Remainder by Tom McCarthy

accident.
    “There’ll also be,” I went on, “on the floor below this old lady, a pianist.”
    “So who else lives on her floor?” Naz asked.
    “No one,” I said. “No one specific, I mean. Just anonymous, vague neighbours.”
    “These vague neighbours: they don’t have to be on parade? On, I mean? They can be off the whole time?”
    “No,” I said. “All the…performers—no, not performers: that’s not the right word…the participants, the…staff…must be…I mean, we’ll need complete…jurisdiction over all the space.”
    “But go on,” Naz said. “Sorry I interrupted you.”
    “You did?” I asked him. I was slightly flustered now; I felt my tone was slipping. I thought of the last formal word I’d used and then repeated it, to bring my tone back up. “Well, yes: jurisdiction. On the floor below the liver lady, or perhaps two floors below, there has to be a pianist. He must be in his late thirties or early forties, bald on top with tufts at the side. Tall and pale. In the day he practises. The music has to waft up in the same way as the liver lady’s cooking smell does. As he’s practising he must occasionally make mistakes. When he makes a mistake he repeats the passage slowly, over and over again, slowing right down into the bit that he got wrong. Like a Land Rover slowing down for bumpy terrain—a set of potholes, say. Then in the afternoons he teaches children. At night he composes. Sometimes he gets angry with…”
    Naz’s mobile gave out a loud double beep. I stopped. Naz picked it up and pressed the “enter” button.
    “Heir or descendant,” he read. “From the Middle English sioun and the Old French sion: shoot or twig. First citation 1848. Oxford English Dictionary.”
    “Interesting,” I said. I took a sip of my mineral water and thought of the scarab beetle again. “Anyway,” I continued after a moment, setting the glass down, “this guy sometimes gets angry with another person who I’ll need, this motorbike enthusiast who tinkers with his bike out in the courtyard. Fixes it and cleans it, takes it apart, puts it back together again. When he has the motor on, the pianist gets angry.”
    Naz processed this one for a while. His eyes went vacant while the thing behind them whirred, processing. I waited till the eyes told me to carry on.
    “Then there’s a concierge,” I said. “I haven’t got her face yet—but I’ve got her cupboard. And some other people. But you get the idea.”
    “Yes, I get it,” Naz said. “But where will you be while they’re performing their tasks—when they’re in on mode.”
    “I shall move throughout the space,” I said, “as I see fit. We’ll concentrate on different bits at different times. Different locations, different moments. Sometimes I’ll want to be passing the liver lady as she puts her rubbish out. Sometimes I’ll want to be out by the motorbike. Sometimes the two at once: we can pause one scene and I’ll run up or down the stairs to be inside the other. Or a third. The combinations are endless.”
    “Yes, so they are,” said Naz.
    The fish soup came. We sipped it. Then the kedgeree. We ate it. I explained more things to Naz and he processed them. When his eyes told me to wait I waited; then the whirring behind them stopped and I’d go on again. He never once asked why I wanted to do all this: he just listened, processing, working out how to execute it all. My executor.
    Before we left the Blueprint Café Naz outlined the rate he’d charge. I told him fine. I gave him my banking details and he told me how to contact him at any time: he’d supervise my project personally, on a full-time basis. At ten the next morning he called me and told me how he thought we should proceed: we should first find a building that approximated to the one I had in mind—at least enough for it to be converted. That was the first step. While this was going on, he’d contact architects, designers and, of course, potential