“Now I fear the worst. If just one of my stories were to be published in your version, I think I’d be blocked again, incapable of writing. Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of.”
And look at this, I’m starting to shake. “You have to understand: I’ve escaped from the grave. I had one foot in it already, thanks to alcohol, but these stories saved me, they got me out. They’re the proof that I survived. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
No, no all caps. Strike that. Makes me sound like my back’s against the wall.
“That’s why I’m dedicating the collection to Joanne.” Why bring that up? He’ll take it badly. He loves when the books he’s butchered are dedicated to him.
“Douglas, if you could publish my stories as I wrote them, correct them a little, improve them without changing them entirely, if you could be content with doing that, I wouldn’t have this feeling that I’m in danger …”
Good grief, I’m getting paranoid. A case of acute paranoia. “God Almighty, Douglas, please get me out of this.
“Raymond
“P.S. You understand me, don’t you? I’m asking you to stop production on my short-story collection. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Not humble enough. Too short and not sufficiently humble. I’ll toss it and start over. I can write it straight out and have it finished before the mailman comes. Already eight o’clock. Twenty cigarettes in one hour. Joanne’s still asleep.
I’ve got to finish this letter and mail it before she wakes up and sees me in this state.
“July 8, 8 a.m. Dearest Douglas …”
DOUGLAS
His July 8 letter. The long supplication of Raymond. I read it, of course. I read it, but I didn’t heed it.
Heeding it would have been a mistake.
Don’t get too close to your authors; if you do, they’ll make you pay.
They’ll drag you into considerations that aren’t and shouldn’t be yours.
Ray can’t unilaterally interrupt a process I’ve put my whole weight, my whole reputation into.
My blood, my sweat.
His collection has to appear with all my revisions, just as they are. It has to appear minus the passages I’ve cut, whether he wants it to or not. As for his letter …
I was about to tear it up, but I’ve changed my mind.
It would have been a mistake.
There’s a market for authors’ letters. Even when they’re badly written.
*
Ray’s story collection was published on July 20, as scheduled.
Never, not even in my wildest dreams, would I have imagined a success of this magnitude.
Raymond’s been launched. He’s in orbit. He won’t be coming back down.
Sometimes I find my power frightening. Yes, sometimes I can’t fathom it myself.
RAYMOND
The only one of my stories he didn’t touch is called “Mine.” It’s the tale of a couple who are fighting over a baby. In the end, they start pulling on it. They nearly cut it in half.
That story he didn’t touch. At least I don’t think he did.
DOUGLAS
I touched “Mine.” The last sentence went, “This was how they resolved the question.” They resolved the question … that declaration bothered me for an entire day.
“This was how the question was resolved.”
After I wrote that, I felt better.
RAYMOND
The first article said, “He pares and shaves his prose like a whittler with a knife.” The following articles took up that remark. They all passed it back and forth.
As if there was nothing more fabulous than whittling.
The misunderstanding has taken hold without my being able to do a thing about it.
DOUGLAS AND RAYMOND
It’s the beginning of winter. The city looks like a black-and-white photograph. Everything seems rigid, paralyzed by fog. Postmen like doctors go from house to house. And I’m weighed down with manuscripts.
Winter makes me melancholy. I don’t read as fast as I do in autumn, and my approach is generally more indulgent. If your work tends toward pathos, write me in the winter. You’ll have more of a chance. I’ll let your metaphors live. You’ll have the right to use an adverb. You can even employ the word “soul.” But don’t get carried away. In the spring I return to zero tolerance.
Past four o’clock. Raymond should be here any minute.
Ever since he stopped drinking, he prides himself on being punctual. It’s no longer necessary to organize a search for him because he’s dead drunk in some bar. “Alive, sober, and working.” That’s how he described himself in a letter to me. “Loving and loved by a good woman.” His Anne Sexton wannabe. “Why shouldn’t I have a right to happiness?” It’s the new Raymond. A guy who has rights.
Clearly, the time has come to renegotiate.
His contract is going to expire. While rights to his short stories are being sold to half the globe, I’ve had the agreement that binds us rewritten. And I’ve doubled his advance. I’m no fool, I’m not going to saw off the branch I’m …
In short, I intend to keep him.
“Raymond.”
“Douglas.”
“You’re wearing a tie? I barely recognized you.”
“It’s Joanne. She insisted I wear her father’s tie.”
“You don’t see that kind very often.”
“People turn around in the street.”
“You can take it off. We just won’t say anything to Joanne.”
He keeps his tie on, as if I’ve been talking to the wall.
“Nice office.”
“This is the first time you’ve been here?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Just think, we’ve done everything by mail.”
“You’ve done everything,” he mutters. He sits down and points a finger at the computer. “Hell of a machine.”
“Not my thing. I do all my corrections by hand.”
“Well, one doesn’t change—”
“A winning team.”
That wasn’t what he was going to say. He was going to say “old habits.”
We stare at each other. I turn to the computer and say, “My secretary showed me one of its functions.”
He seems as enthralled as if I were talking to him about my psoriasis.
“I can do this on any text.” I show him what I mean. “You see?”
“It’s crossed out.”
“Yeah. I crossed out the word. And if I want, I can do this.”
“Incredible.”
“Crossed out twice.”
“I can see it.”
“ ‘Double strikethrough,’ it’s called.”
“And the first one?”
“ ‘Single strikethrough.’ ”
“Obviously.”
“But I don’t give a shit about that. I do everything by hand.”
“Hell of a machine,” he says again.
That’s what I like about Raymond. He cuts to the chase. Not one word too many. Except in his short stories.
“Serious matters,” I say.
“Now?”
“Now.”
“I saw André in the lobby.”
I let my surprise show. “That little jerk?”
“I like him.”
“You don’t know André. He’s a hungry young editor on the make. But at the first obstacle, he’s going to be sobbing into his secretary’s skirt. They don’t give him anything but second novels.”
“Oh, no?”
“There’s nothing to be done for second novels. Nobody reads them. They get passed to profit and loss.”
“They get passed to André—”
“They get passed to André, who puts them in the loss column.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Third novels wind up on my desk. Look.” (I point to a manuscript as thick as a telephone book.) “It’s Eleanor’s.”
“I’m eager to read it.”
“It’s the story of a nun during th
e Second World War. She paints watercolors while the world goes up in smoke.”
“You think it’ll do well?”
I sigh and say, “Things have changed quite a bit since your last visit.”
“You don’t have your rose window anymore.”
“I sold it.”
“Get a good price?”
“You may not believe me, but it wasn’t worth a dime.”
“You should have told me about it. There’s a church near us that would have bought that window from you.”
“Really?”
“Joanne and I would have bought it from you. The window in my office faces south. I would have taken that window off your hands.”
“It’s true that you’re rich now.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Well, you’re on the way to being rich.”
“My family … my ex-family is bleeding me dry.”
“Not for long.”
I hand him eight sheets of paper stapled together.
“What’s this?”
“The contract for your next collection.”
He huddles back in his chair.
“Where’s my pen? I have a hundred manuscripts and no pen.”
I rummage around in my coat pockets and take out the felt-tip pen I use to make my cuts. He recognizes it.
“The murder weapon,” I say.
He doesn’t laugh. He says, “I’ve signed on with André.”
“You just sign your name. I’ll initial it for you.”
He looks at me. After a delay, I register what he’s just said. “André’s my new editor.”
I put the felt-tip away. I loosen my shirt collar and scratch the irritated skin on the back of my neck. Then I go and sit down at my desk.
“You know what the people here say about me?”
The light streaming in from outside dazzles him. He blinks.
“They say I’m paranoid.”
“Douglas—”
“Yeah. Paranoid. Now let me ask you a question. Am I looking at a friend?”
He says nothing. He’s waiting for me to go on.
“Or an enemy?”
More blinking.
“Betrayal, Raymond. There’s nothing I detest more than betrayal.”
“I haven’t betrayed you. I’ve been intending to change ever since—”
“You’re changing sides at the moment of victory.”
He says nothing.
“You see this contract? Watch what I do with it.”
I take a pair of scissors and cut the contract into strips. I gather a handful of strips and cut them up some more.
He stands. “There’s no need for you to do that,” he says.
I put down my scissors. “It’s a gesture of trust, Ray. The bond between you and me is stronger than any contract. Why did you sign with André?”
“I don’t want you cutting me anymore.”
“Listen to me. I can see you’re in one of your moods. Honestly, you ought to sit back down, take a tranquilizer, and think things over.”
“I don’t want you cutting me anymore.”
I let a few seconds go by.
“Do you know they want to fire me?”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No, they’re trying to get rid of me. My position is hanging by a thread. If your story collection hadn’t been a success, they would have shown me the door long before this.”
“Well, fortunately they didn’t.”
“Bullshit! You waited until my back was turned and then signed with the competition!”
“I’m not changing houses. Just editors.”
“You waited until I was dead!”
“I told André I could stay with you.”
“Really?”
“Provided you limit yourself to copyediting.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you’d refuse.”
“He got that right. You think I’m going to work for that fool? Be his assistant?”
“Of course not.” Raymond heads for the door.
The walls seem to be approaching each other. It looks like they’re closing in on me.
“I know what I owe you, Douglas.”
I spin around toward the window. “You don’t owe me anything. Except minimalism.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve whispered that word to the press. Invented a school.”
“I’m anything but a minimalist.”
I turn my face to him. “Even in betrayal? What school do you belong to in the art of betrayal?”
“Go fuck yourself, Douglas.”
He leaves.
That can’t have happened. I can’t have lost Raymond. I stand up, I totter among my manuscripts.
I reach a spot in the middle of the office, stiffen myself, mop my forehead.
And I smile. Yes, there’s a smile on my face. I glimpse Raymond’s future. His manuscripts published uncut, just as they are. That’s what’s waiting for him if he dumps me.
I charge into the hall and yell at him, “YOU’RE FUCKED, RAY, YOU HEAR ME? STARTING TODAY, YOU’RE DEAD!”
I run out of breath and continue in a lower voice, alone in the hall: “Finis.”
All at once it dawns on me that he never uses Latin in his short stories. Not even the easiest word to understand: Finis.
Almost five o’clock. If I left now, I wouldn’t come across a single mailman. But they must be somewhere. With their mailbags full of manuscripts. Bundles of short stories, the hope of someone’s life.
How can anyone place so much hope in short stories? How is that possible?
I should never have sold my rose window.
MARIANNE
How could a person die so senselessly?
Nobody deserves an end like that.
What saddens me the most is that he never wrote me. I could have told him … I could have warned him against those people.
No, I don’t think it was his decision. I think he was manipulated. He met up with a guru. Some guy stronger than he was. Even so, seventy people, and they all died in the fire. No. I don’t think they’ve identified his body. One of the investigators told me, “The problem with sects is they burn their records. The archives go up in flames along with the members.” That contributes to their mystique, he explained.
Crazy, huh?
I knew Edgar was a mystic, but I didn’t think he was nuts.
So what are you doing for her birthday? She’s three, I can’t get over it. Oh, don’t say “young,” don’t say I’m a “young grandmother.” I feel old. Even more so since … You talked to him? How’s he doing? No, I haven’t heard from him since … He’s been out of the country. He always is, I believe.
With that tramp.
Do you know I spoke to her two months ago? My bad luck. I called up to talk to Raymond and she answered the phone. Yes, I know they’re living together, but all the same. I have every right not to get used to it.
Anyway, I call up and that tramp answers. I try to be polite and not gnash my teeth. But after a few minutes I can’t hold out any longer, and I say, “I’m surprised Ray doesn’t want to see his family more often.” I emphasize more often, like I’m wondering what in the world the reason could be. And you know what she says? No joking, you know what she says? She says, “Ray has to leave the elements of his past life behind. That’s the condition for him to stay sober.” She dared to tell me that! “Look,” I say, “are you calling me an element? My name’s Marianne. It isn’t gin or Scotch or vodka.”
And then I hung up on her, but she hung up before I did.
I love this place. Everything’s so calm here. Have I told you how much the chestnut tree has grown? You have to come here with the little one. I’m going to have a swing installed in the backyard. You could all come. Leo and Greta, you and Chris, all my grandchildren. Three generations around the chestnut tree. We could invite Raymond. After he gets back.
I know. She’d never let him come.
I feel a little lonely, to tell you the truth. In spite of the people who stay here. “Spiritual coach,” that’s how I present myself. I listen to their problems, I identify whatever’s not going right. Sometimes they ask me, “How about you? How did you manage to pull through?”
I’m not so sure I’ve pulled through.
I read Ray’s stories and I realize he’s never stopped writing about us, about him and me. He reopens our wounds. He displays them to the whole world, and the whole world applauds.
That’s what’s called fiction, but readers forget there are people behind it. Readers forget the elements of the fiction. No, I haven’t pulled through.
It’s my success, too. It’s ours, you know. Your father’s success is ours.
Even if we’ll never see any money.
JOANNE
April 30
I’m writing this in the garden of the Hotel de Russie, a haven of peace in the heart of Rome. Ray hasn’t gotten up yet. Last night’s dinner exhausted him.
Magdalena, his Italian translator, served as our interpreter. When the three editors seated near us started to quarrel over the rights to Ray’s next story collection, we retreated to a corner to talk with her. To our amazement, this petite and very lively lady turned out to have been Hemingway’s translator too. She described in great detail her meeting with him sometime in the 1950s. As we listened to her, I felt as though we were on a boat headed out to sea. With Hemingway at the helm.
Ray devoured the puntarelle and asked for a second helping of the truffle risotto. I pointed out to him that we weren’t at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but Magda encouraged us to make ourselves at home. I told her we didn’t eat that well at home. Ray’s appetite always surprises me. He needs to compensate for the lack of sugar.
He smokes too much. I tell him it’s not real smart to stop destroying yourself with your right hand if you’re just going to speed up the process with your left. He’s right-handed, but he uses his left hand when he smokes. I’d like to write a poem on that subject—I’ll call it “Smoking Left-handed.”
Yesterday he explained to a journalist that alcoholism was doubtless a metaphor for his social condition. The journalist pretended he understood what Ray was talking about, but Ray looked at me as if he himself didn’t. He loathes interviews. He feels obliged to come up with statements people will want to quote, whereas in his stories he avoids that sort of thing like the plague.
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