Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘That’s how I’m feeling right now. Writing a novel is a war and I think I’m winning at last.’

‘I’m really glad to hear that,’ I replied. ‘So are you going to give me some clue as to what it’s about?’

‘Afraid not,’ you said, shaking your head and grinning like a mischievous child. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘I’m hardly in a position to,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if I’ve been willing to tell you about mine.’

‘Exactly,’ you said. ‘You must be getting close to a final draft, anyway?’

‘Another six weeks or so. And you?’

‘Around the same.’

‘What?’ I asked, staring at you in astonishment. ‘But you’ve only been working on it since November.’

‘I know, but it’s just coming together a lot more quickly than I imagined. These things can happen. Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in about three weeks, you know. Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six.’

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ I said, unsure whether it was or not. I couldn’t even conceive of writing a novel in so short a time, but I was aware that you’d often worked in sustained periods of creative intensity.

‘Actually, I have some news too,’ I said carefully, praying that my announcement wouldn’t destroy your positive mood.

‘Oh yes?’ you asked. ‘What’s that?’

‘You remember Garrett Colby?’

‘The children’s writer with the talking animals?’

‘He’s not a children’s writer,’ I said with a sigh. ‘You’ve been told this before. Many times. They’re adult stories.’

‘With talking animals.’

‘Murakami has lots of talking animals in his books,’ I said. ‘As does Bulgakov. And Philip Pullman.’

‘Yes, but you can’t compare that little twat to any of them,’ you said.

‘Don’t call him that. It’s not nice.’

‘You don’t like him any more than I do.’

‘I know, but still.’

‘Fine,’ you said, laughing a little. ‘I’ll be nice. What about him, anyway? Has he had a breakthrough of some sort? Decided that his novel needs some trees that can dance the tango or a few lamp posts that can juggle while singing show tunes?’

‘No. Actually, he’s sold them.’

‘What do you mean, sold them? Sold what?’

‘Sold the stories. As a collection.’

You put down your cutlery and looked at me with an incredulous expression on your face. ‘You don’t mean to an actual publisher?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Jesus Christ.’ You stared across the room, refusing to meet my eye, and I could see that you were allowing yourself a few moments to digest this information and decide how to react to it. ‘Who bought them?’ you asked when you finally looked back.

‘You won’t believe this,’ I said. ‘But it was Rufus.’

You didn’t even blink. ‘Not my Rufus?’ you asked.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I replied. ‘If that’s how we think of him.’

I had only met Rufus Shawcross twice, and briefly on both occasions. The first time was only a few weeks after I’d started dating you and I was waiting in the lobby of your publishing house while you met with him in his office upstairs. Afterwards, you came down together and I could tell by the expression on your face that things hadn’t gone well, but you couldn’t avoid introducing me. I liked him immediately. He was exactly my idea of what an editor should look like: button-down shirt, thick-rimmed glasses, floppy hair, boyishly handsome, looking like he needed to shave about once every second month. The second time was several years later, after you’d had all those novels rejected and effectively been dropped. We’d run into him in a health-food store on Glasshouse Street and the whole thing had been terribly awkward. You’d pretended to be friendly but everything you said was clearly intended as an insult and he seemed upset by your rudeness. For my part, I was simply embarrassed. I knew the poor man had taken no pleasure in turning down your novels, but he’d had no choice. After all, they weren’t any good.

‘He must have lost his mind,’ you said, trying to sound chipper, but I could tell that it was taking every fibre of your being to stop yourself flinging our bowls at the wall and watching the food slowly trace a furious, misunderstood path down the paintwork.

‘He’s actually quite good,’ I said.

‘Rufus?’

‘No, Garrett.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Maurice, you haven’t even read him,’ I pointed out. ‘You don’t know.’

‘I didn’t go down on the Titanic either but I know that it wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience,’ you said, shaking your head. ‘Fucking Rufus. Did you hear what he got? The advance, I mean.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He didn’t mention it.’

‘It probably wasn’t very much.’

It was, actually. He’d been offered one hundred thousand pounds for the story collection and a novel to follow. But I chose not to tell you that.

‘Well, good luck to him, I suppose,’ you said, after a lengthy pause filled with a barely concealed frenzy of anger.

I sighed. A pleasant evening together had disintegrated yet again. I wasn’t sorry that I’d brought it up but I wanted to let it go now. Looking back, I wonder if I wanted to hurt you by telling you Garrett’s news. You had hurt me, after all. You had hurt me physically . Perhaps I wanted revenge. For even if you’d played it cool and pretended that whatever happened with my students held little meaning to you, I knew that you would brood over it for weeks.

‘Something else happened today,’ I said after a prolonged silence, ready to tell you the second piece of news. ‘One of my students got thrown off the course.’

‘Really?’ you said, sitting up straight now. ‘Who?’

‘Do you remember Maja Drazkowski?’

You frowned. ‘Which one is she?’

‘When you came to talk to the students, she was the one who looked like she’d rather fuck you than listen to you speak.’

‘You’ll have to narrow it down.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ I said, laughing.

‘Yes, I remember her,’ you admitted. ‘What happened? Why did she get cut?’

‘Plagiarism,’ I replied.

‘You’re kidding!’

‘No.’

‘Who did she plagiarize?’

‘No one I’d ever heard of, to be honest. A story that had been published in the New Yorker three or four years ago.’

You stood up, gathering the bowls and plates, and began carrying them over to the sink to rinse them off before putting them in the dishwasher. When I rose to help, you placed a hand on my shoulder and told me to stay where I was, that I’d had a busy day and should relax.

‘How was she caught out?’ you asked.

‘The tutor who was marking my group recognized it. Apparently, he’s quite a fan of the New Yorker and keeps all his back issues. She was called in this morning, presented with the evidence, and the stupid girl said it was nothing more than a coincidence.’

‘A five-thousand-word coincidence?’ you asked, laughing.

‘Well, exactly. That was never going to fly. Anyway, she gave up that defence quickly enough. Within a couple of minutes the tears were flowing and she was telling us how she felt she didn’t belong on the course, that she couldn’t compete with the others. I could have written something, of course , she told us, but it wouldn’t have been good enough and I refuse to give in sub-standard work. I just refuse. ’

‘But she’s happy to give in someone else’s work?’ you said.

‘That’s what I said! And then she just started crying again. Anyway, the whole thing went on for an hour and became rather tedious, and when we reached the point where she started telling us how her uncle used to make her sit on his lap when she was a little girl and she wondered whether this was what led to such behaviour on her part—’