Pantheon
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Joseph O’Neill, author of “Netherland” (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction) and “The Dog,” returns with “Godwin” (Pantheon), a novel about a bizarre plan to find the next international football star.
Read an excerpt below.
“Godwin” by Joseph O’Neill
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A few years ago, my phone turned into a device that allowed strangers and robots to intrude between me and what I was doing. It was most likely a financial and verbal intruder. The mere buzzing of a phone began to frighten me. I decided to systematically avoid phone calls, with the exception of Sushila, of course—and even Sushila knows that, barring emergencies, a text message is optimal. This decision was long overdue. The general history of phone calls, it is safe to say, is grim. Who can begin to measure or even comprehend the magnitude of the calamities signaled or produced by this system of sound transmission? It was with very good reason, I now understand, that my father invariably ordered me to ignore the beige, ringing gadget that sat on the living room bookshelf. Together he and I would wait, all activity paused, for the shrill scream to cease, a suspenseful interlude that might last a minute or more, for in the days of landlines there was nothing to stop a caller from staying on the line indefinitely, and often the house would be filled with that strange, seemingly endless electronic scream, and often that scream would be followed by a second scream of a call, in the hope, perhaps, that the first call had been misdialed or that my father had just walked through the door or gotten out of the bathtub. Dad refused to install an answering machine. As a concession to me—I was a freshman in high school; it was now important to me and my friends to be in constant conversation—he would allow me to pick up the phone, but only on the condition that if the caller asked to speak to him, I would state that he was “not available at the moment.” That was the wording he insisted on using.
The problem is, I’ve developed my father’s aversion to the telephone. It’ll be two days before I can find Geoff again.
“Hey, Markie,” he said. “Thanks for calling, guys. Sorry to barge in on you.”
“Don’t be crazy,” I said.
I will say that I love my brother’s voice, which I hear so rarely. It is a voice from a complementary, more summery world that once existed or could never exist. It is the voice of a love long lost or long impossible. That is where things stand between me and my brother’s voice.
He informs me that he is “in a difficult situation.” He wonders if I could set aside a few days to go to England to help him with “this business opportunity.” He has had some sort of accident and is unable “to travel, you know.” He adds with a bit of a laugh: “That’s a lot to ask, mate, I’ll be honest. If you can’t come, I’ll totally understand.”
“You’re hurt?”
“No, guys, I’m fine.” As he says this, he texts me a picture of a leg in a cast. Crutches rest against the couch.
“Jesus. You’re really messed up.”
“Yeah, it might be a while before I kick a ball around.” He continues, “Fing, Markie, I need someone I can trust absolutely. I’m not gonna lie, there’s a lot on the line.” He goes on to say more, including the assertion that “if this works out, there’s going to be a serious – I mean serious, family – payday for all of us.”
Out of politeness and for no other reason, I ask him for the deadline.
“We’re talking about a week at the most. I’ll take care of your expenses, my family. It’s not a problem.” He said this very calmly.
“Let me think about it.”
I won’t think about it. A simple rule applies here: no monkey business. An unexplained mission involving upfront expenses on my part and reimbursement from him at the end? A big payout that may or may not materialise? Sounds a lot like monkey business to me. Geoff is, as far as I know, a football agent. It’s a legitimate profession, but it’s not exactly a bishopric. More fundamentally, the whole idea is crazy: I drop everything and go on a self-funded exotic trip to help him? Who does he think I am: Captain Haddock?
To my surprise, Sushila has a very different view. “You’ll be able to spend time with your brother,” she says. “When was the last time that happened? I think you should think about it.”
We’ve finished dinner. I’m loading the dishwasher. If I have a calling, it’s to put away dishes, glasses, and kitchen utensils with maximum efficiency.
His voice continues: “Why not go? It will be an adventure.”
“An adventure?” I’ve spent years fighting my impulsiveness. No one knows that better than Sushila. And now she wants me to fly around the world on an adventure?
When I was ten years old and living in Portland, Oregon, my father announced to me, “You have a little brother,” and gradually more details came to me, including the fact that he was in “England.” There was a fabulous geographical tinge to this rumor that never quite faded. I came to believe that this baby had been born in a country far removed from his real home—which was mine—and that as far as I was concerned, he was a foundling of sorts and it was my duty to find him and bring him home. I pulled out an atlas and figured out where England was. I determined that with a team of huskies I could quite easily navigate the frozen surfaces of Canada, Baffin Bay and Greenland, from where I would hitchhike on a fishing boat across the Greenland Sea to Iceland, from where another trawler would ferry me across the nameless and terrible stretch of water that separates Iceland from the Faroe Islands. From the Faroe Islands it would be relatively easy to reach the Orkney Islands and finally the British mainland. I had no planned route for the return. I did foresee, however, that the two brothers (suddenly and miraculously closer in age) would be involved in great peril and great deeds of bravery. Even today I remember many of these visions and can still see, in the flashes of a child’s eye, two boys, walking in the desert, stopping to share water from a canteen; the same two boys riding side by side on white horses; and, strikingly, a snowy drama in which our heroes somehow find themselves bobsleighing. Their sled races along a pale, winding track. The two boys are crouched very close together in the cabin, and despite everything—the icy slide, the thunderous, stormy descent, the dark, determined pursuers—they are warm and safe.
The next day, I inform my colleagues that I will be taking my accumulated vacation. Then I leave for a trip across the Atlantic. I realize, finally, that maybe the brother in trouble is not Geoff.
Excerpt from “Godwin” by Joseph O’Neill. Copyright © 2024 by Joseph O’Neill. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without the written permission of the publisher.
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“Godwin” by Joseph O’Neill (Pantheon), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats
