Death by Publication

by J. J. Fiechter

  I opened the bottom drawer of my desk. The barrel of my revolver was visible. One bullet would be enough. I picked up the gun and cradled its heft in the palm of my hand.

  At that moment my intercom buzzed. I put the revolver back in the drawer.

  “Yes, what is it?” I asked in a thick voice.

  “Sir Edward, if it’s all right with you I’d like to leave now,” replied Doris. “Unless you need me for anything.”

  “No, Doris. Please do go ahead. It’s just past six, and I’ll soon be leaving as well. It has been a difficult day. Good night, Doris.”

  The moment of self-destructiveness had passed, but I must have stayed another two hours in my office, wallowing in self-pity, feeling as if I was already among the dead. All that remained of life was to bear, until the end of my miserable days, the terrible burden of guilt for what I had done—

  What about Nicolas? What would he do? What would happen when he found the copy of The Need to Love that I had placed in his study? He would have no further doubt of his guilt—involuntary guilt though it might be. To sin from amnesia is no sin, though the whole idea would throw into doubt the creative process. With every line he wrote, the man would wonder whether he wasn’t just copying out someone else’s book. And if Nicolas never found that third copy? He would be condemned, as I was, to live with the agony of uncertainty.

  A miserable way to survive.

  Chapter 13

  The following morning, as I had promised, I drove Nicolas and Millagard to Ipswich. A fine, icy rain was falling. We prowled up and down Dickens Road and studied the houses—which looked appropriately Victorian, with their grimy red brick and tiny gardens—for more than an hour.

  A despondent Nicolas carefully examined the former abode of C. Irving Brown, perhaps with the hope of finding somewhere among its gloomy gables the key to the mystery that had ravaged his life. He must have wondered how his double could have inhabited such a lugubrious place and still write a book that in its glorious descriptions of Egyptian splendors was the twin to his own.

  “Only one person can solve this mystery,” he concluded finally. “That witch Marianne Evans! The idea of meeting with her revolts me, but I must know if she has done this thing to me. How can anyone’s hate be that strong?”

  These last words made me tremble. What if Marianne Evans, moved by Nicolas’s entreaties, admitted that Brown’s book had come to her anonymously? What if she were suddenly to become interested in the person who sent it?

  Nicolas would devote his life to looking for the wretched creature.

  I gathered together all my persuasive powers to dissuade him from seeking a meeting with Evans, which could, I assured him, have disastrous consequences. Evans might accuse him of threatening her with physical violence. Luckily, Millagard agreed with me. To distract them from further discussion of the idea, I drove them to the Defense Ministry, where my friend had Brown’s military file waiting for us.

  As I had known, the slim green folder contained nothing of use. Inside were three typed forms and an identity photo. The photo made Brown look even more like a ghost—downcast eyes, haggard expression. He looked as if he were embarrassed to be seen. As to his record, there was nothing extraordinary about it. He had died a banal death under the strafing fire of Goering’s Stuka dive-bombers.

  I saw that Nicolas was deeply disappointed at how little Brown’s record and his own had in common. He might have accepted his fate better had Brown at least flattered his narcissism.

  We had to struggle again to keep Nicolas from going to see “that bitch Evans.” Finally, exasperated, Millagard announced that he would be finished with this madman if he didn’t join him on the next flight back to Paris.

  “You are all abandoning me!” Nicolas cried. “You whose coffers I have been filling for twenty years! You bastards! You filthy fucking bastards!”

  But Millagard really had had it and wouldn’t retreat. Calling Nicolas insane and self-centered, he shoved him against the backseat of the car. I had never seen this timid publisher so incensed as to attack one of his own authors.

  I drove them to Heathrow. The rain came down in sheets. Millagard and I talked.

  “This business is not finished,” he said grimly. “I have thought long and hard about it. There is still another danger. If by some miserable chance this C. Irving Brown has an heir, I may as well hand over to him the keys to the publishing house.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to look surprised.

  “I mean that if there is an heir I will have not only to turn over all profits earned on the sale of more than 300,000 copies of Il faut aimer but also reimburse him for compensatory damages for having published an unauthorized ‘adaptation.’”

  “Ah.”

  “The solution is for you to purchase the estate of Marble Arch Press, thereby making yourself legal heir and inheriting the proceeds a publisher owes an author.”

  “But Brown doesn’t seem to have any heirs.”

  “Two precautions are better than one. If it comes to it, you could threaten to sue me, that would allow me to transfer to you those rights which would have belonged to Brown. Do you follow me?”

  I managed to look as if I found what he was telling me admirably clear. What was most important for Millagard was to avoid the financial risk involved in being sued for forgery. The London court had not settled this issue, contenting itself with authenticating The Need to Love and denying Nicolas’s countersuit for defamation. Still, I felt a sudden doubt. Could this be a trap? Had Millagard learned that I’d already negotiated for the estate of Marble Arch Press with Philip Ramsay’s nephew? I dismissed the idea. He looked far too sincere to be playing that cool a game.

  At this point in the conversation, Nicolas leaned forward.

  “I’m going away,” he bawled. “I’m going away. Far away!”

  We pretended not to hear him.

  I left Nicolas and Millagard at the airport and drove back to London. I was going back to work, seriously this time, and would wait for the moment when Nicolas found his copy of the book. That should finish it. I knew Nicolas well enough to know that finding it would be too much for him.

  To live with expectation is to live in hope and fear, torment and joy, and I was no exception to this rule. Nicolas was a courageous man. If he got through this dark period of his life it was entirely possible he would write yet another novel, perhaps one as brilliant as the last. That thought gave me chills. Images of him confronted me everywhere—in the street, in my office, in my dreams. I imagined Nicolas covered with glory once again, me crushed as before beneath the weight of his superiority, blinded by his name emblazoned on the jacket of a book.

  Why would he not just confess to his amnesia, after all? Simply admit his unconscious error to the public, and by so doing attract their sympathy and understanding? He was, after all, only a victim of his own wartime heroism. No shame in that.

  Perhaps he would conceive of writing about his “cryptoamnesia,” and with great subtlety and insight, thereby capitalizing on his accident and its consequences. The act of writing about it would free him of opprobrium.

  I could just see him holed up in his study, the blinds closed, hard at work on this new masterpiece. Time was on his side. Once more he would find a way of depriving me of life.

  My moods changed. These were my worst fears. There were other moments when I managed to enjoy what I had accomplished. And I suspected that despite it all my life would roll along as smoothly as a Bentley. I would find new writers, publish new books, create new profits. My new fears were the shadows of older fears. During the moments of euphoria, I felt a very strong temptation to confess everything to Doris.

  One day a letter from Nicolas arrived on my desk.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” it began. “I’m going to Brazil. To Manaus. The jungle’s profusion will conceal me from the demons that haunt me. Start from scratch. No other way. I have hit bottom, but I am free. I can begin again, be reborn. Good-by
e.”

  I made a few pitiful attempts to keep him from leaving. I wanted him to stay in Paris, to look through his books, and to find the copy of The Need to Love that I had intended for him. I talked to Millagard and said he should urge Nicolas to stay, to face up to his detractors. He replied he had no intention to coddle Nicolas until the end of his days, and that as far as he was concerned going to Brazil was a fine idea.

  I called Peter at his school in Gstaad to ask him to talk to his father. Peter replied that he didn’t want anything to do with “this whole crazy business,” and that anyway, his father always did as he pleased. I was ashamed of myself for having tried to use Peter, whom I loved, and I didn’t push the matter further.

  The bitter tone in Peter’s voice wounded me. Up to then I had thought him untouched by the scandal, given that he had so little contact with his father and was so far from him physically. To learn that he had gotten into a fight with his best friend, a French boy, because the latter had called him “Little Boy Brown” was truly painful.

  So I conceded defeat and resigned myself to the fact that eventually a letter would come informing me of Nicolas’s miraculous “resurrection.”

  In his first letter from Brazil he wrote that with all its seductions and sirens, the New World had cured him of the urge to write. The writing life that he had led for so long, seen from afar, seemed ridiculous.

  “I have become absorbed by an exquisite sensuality in which the only ink is the sap of trees and bodies.”

  The next letter was more explicit.

  “Eulelia’s body, lying next to me, glistens like gold and gives off blinding power. Her pidgin French, a relic of a church school, enchants me. The varieties and vagaries of her fantasies are limitless and extraordinary. She conceals her professionalism beneath naive charm.”

  Some months later, yet another letter announced he was coming back.

  There is nothing more for me here. I probably should have adapted to the idea of expiating my sins through exile, but I actually continue to believe in my innocence. One might accept being a thief or a murderer. But not someone possessed by an invisible devil. I cannot spend my life running away to the ends of the earth. I refuse to act the part of the pariah, the one you might hear about on some street: “Fabry? You mean the famous plagiarist? I’d heard he’d gone native somewhere in the Amazonian Basin.”

  Now that I have recovered somewhat, I will come home and face things squarely. I am no grave-robber. I do not steal manuscripts from the dead, like Sholokhov did with the first volume of Quiet Flows the Don (at least according to Solzhenitsyn). Have I not written a body of work that proves my abilities? The accusation of plagiarism is naive and simplistic, and leaves me feeling more indifferent than ever.

  If Nicolas were going to prove game enough to come home, I would have to be the one to leave. My affairs were in order and had been for some time. In my will I left a good deal of Turner Press to the staff, reserving the major portion for Peter, who I knew had become passionately interested in literature. He would also get my flat in Chelsea. Everything else would go to various charitable organizations. And as for my own personal copy of The Need to Love, Marianne Evans was the only logical recipient. I also planned to give her the proofs and original manuscript, and had written a letter explaining everything.

  “When you read these lines,” it began,

  I will have returned to dust. But from the bottom of my living heart I thank you for contributing so much to the cleverest literary scam our drab century has produced. I suspect you will take this news with you to the grave, and remain my only judge, but I thought you should know you played your role magnificently, and hope you do not resent me for having chosen you for the part. You see, I knew your need for revenge was nearly as powerful as my own. Please accept this small token of thanks.

  This letter, a finished copy of The Need to Love together with galleys, and my will were all sealed in an envelope at the bottom of the safe in my country house. There would be time to give it to John Holland in due course.

  I tried several times to call Paris, to learn whether Nicolas was back, but no one answered. A month passed. Finally, one day, a call came from Heathrow. It was from an Air France pilot who said he was an old friend of Nicolas. Nicolas had given him an envelope two hours earlier and asked that it be put directly into my hands.

  I hurried out to the airport. Sitting in my car in the parking lot, I opened the envelope, pulled out a small pile of papers, and immediately set to reading them.

  You may have tried to call me. I disconnected the phone. No one else besides Nora knows that I am back from Brazil. It has been two months since I’ve been going in circles, circling the abyss, spinning together memories, questions, anxieties. Writing my last book put me through so much soul-searching. I knew that up to that point my work had tasted of usury and of death. I’d become as hollow as an old stump. All I’d really done was satiate my fantasies and apply them to different literary styles. Until I thought of writing about the story of Farida, Yasmina, that Egyptian girl I’d gotten pregnant so many years ago and who then killed herself. Because of me. I never spoke to you about it. It was my secret. The words seemed to come spilling out on the page, and the novel rose through me like a spasm of pleasure. Everything was new again.

  Nora came to my house eight days ago. She managed to sneak by the concierge, despite my orders to admit no one. She moved back in. Her looks of sympathy I found revolting. It was the Egyptian dancing girl I had always loved in her. Now she was nothing but a nurse. I don’t know. Perhaps she had to come back for my destiny to be fulfilled.

  What possessed her to decide to organize my books? To distract me from my agonies?

  You know that I have never thrown out a single book or given one away. If I lose one, I have to buy another copy of it. I must have 6,000 books by now, and for many of them I couldn’t give you title or author.

  We started by putting them into alphabetical order according to author. A slow process. I will admit I started to enjoy it, for it distracted from darker thoughts. Then Nora found a little blue book on whose damaged spine a name was printed with gold lettering: C. Irving Brown.

  Cold horror. I was pushed into the darkness of a bottomless crevasse of ice.

  Like the other two copies, it has no dust jacket. The cover was slightly singed, as are some of the pages. But on the whole it survived in good shape. A price is written in pencil on the flyleaf, the way they do in old books of interest only to collectors. Two shillings.

  I have been reading and rereading it over and over. It is truly staggering. How could my novel, page after page of my own work, resemble Brown’s novel in so many details? How is it possible that I could have retained in the unconscious folds of my memory so much of his text? How, without knowing it, could I have captured in nearly photographic fashion Brown’s book, before burying it thirty-years-deep in the secret labyrinths of my mind? How? Because the story was so similar to something I had lived? Because it was about a tragic affair with a young girl who in every respect was Yasmina’s double? But they were mine, those nights of love! They were ours! Our midnight walks along the shore, that crazy evening on Pharos—I was the one who lived them with her! They were mine! At least, they were before the accident. Could it have been that this English cipher had dreamed precisely the same things I had actually lived? Had fantasized exactly the same feelings I had actually experienced? That way, madness.

  When I read this novel thirty years ago, I must have been fascinated by the similarities and devoured it without dropping so much as a single word, too swept away even to scrawl something in the margins the way I normally do. This absence of marginalia makes me think that, after all, I am “guilty.”

  One thing is certain. I will never write again. How could I ever be sure that I was the author of my ideas and my expressions? Is that metaphor mine? What about that imagery? Did I make up that character? How can I be sure? Writing was the one thing upon which I counted to tell me I was
unique and that I was alive.

  When all is said and done, you know, the scandal surrounding Il faut aimer is a magnificent amalgam of glory and humiliation, and it remains the “highwire act of genius” that some critics called it when it first appeared. That is what I think, and I really don’t care what history decides. Probably in the future my name will be inexorably linked to a clinical case of interest only to students of psychiatry. The “Fabry Phenomenon” will be my claim to immortal fame. I really don’t care.

  Time to cross the bar. I am sorry not to see Peter grow up. I am sorry, too, for all the women who I could not bring myself to love. None of them are worth staying for.

  If I had one wish, it would be that someday someone would write of me as the true father of Il faut aimer. Because, you see, bastard though it be, I think it my finest offspring.

  Nicolas

  I ran to the nearest telephone and called Millagard. He confirmed what the letter had said. Nora had found Nicolas’s body at 9:13 P.M. on the floor of his study, a bullet through the brain.

  Chapter 14

  There was quite a crowd at the cemetery. All the women that Nicolas had never been able to bring himself to love had come to say farewell. Anne, remarried and living in Canada, had decided not to attend. Flu prevented Peter from leaving Gstaad, which was a very good thing, I thought. There were lots of official-looking people from the Compagnons de la Libération and plenty of people from the publishing world. But mostly there were women. The overpowering smell of perfume was proof enough that the man we were burying had not lived a chaste life.

  Given the manner of Nicolas’s death, no grand eulogies were given. A priest said a few simple words about fame, courage, despair, and Divine Mercy, and offered prayers to the heavens. For my part, I threw a handful of dirt on the coffin. A grief-stricken Millagard saw my half-smile and gave me a puzzled look.