crashed to the floor, tumbling across the cool tiles, landing on her belly, then rolling onto her back to show that she was unhurt.

“People live below us. Stop that.”

Paul was particularly tense that morning, expected at the U.S. Embassy in less than an hour to start his latest contract. He was an information-technology specialist for Ritcomm, a private company hired by the State Department to upgrade diplomatic communications overseas. The larger American embassies, such as here in Bangkok, had mainframe computers with telecom links to Washington, allowing them to check the latest “bad-guy list” whenever a foreign national sought to visit America. But many smaller U.S. outposts had never been linked to the network, and were obliged to consult ancient documents on microfiche. Paul was overseeing upgrades around the world, traveling to each dinky consulate, where he conducted a site survey, installed the Wang VS able to open up a 3270 emulation, ran BNC cables to every desk terminal. Finally, the staffers could connect at 9.6 bps via the phone line, type in a name, date of birth, place of birth, and wait for a hit.

Each of his assignments lasted about a year, during which he based himself at a hub like Bangkok and traveled throughout the region, doing his best to avoid time at the suffocating embassies. Diplomats there often styled themselves a ruling class, treating support staff like servants. Paul might be assigned to fix a faulty dot matrix, for instance, or told to exorcise gremlins from the ambassador’s monitor. On embassy days, he tried to vanish among the swarms of staff and visitors — just another guy slouching out of the cafeteria with a Styrofoam box for lunch. He avoided others’ company by choice, although this was not the only reason he made himself unknown.

Tooly watched him hobbling around in one black Velcro shoe, his polo shirt tucked into pleated khakis. He sniffed — air-conditioning congested his sinuses — then swallowed, Adam’s apple rippling, neck dotted with razor-burn blossoms. “Where’s my other shoe?” His anxiety pervaded the apartment, and her. The disquiet of others was an undiscovered force alongside gravity that, rather than pulling downward, emanated outward from its source. Unfortunately, she was excessively attuned to his nervous pulses. She joined the hunt and discovered his lost shoe under the couch. Disastrously late now, he grabbed for floppy disks and printouts. At the door, he stopped. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“Where are you today, Tooly?”

“What?”

“What are you supposed to be doing? I can’t just leave you here.”

“Isn’t there a housekeeper coming?”

“Not till Thursday.” Paul always endeavored to keep them prepared, yet the narrowness of his attention caused lapses. He was a man who could grind at a programming conundrum for thirty hours and resolve it elegantly, then look up to find all else in decay. “Goddamn!”

“I don’t mind staying on my own.”

“I mind,” he said.

“Can I jump on the bed?”

He checked the time. No choice but to leave her there. He came near to an apology, then locked her inside.

This new apartment was large and modern, constructed in the late 1970s, ceilings low, furniture sparse. The windows hummed with AC units, which blew up the skirts of the curtains. In Paul’s room, open suitcases lay on the bed. His computer, a high-performance DEC workstation, was always shipped ahead. She was forbidden to touch it alone, yet did so now, turning the dial on the cube monitor and flicking the I/O switch, floppy-drive light flickering. Within minutes, a green cursor fast-blinked on the black screen.

He had taught her a program once, and she typed it in now, then hit Return. The words “Hello world!” flashed onscreen. Tooly imagined that the machine was alive, and typed back “hello.” But the cursor blinked dumbly. She was only talking to herself.

She left everything exactly as before and ventured into his en-suite bathroom, closed the toilet lid, and climbed up. Tooly parted her unbrushed hair as if it were curtains and peered between, voicing imagined dialogues with acquaintances from previous cities: stewardesses, travelers, and other forms of grown-up. In the mirror, she inspected herself, ears protruding, forefinger fish-hooked in her mouth. All her clothing was rolled up at the hems. She was supposed to grow into it, but remained little. In every class photo, Tooly was at the front — next to whichever resentful boy genetics had consigned to a similarly low altitude.

It didn’t feel as if that reflection in the mirror was really her.

She slid open the mosquito-screen door to the back balcony. The morning sun glared through smog. Beyond the apartment complex stood rusty corrugated shacks and banana trees where birds chirped. She fetched Paul’s binoculars, sneaking them off a high shelf, popped the eye caps, and wiped the lenses on her T-shirt, the glass squeak-squeak-squeaking. With a finger raised (“Careful!”), she returned to the balcony.

Tooly deplored birding, among the dullest activities ever conceived by adults. Animals were endearing when they were crude versions of people, but birds weren’t human at all. Paul said birds had evolved from dinosaurs, which was hard to believe, given that dinosaurs were notably interesting. Nevertheless, she looked everywhere for birds. On the occasions that she spotted one, the sighting pleased Paul, and she wished for that rare effect. Generally, she seemed to irritate him.

“Which do you like best,” she’d once asked him, “birds or people?”

“Oh, birds,” he responded emphatically, adding softly, “Definitely birds.”

Back inside, she clasped in each fist a corner of her T-shirt, stood under the ceiling fan, the propeller chopping air. She remained motionless, her heart rate increasing until she sprang forward, sprinting through the living room, leaping onto her bed, landing on her knees, then bounding off again — through the kitchen, into the empty maid’s quarters, squealing till she remembered that she oughtn’t. She jammed a handful of shirt into her mouth, fabric dampening as she galloped around, sucking breaths through her nose. On the front balcony, she halted, looking down onto their lane, where construction workers toiled, bicyclists queued before a food stall, a street tailor hunched over his pedal-operated sewing machine. All those people down there and she up here — how strange that there were different places, events happening at that moment, and she wasn’t in them. There were people she’d once known doing things on the other side of the world at that instant.

She ran back inside, grabbed her book, and belly-flopped onto the couch. With the thick paperback of Nicholas Nickleby spread before her, Tooly went still. When reading, she appeared comatose and deaf. Yet inside she moved all the faster, hurrying along a tall wooden fence through whose knotholes she observed extraordinary scenes: a whip-bearing butcher cleaning his hands on a leather apron, say; or a pickpocket with a stump for an arm; or a crafty innkeeper eavesdropping on clients. Sometimes she found her view blocked by a mysterious word — what, for example, was an “epitome”? Nevertheless, she hastened forward, finding the next knothole, having missed only an instant. To disappear into pages was to be blissfully obliterated. For the duration, all that existed was her companions in print; her own life went still:

“May I — may I go with you?” asked Smike, timidly. “I will be your faithful hard-working servant, I will, indeed. I want no clothes,” added the poor creature, drawing his rags together; “these will do very well. I only want to be near you.”

“And you shall,” cried Nicholas. “And the world shall deal by you as it does by me, till one or both of us shall quit it for a better. Come!”

She considered the word “shall,” wishing to utter words like that to stammering friends who inquired, “May I — may I go with you, Tooly?” To which she’d reply, “You shall!”

Paul stood beside her, lips moving, words emerging but not sounding yet, her ears still switched off. A stick of dried spaghetti in her mouth, she finished the chapter, then closed the book. “I saw a tree babbler,” she said.

“Where?”

“In a tree.”

He lowered himself into an armchair, rubbed his face. “Don’t eat raw spaghetti.”

“I shall not.”

“Why are your lips green? Were you tasting toothpaste again?”

“Maybe.”

“Just have something normal from the fridge.”

“There wasn’t anything normal.”

“What was there?”

“Nothing.”

He frowned disbelievingly and rose to check. But why would there have been food? They’d only moved in the day before. Every cupboard was empty, the fridge unplugged. He had left her alone for ten hours. “Nothing since breakfast?” he asked.

“I didn’t have breakfast.”

He opened all the cupboards again, ashamed of his oversight and uncertain how to respond. He checked the clock. (In place of numbers, its display had birds; instead of chiming, it twittered on the hour. By now, they could tell time by birdsong.) “It’s blackbird past owl,” he said. “I have to feed you.”

“You shall.”

She described the tree babbler but fell silent when the elevator doors closed after them — he opposed talking in elevators, since outsiders could hear. They crossed the building’s courtyard, which was lined with frangipani trees and flanked by twin fountains, spray misting the hot evening air. “Nothing at all?”

“That spaghetti,” she replied. “When I was on the balcony, I saw places down the road where they have food.”

“We’re not eating things from the street, Tooly.”

“Can I try?”

“There’ll be proper restaurants,” he said. “They probably have Italian in Bangkok. You like spaghetti.”

“Can I see down our street first?”

“You saw from the window.”

“Only from high up.”

“Well … okay. But follow me and stick close.” He stepped from the complex and onto the soi, directly into the path of a motorcycle, which swerved around him, its whoosh fluttering her T-shirt. Walls ran along both sides of the lane, hiding the expat apartment buildings, while electricity cables hung from utility poles like vines. They walked single file toward the main road, Sukhumvit, passing a cart of tropical fruit on ice: papaya spears in plastic bags, skinned pineapples, hairy rambutans. The shopkeeper attacked a mango with a butcher knife, severing it on a tree-stump cutting board.

Gray blotches spattered the dry pavement. It was rain — from specks to a gushing torrent within seconds. They speed-walked for Sukhumvit, where tuk-tuk taxis awaited. “Can we take one?” she asked.

“They’re not safe,” he replied, the downpour plastering white hair over his forehead, rain dribbling down his spectacles. “It’s like a cart — you can just fly out. We need a proper taxi.”

They continued into the deluge, rain overwhelming the grates, water rising out of the gutter.

“Look!” she said. “Rats! They’re swimming.”

“Don’t look at them, Tooly! They’re diseased. Tooly — keep up!” Glancing left and right for a taxi, he hurried onward, inadvertently leading them down Soi Cowboy, a strip of winking-neon bars, with hookers sitting cross-legged on stools, smoothing down miniskirts, gabbing in Thai above tinny pop music. They spotted the farang man and cooed. One waved innocently at Tooly, who waved back. “Don’t!” Paul told her. “Really, don’t.”

She spotted a taxi and flapped her arms at it, then tugged Paul’s shirt so that he might turn and believe he’d discovered it himself.

“Here’s one!” he exclaimed, pushing past, nearly treading on her. “Hurry, I’ve got us a cab!”

Communicating to the driver that they wanted lasagna was beyond Paul, so he allowed the man to drop them outside a place in Chinatown.

A waitress ushered them into No. 2 Heaven Restaurant, past a tank of underbite fish, which glared at each new customer, and with good reason. Framed photos of suckling pig, roast lobster, and shark’s fin soup hung on the red-gold walls. Paul took a metal water carafe and slopped a wave into her glass, which filled with a fast glug and overflowed onto the maroon tablecloth, a dark patch that expanded.

“Do animals get haircuts?” she asked.

“Which animals?”

“Rats.”

“They don’t need them. Their hair doesn’t grow long.”

“It just stops growing?”

“Yes.”

“So why doesn’t people’s?”

“People’s what?”

“People’s hair.”

“Tooly, please. We’re about to eat.” He raised his menu.

She consulted hers. “You don’t like sweet-and-sour, do you.”

“No,” he confirmed. “I want food that can make up its mind.”

“What is ‘cheeking breast’?”

“It should say ‘chicken breast.’ ”

“They have something called Unique Leg of Camel. What’s ‘unique’ mean again?”

“One of a kind.”

“Isn’t every camel leg one of a kind?”

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Please, Tooly, let’s not talk of animals at the table.”

This made discussing the menu difficult. Eventually, she defied him, speaking so fast that he didn’t have time to object: “They have something called ‘lamb without odor’ and ‘slice pigeon.’ ”

“We’ll get the chef’s special noodles,” he informed her, closing his menu. “Plus crab meat with asparagus.” Paul always picked for her. It never occurred to him that this was bossy.

“I shall tell them our order,” Tooly said, swiveling around for a waiter. “Excuse me!”

“Tooly, quiet.”

“Then how do we get them to come over?”

“We wait. That’s why they’re called waiters.”

The staff confirmed his interpretation, chatting at length by the fish tank, then vanishing through the swinging kitchen doors for dishes that sailed past their table. Tooly swallowed hard, suddenly famished.

She folded and refolded her napkin. Paul did the same. Now and then, he refilled their water glasses. Something to say! She wished for a sentence. When they were on flights or at home, there were distractions. But dining, seated opposite like this, there was nothing. Silence sat between them as if upon its haunches on the table. She watched the uniformed doorman, who watched the fish, which watched Tooly. “Is that man a soldier?” Tooly asked, knowing he was nothing of the sort.

“He’s a guard.”

“Why do they have a guard at a restaurant? In case the cheeking escapes?”

He looked at her, uncomprehending, then at his water glass from several angles.

A waitress arrived and food came soon after — a huge bowl of soup they hadn’t ordered. Tooly launched herself at it before Paul could protest. She spooned it in ravenously, while he held her hair out of the way. Plates seemed to emerge from the kitchen at random, dishes served whenever it suited the cook. Presently, another arrived. “Oh, no!” Tooly said. “Fish!”

“It’s not one from the tank,” Paul said unconvincingly. “Anyway, we have to eat it or it’ll be perceived as an insult.”

“By the fish?”

Paul chewed on one side of his mouth, gazing off as if there were something untoward about dining, a necessary embarrassment like toileting.

“Was your job okay today?”

“Was it okay?” he said, the wrinkle tightening between his eyebrows. “I heard that my father is sick.”

“Shall we venture to America to see him?”

“Why are you talking like that?” he said. “I just told you my father’s sick.”

“Sorry.”

“We can’t go back. And that’s that.”

When Tooly was younger, she had met Paul’s father, but had no memories of him, only images from two photographs: one of a cheerful bald man with a mustache and a butterfly collar clowning around; the other of a youth in an army uniform. Burt Zylberberg, a basketball player in college and later an insurance salesman, had converted from Judaism to Catholicism as a young man, and served as a chaplain in World War II. During the Anzio invasion, an explosion shredded his legs. He and his wife, Dorrie, had intended to start a family after the war, but the extent of his wounds precluded that. They adopted a boy, Paul, and settled in Northern California. They were jovial parents, particularly Burt, an indefatigable optimist despite his infirmity. But they were so different from their adopted child, an earnest boy without any spiritual inclination. Yet he was intensely loyal to them. Whenever people asked if he thought of finding his real parents, he grew annoyed — he had no curiosity about those people, and never developed any. Paul went on to study computer science at UC Berkeley, which gave him access to high-end mainframes. In the wee hours, he haunted the computer lab, partly because all the interesting hardware was available then, but also to escape his peers’ cavorting. The hum of mainframes produced in him a conditioned response of tranquillity. During his final year of college, a surprise came: his parents informed him that he had an elder brother. When World War II was breaking out, they’d given up a baby, and that child had grown up and found them. This biological son — having just met Burt and Dorrie — already interacted with them with an ease and warmth that were alien to Paul. Rather than spurring him to seek his own biological kin, the development instilled the sense that he had no origins at all.

Paul placed his credit card on the bill, and went to the toilets. Tooly waited and waited, then wandered toward the front door, which a waitress opened for her. Outside, the air was hair-dryer hot and smelled of exhaust. Pedestrians gushed down the sidewalk, a human river coursing past the Chinese-Thai shopfronts displaying vases, gongs, ceramic lions, meat grinders. She found herself swept away, bundled along among strangers until the end of the block. On her return to the restaurant, Paul had still not come back from the bathroom. She approached it, heard his inhaler hissing in there, and she whispered his name.

Sheepishly, he edged out, a water stain down his trousers. “The sink area was all flooded but I didn’t see,” he said. “I leaned against the counter and got soaked. It looks …” As if he’d urinated down his khakis.

“I’ll ask for a napkin,” she suggested.

“Don’t say anything, Tooly!”

“Can we just run out?”

“I haven’t got my credit card back.”

“I could knock over the water. Then everything will be wet and they won’t see the difference.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“I can run through the restaurant and you chase after me, shouting that I poured water on you.”

“We can’t do that.”

But they did, to the bewilderment of the waiters and diners. Paul hunched forward in humiliation, mumbling his lines. “Why did you do that?” he said, rushing after her.

“I poured water all over you!”

“You’re a bad person! Where’s my credit card? Look what you did!”

“I threw water all over!”

Outside, he crossed his hands over his crotch as she searched for taxis, waving wildly at the passing traffic. “Don’t make a scene,” he pleaded.

In the cab, Paul said, “I wasn’t really angry in there.”

“I know you weren’t.”

They arrived back at Gupta Mansions, took the elevator up, unlocked the front door. “Good to be home,” he said.

As they looked at this latest apartment, it felt like home to neither of them.