Private Novelist

by Nell Zink

  “Isn’t that your cow?” she asked with an air of studious wonder.

  “Then it must belong to someone else,” I said.

  She put her arms around me. “I care for your cow because you are my husband. It is up to me to take care of all of us now, to make money so that our child will have clothing.”

  For the first time I was to be a father. I embraced her passionately. When the autumn arrived I was fit and proud. From working in the fields I had strong, callused hands. We went down to the station with Mary’s mother and the sack of cheese. The train pulled in slowly. A young man, a passenger, was holding the rail and leaning far out from the train, shading his eyes. “Mary! Mary!” he called.

  She ran forward to him, grasping her belly. “I can no longer be your wife,” she said. Her mother grunted.

  “I forgive you everything,” he said. She began to cry. He held her tenderly. I walked to our house and untied the cow and her calf. They raced off into the tall grass.

  When I returned by another way to the station, Mary and her husband were nowhere to be seen, and I bought a seat in second class. The inspector joined me one stop past my old post. When he heard my story he descended from the train to buy a bottle of the cheapest vodka. He taught me a love song, a wordless march with accompanying hand motions. We became so drunk that the stars wheeled below us like carnival lights reflected in a well. But even after a week the embraces of the inspector were of so little use against my pain that I leaped gently and secretly, without saying good-bye, to the tall-grass prairie near a river, in a fertile area dotted with towns. I followed a path through the reeds to a riverbank, where a little boat lay rocking under a canopy of willow branches yellowed by autumn. The boat had waited a long time through the summer rains and falling leaves, and had to be dragged in and overturned, cleaned, and left in the sun for a day. Then with my pay jingling in my pocket I began my journey downstream.

  I paused at every opportunity to explore the country. In a medium-sized market town I visited a bookstore. Among the ancient and indecipherable texts was a book by the railway inspector, which he had dedicated to me. The margins were filled with notations in his own handwriting. The topic was the history of the Kalda railway.

  “Almost nothing is commonly known about the origins of Kalda,” he wrote. “That a town should spring up in isolation, where no town is needed, may surprise no one; but that such a town should be served by a railway is strange indeed. Many are the forces which compel otherwise solitary people, whose lonely homesteads, devoid of visitors or of any variation in human contact beyond the occasional arrival of an infant, which can hardly be regarded as variation given the inevitable formative influence of its surroundings” (I didn’t say the inspector wrote well; only that he wrote) “to build a forum as it were for daily contact and interaction. Some may indict certain romantic or poetical tendencies among these lonely steppe-dwellers, but it is legendary among railway personnel, of whom I am admittedly one, that in the case of Kalda the hermits of a vast tract of interior land were lured, briefly, into one place by precisely one common goal: namely, that of obtaining railway service.

  “Records of the railway’s initial decision to consider construction of the Kalda line make reference to a thriving market for priceless furs of fisher and sable, where common household goods such as colanders, imported from manufacturing centers, might be exchanged for their weight in gold. That these stories were believed does not bespeak gullibility on the part of the railway company, but rather great skill in deceit and falsehood on the part of the people of Kalda—or rather, the solitary hermits of the steppes who, for several days many years ago, filled the poor gray city they had prepared of mud and lime to welcome the first train, on which, I am strangely proud to say, my father rode as chief inspector. There are no citizens of Kalda, as there is no city of Kalda. To explain how an illusory city might come to occupy a prominent position on the maps of our nation and even, due to its unique isolation, on globes of the world will be one aim of this essay; a defense and, I hope, complete vindication of my father’s role will be another, albeit minor, goal.”

  Here in the margin the inspector had written: “Mary.”

  The text continued: “The essentially solitary nature of Kalda can be disputed by no one who has visited that city. Yet with what regret must I note how few can claim to have done so! Whatever I write will be dismissed as the word of one man against a thousand, for everyone holds his own opinion of the city of Kalda, and has always held it. I who have returned from witnessing the dread desolation imposed by the vast caldron of featureless sky which oppresses our interior in general and the spurious city of Kalda in particular—unique so far as I know, in that no one who sets foot on the earth of that region can claim to have escaped its”—here I felt all at once like a descending yoke the ponderous self-aggrandizement of his prose, and turned to the appendices. Mary was named only once, as the fifth item in an alphabetical glossary of Kalda’s false citizenry: “a beauty whose qualities might, given greater scope, have come to some use, had she not lost the power of speech; but the subject of this book is the little town itself, and the vindication of my father.” The book was very dull.

  The price was outrageous—“Extremely rare,” the bookseller said, snatching it away in distress. My buttery fingers had left a halo of translucency around each word I had touched, and a greasy radiance still emanated from the page where the inspector had written “Mary,” underlined many times by my amazed index finger. In the bookseller’s eyes I seemed to see the calf, emaciated, his swollen belly heaving, lying on bare ground in a place where the prairie had been parted as if by a comb. A burying beetle paused in a corner of the scene, unsure where to start.

  “Did you also know Mary?” I asked the bookseller.

  He closed his eyes and faced the back of the shop. A musky odor, as if he seldom bathed, rose as he turned and his untrimmed nails clicked on the tiled countertop. I sang softly to his reddening ears: “Merry comrades, I belong to you. Swiftly the river flows, carrying us onward together. Never mind where: Has anything a source or destination?” The bookseller fled the shop, and I slipped the book into my pocket and took it back to the boat to read.

  While I walked I sang the other song: “Where are you going, little child, in the woods? At home, your parents wait for you. Yet you hurry onward, head down, appearing to seek for something in the carpet of needles. Why do you walk at dawn toward the western darkness?” I lay in the boat and ate buttered rolls. I thought of singing the love song without words, but finished the sack of rolls instead.

  I read further. “Once experienced, Kalda’s brutal deceptions instantly drain a man’s life of all possible meaning. This thesis being difficult to prove without reference to the all-too-personal, I beg you to place your full confidence in me on this point. The sensitive reader will easily deduce Kalda’s effects and refrain from further inquiry as to its causes. Respect for my father’s memory demands nothing less.” Dropped over the side, the book sank quickly. I lay back, admiring the sharp outlines of the clouds overhead. I kept imagining the roar of an approaching waterfall, but there was none. The river was broad and placid as a serving plate.

  CHAPTER 18

  AFTER TRYING OUT ONLY THIRTY-FIVE thousand words, I learned that I had, through blind luck, happened on one utilized by Shats. He writes:

  An albatross features in my Sailing Toward the Sunset, a specific one named Albert (details: www.zetnet.co.uk/sigs/birds/albert.html). Mary mocks the protagonist’s attempt to use it as a literary symbol of something.

  The URL refers to the pathetic story of a solitary black-browed albatross, a species whose proper home lies in the far Southern Hemisphere. In Shetland, northernmost of the British Isles, Albert’s chances of finding love and starting a family are slim, but he returns nonetheless every year to a cliffside nook from whence he makes clumsy passes at neighboring gannets. He has become a tourist attraction.

  Shats has also helped clarify two rather m
ore urgent issues. Close reading of the excerpt above reveals: (1) that Mary is not the protagonist of Sailing Toward the Sunset, and (2) that “Zetland” and “Shetland” are very likely the same place. The translator of Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, also provided the text for a lovely picture book about Scotland [note that this is false; the book about Scotland is by Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk], and when I was still quite small, I memorized its list of the seven crofting counties and resolved to visit each one. They were:

  Argyll

  Caithness

  Inverness

  Ross

  Sutherland

  Orkney

  and (suspiciously)

  Zetland

  Even as a child, I could tell there was something un-Scottish about the name “Zetland.” It tainted the entire list for me. I never suspected that it had anything to do with the quaint, rugged, and picturesque “Shetland” of pony fame. And indeed, perusal of the Internet’s “Zetland” pages makes clear that the inhabitants are eager to cast off all associations with Scotland in favor of a putative Viking heritage. Yet even the briefest look at the accompanying illustrations puts the lie to their charade: The ships supposedly employed by the Vikings in their voyages of conquest were made of wood. There are no trees on Shetland.

  Legends of Scandinavian seafaring have an obvious motive. Readers of authentic tales such as Hrafnkel’s Saga will recall the monotony of clan warfare as it was carried on by poorly armed louts mounted on horses that came up to their waists. Bravery may be possible under these conditions, but glamour certainly is not. Ambitious young men were well advised to head south in rowboats, returning several weeks later laden with exotic riches such as (I’m guessing now) spoons. Leif Ericson may or may not have crossed to North America in a Viking ship, but Thor Heyerdahl most certainly crossed the Pacific on a reed raft powered by guesswork, which just goes to show you that any number of failures receives less publicity than a single success, especially if all the failures drown or can’t get their books published. After all, it took over a hundred years for the classic Scandinavian adventure “Slow Death by Balloon” to find the publicity it deserved.

  From various sources it is becoming clear that a ship in a bottle must soon play a decisive role in my plot. On the cover of Shats’ first edition (I assume there will be corrections for subsequent editions), a ship in a bottle appears, perched on a copy of Lolita. My assumption, grounded in hearsay, is that some character or another builds ships in bottles as a hobby, and I hereby elect that character to be Zohar. For the past few days, he has been unwinding from the stress of his Himalayan escape at the World Ships-in-Bottles Convention in Honolulu.

  Ships-in-bottles conventions, like science fiction conventions, manifest only very tenuous links to ships in bottles themselves. In large hotels on suburban bypass roads, women dressed as figureheads exchange pleasantries with men dressed as old-timey sea captains, through endless rounds of parties and receptions. Downstairs are displays, competitions, and panel discussions while upstairs ship-in-bottle enthusiasts swarm from open bar to open bar, engaging in discussions even more pretentiously formal than those taking place downstairs. As a rule, formality, once undertaken, increases with drunkenness, which lengthens the gaps between utterances, allowing time for exponential increases in ponderousness and gravity. Men in ragged frock coats, with waxed black goatees, debate the merits of competing shipyards, solemnly exchanging business cards that read:

  HERMAN GOOCH & SONS’

  SHIPBUILDING AND DRY DOCK

  17 Norma Court

  Indianapolis, IN

  and

  JIM “ROB” FRANK

  Tackle—Bollards—Belaying Pins

  445 W. 22nd St., #12P

  New York, NY

  On Saturday night everyone goes downstairs for the “masquerade,” at which the more exhibitionist elements of the costuming crowd come into their own. Waving fluttering white pennants, an ex-Rockette in a flesh-colored catsuit reenacts the first America’s Cup race. A line of well-rehearsed children spell a holiday message with signal flags to a standing ovation. A bearded man stands very still while a friend hoists sails all over his body. The bewildered crowd applauds politely. By midnight the rooms upstairs are packed with convention-goers who long ago stopped stirring their drinks. They sip the vodka off the bottoms of highballs through little red straws, and gossip about what happened at the last convention. In one such room, in a corner, out of the way and minding his own business, sits Zohar, listening attentively, through headphones, to a talk radio call-in show. Every so often someone approaches, shuffling and slightly bowed, as though requesting an audience from a despotic czar.

  “Your name?” Zohar asks.

  “I am Gary Blaine, the chief operating officer of ______ Bank, and Mr. Schmidt told me you might have something of interest to us.”

  Nodding, Zohar removes his latest work from his pocket and unwraps its protective tissue paper. “USS Essex CV-9,” he says modestly, letting the tiny ship, built entirely of cardboard matchsticks inside a crack vial, rest in his palm. Tiny P-47s, their wings folded upward, populate the deck, joined by a legion of weary swabbies whose mops really move, in circles too small for the naked eye. The bank officer, sweating, asks for a jeweler’s loupe and watches in silence as tiny ensigns oversee routine maintenance on the catapults. “A million dollars. Take it or leave it.” Nervously, the bank officer asks for more time. “I have something else really special, for the right customer,” Zohar will add, opening a slip of waxed paper with tweezers to reveal the Haganah ship Exodus under steam in the harbor of Famagusta, carved on a grain of rice.

  “Too rich for my blood,” the sap will say, retreating. I always told Zohar if he’d lower his prices a little he might sell something now and then, but he has very firm ideas about art.

  Zohar has asked me to put more of his friends in my book, so I will add that at his elbow stood a mysterious, slender figure, thirty years old, ineffably beautiful and sexy, dressed like a French gamine and smoking a wickedly potent cigarette. “Zohar,” she said impatiently, “I’ll give you a million dollars myself if you’ll just give up and come to bed.”

  He sighed. Though he saw her only at conventions, she was still managing to wear him out with her incessant sexual demands. He thought longingly of the comforts of marriage and home, and then obeyed her, which after all was easier than making a scene.

  CHAPTER 19

  HAVING ALLOWED A MISSILE WITH sexual content to penetrate Sailing Toward the Sunset, I feel I should mention Gravity’s Rainbow, but I won’t.

  Yigal never liked Pynchon either. He had been traumatized early in life by his friend Elad Manor, one of those Pynchon fanatics who call you in the middle of the night to say, “I just got to page 332!” In bed with a notebook, the pencil in his hand poised over the word “Swedenborg,” Yigal would answer the phone only to find Elad in the advanced state of mental decomposition that later became known as “deconstruction.”

  “Dewey Gland!” Elad would giggle before begging, nay, ordering Yigal to immerse himself likewise in Pynchon’s interminable tableau vivant.

  “Get a girlfriend,” Yigal would advise him patiently. “Better yet, see a whore. Rub some coke on your dick and you might last long enough to get your money’s worth.” With his left hand Yigal would smooth out the wrinkled reproduction, clipped from a newspaper by a distant pen pal, of Picasso’s Guernica and return to his private thoughts.

  To Yigal’s astonishment, the easily led Elad would later accomplish several daring media pranks, most notably his facilitation of Avner Shats’ meteoric career as a poet. Back when Amir Or first organized the Mishkenot Sha’ananim poetry workshop, Shats explains, he published this ad calling young, unknown poets to apply. I sent some poems signed ‘Elad Manor,’ because I was already very famous at the time, or so I thought. . . . In gratitude for his performance in Jerusalem, Shats awarded Manor the leading role in his first novel, Sailing Toward the Sunset.

  This
rankled Yigal, who had received assurances the role was his, but he remembered Manor without bitterness. If Elad Manor, he thought, is the sort of Pynchon-loving soft-butch lapdog these postmodern novelists want, then they can have him. He had never read Sailing Toward the Sunset, but based his entire assessment of the situation on his youthful memories of Manor, which over time had become conflated with the feelings of irritation he had experienced from his position in the family as an only son with five younger sisters. The girls, doctrinaire feminists, were passionate about their careers, and it didn’t seem to have crossed anyone’s mind that Yigal, with the world at his feet, would persist in avoiding anything resembling commitment until, late in the course of his last philosophy degree, a professor took him aside and indicated to him that, with his qualifications, academia was out of the question. “But you really seem to know how to mind your own business, don’t you?” Yigal shrugged. “I mean, I’m your adviser and I can’t claim to be privy to the subject of your thesis. Have you considered becoming a Mossad agent?”

  “No.”

  The professor grasped Yigal’s shoulder and looked deeply into his eyes. He spoke of Rome, of Paris, of Tokyo, of the French South Sea nuclear-testing islands. . . . It was a bit like the scene in Gigi where they’re trying to convince innocent little Gigi to accept Gaston for the travel opportunities, except that what the professor was describing to Yigal opened up such undreamed-of new vistas of whores, gambling, and cocaine that Yigal was almost dumbstruck.