by Peter Barry
I think of Dante. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. And I wonder at which level of hell we are living here.
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Today, for the first time since I arrived here, the sky is a brilliant blue. The weather is definitely getting warmer. There are still cold snaps, and at night it’s usually freezing, but sometimes, during the day, weak sunshine spills like a Turneresque watercolour across the sky. The snow and slush have been replaced by grass. The green startles. There are buds on the trees up in the mountains, and every now and again I see a smattering of flowers – no, an explosion of flowers, an explosion of colour that matches the explosions in the town. Crocuses and cyclamen, primroses, and blue flowers whose name I don’t know are scattered amongst the trees. Nature, I’ve noticed, doesn’t make any sound around here. With the almost incessant sighing of shells overhead and, a second or two later, the krrrump! as they hit their target, it has taken me a while to realise this. It’s as if Mother Nature has been shocked into silence by the shelling, regarding the events happening around her with dumb stupefaction – unlike me. I feel at home in this noisy bedlam, quite accepting of the outlandish lullaby.
Even the cemeteries that litter the city landscape have taken on a refreshed, resurrected air. It’s possible, with spring almost on us – maybe already here – that those who lie there have found new hope and may soon rise from their coffins in jubilation. They’re the lucky ones, I guess, those in the cemeteries, because corpses are now being buried in the main sports arena. The playing field, like a badly made bed, is a mass of bumps. Today I’m shooting from the Jewish cemetery high up above Grbavica. The irony doesn’t escape me – I lie amongst the dead and attempt to add to their number. They are my allies, my friends, we are on the same side. The dead provide excellent cover: the grass clusters at the base of the white, smooth stones like pubic hair around a penis. The tombstones lie skew-whiff, as if the bodies lying beneath them have stirred in their sleep and pulled their blankets out of place. The sounds of the mortars whistling overhead, from the wooded hills behind me, and the explosions from the streets below are muffled by the mantle of death under which I sit. I’m writing this resting on a grave at the back of the cemetery, beneath a tree that grows alongside a high brick wall.
The cemetery is on a steeply rising hill. Halfway up the hill is a memorial to the fight against fascism from 1941 to 1945. The white marble slab has a black band around its middle. It’s the perfect sniper’s resting place, in both senses. Directly below me, across the Pale road, are higgledy-piggledy houses of every colour: pink, white, yellow, stone, orange, blue and green. Few roads run from the main road down to the river, and those that do are steep and winding.
I’ve been telling my neighbours lying quietly around me about the novel I bought at the airport. I thought it might interest them, but it doesn’t seem so. The novel has many pages about the planets and stars, about the universe, about astrology and astronomy, and I’ve been trying to work out the relevance of these planetary paragraphs. I believe Amis is making a link between the cosmos and this nebulous, hard-to-pin-down information, whatever that might be – although I suspect it’s man’s awareness of his mortality. His book could therefore be about the place of literature, of man, in the universe, and about whether the writer receives or does not receive this information, this information which is everything and nothing. When I asked members of my reading group if they’d like to discuss this particular point, they snorted derisively. I took that as a no.
The Information is good. I study, and think about, the plot. On the surface the book is about literary success and failure, and about the humiliation of novelist Richard Tull. The latter has to suffer the success of his friend, also a novelist, Gwyn Barry, just as I have to suffer the success of Martin Amis. He’s eaten up by envy, just as I am. Creating the plot wouldn’t have been too difficult: it’s simply the story of two writers, one with talent who’s unsuccessful, and the other with no talent who’s successful. The writing is masterful, the descriptions, metaphors and similes – the way it’s all tied together in a rich tapestry of words – is typical Amis. He pleasures his readers on every page.
The book is excessive – but of course, can Amis be anything but? That’s what makes him so enjoyable to read. The author is angry, an angry, middle-aged man, still raging, still ranting, delivering artistic, beautifully phrased tirades against anyone and everyone. In that respect, Richard Tull must be his surrogate. This character despises everything and, with the exception of his wife, possibly everyone. He could come to Sarajavo, take up sniping and immediately feel at home. The place would fuel his hatred and anger in a most satisfactory manner.
I tell all this to my neighbours, the Cohens, Baruchs, Fursts, Gluckseligs, Brankos and Engels who once lived in this city, but who now lie quietly at my feet and never say a word. It seems they’re not interested. They certainly have no opinions to offer up. I suspect they must be bored – dead bored. They’d make good publisher’s readers.
I, of course, lie at the feet of Mr Martin Amis, whose parents – both writers, as is well known – even went to the extraordinary length of getting the word ‘art’ into their offspring’s name. This Martin Amis – why didn’t they simply name him Art? – doesn’t know that I exist, yet I know him so well. I also know that he’s a published writer and I’m an unpublished writer. That’s the main difference between us. He has a public, and I have none.
I’m dazzled, nevertheless, by his book. It’s so well written I’m in awe. I continue to skip back through it to re-read passages, to check what I’ve already read against where I’m up to now. I want to understand the book and discover the secrets of its construction. I’m determined to miss nothing. Having all the time in the world, I can study the novel at leisure – unless someone puts a bullet in my head tomorrow, which is always a possibility. Hopefully, I’ll finish the book before that happens.
His writing is as distinctive as ever. It’s clever, good writing. I wonder how easily these metaphors and similes come to him. Does he sit at his desk and write them straight off, or does he have to write them again and again, puzzle over them, worry them – worry over them – and try every combination of words until he finds the solution? When he first writes a passage, is it mundane and clichéd, and does he spend a long time thinking about how to make it different? I’d be happier to know he had to work hard rather than discover that such phrases and sentences just rolled off his pen without any thought or effort on his part, purely as the result of inspiration.
Because inevitably, reluctantly, I do compare myself to him. Surreptitiously, even furtively, like men in a public shower, I compare our bodies of work. It’s his word against mine, his sentence against mine, his paragraph and chapter against my paragraph and chapter, and every time he wins. He’s bigger than me. He has more length and breadth, more bulk. And yet, like him, I build. We’re both builders. Words are the building blocks with which we construct or design our phrases, sentences and paragraphs. I start with three bricks: subject, verb, object. I place one on top of the other and, ho hum, I have a sentence. And it is ho hum – or so the likes of Mulqueeny, the odious Mulqueeny, would have me believe. Whereas Amis starts with the same three bricks, subject, verb and object, places one on top of the other and has an edifice, a thing of beauty, something of interest that stops people, makes them stare in wonderment, and quite takes their breath away. How does he do it? We have the same materials and yet the results are so different. I’m told that I’ve constructed a sixties block of council flats, grey, flat and monotonous, straight out of Brixton, while those supposedly in the know declare that he has built an ornate palace with balustrades, gargoyles and fancy crenellations, a Brighton Pavilion of words. Mine will be torn down tomorrow, but his will be left standing, if not for all time, then for many, many years to come.
The big story about The Information is that he received a £500,000 advance for it. He hadn’t even put pen to paper, or so I understand, when some pub
lisher walked up to him and said, ‘Mr Amis, we’d like to give you £500,000 for your next book.’
‘But I haven’t written it yet,’ he replied. (I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt here, trusting he recognised the absurdity of the situation.)
‘That’s all right, you just hang onto the £500,000 until you do write it.’
‘But I don’t even have an idea for my next book.’
‘That’s fine, old chap. Keep the money, have a good time, go shopping, splash out at the dentist’s, just let us know when you have a book ready for us.’ And the publisher would grovel and fawn (could that be the company name, I wonder) as he backs out of the front door, mightily pleased with his investment.
I understand that only one out of every eight novels will pay for itself, so publishers try to limit their risks by advancing huge amounts of money for just a handful of titles. It works on the theory that the public hears about these vast sums – in fact they’re put out there as publicity, as part of the pre-launch hype, virtually shouted from the rooftops – and is so intrigued that it buys the book. The reading public associates price with worth. How cynical is that of the publishers?
And what about all the struggling writers, the ones trying to start out? We’re the ones who should be encouraged with substantial advances, not writers like Amis: he’s probably a millionaire already, lives somewhere like Holland Park, eats caviar for breakfast, lunches at Langan’s, bathes in champagne or ass’s milk every evening, and every day, for a spot of fun and entertainment, visits either the tennis club or the dentist.
Yes, this is what’s truly astounding – it was all over the media, too. He supposedly requires the advance for his teeth. His teeth! What kind of dental work costs £500,000? I admit to having a problem getting my head around this. It was like one of those unbelievable scenarios he’s so keen on in his novels – imagination stretching. He was about to undergo major dental work in the US, that’s why he needed the money. It’s obvious we’re not talking fillings here, certainly not a dental hygienist, and I suggest even a crown or two would be unlikely. We must surely be talking jaw reconstruction at the very least. Possibly his whole mouth is to be filled with exquisite, hand-carved ivory from the tusk of an Asian elephant – softer, whiter and more opaque than the African variety, or so I’m told. I’m ashamed to say I was both fascinated and enthralled, like the general public. It stayed in my head; Martin Amis’s teeth stayed in my head. I couldn’t get rid of them. I chewed over them. It annoyed me to spend so much time thinking about such a frivolous subject. Frivolous to me, but I guess not to him. Now that I think about it, he’s always had a thing about teeth, especially in Dead Babies. What was the character’s name? Giles Coldstream? He was very funny, a great comic creation, always having nightmares about his teeth and imagining terrible things happening to them. He would imbibe copious amounts of gin in order to anaesthetise his mental torment. Perhaps that’s how his creator feels.
This fascination with an author’s teeth, with the minutiae of his life, means no more and no less than this: our Martin Amis is a star. He’s all American glitz and Hollywood glamour. He’s red-carpet fodder for People and Variety magazines, a source of gossip for tabloid columnists. A writer who’s a star, now there’s a thing. Like a twentieth-century Dickens or Byron. Like Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Not many writers get to become stars, where readers are as interested in them and their lives as they are in their books. Not even readers, just people. People who would never dream of opening a Martin Amis book, nor any other book for that matter – Sun readers. They forage for titbits about his daily life and devour what he has to say on any subject under the sun. It doesn’t have to be about writing, it can be about planting petunias in the spring, his favourite restaurant or pub, what he thinks about bringing up children, or his opinion about the merits of pilates. He is a star.
Whereas I am a sniper.
If Art only receives that £500,000 for The Information (and the likelihood is he’ll receive much more), and the book has 150,000 words – I’m guessing, just to make it simple – then for every word he has written he’ll receive £3.33 recurring. He receives £3.33 for every word he writes, while I receive 500 Deutsche Marks (or around £175) for every person I kill. This means he has to write about fifty words to earn the equivalent of what I get for one victim – and most of those words will just be a or the, and or but.
It’s hard to imagine, even for me, how the people in the city, scurrying through the streets down there, would feel if they were told that each one of their lives, to which they cling so enthusiastically and earnestly, is worth only fifty Martin Amis words. Mind you, to give the man the benefit of the doubt, a Martin Amis word has a certain cachet: few people will understand it and some dictionaries may think it too esoteric to even list. One is not talking here of a common-or-garden mot.
Those people in my sights will be more appreciative of my talents, that’s for sure. I’m good at sniping, and it’s a real craft. It’s as much a craft as putting pen to paper, in some ways more of a craft. It’s a skill I’ve become increasingly proud of, and one that I work hard at to make myself even better.
I attempt to bolster my self-esteem by frequently reminding myself of the difficulty of what I do. A bullet spins as it flies through the air. It leaves the barrel spinning at around 2500 revolutions a second, and the resistance it encounters on its path warps its flight ever so slightly to the left or right. Gravity also does its best to take the bullet off course, pulling it downwards. These factors mean that its trajectory is below and to one side of where the barrel’s pointing. I must therefore ‘lay’ my rifle, adjusting the sights so that the bullet strikes its target. That is the skill, the artistry of what I do – and could Art do that? The accuracy, the threading of the needle, is absolutely up to me. I like the scientific exactitude of this, the mathematical precision. I like knowing that over six hundred yards, if the calculations are a fraction out at my end, then it will mean the bullet will strike several inches out at the other. I like knowing that. It’s not intuition, it’s not guesswork, it’s fact. It’s the difference between putting my bullet in someone’s heart and putting it in their upper arm. It’s a matter of life and death – for both of us.
When the bullet leaves my rifle, there’s a split second – which, at times, can seem like an eternity – before I see the result of my endeavours. If the target is a thousand yards away, which is rare in Sarajevo, it will take the bullet two seconds to travel that distance. It’s a long time. I can hum a little tune while I wait, puzzle over a mathematical formula, cogitate on the meaning of life, calculate that to walk such a distance, a thousand yards, would take about sixteen minutes. Sometimes I’m acutely aware of waiting and wondering: I study the targets, still holding my breath in order not to move the rifle, eager to see how they’re going to react to the little lump of lead that is speeding towards them, the angel of death of which they’re still completely unaware. They’re oblivious, utterly oblivious of the second most important thing that will ever happen to them in their lifetime. Usually they react the same way, like marionettes whose strings have been suddenly jerked. They throw their arms up, their legs buckle or their head snaps back. Sometimes this is done in slow motion, like a solo dance movement captured on film, full of poetry and beauty. They can be inspiring, as well as enjoyable – even entertaining – to watch, these death throes. Always, it seems to me, the people I shoot appear puzzled. It’s strange. Perhaps they’re unable to understand why this particular mishap is happening to them. ‘Why me? Why has God called me so suddenly, so unexpectedly? I was convinced I had a few more years.’
If I’m fortunate, the quarry doesn’t buckle to the ground immediately. That can make for a disappointingly short show. I prefer it when the person stays upright for a moment or two, possibly taking a step this way or that, as if pondering his or her fate, or simply reluctant to leave the stage. One of my targets reminded me of those opera singers who go through a whole aria after they’v
e been mortally wounded. He staggered backwards and forwards along the street for what seemed like an eternity, doubtless watched by a few fellow performers in the wings, wide-eyed, their hands to their mouths, waiting to applaud this bravura performance. He collapsed, finally, into the gutter. Most of my victims, however, tend to exit the stage quick smart, in a suburban, amateur dramatic kind of way.
That’s how I remind myself how good I am.
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I dreamt about your teeth last night. You must be on my mind.
I was in a fairground, at one of those sideshows. It was a shooting gallery. There were other galleries to my left and right. The target was a beautifully carved, intricately ornate, painted face mask. It was larger than life-size. It was your face, Martin Amis’s face, with the finely chiselled features, the greased, always wet-looking hair swept back from the high forehead and the intense, faintly disdainful, almost sardonic expression frozen forever. But instead of your usual serious face – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photograph of you smiling, but I suspect that is because of some complex you have about your teeth – you were grinning like a madman, possibly even laughing. Your eyes were staring, your irises like marbles rolling in the base of the bowl of your eyes, and your mouth was wide, wide open to reveal two rows of brilliant, perfectly formed white porcelain teeth. Your face was all grin, a crazy grin, like a caricature.
