Novelists

by C. P. Boyko

  Zoltán Szatt was the most popular and beloved novelist of István’s country, and Pig his most popular and beloved novel. Clint had selected Szatt as Brownhoffer’s rival because none of the other jurors had seemed to feel at all strongly about him. But the results of the final vote had surprised and horrified him. Not counting Max, who voted both ways, the results were five against five. While it was true that none of the opposing five were particularly fond of Pig, they were united in their hatred of Gravy Train, and were tired of Clint having his way.

  Clint urged, indeed pleaded with István to set aside all patriotic considerations and choose the novel most deserving of the prize by artistic merit alone. This plea was unnecessary. István staggered to his feet and gripped the receiver like a microphone. The spy put down his fork.

  The old man sat deep in the gloom of the restaurant, hunched rigidly over the table, chewing his lips and muttering sounds of expostulation. The waitress, after contemplating him for a minute, crossed the room to check that his cups, cruets, shakers, and dispensers were still filled. She frowned at their untouched state.

  “You got to eat, Mr. Brolly, or that big old brain’ll shrivel up like a pea in the sun.”

  Her voice, warm and solicitous, stirred him subconsciously and set his teeth on edge, like a dentist’s drill heard through a wall. He became aware of a bowl of soup on the table under his face.

  “What is this? I didn’t order this!” He put his finger in it, and grimaced in satisfied pessimism. “And it’s cold! Bring me something hot!” He pushed the bowl off the table with his elbow; it shattered on the floor, sending soup and noodles everywhere.

  The waitress sighed and glanced humorously at the interviewer, who sat at the next table, out of harm’s way. “He’ll realize he’s hungry by about bowl number three,” she said, and went to fetch a mop.

  The interviewer shuffled her notes. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions now?”

  “Go away! I don’t give interviews.”

  “Well, maybe we could start there. Why don’t you do interviews anymore?”

  “If I answered that, I’d be giving you an interview, wouldn’t I? Go away.”

  The interviewer did not go away, but was silent for a minute, having noticed that if she did not speak or move the old man tended to forget her presence. She could not go away: her editor had made it clear that one more failure would mean termination. She had already been fired from every other newspaper and most of the magazines in town, because she was constitutionally incapable of handing in a story shorter than forty thousand words. Although the old man was notorious for not talking to the press, her editor believed he would talk to her—for she had once been his student.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Brownhoffer?” A young man clutching a notepad approached the table diffidently, driven forward by a group of gesticulating friends. “You are Mr. Brownhoffer, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  The young man laughed at this joke and relaxed a little. “I just wanted to tell you what a really huge fan I am—I mean, what a really great book it is, your book. I read it three times and it’s just really—great.” He giggled nervously and stamped his foot to drive away ineloquence. “I mean, I read a lot of novels and yours is just really—the best. I know everybody says that, but what I mean is, I think it’s something completely new. It’s not just another novel. It’s a whole new kind of novel. What you’ve done is given new life to the novel. You’ve resurrected the novel is what I mean to say, and could I have your autograph?”

  “No.”

  He laughed gratefully at the old man’s disarming sense of humor. Then he darted forward, placed the pen and pad on the table, and darted back, as if feeding a skittish animal.

  Grumbling, his eyes shutting involuntarily and his mouth slewing from side to side in disgust, Brownhoffer picked up the pen and scribbled:

  GO AWAY

  AND LEAVE ME ALONE

  YOU FOOLS

  Then he threw down the pen, lurched to his feet, and stumbled out of the restaurant. The waitress, tsk-tsking indulgently, watched him go. The young man’s friends came forward to see what the famous novelist had written, and to admire his wit and his penmanship.

  “Too bad he didn’t sign his name, though.”

  “No no, that’s what makes it valuable.”

  Christin left some money for the soup and broken bowl and hurried after her former professor. She caught up quickly, for as soon as he was outside Brownhoffer was again seized and slowed by his thoughts, as if by quicksand.

  “You used to feel differently about your fans,” she said.

  “My fans used not to be idiots.”

  “You told me once,” she said, “that every work of art finds its own proper audience.”

  “Who are you?” He peered at her closely, and slowly and imperfectly recognized the lines of pertinacity and intelligence on her face. “Why—April Allen!”

  “Christin Shane.”

  “Why—Christin Shane! Yes, you were one of the good ones,” he said, taking her sadly by the arm.

  Christin laughed bitterly. “Not good enough, as you can see.”

  “A real spitfire, I recall,” he chuckled, handling his memories with sentimental self-pity, like an aging actor mooning over his old headshots. “All of Trollope!” He sighed, then chided, “Why haven’t I seen your name on the bestseller lists?”

  “Because I took your advice, Professor. I gave up writing novels. Now I do this. Ask questions like,” she rummaged facetiously through her notes, “How has fame affected your writing habits?”

  He made a sound as if preparatory to spitting. “Fame is when a lot of fools are interested in you because a lot of fools are interested in you. Why did you stop writing novels?”

  “You told me to.”

  “Nonsense. You were one of the good ones.”

  Her hands were shaking; she stuffed them in her pockets. “You told me that I would never be good. You told me there was no hope. Those were your exact words.”

  He brushed this aside with a casual gesture, dropping her arm. “I was in a bad mood. You mustn’t take such things to heart, or you’ll never be a first-class novelist. Novel-writing is primarily hewing your own path, no matter what anyone else thinks of it. No, I remember your work quite vividly. ‘He held the door open for her’—eh? Not bad, that. Quite—different. The world needs more of that sort of thing just now. An antidote to all the foul, obnoxious, idiotic trash being produced.”

  Was it possible? Ten years of her life wasted! How much she could have written in ten years! She should never have listened to him. But then, why was she listening to him now? What did he know, anyway? On the other hand, what did anyone know? Despair, like a hand laid upon her mouth, threatened to suffocate her. Desperately she clung to the immediate task, to her role as interviewer.

  “Do you read a lot of contemporary fiction?”

  “I read the bestseller lists. That’s enough. Ugh!”

  “Who do you read? Who are your influences? Do you miss teaching? What are you working on now? What time of day do you—”

  But she had lost him. His mind had returned to its tethering post, and was slowly wrapping itself around its grievances: that no one understood his work, and he was damned if he was going to explain it to them; that recognition had come too late to do him any good, and now he had nothing left to say; that perhaps he had not said what he had wanted to say after all, or done what he had intended to do, and there was no one capable of continuing, or of correcting, the work he had started; that he was the greatest novelist of all time and still they served him cold soup.

  Then, after a minute of angry muttering, a pleasant thought occurred to him. His deep, melancholy eyes for a moment almost twinkled. He again took her arm, and led her in the direction he believed his hotel lay. It was nearly time to burn the day’s mail.

/>   1 “Art is produced when frustration meets leisure.”

  2 “Big books sell like gym memberships in January.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  C. P. Boyko lives and writes in Vancouver.