was absent. Late love and political ambitions were a disastrous combination. He needed the support of his friends to become prime minister. It couldn’t be allowed to transpire that all his efforts would be rendered futile by the impulses of his old penis. From then on Thome’s father took part in every middling hunt he was invited to, revitalized his contacts to the royal family, and hoped that society would forget his wife as long as she was invisible. Society was obstinate, never forgave and forgot. “Oh my dear, what a pleasure to see you,” began the conversations conducted with his father. “Will we see you at the Moorhuhn hunt?—Oh excuse me, I need to firm up a few details with Lord Summerburn. We’ll have the pleasure later.” His spouse was never mentioned. Never. Invited. She roamed around the villa in a bathrobe and was bored, if she didn’t happen to be selling oligarch-preferred diamonds or Bentleys or a German-owned company or Rolls-Royces or a German-owned company. The country’s IT firms belonged to Russians and Americans, the bulk of the city to Arabs and Russians.

XIANG MAI

“Nothing belongs to the Russians or Arabs anymore, or the Germans. Especially not the Germans.”

“Pipe down, you idiots,” thought

THOME

that weekend, as he sat in his room and Russians rubbed shoulders downstairs. Women who managed to look cheap despite very expensive clothing, men whose brutality couldn’t be hidden by bespoke suits. That’s real international understanding, that’s globalization, here’s to the people. All of them mutter: “Cheers.” That people so often operated within the parameters of their own clichés was amazing. Thome went down—at times with utterly no other goal than to bother them—and joined the Russians, who seemed a bit insecure. He watched the lady of the house. Looked at her breasts that pressed out of the neckline of her top. Thome didn’t even find the thought objectionable that his father, whom he could only picture in flannel suits, had allowed his penis to be sucked by this woman. It was a brilliant moment. When Thome pictured his father with his pants pulled down and this Versace-bitch in front of him, it was the moment when he lost all respect. It was before hate filled him,

Months later