Writing Game

by David Lodge

  ‘Marion, are you a little too near the fire?’ she said. ‘Would you like to change places with me?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Marion, certain that such a manoeuvre was beyond her capability. She added carelessly, ‘It’s only a hot flush.’

  She saw reflected in Vera’s face the enormity of her indiscretion; but, dizzy with drink, could feel no shame or regret. ‘It’s my time of life, I’m afraid,’ she said defiantly. Then, with a giggle: ‘It’s been so cold lately, when I have to walk the dog, I wait till I get a hot flush. It’s like portable central heating.’

  There was a shocked silence, broken after a few seconds, by a rich, appreciative chuckle. Hamish Sedley –

  JEREMY (off stage)

  I’m sorry, Maude!

  MAUDE, startled, breaks off her reading, and looks up from her typescript. JEREMY comes onto the stage. He is carrying PENNY’s hat.

  JEREMY

  I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your reading, Maude, but there’s a bit of an emergency. (He turns to face the audience and holds up the hat) Has anybody seen Penny Sewell?

  Blackout.

  Act One Scene Five. The same evening.

  The barn. It is dark outside and the interior is unlit. The outside door opens and LEO enters. He switches on the light, which reveals PENNY asleep on the sofa. LEO freezes momentarily with surprise, then moves quietly across to the sofa. He bends over PENNY. She stirs slightly.

  LEO

  Hey, Goldilocks.

  LEO shakes her gently. PENNY opens her eyes, gasps and sits up.

  LEO

  Who’s been sleeping on my couch?

  PENNY

  Oh, I’m sorry. Ever so cheeky of me to come in here, but I wanted to be sure to see you. (Yawns) I must have dropped off.

  LEO

  People have been wondering where you were.

  PENNY

  I didn’t have any appetite for dinner.

  LEO

  Or for Maude’s reading?

  PENNY

  Somehow I couldn’t face it. She’s so clever, I knew it would only depress me more. Is it over?

  LEO

  I guess so.

  PENNY

  Was it terribly good?

  LEO (shrugs)

  If you like that kind of thing. Comedy of manners plus love interest plus a little gynaecology. What are you depressed about?

  PENNY

  What do you think?

  Pause.

  LEO

  I can’t take back what I said just to make you feel better.

  PENNY

  I’m not asking you to. I want you to tell me how to write better.

  LEO

  Oh.

  PENNY

  You told me earlier what I was doing wrong. I understand that, I think. Now I want to know how to do it right.

  LEO (slowly)

  You want me to tell you how to produce literary works of enduring value?

  PENNY

  Please.

  LEO shakes his head.

  PENNY

  I know it’s not a simple matter.

  LEO

  You bet your sweet – bet your life it isn’t.

  PENNY

  But you are a teacher of creative writing.

  LEO

  I offer criticism. What my students do with it is up to them.

  PENNY

  But surely you must have some advice, some hints, some tips.

  LEO stares at her for a moment.

  LEO

  Care for a drink?

  PENNY

  No, thank you.

  LEO goes to sink unit and pours himself a scotch.

  LEO

  Okay. I’ll tell you how to write. I’ll give you the magic formula.

  PENNY sits up expectantly. She takes from her handbag a small notebook and pencil. LEO takes a slow sip of his drink.

  LEO

  Repetition and difference.

  PENNY

  What?

  LEO

  It’s all a question of striking the right balance between repetition and difference.

  PENNY

  Sorry, I don’t understand.

  LEO

  Imagine a text that was all repetition, that consisted of just one word, endlessly repeated. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, and so on, for two hundred and fifty pages.

  PENNY laughs.

  LEO

  Or: Depression, depression, depression, depression, depression, depression, depression, depression, depression, depression, depression …

  PENNY

  Stop! It’s unbearable.

  LEO

  Exactly. Beckett came pretty close in some of his later work, but even he can’t get away with just repetition. There must be difference as well. But imagine a text, that was all difference. A text that never used the same word twice, a text that introduced a new character, a new topic, a new storyline, in every sentence. Like, er …

  LEO (drinks, thinks)

  ‘Jake was a tough cowboy … She went waterskiing every summer … If only I had remembered to fill up with gasoline before I tried to rob the bank … the dwarf said to himself.’ Er …

  PENNY

  You said ‘I’ twice.

  LEO

  So I did.

  PENNY

  And ‘the’.

  LEO

  Right. It’s hard to avoid. You can’t have a text that’s all difference, any more than you can have one that’s all repetition. So you see, the whole secret of writing well, is knowing when to repeat yourself and when to differ from yourself.

  PENNY

  And how do you know that?

  LEO (shrugs)

  I’ve no idea. It’s a mystery.

  PENNY (deflated)

  You’re teasing me.

  LEO

  No, I’m not. It’s something that comes unbidden, like grace … Look, I’ll give you an example. In the winter of 1981, I went to Poland, just before the military takeover and the suppression of Solidarity. There were terrible shortages of food and ordinary things that we take for granted, like batteries, light bulbs, soap. After I got back home, I became obsessed with the idea of this guy who goes to Poland with a suitcase full of soap, which he uses like currency, to obtain services and favours, especially sexual ones. He uses the soap to pay prostitutes. He does kinky things with them, with the soap. I started writing the story, but I couldn’t see what the point of it was, or how it could end. It was all soap and sex, soapy sex. I abandoned the story, put it away, forgot all about it. A few weeks ago I dug it out again, and as I was reading through it, I suddenly flashed on why the guy was doing this crazy stuff. Which is to say, why I had fantasised him doing it. He’s Jewish, you see, like me. My family came from Poland, originally. There’s a long history of persecuting Jews in that part of the world. Russians, Germans, Poles – antisemitism is about the one thing they have in common. Through the soap, by humiliating Polish shiksas with the soap, my character’s trying to take revenge, exact reparation. His relatives would’ve been gassed in what they thought were shower-rooms, and their corpses boiled down to make soap. As soon as I saw that, I knew that the story would end with the guy going to visit Auschwitz and realising what he’s doing, and what it’s doing to him. Soap, you see, had become a kind of pun, a serious pun. Repetition and difference compacted together. Bingo!

  PENNY

  Gosh!

  LEO (grins)

  Go thou and do likewise

  PENNY

  But what shall I write about?

  LEO

  I can’t tell you that! Rewrite your novel.

  PENNY

  You said it wasn’t worth going on with.

  LEO

  It wasn’t so bad. There were touches. But there was too much difference in it. It didn’t rhyme – you know what I mean?

  PENNY

  What touches?

  LEO (thinks)

  The image of the kids’ toys scattere
d in the garden, like the aftermath of an accident. That was striking. I don’t know what it was doing in the piece, but in itself it was striking …

  PENNY makes a note. LEO tries to change the subject.

  LEO

  How old are your children?

  PENNY

  I don’t have any.

  LEO (surprised)

  You don’t have children?

  PENNY

  No, Graham and I tried for years, but I kept on having miscarriages.

  LEO

  That’s tough … Why don’t you write about that?

  PENNY

  Oh, no.

  LEO

  Why not? That’s where your image of the toys comes from, after all.

  PENNY

  Is it?

  LEO

  It’s an image of loss, bereavement.

  PENNY

  I couldn’t write about that. It’s too private. Graham wouldn’t like it. Mother would have kittens.

  LEO

  Your mother-in-law?

  PENNY

  No, my mother. Graham’s an orphan.

  LEO

  So you don’t have a mother-in-law?

  PENNY

  No.

  LEO

  Do you have a job?

  PENNY

  Yes. I’m a primary-school teacher.

  Pause, while LEO digests this information.

  PENNY

  I don’t know what my headmistress would say, either.

  LEO

  Look, if you’re going to worry about other people’s feelings, you might as well forget the whole idea of being a writer.

  PENNY

  But supposing it were published. What would people think?

  LEO

  What they always think, if they know the writer personally. That the story is totally autobiographical. You just have to remember that you’re not writing for your family, or your friends, or your employers, but for readers, people to whom you are just a name on the spine of a book.

  The outside door opens and MAUDE enters. One of her shoes and the hem of her skirt are wet. She pulls up in surprise on seeing PENNY.

  MAUDE (to PENNY)

  Oh! So you turned up? Are you all right?

  PENNY

  Quite all right, thanks. But you’re wet.

  MAUDE

  Yes.

  PENNY

  I’m sorry I missed your reading.

  MAUDE

  You didn’t just miss it, dear, you silenced it. (She sits down and takes off her wet shoe) Where were you?

  PENNY

  Here.

  MAUDE

  Leo found you here?

  PENNY nods.

  MAUDE (to LEO)

  You didn’t think to tell Mrs Sewell we’ve all been searching the river for her.

  PENNY (looking from one to the other)

  What?

  LEO

  I’m afraid it slipped my mind.

  PENNY

  Why the river?

  LEO

  Somebody found your hat on the river bank. It was feared you might have tried to drown yourself because I was unkind about your imagery this afternoon.

  PENNY

  But that’s absurd!

  LEO

  That’s what I said.

  PENNY

  I did go for a walk by the river this afternoon. I must have left my hat down there.

  MAUDE

  Yes, well, I think you’d better go back and call off the search party. I gave up when I nearly fell in the water myself.

  PENNY

  Oh dear. I’m awfully sorry.

  LEO

  It was my fault, Maude. We got talking.

  PENNY puts her notebook into her handbag and prepares to leave. MAUDE wipes the mud off her shoe.

  PENNY (to LEO)

  I’d better go. Thanks for the advice. It was fascinating.

  LEO

  Okay. (He escorts her to the door) Tell me, what kind of wallpaper do you have in your bedroom?

  PENNY (puzzled)

  Here?

  LEO

  At home.

  PENNY

  We don’t have any wallpaper. It’s all white walls.

  LEO

  You know, Penny, I think you may be a writer after all. I really believed in that wallpaper.

  PENNY smiles, and goes out. MAUDE watches this parting between LEO and PENNY with an unfriendly, possibly even jealous expression. As LEO shuts the door after PENNY, she turns her back on him.

  LEO

  Maude! I’m sorry.

  MAUDE (coldly)

  I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.

  LEO

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  MAUDE

  I was just wondering why you seem suddenly to have become a charismatic teacher, after two days of bored indifference to the students. I thought perhaps the wide-eyed innocent type appealed to you.

  LEO

  Don’t be ridiculous. Let me fix you a drink.

  MAUDE

  No thank you, I’m going to bed.

  MAUDE goes to the stairs and ascends them in the course of the ensuing dialogue.

  LEO

  I’m sorry about your reading. I was really enjoying it.

  MAUDE

  Is that why you kept yawning?

  LEO

  It was hot in there. You could read another time. Tomorrow – before me. I’ll speak to Jeremy about it.

  MAUDE

  Please don’t trouble yourself.

  MAUDE goes into her bedroom and shuts the door. The telephone rings twice and stops.

  LEO (calls up the stairs)

  Sounds like Henry’s logging in, Maude.

  LEO goes over to phone and turns up volume control.

  HENRY’S VOICE

  … there’s a lot of white foam coming out of the back of the dishwasher – can that be right? I wasn’t sure how much soap powder I should use and I couldn’t get the little box thing to shut, I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it … But what I wanted to know is whether it’s still under guarantee, I can’t remember when we bought it …

  LEO looks up at MAUDE’s door.

  LEO (shouts)

  Yeah, it’s Henry. Want to take it? (To phone) Sorry Henry, she’s pissed off. Won’t speak to either of us.

  LEO turns off sound.

  Blackout.

  Act One Scene Six. The following evening.

  LEO is seated in spotlight, facing the audience, exactly like MAUDE in Act One Scene Four. He holds a yellow ringbinder containing a typescript.

  LEO

  This is a short story that I started several years ago, but only finished quite recently. It’s called ‘Soap’. (Clears throat) ‘Soap.’ (Reads.)

  Irving Zimmerman arrived in Warsaw with two medium-sized suitcases. One suitcase contained his clothes and lecture notes. The other was full of soap. Toilet soap. Palmolive, Lux, Camay – the basic American drugstore range, plus some imported soaps from England and France: Pears, Imperial Leather, Roger et Galet, Chanel, special handmade trompe l’oeil soaps in the form of fruit – apples, lemons, bananas; and soap from healthfood stores containing macrobiotic wheatgerm, almond oil and coconut milk. The customs officer sneezed in the powerful gust of perfume that came from this suitcase when Zimmerman opened the lid.

  ‘Why are you bringing these?’ said the customs officer, pointing to the soap.

  ‘Gifts,’ said Zimmerman.

  ‘Why are you coming to Poland?’

  ‘To lecture on American literature,’ said Zimmerman. ‘The United States Information Service sent me.’

  The customs official was sufficiently impressed to wave him through. Zimmerman slipped him a bar of Oil of Ulay. ‘For your wife,’ he said.

  The USIS officer who had briefed him in Chicago before his trip had given Zimmerman a list of commodities he should be sure to take with him because they would be unobtainable in Poland: torch batteries, toothpaste, coffee, so
ap. ‘Coffee and toilet soap would make acceptable gifts,’ he added. Also barter, Zimmerman thought to himself. He went shopping for soap.

  That first evening in Warsaw Zimmerman attended a cocktail party at the US Cultural Attaché’s apartment, with a bar of Pink Camay bulging each pocket of his suit. He offered one to a plump, blonde lady agronomist from Lublin. She looked somewhat surprised, but slipped it dextrously into her purse, and, when they parted, rewarded him with a smacking kiss. He imagined her rushing home to take a bath with his soap, and found the thought arousing.

  The Attaché gave Zimmerman dinner and delivered him to his hotel, the Europejski, a faded monument to pre-war bourgeois luxury. In the marble-floored, art-deco lobby, unaccompanied women wearing hats sat under the potted palms and crossed their legs invitingly. One of them came boldly up to Zimmerman as he collected his key from the clerk, and pretended to know him. ‘Hallo,’ she said, in English, linking her arm with his.

  ‘How many zlotys?’ said Zimmerman.

  ‘Zlotys no good,’ said the girl. ‘Twenty dollars.’

  ‘How much soap?’

  They agreed on three bars. Upstairs in his room, she took off her hat and most of her other clothes, and lay down on the bed.

  ‘Let’s take a shower together first,’ said Zimmerman. He fetched a lemon-shaped tablet of soap from his suitcase. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, tossing it in his hand. ‘This won’t count as one of the three. I might even let you keep it.’ He had thought of a way to do this. The girl giggled and went readily enough into the bathroom.

  Stripped, in the perfumed steam of the shower, she was pink and spotty and overweight. He soaped her all over, feeling her nipples spring to life under his slippery fingers. She moaned with unsimulated pleasure as he lathered her mousy quim. She squirmed on his index finger like –

  LEO looks up as if distracted by a disturbance in the audience. He mimes watching somebody getting up and walking out. The sound of a door banging shut at the back or side of the auditorium. After a momentary pause he continues reading.

  She squirmed on his index finger like a hooked fish. Then he bent her over the side of the tub and buggered her with the soap. She squealed as he rammed it into her. Zimmerman had never done anything like this before. He felt enormously excited. Uplifted. Then –

  LEO breaks off again and mimes watching another person or persons walking out. The sound of the door slamming again.

  LEO

  Does anyone else want to leave?

  Evidently several persons do. The door slams once, twice more. LEO considers, closes his ringbinder, and walks off the stage in disgust.