Long Made Short (17 page)

de rigueur
, if you know what I mean: hometown always wants the hometown boy to make good, if
he hasn’t been insulting to it, for it looks good for the hometown—there hasn’t been
any acclaim. And does my book deserve the award, I think you asked? Who am I to say
which book does? Maybe them all, and also some books that weren’t nominated—certainly
some of those—and I just got lucky, that’s all, but it’s probably more than that,
though what, I don’t know. Not that I’m disputing the judges’ judgment, you understand.
I’m grateful—eternally, or as far as that goes—I mean it, for something like this,
if you know how to live with it, can’t do anything but good for the book. And a real
writer…ah, forget what a real writer thinks, says, how he acts, that kind of business,
as if I were one. But you know, your book can win for the wrong as well as the right
reasons. Maybe less chance of that happening with five judges, which is why they have
that number, but every so often there can be a fluke there too. For someone can see
something really good in it that wasn’t intended, in or under the writer’s mind, and
if that person has a strong personality or persuasive delivery or is preeminent in
his field or just famous for any reason, really, and the others aren’t well known
and are weak or just easily manipulated or swayed, this person can convince them this
is there when it’s not, and what do you do about that? Protest that someone raved
about your work and then got the rest of them to, for the wrong reasons he saw into
it or just said to show his power or ability to persuade or to test out how compelling
his preeminence or fame is? I’m not being very clear, am I?” and she says “No no,
it’s okay, but—” and he says “When my sentences get too long, I lose touch with what
I started out to say. There, that was a clear one and ended with a monosyllable, my
favorite way. But I’m also too excited, surprised, since this award just happened,
didn’t it? And besides that, I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast, and that wasn’t
much—toasted English muffin, margarine because they didn’t have butter, and black
coffee—for my publisher’s been carting me around town all day signing books, a new
experience for me and which I’m sure also came out of the nomination and possibility
that I might win, and then I don’t know—wait, here I go again with my long sentences—what
the heck happened to lunch. Maybe—good, I stopped—maybe that was the English muffin
and coffee on the run, and breakfast was just toast. And I also, at the cocktail reception
just before the awards dinner, had, with just a couple of skimpy hors d’oeuvres—”
and he suddenly sees his editor beside one of the cameras, waving her hand across
her mouth for him, he thinks, not to say what he was going to and then making motions
to drink several quick shots and shaking her head right after. “Well, like that,”
he says. “For being hungry and a bit tired, I have to admit—they really moved me around
today—can make one,
me
, confused and nervous and thus inarticulate and unintelligible too.” “Okay, that
ought to do it,” she says. “Thanks, Bob,” and the TV lights go out, and another reporter,
holding a pen and pad, says “What will you do now that you’ve won, Mr. Bermmeister?”
and he says “Do? Finish my dinner tonight, but I know you mean something different.
But I hardly started it, and I mentioned my hunger, so if my plate’s still there,
and probably—no, no doubt—call my kids and my mother and wife’s folks to tell them
I’ve won. I told them I’d call, but only if I won, so I also told them not to expect
to hear from me. And I don’t know, I guess there’ll be some celebrations somewhere,
at least where I teach, and oh yeah, and this is probably the most important thing—in
ways, the only important thing in what I’ll do with the award…I wish, I’m not a publicity
seeker but I wish the cameras were still on for this but that’s okay, do what you
want,” and waits a few seconds for the woman TV interviewer to react but her back’s
still turned to him while she talks to another woman and the cameras and lighting
equipment are being torn down…“Anyway, if it’s possible, to use my win as a platform—I
don’t know if that’s the way to say it—but for the novelist, the Indian living in
England, on the lam, really, lying low, constantly guarded by English cops…oh, God,
I suddenly forgot his name but it’ll come, but the one the Iranian government and
Islamic fundamentalists there…the mullahs…all, really, together, for you know, one
doesn’t operate without the other in that country, and both groups, religious and
political…well, they’re interchangeable and the same, aren’t they? and both feverishly
behind it…the ransom for his assassination, calling on every Moslem in the world,
or at least of their sect—I mean, is that supposed to be religious?—and then not rescinding
the call even after the guy—” and the reporter says “You mean, to use your platform
to speak out against this threat,” and he says “Yes yes yes, but not a platform, but
what’s his name? I feel lousy I can’t come up with it. I mean, he’s a first-rate writer,
tremendous, one of the world’s best, maybe not with that book, but that’s not my point—but
that also, my memory lapse with his name probably has to do with the excitement tonight
and my hunger and tiredness—oh, I’m not making myself clear,” and the reporter says
“Don’t worry about that. And about this writer, there already are, if I’m not mistaken,
many well-known writers and writing organizations—the Authors League, for one—doing
something along these lines. Though one more voice, and surely someone of your stature
now, won’t hurt the cause. But my question was somewhat more mundane than that. Will
your publisher, because of your new stature, be sending you on the road with your
book now that it’s won? Any special appearances—TV, for instance—and do you think
this attention will change you from the relatively unknown but hard-working, demanding
craftsman you’ve been to someone whose new-found celebrity will stop him from getting
to his work as much as he wants?” and he says “No question it won’t. And my publisher’s
just a small guy so I doubt—small in the sense his house is; his publishing house;
he’s actually about six-four or -five—I doubt they have anything expensive planned
for me like a book tour. But ask the editor there, Miss Lassner,” and points to her
and she says “We’ve lots of plans, lots. Rob has a great smile and disposition and
has promised to be generous with his time for a short while, so it’s a whole new ballgame
now, I say happily,” and another reporter says “Bob, you really don’t use a word processor?
For up on the stage before you said—the sound wasn’t too good so I didn’t catch it
all—but about a manual typewriter,” and he says “Manual, sure; tried and true. I like
the keyboard action of it, what can I say? I’m like a pianist on my machine, banging
out my anger and frustrations and such, not that that’s what a pianist does—it’s different,
of course, and some of what I bang out’s even positive. But it’s what I learned on,
though self-taught learned, and the word processor—three fingers, I mean, my typing,
and if my left thumb’s especially dexterous that day—or maybe it’s the right,” and
he types in the air with both hands, “the left, then that thumb on the space bar.
But the word processor—well you know, those things are complicated and cold, which’d
take weeks out of my work to learn how to use—months, forever. And with their justified
margins and perfect print, well, looking so good on the screen it makes you feel your
work’s maybe that good too, so, illusions, things done before they’re done, besides
your eyes. But if I was starting out today, say—a kid just out of college, a newsperson
like you, but your age and my sex, with nothing at the paper or radio or TV station
but processors to work on, or even a semi-whiz at computers or electronics, so with
some feel of what runs those things, well then of course…anyway, manuals are what
I do and am used to, and they’re also light and one piece, not three separate sections
to sling over your shoulders when you travel and weigh you down, and I can even clean
the keys myself, use the vacuum cleaner to suck up the dust out of the chassis, and
so on,” and other questions—“Why the title
Scorch?”
and he says “Because I didn’t want to call it Bernard—the main character’s given
name,” when the reporter looks confused, and the reporter says “What do you mean?”
and he says “I would’ve said ‘Christian’ but he’s not. Just kidding, I know what you
asked, but you know,
scorch
, what the word reverberates—did I say ‘reverberates’? ‘Resonates’ is what I meant—that
everything in the book or just about goes up, is hot. Not sent up but that too in
a way…it’s supposed to be a fiery book, a dry, sizzling, burning, fast, even an excoriating
book, but I’m also not very adept at explaining about myself or my work, just as I’m
probably not at anything—explaining, I’m saying”—all of which are innocuous and slight
and he feels he answers insufficiently and insipidly if sometimes stupidly because
of his tries at humor or plain speech or eloquence with fancy words, and then the
reporters thank him—not one thing did I answer right, he thinks, not one except maybe
the title thing…no, nothing, which will make people think who see or read the interview
or hear it on radio “This fop wrote that book? Not one I’m going to borrow or buy.”
A couple of them wish him good luck, and one says “Hope you make a killing,” another,
when the others are no longer near, says “Off the record, Bob, with your family and
job and all the other chores every responsible adult has to do, how have you been
able to write so much? I’m a novelist too, albeit not as successful,” and he says
“I just hack away at it but not like a hack, chip by chip if I have to, ten to fifteen
minutes at a time lots of times plus a coupla weekend hours when my wife and I spell
each other, and you can print that if you want,” and the reporter says “No, that was
just for me, thanks,” and he returns to the table with the editor, apologizing for
bringing her into it when he could see she didn’t want to and for giving such a sappy
interview, and she says “What are you saying? Any publicity is good publicity so long
as you don’t cuss out America too sharply or say you’ve a liking for little boys or
girls. And yours was fine—your great smile, your words, one could see the serious
writer’s mind working—we must have sold another thousand copies from it,” and he says
“You can’t mean that; I was a grade-A schmuck,” and she says “Cross my heart and hope
you get a
Sunday Times Magazine
article—it was real and informative. So, sold books or not, which isn’t the goal,
I do mean it; you’ll be great on tour.” He sits down, kisses his wife, says “It went
lousy, a spoof if I’d been spoofing, a fiasco because I wasn’t,” breaks a roll, reporter
pulls a chair up, sits down and turns on a tape recorder and says “Mr. Bermmeister,”
and he says “Really, just want to eat, and everything I have to say about my work
is in the work and that sort of standard writer thing, and the rest of it should be—how
I’m now feeling—on my face,” and the reporter says “What I’d love are your spoken
thoughts of how you feel tonight but not on a stage to a thousand people or in front
of cameras and a dozen other newsmen, which become events and can alter the truth
of what you have to say,” and he says “Well, great then, I feel great of course, what
do you think?” and the reporter’s motioning with his hands “More, more,” and he says
“Humbled also—not humbled, that’s bull, or at least for me, but something—but you
see? I can’t speak about these things. My wife can do it better for me than I can
but she won’t want to”—she’s shaking her head. “Or my editor, publisher”—they’re both
waving him off—“or the waiter,” and he grabs the arm of the passing waiter, who says
“Your main dish, sir? We brought it back, but I’ll bring it out now,” and he says
“No, yes, I mean, I’d like my food, I’m starving, but talk to this reporter, tell
him what vintage wine we’re having, how writers and their like probably tend to get
smashed at these affairs—the free booze, lavish food, in the air all that perfume,
the rich well-bred gentlefolk in their million-buck tuxes and skimpy gowns, fish that
don’t swim, clams that don’t dry, jeez, what do you expect of us or at least me?—we’re
night-on-the-town, go-on-a-toot kind of guys, a day off from heavy construction work
and whistling at passing girls, you could say, but who like to overdo the laboriousness
of their labors and their commonplaceness and bad manners, as you can see, even when
they don’t win, if I’m making myself clear,” and the reporter says “I think I got
the message,” and he says “Then you tell me,” and the reporter says “You know. But
this is still a good chance, Robert, for a small book. We go to a large number of
educated people—it’s public radio, syndicated—so good book buyers,” and he looks at
the editor, she’s nodding, and the publisher, whose look and finger-pointing say “Anything
she says goes,” and he says into the mike “Okay, truth is, I am humbled, honestly,
or at least feel small in comparison to the largeness of the honor. It’s a fine thing
to win, totally unexpected, a bigger shock than being nominated,” the reporter’s eyes
are turned up to the ceiling as if this is all so trivial, “and I feel great about
it. It may be the best moment of my writing life, in fact. Certainly the best thing
that’s ever happened to my work and maybe in the order of my personal thrills or whatever
you want to call them—excitements, kicks, gratifications, fications, bliss—it comes
after the birth of my first child, then the second, but I’m talking about when they
happened, the baby suddenly out. Then my marriage ceremony and after that when my
wife said she’d marry me and then when I first learned she was pregnant the first
time and then the publication, rather the phone call from my first publisher saying
they were taking my first book, which was actually my fifth or sixth book-length manuscript
but the first to be taken. And the order that tonight’s excitement comes in shouldn’t
be after the birth of my first but after them all, ending with the first book’s acceptance
and maybe even ending, and then comes tonight’s, with the time I got a telegram from
my U.S. senator—I didn’t have a phone then, couldn’t afford one—saying I’d won an
N.E.A. grant in fiction when I’d given up getting any recognition or money for my
work and was almost dead broke, and I think, for the first of several times in my
life, about ready to give the whole writing thing up,” and the reporter’s smiling
now, got what he came for, and says “That’s wonderful, the twists life takes, then
how things turn out; anything else?” and he’s about to say something—how this award’s
particularly fulfilling, coming with a long complex book he didn’t think anyone would
take and being published by a small press—when a waiter sets down his plate, and he
thanks him and points to his glass with an expression “Some more?” and the waiter
signals with his fingers to someone and a waitress hurries over and pours wine into
his glass, and the reporter says “So you were about to tell me something else, Robert?”
and he says “I was going to say how rewarding the award is in other ways. For instance
that it makes my mother and kids and wife and her folks so happy—it will, when they
hear it. My wife, of course, sitting right next to me, has. In fact, my kids, oh my
gosh, I forgot—excuse me but you have enough, don’t you?—but watch what a good poppa
I am for I gotta call and tell them I won before they go to sleep, otherwise they’ll
never forgive me,” and his wife says “It isn’t too late?” and he says “If it is, the
sitter will say so, and really,” to the reporter, “I also have to check up on the
sitter to see she’s working out all right,” and leaves the room, foundation person
is suddenly alongside and accompanies him, and he says “Really, you don’t have to,
I’ll be right back, and what good am I in there anyway now? And they won’t let you
into the men’s room, and I think I can find the phones—where are they,” looking around
the corridor, “you know?” and she takes him to a bank of them, stands a little off
to the side, and he says “Really, this is personal and I tend to talk loud—I won’t
fly away—my wife’s still there and our coats are checked,” and she goes and he calls
the hotel. “They’re sleeping,” the sitter says, “—no they’re not, they’re up, must’ve
heard your rings or me talking,” and his daughter gets on, “You win, Daddy?” and he
says “Believe it or not, kid, I did,” and she shouts “Piers, Daddy won, we can go
to FAO Schwarz tomorrow, get up, let’s celebrate—can we, Daddy?” and he says “Okay,
for a moment. Tell the sitter, Miss Marlene, or I will, you can each have one of those
overpriced cans of ginger ale in the little fridge—she too, but nothing else,” and
while his daughter’s telling the sitter about the sodas and bag each of nuts or chips,
“my father said so,” his son gets on and says “I love you too, Dada, you have very
good luck,” and he says “I know, amazing; the babysitter nice?” and his son says “Very;
she tells great stories,” and he says “Good. Now kiss-kiss for the two of you from
Mommy and me and don’t eat all the chips or nuts right before sleep—bad tummy stuff—and
put Miss Marlene on,” and the sitter says “My felicitations, mister—we prayed for
it here, the three of us in an innocent untheological way. Now it’ll make it more
troublesome getting them to bed again but, considering what caused it, it’s worth
it and we shall persevere and win—you’ll be here by 11:30, please?” and he calls his
mother, she says hello, and he says “It’s me, Mom, Robert, did I wake you?” and she
says “So-so, I could feel better. Anything wrong with you or your family?—it’s so
late,” and he says “I did wake you then, huh?” and she says “No, I was dozing, what’s
wrong, the children okay?” and he says “I told you I’d call if I won,” and she says
“Won what?” and he says “The book prize,” and she says “I must have forgot—for what?”
and he says “My book, the novel,