Subject: B leaped.
Hey T,
I heard your dog died. Condolences. He was a good friend to all of us.
Our mutual friend B sent me a draft of the first chapter of his novel. He has leapt, finally.
—Mer
I was glad when you left the Old City…
Subject: Re: B leaped.
My dear Mer,
Thank you. Calculus left me in 2019, but I still hear his footsteps and can feel his warmth under my desk. I miss him. I thought you knew. Did you just learn of it?
It stings a bit that B chose to share the draft with you and not me, but then again I was always your “plus-one.” What is the story about? You too, my dear Mer, were writing a novel all those years ago. Dare I ask if it is done?
The three of us last met in B’s beautiful house, didn’t we? I recall he was building a new bookshelf for his ever-expanding collection of poets. There was a fresh coat of varnish on his Edwardian armchairs. The smells remain with me. Sawdust, turpentine, and the resinous odour of shellac mixed with the smoke of those awful Burmese cigarettes that both of you loved! Those were happier days, Mer. Yes, happier is correct.
I miss the Old City.
—T
Subject: Re: Re: B leaped.
Hey T,
Happier indeed. I agree. I miss old Calculus Dogbertus too. I have always envied your (and his) ability to find joy in the mundane: in that hour of walkie time around the lake in the evening, never mind the muggers, junkies, and mosquitoes. I keep, as a bookmark, that photograph of you playing fetch with Calculus. Do you remember it? You are frozen mid-throw, and Calculus is already a blur, halfway down the dirt path, ears and tongue flapping in full sprint.
B with his collection of poets, in his study
I was glad when you left the Old City to seek a better life. I did too, eventually. B too attempted to escape our old neighbourhood. He sold his fine art-deco bungalow and moved into a flat that spans the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh floors of a building at the end of a cul-de-sac. The irony!
On the eve of my departure I decided to accept his polite invitation ("I realise the inconvenience. Come only if you feel that you must.–B"). The gloved doorman, after staring at my wrinkled clothes and scuffed shoes, escorted me to the lift and stood there, eyeing me suspiciously, until the doors closed. B’s wife stood smiling at the open door to their cavernous flat. “He’s waiting for you,” she said, pointing towards a door at the far end of the drawing room.
I found him seated in one of those Edwardian chairs, wearing a burgundy dressing gown over his striped pyjamas. The study was small compared to the room outside. On the walls, handsomely framed in bookmatched hardwood: a Constable, a Klimt, an anonymous impressionist nude, and three of B’s exquisite collages, assembled with photographs from the family’s century-long subscription to National Geographic Magazine. The rest of the art you might remember from his bungalow was parked in neat rows on the floor. B’s collection of poets sit like obedient schoolboys on the tall bookshelves. You can almost imagine him calling out to one of them on a rainy evening… Borges jumps down, clears his throat, and begins to read aloud… In one corner are an ancient steamer trunk and a cabinet both filled with memories. An unfinished collage, later to be christened Dreamcatcher, lay on his desk amidst a stack of donor magazines waiting to be disembowelled. Thick drapes hid a large window above the desk.
“Did the taxi driver know the way here?” he asked.
I parted the curtains to reveal the garish shopping mall squatting a hundred yards away at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. Its technicolour Christmas lights exploded into the study, staining its walls neon. “He knew where that is,” I replied.
B was not amused. I imagine he had rounded up all the creatures in his world, crammed them into an Ark, and put out to sea only to find himself immediately shipwrecked on a concrete island under a psychedelic sun. I’m sure that he has told you why he chose to listen to the siren song of suburbia.
B and I cannot properly be honest with each other (or with ourselves) on matters that actually matter… However, I have always felt a sort of placental linkage to him because, for twenty years, he and I floated next to each other in the womb of the Old City: sloshing about silently as we dreamed, waiting to be inevitably stillborn. Such is the wretched fate of all the writers and poets who live there. Amor fati, I suppose. B and I offer each other that painless honesty shared only by those connected at the navel: someone who can recommend euthanising a beloved character, someone who will read that first hesitant draft with irony. I am happy to do so for B; and I trust he will do the same for me. Everything else he discusses only with you. No, my dear chap. I am the “plus-one”.
B looked happy as he poured us both a snifter–at least as happy as writers like us allow ourselves to be. We drank in silence as we always did. B’s wife was chopping vegetables in the kitchen. She was humming a half-forgotten song to the cadence of the knife on the block. When she reached the end of what she remembered, she would pause for a moment, hum a connective arpeggio, and skip back to the top of the tune. Every time she looped back, I kicked the sides of my memory hoping for a response: the name of the song, its lyric, anything to complete the tune… B couldn’t remember either. We are crippled by our imperfect memories, while she was perfectly content with hers. Our songs are half-forgotten, hers are just songs. Later, at the dinner table, the lights from the shopping mall twinkled playfully in her eyes when I asked her about the song. “Was I humming? I don’t remember. Oooooh! It’s still killing you, isn’t it–trying to remember the name of the song!” she said, grinning impishly. She spoke warmly of you and sends her regards.
Every week on his way to the club B surveys, stoically, from the rear window of his German horseless carriage, what remains of his old kingdom. I will not look. I will not look, he promises himself, but always does.
“It was demolished last year,” he said. “Twelve stories of glass and steel will come up in its place. They’ve built four floors already. The lawn is paved over. My study and library are now a gym. Instead of one fool pacing about without purpose, there are now twelve, all marching purposefully on treadmills.” He stared morosely at the marble floor in the room. “A peddler stands where the front gate used to be. You can buy a Chinese Rolex from him.”
‘To reach my office you start at the gates of Hell…’
I left the city the next morning. I lease a small flat at [■■■] and a cubicle in an office building, which I call the Aquarium (more about this later). Do you remember how B’s directions would always begin from the gates of St. Xavier’s? Just the other day I wrote this in my notebook on my way to work: “To reach my office, you start at the gates of Hell, take a left, and count the corpses of dead novelists along the way. Take a right after the third. Watch out for starving dogs, fat cats, and mutant beards.”
Speaking of: The other day at the office cafeteria I found myself behind two bearded ponytails wearing dull organic shirts and bright rubber sandals. I hated them. When they introduced themselves as members of a group of poets, free-thinkers, and seekers I hated them even more. I can imagine your reaction—you would have smiled and spouted polite nothings. I explained that I was poetry-deaf, had never had a single original thought in my life, and wasn’t seeking anything in particular apart from peace and quiet. Of course, they sat down beside me and invited me into their cult: they sing and read poetry under a tree on Sunday mornings in a god-forsaken park somewhere. I wish Calculus were around—we could have had him pee on that tree every Saturday.
B insists that these early drafts are not ready for public scrutiny. I can reveal that the decade it has spent on a low simmer has not been wasted. It is a fine piece of writing. I wish I could say more. P has a copy too, by the way. Are you in touch?
We should talk more often, T. I sense something in the air.
—Mer
PS: I accepted the invitation to the Pretentious Ponytail Poetry Cult. Merely for research purposes, of course. I am not going insane–you collect postcards, B collects poets, and I collect characters.
Subject: P
Dear Mer, you miserable Bolshevik troll,
“B has marooned himself on a neon-lit island?” [■■■] is one of the most sought-after addresses in the city. The doormen wear gloves so they don’t have to touch plebs like us. I’m happy that B has moved into a flat with mod-cons, and you should be too.
B sent a copy to P as well? I don’t know what to say. Does B not trust me at all? It does seem that his first draft has reunited us all because P showed up unannounced yesterday with a bottle of rum. At 11 PM! She looks surprisingly well-preserved—or not surprisingly at all, given the amount of liquor she consumes. She poured me a little snifter before she settled into my armchair with the bottle. She had drained a third of it before she spoke.
“Talk to Mer. He’s got something going that you might want to join. If you do, I will too.”
“Is this about B’s book?”
She closed her eyes and refused to say anything. Another third of the bottle disappeared.
“Do you still draw? Or is it all photography nowadays?” I asked, not sure if P had dozed off.
“AI art,” she replied. Then she said, abruptly: “Stop moping about your dog. It’s time to move on.”
That hurt, but you know P: there’s no filter between her brain and mouth.
We finished the rest of the bottle in silence. P announced that she was off to take photographs of “urban wildlife” (I have stopped worrying about a drunken P travelling around the city on a motorcycle at night. She can take care of herself.) She got up to leave and, flicking my forehead thrice for emphasis, she said: “Talk. To. Mer.”
What’s this all about? Are you writing a new novel, or are you resuscitating the one that you began all those years ago? Do let me know. Is P illustrating the work? How am I to contribute?
—T
Subject: Re: P.
Hey T,
New? Old? It doesn’t matter. We shall speak again by learning to speak again. And, as is the custom, we begin by saying “Hello, World!”
We ought to leap with B. As an act of solidarity. Or one of sheer bloody-mindedness. What do we have to lose?
—Mer
PS: I have added P as on the cc.
PPS: Pull out some of the old manuscripts and type them up. We’ll need them.
Subject: Hello, World!
Dear Mer and P,
I have no idea what the two of you are planning, but count me in.
—T
Subject: Re: Hello, World!
——————^
—P