The New Republic. Lionel Shriver

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      Edgar could only intuit vaguely that they had money troubles.

      “Barrington understood,” she added sadly. “But Barrington collected meaning like lint. Like that Peanuts character: it followed him in a cloud.”

      “You’re the only one I’ve met so far who mentions him in the past tense.”

      “It’s a discipline.”

      “I hope your, um, circumstances don’t mean you’ll have to clear out of this house,” said Edgar. “It’s cool.”

      “I’m sorry, I’ve misled you. You’re new here, you must be knackered after your long journey, and here I’m being coy. Don’t worry about our being evicted, Edgar. We own this house and five others all over Europe. But I’m a little tired myself. If you don’t mind, we won’t get into it now.”

      Dismissed and disconcerted, Edgar drifted back to the knot of gossips in the corner, his gate a bit unsteady. He’d switched to Heineken but eyed the brown bottles of Choque, curiously magnetic. The stuff was awful, punishing, but, much like the subject of Mr. Saddler, inexplicably difficult to leave alone.

      At least when Edgar rejoined the group they’d moved on, which was probably the work of the visiting German from Der Spiegel. In his fidgety silence, Reinhold Glück had seemed impatient with ceaseless scuttlebutt on someone he didn’t know. Serious and bespectacled, Glück was doing a feature comparing O Creme de Barbear with German neo-Nazis. Edgar recognized the tone before penetrating the German accent; liberal indignation whiffled with the same strident huffiness all over the world.

      “It is nothing but racism!” said Glück.

      “We’re not talking about a handful of funny-sounding visitors,” said Trudy, crossing her legs. “What about all those Turks in Germany? What if there were more Turks than Germans? If they could vote your prime minister out of office—”

      “Chancellor,” said Martha.

      “Whatever. And you walk down the street and everyone’s talking Turkish? And it’s hard to find a Pilsner anymore, like, all you can find is, I don’t know, mead, or whatever Turkish people drink. Know what a place like that’s called? Turkey. There wouldn’t even be a Germany anymore. Wouldn’t that tee you off? Where’s your national pride?”

      “The whole world has suffered for Germany’s national pride,” said Glück. “I have a different kind of pride.”

      “Well, I have American pride,” said Trudy. “Us Floridians have Cubans, Haitians, and Mexicans up the wazoo. When I grab a cab, if I don’t know Spanish for ‘airport’ the cabby looks at me like I’m the nitwit. In Miami, I feel like a foreigner in my own country.”

      “In a truly pluralistic society, all people feel equally foreign and equally at home. You are not talking about being American, but about being white and in control. It is the same in Barba. The fascists in O Creme only want to stay in power—”

      “I’m with you in theory, Reinhold,” said Martha. “Still, nobody in crappy little Barba has power of any description to hang on to.”

      “They do now,” said Ordway. “Whole bloody Western world is up in arms about immigration in crappy little Barba. That’s power. Look at us: we live here, we file from here, we’re consumed with local politics. And we’d never have considered so much as a bargain package holiday to this filthy bog five years ago.”

      “That impresses you?” said Edgar.

      “It is impressive, innit?” Ordway’s standard middle-class London accent was decorated with lowbrow touches. Translate: white geeks from Long Island lacing their conversation with yo! and I hear dat! like the brothers in the ’hood.

      “The Sobs having murdered over two thousand people—that impresses you, too?” The journalistic penchant for calling members of the SOB the Sobs and their political counterparts in O Creme de Barbear Creamies had first jarred as swaggeringly familiar, but Edgar got a charge out of tossing off the jargon himself.

      “Kellogg, don’t be so earnest!” said Ordway. “There must be some bloke side of you that fancies their flash. The Sobs have Interpol, the FBI, the CIA, the Portuguese Army, and the local coppers combing every pera peluda peel of Barban rubbish, and nobody can find a trace of them. Even Creamies keep their hands clean. They get lifted, but the next week they’re back on the street when nothing sticks. Other than the author of that sodding autobiography, I Was an SOB—a load of bollocks, in my view—no one’s dug up a single bona fide member of that lot in five years. That’s impressive, mate.”

      “Only to little boys,” said Martha.

      “Already, half the schoolchildren in the States are Spanish-speaking,” Trudy was preaching fervently to Reinhold. “And kids grow up. They’re taking over!”

      “Majority status is no people’s right,” Glück insisted. “It is an accident, a lucky advantage. Like any advantage you want to hold on to it. But it is typical reasoning of privileged people to assume that just because you have something, ipso facto you deserve it. In truth, this ‘defense of borders’ is naked defense of self-interest—not of justice.”

      “I still think Verdade has a point,” said Trudy sulkily. “If I were Barban, I’d sure get peeved with hordes of North African Muslims overrunning my home. These immigrants don’t have any money—”

      “From what I have read, the Moroccans are much more industrious than the lazy native Iberians,” said Glück. “And Moroccans don’t blow up airplanes, either.”

      “Okay, the Creamies are extreme,” said Trudy. Recrossing her legs, she added slyly, “But you gotta admit: Tomás Verdade is pretty sexy.”

      “Violence puts an issue on the map,” Ordway was lecturing Edgar. “Sob tactics may not be pretty, but they’re sussed. No casualties, we’re not even having this conversation.”

      “I’d concede that targeting world powers is smart,” said Edgar, beginning to get in the swing. “Terrorizing has-been Portugal wouldn’t work. No one would give a shit.”

      “Yes,” Ordway droned wearily. “That observation has been made before.”

      Edgar flagged the jaded response. By nature he had both a good feel for the trite and a special aversion to it. He could pinpoint the exact instant when having a “bad hair day” was no longer funny.

      “Anyway,” said Ordway, “you’ll soon clue that your new profession is dull as ditch water unless someone gets hurt. I covered the Quebec referendum on secession: few punch-ups, a bit o’ shouting. Even my mum used the paper to line her kitty-litter box.”

      “News isn’t entertainment,” said Edgar.

      “News is exclusively entertainment,” said Martha, “according to Barrington.”

      “Ten minutes, girls and boyos!” Ordway exclaimed, checking his watch. “A record.”

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