Free The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith Page A

God-fearing. A woman who gives up her treasure with too much frequency is not coveted by men. Likewise a god who makes himself manifest and his laws obvious—such a god is not popular. Likewise a Ginger Rogers is not worth as much as one might imagine. This is because she signed everything she could get her hands on. She was easy. She was whorish. She gave what she had too freely. And now she is common, in the purest meaning of that word. Her value is judged accordingly.
    Greta Garbo was not easy. If she put pen to paper at all, Garbo tended to use a pseudonym, Harriet Brown. Garbo would demand that her bank chase up the whereabouts of any check she had written that had not been cashed. She wouldn’t let her name go, even on a receipt. A Garbo autograph, even a bad one, is still worth about six thousand pounds. Kitty Alexander signed even less than Garbo. Kitty was as awkward and invisible as Jehovah. She was aloof. The public hated her for it. And in time she was forgotten, for the public do not like to be ignored. But Autograph Men are rather more masochistic than the public (the public are primarily sadistic); they
enjoy
contempt. The Autograph Men remembered Kitty, always. These are the same people for whom untimely deaths are good business, along with assassinations, and serial murders, and high-profile failures. Monroe’s first husband, the third man on the moon, the Fifth Beatle. They have peculiar tastes. For a long time, Kitty Alexander’s autograph has been one of the most sought-after scribbles in this peculiar world. Most Autograph Men have given up the hope of ever getting one. Not Alex. Every week since he was thirteen, Alex has sent a weekly letter to Kitty, to an address in Manhattan, her fan-club address. Never once has he received a response. Not once. Only a drawer full of form letters, signed by the fan club president. And therefore,
therefore,
it takes Alex a long moment, therefore, to remember why, how,
by what means,
a blank postcard with Kitty’s autograph clearly written upon it has come to be pinned, like Luther’s declaration, to his own front door. Carefully, he unpins it and holds it up to the light. It is exquisite. It is real. Or he is not Alex-Li Tandem. He presses the TALK button.
    “Alex,” says Joseph in his quiet way, “listen to me one more time. You did not receive it from God. Nor did you receive it in the post. You forged it, Alex; you were on a very bad trip. Everybody was. Listen to me. It isn’t real, it never will be real, and things do not become real simply because we want them to be so.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Netsah
    ETERNITY • Three rabbis • The problem of the bookcase • The world is broken • Rebecca’s midgets
• Alex’s secret book • Rubinfine’s goyish tastes
• Bette Davis was Jewish
    The black trees, vivid against the blue sky, were elms. The crazy boxes, each containing one regretful man, were Ford Mondeos. The birds, for the most part, were magpies. And the tall young man with the Oriental look, deliberately slowing his pace down the Mountjoy Road, was none other than Alex-Li Tandem. He realized he was heading directly for three men staring at an open car boot, and he didn’t like it. He had not been spotted yet, but soon he would be. One of these men was a rabbi well known to him. Where to hide? From here he could see Adam’s video store, Hollywood Alphabet, like an open cave across the street. Closer by, one of these outdoor toilets, fitted with the mechanical doors and the urban myths. But for sanctuary it was too late. There was no escape. Nothing to be done.
    “Alex!”
    “Hullo, Rubinfine.”
    “Alex, Alex,
Alex.
What a day, no? What a gift of a day!”
    With gloomy clarity, Alex noted that Rubinfine’s smile this morning was merely a grimace the other way up. He stood with his right foot crooked up against the Justice side of Mountjoy’s War Memorial, a huge stone monolith engraved with four values—
Justice, Courage, Honor
and, for some