Potboiler

He studied the photo, picturing the author buttering toast or waiting at the doctor’s office. He imagined what he or she would be like as a brother, a sister, a lover, a teacher, a friend. He imagined the author calling his agent and pitching a half-formed story that made no sense outside of his mind. He imagined the frustration the author felt when he understood, yet again, that his mind was not synonymous with anyone else’s, and that to tell his story he would have to sit down and write and rewrite and work and rework. And the frustration that came with knowing that the story would never come out quite the way he had envisioned it. Writing was impossible. It was easy to think of books as products, made in a factory, churned out by some gigantic machine. Pfefferkorn knew better. Books came from people. People were imperfect. It was their imperfections that made their books worth reading. And in committing those imperfections to paper, they became omnipotent. A book was a soft machine that made a god of its builder. It was impossible and yet it happened every single day.

Writing is impossible, Pfefferkorn thought, reading more impossible still. To read truly—to read bravely—to read with compassion and without fear—did anyone? Could anyone? There were too many ways to understand, too much emptiness between word and mind, an infinite chasm of misplaced sympathies.

118.

The hardcover had red library binding stamped with gold lettering. Breaking with tradition, he turned straight to the last page.

He wanted to feel disappointed, but disappointment entails the possibility of surprise, and he had formed in advance a fairly clear notion of what to expect. In the final, unattributed canto of the revised West Zlabian People’s Press edition of Vassily Nabochka, the king died before the antidote got to him, and a grief-stricken Prince Vassily repudiated the throne, deeding the royal lands over to the people and going to live as a commoner, tilling the fields and herding goats, finding redemption in manual labor before dying peacefully beneath a runty tree in the meadows of West Zlabia. It was the worst kind of agitprop: heavy-handed, impatient, and artless. The turns were improbable, the imagery fuzzy, and the characters reductive.

Pfefferkorn laughed until he cried.

119.

Three days before Christmas he made a pilgrimage. The bus dropped him at a dusty intersection in a village thirty miles south. He visited the market and the plaza. He admired the murals. He noted with pride that the church bell was not as fine as the one he tended.

He checked to make sure he was not being watched.

He entered a bodega and found the pay phone at the back.

He put in his phone card.

He dialed.

It rang once.

It rang twice.

They had it set to answer after the fourth ring.

It rang a third time.

“Hello?”

Pfefferkorn’s heart pitched. It felt as though he were breathing through a drinking straw.

“Hello,” his daughter said again. She sounded harassed. He wondered if she had had a bad day. He wanted to console her. It’ll be all right, he wanted to say. Let me help you. But he could not say that. And he could not help her. He silently implored her to stay on the line. Don’t give up, he thought. Say Hello again. Or don’t. But don’t hang up. Say something else. Say I can’t hear you. Say Can you call back. Say anything at all. Get angry. Yell. Only: speak.

A child cried.

She hung up.

Pfefferkorn did not move for some time. The receiver was heavy in his hand. He replaced it softly. The phone ejected his card. He slid it into his pocket. He went to wait for the bus.

120.

The next morning, Fray Manuel greeted him when he came back from the market.

“You have a visitor. I asked him to wait in the vestry.”

Pfefferkorn handed over the bags and went down the hall. He knocked and entered.

They stood face-to-face.

“Hello, Yankel.”

“Hello, Bill.”

“You don’t seem that surprised to see me.”

“It takes a lot to surprise me these days.”

“I like the beard,” Bill said. “It makes you look distinguished.”

Pfefferkorn smiled. “How are you?”

“Not bad, for a dead guy.” Bill glanced around. “Some place you got here.”

“You want the tour?”

“Why the heck not.”

They went out back to the shed.

“It suits my needs,” Pfefferkorn said. “Although—a doorman. That I miss.”

“You have the priest.”

“That’s true.”

Bill’s gaze settled on the hardcover on the cot. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Be my guest.”

Bill opened Vassily Nabochka and paged to the end. He read. He closed the book and looked up.

“Well, that’s shit,” he said.

Pfefferkorn agreed.

“What about you? Working on anything?”

“Oh no. I’m done with that for good.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Don’t be,” Pfefferkorn said. “I’m not.”

“Not even a little?”

“I’ve said everything I needed to say.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“When you know, you know.”

“And so that’s that.”

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“Kudos,” Bill said. “It’s a rare writer who knows when it’s time to shut up.”

Pfefferkorn smiled.