Damon Knight - Orbit 20

Karath lived in a large villa overlooking the Adriatic. As I entered, I looked around the hallway. Several green beanbag chairs stood next to heavy Victorian tables covered with illuminated manuscripts. Colorful tapestries depicting minstrels and scribes hung on the walls. The servo, a friendly silver ball with cylindrical limbs, ushered me to the study.

The study was clean and Spartan. To my right, a computer console stood next to the wall. To the left, a large window overlooked the blue sea. Karath sat at his glass-topped desk, typing. He looked up and motioned to a straight-backed wood chair. I sat down.

As I fidgeted, he got up and paced to the window. I had seen him on the screen a few times but in person he seemed shorter. He was wiry, with thick dark hair and a small hard face. He looked, I thought apprehensively, like a young tough, in spite of his age. I waited, trying to picture myself in this house, typing away, making friends, workshopping stories, getting drunk, having an affair and doing all the things a writer does.

Karath turned and paced to the desk. As he picked up a folder, which I recognized as my file, he muttered, “You’re Alena Doren-matt£.”

I tried to smile. “That’s me.”

“What makes you think you belong here?”

“I want the best training in the novella I can get.”

“That’s a crock of shit. You want to fuck and get drunk and sit around thinking artistic thoughts and congratulating yourself on your sensitivity. You won’t sweat blood over a typewriter. You want to be coddled.”

He threw my file across the desk. It landed on the floor with a plop. I picked it up, clutching it to my chest.

“Let me fill you in, Dorenmattd. There’s nothing but cow pies in that file. Understand? I don’t think you could win a local.”

“I won a local last year, I placed first in the BosWash.” He couldn’t have reviewed my citations very carefully. “Why’d you ask me here anyway? You could have insulted me over the relay.”

“Maybe the truth wouldn’t sink in over the relay. I like to say what I think face to face. You’re not a writer. Your stories are nothing but clichés and adolescent tragedy. You can’t plot and you can’t create characters. You have nothing to say. You’d make a fool of yourself in Olympic competition. Cow pies, that’s what you write. Go home and learn how to socialize so you don’t ruin your life.”

My face was burning. “I don’t know why anybody trains with you. If the other trainers were that mean, no one would ever write again.”

He flew at me, seized the file, and tore it in half, scattering papers over the floor. Terrified, I shrank back.

“Let me tell you something, Dorenmatté. A writer doesn’t give up. He takes punishment, listens to criticism, and keeps writing. If he doesn’t make it, it’s because he wasn’t any good. I don’t run a nursery, I train writers. Now get out of here. I have work to do.”

I stood up, realizing that I couldn’t respond without bursting into tears. Grasping at my last threads of dignity, I turned and walked slowly out of the room.

I could have applied to another trainer. Instead I moped for months. At last my father issued an ultimatum: I would have to move to a dormitory and learn to socialize or enter a competition.

Even my parents were deserting me. I moved out and rented an apartment in Montreal. I stayed inside for weeks, unable to move, barely able to eat. One night I tried to hang myself, but I could never tie knots properly and only fell to the floor, acquiring a nasty bruise on my thigh. Fate had given me another chance.

I had forgotten that the PanAmerican Games were being held in Montreal that year. Somehow, even in my hopeless state, they drew me. I found myself entering the qualifying meet in paragraphs. I lugged my typewriter to the amphitheater and sat with a thousand others at desks under hot lights while the spectators came and went, cheering for their favorites. Several writers made use of the always-popular “creative anguish” ploy, slapping their foreheads in frustration while throwing away wads of paper. Ramon Hogarth, winner of the West Coast local, danced around his desk after completing each sentence. My style was standard. I smoked heavily and gulped coffee while slouching over my machine. Occasionally I clutched my gut in agony, drawing some applause.

I qualified for the semifinals and was given a small room filled with monitoring devices. The judges, of course, had to watch for cheating, and spectators all over the hemisphere would be viewing us. I tried to preserve my poise at the typewriter, but gradually I forgot everything except my novella. I wrote and rewrote, rarely taking breaks, knowing that I was up against trained contenders. Whenever I became discouraged, I remembered the mocking voice of Phaedon Karath.

I made it to the finals. I recall that I envied the short-story writers, who had a four-month deadline, and pitied the novelists, who had to suffer for a year. I can remember the times when my words flowed freely, but there were moments when I was ready to disqualify myself. I agonized while awaiting the decision and wondered if I could ever face another race.

I placed sixth. Delighted, I got drunk and daringly sent off my sixth-place novella to Phaedon Karath. A few days later, his reply appeared on my telex: still cow pies but improvement stop COME TO ITALY STOP SEE IF YOU CAN TAKE REAL WORKOUT STOP.

At the villa I had to work on sentences for months before I was allowed to go on to paragraphs. Karath insisted on extensive rewriting, although constant rewriting could kill you off in competition as easily as sloppy unreworked first drafts. He rarely praised anyone.

We workshopped a lot, tearing each other’s work apart. Reina Takake, a small golden-skinned woman who became my closest friend, used to run from the room in tears. The more she cried, the more Karath picked on her. We would spend hours together planning tortures for him and occasionally writing about the tortures in vivid detail.

At last Reina packed and left, saying good-bye to no one. Karath told us of her departure during a workshop, watching us with his gray eyes as he said that Reina couldn’t cut it, that she had no talent, and that it was useless to waste time on someone who couldn’t take criticism.

I hated him for that. I stood up and screamed that he was a petty tyrant and a sadist. I told him he had no understanding of gentle souls. I said a few other things.

He waited until I finished. Then he looked around the room and said, “The rest of you can continue. Dorenmatté, step outside.”

Trembling, I followed him out. He led me down the hall and stopped in front of my room. He turned, grabbed me by the arms, and shoved me inside. I stumbled and almost fell.

“Stay in there,” he said. “You’re not coming out until you finish a specific assignment.”

“What assignment?” I asked, puzzled.

“The novella you’re going to write, and rewrite if necessary. You’ll write about Takake and about me if you like. Do it any way you please, but you have to write about Takake. Now get to work.”

He slammed the door quickly. I heard him turn the lock. I screamed, bellowed, and cursed until I was hoarse. Karath did not respond.

I spent a few hours in futile weeping and a few days in plotting an escape. Food was brought to me, occasionally with wine; the upper door panel would open and the amiable servo would lower the food into my room. At first I refused it but after a few days I was too hungry to resist.

I soon realized I’d never get out of my windowless room until I wrote the novella. I took a bath, then bitterly went to work. At first I rambled, noting every passing thought, incorporating some of the paragraphs Reina and I had written about torturing Karath. But soon a particular plot suggested itself. I outlined the story and began again.