Page 29 of Telling Tales


  Instantaneously with that recognition, it dawned on him why, against all his principles and his inclination, he was permitting the woman in the green dress to cross-examine him, to probe his inmost being. That long ago afternoon the accusing teacher had been wearing a green dress. Because he despised her, he needed to vindicate himself.

  “You know,” the woman said, breaking the silence, “I’m interested in your book. One writer to another.” Now she was pressing the volume against her chest with her arms folded over it. “Will you sell me this copy? At the original price.”

  “No.”

  “Even if I give you my word I’ll destroy it by some other means than burning as soon as I’ve finished reading?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll give you only the most superficial reason. Allowing you to read the book would defeat my purpose in coming to this town, where I had the luck to find a copy. Since I wrote the book it’s my responsibility to destroy it. By burning.”

  “Given that you and I have been having such an honest and open conversation, will you concede, just between the two of us, that I was right? The truth is you did steal the book.”

  “Technical truth is not the truth. You can’t steal your own book. Not even a copy of it.”

  “Look, I know where you got the title. Just as you pretended to have a coughing spell to make me believe you were absorbed by the second book you took from the shelf, so I wouldn’t suspect you’d slipped the first book into the pocket of your raincoat…in the same way you dropped the last three words of a memorable phrase written by one the great greats to make it seem you hadn’t stolen your title.”

  “Wrong again. I had no doubt that almost all of the very few into whose hands the book would find its way would instantly identify the source the title was taken from and would supply the omitted words for themselves. Besides, if you really are a writer, you have to know it’s an accepted practice to use well-known phrases for titles. In fact, a great Southern writer swiped three words from the very sentence my title is lifted from for the title of his greatest novel.

  During another long silence the woman allowed another smile, this one a full smile to take over her face.

  “You’re right.” she finally got out, “I’ve misjudged you. Will you accept my apology for calling you a thief?”

  “No. It’s hypocrisy for you to apologize when you still believe I stole the book. You can’t help it. But I don’t need your exoneration.”

  “Since I’ve taken an interest in you—a writer’s interest, though I should say it has its human dimension as well—I hope you won’t think me presumptuous for asking whether you’ve ever considered…well, getting help for what has to be a terrible compulsion—a kind of infantiicide it is—to steal and burn your own book.”

  “No. Now you’ll have to excuse me, madam. I must get on with it.”

  “It turns out you’ve been graciously responsive even though you…

  “Thank you. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye. Do you know what that word means?”

  “Of course. Fat chance of that.”

  He cut the final moment of silence between himself and the woman in the green dress with a chilling laugh.

  “The book, please. It’s mine.”

  “Oh. I almost forgot. I hope you won’t think it was trying to…to steal it.”

  As she unfolded her arms and handed him the small volume, she sighed. With polish on their nails, the color of fresh blood, her fingers, he noticed, were long, slender, beautifully tapered.

  Slipping the book into the left-hand pocket of his raincoat, he shambled off in the direction opposite from that he’d taken when he’d left the bookstall.

  #

  “Well, governor, seems you’ve done it. Stumbled your way through. My taste buds, or I should say thirst buds, tell me it’s just about time for you know what.”

  “So, how’d I do? Be honest.”

  “Couldn’t be anything else. Sorry to have to say I have some reservations.”

  “Let’s have them. And get it over with between us.”

  “Now don’t be bitter. You asked for them.”

  “Okay, okay. Shoot.”

  “It’s not life, you know. It’s a tale.”

  “What then are your reservations?”

  “Well, the ending, denouement, as you’d style it. It’s a bit flat and far too drawn out. The dialogue between the woman in the green dress and…let’s just call him the man…is anticlimactic, a transparent device to wrap things up for the reader. It’s not just unnecessary, it’s condescending. And, as I was afraid you were going to, you dragged it out with all those accursed details and particulars of yours.”

  “Such as…?”

  “Such as the policeman’s cap, the smile of the proprietor of the bookstore, the fingers of the woman in the green dress. Adjectives, adjectives, adjectives. Even some adverbs. That ‘suddenly’, when the man makes the connection with the teacher who’d accused him spoils everything after you’ve quite nicely prepared the reader by the echoing of the word ‘association.’”

  “You’re wrong. What you’re finding fault with is necessary for realism. To enable, no, to compel the reader to believe.”

  “I, though perhaps mistaken, am of another opinion, as a wily Greek once said. But hell, getting the tale told, like making it through life, is one long compromise. Comes with the territory, as Willy Loman’s neighbor Charlie says.”

  “I can’t pass up the opportunity to observe your use just then of the adjectives—verboten parts of speech—‘wily’ and ‘long.’ Anyway, to turn your doctrine of necessity back on you, I did it the way I had to.”

  “Touché, governor. That you did.”

  “Which leads me to the question you’ve never answered to my satisfaction. How can you be so sure I summoned, as you call it, you to have your story told?”

  “The answer’s now self-evident, isn’t it? Because you’ve done it. You had to tell my story. Otherwise it wouldn’t be told.”

  “Your reasoning makes time run backward. Which is an absurdity.”

  “So absurd physicists these days are proving it’s possible. Don’t read very widely, do you, governor.”

  “Such stuff is beyond my down-to-earth brain. But there’s another unanswered question.”

  “The light’s still green.”

  “Don’t you think after I’ve done my part to the best of what you consider my limited ability, I have a right to know what the book’s about?”

  “My, oh my. Question shows you don’t understand the tale even though you’ve told it.”

  At this point, after he’s been sitting in my reading chair still as a dummy all morning, I see him stir.

  “Wait! Before you leave. There’s one last piece of unfinished business between us.”

  “You do find it necessary to wrap up the package and tie the ends in a neat bow, don’t you, governor. Closure, as you’d call it.

  Well, let’s have it, and be quick to the point. Time for me to be out of here.”

  “Now that the tale’s not only been told but also has been inscribed on these sheets of paper, which you’ve noticed are yellow with blue-green lines, what am I to do with it?” I wave the thin sheaf at him. “Incidentally I’ve come to hate these pages.”

  “Sorry you asked that question, governor, really sorry. And mighty disappointed.”

  “What in God’s name is wrong with my asking? Since it’s your tale, obviously you’re the one to address the question to.”

  “All I can say, and I deeply regret having to say it, is if after having put my story down in your hand, at the same time you were rendering it with your lips, you don’t know what to do with it, I’m not going to tell you.”

  On that sour note he draws his hands from the pockets of his raincoat and plops them on the arms of my reading chair so his stubby fingers overlap the ends. At that instant he
does indeed look like Ramses II. Then, grunting, he pulls himself up onto his feet. Hands in front of him, fingers clawed, he’s bent over an invisible walker. Wearily, as though he’d exhausted himself telling the tale, he shuffles across the room, passing so close to me, pen still in my left hand, now pointing in the air at nothing, that I can’t help wondering how long it’s been since he’s bathed. Phew!

  “Have anything in the pocket of your raincoat? You know, to pick you up.” I fling it at him, sounding as brutal as I know how.

  Ignoring me, as if I weren’t there, he grasps the doorknob with his left hand.

  “Haven’t you the decency, the common decency, to thank me?” Though I try to make my voice sternly reproachful, it comes out shrill, even more sepulchral than his bodiless tone. “I did tell your story, for Christ’s sake. Leaving me exhausted while consuming one whole morning of my life. Of which I don’t know how many I have left.” The note of pleading I hear in my final words gives rise to an intense feeling of self-disgust.

  “Thank you?” he echoes, changing the tone from entreaty to contempt. When he turns his head around toward me, the scowl on his face bespeaks the darkest scorn. “I prefer not to.”

  As he twists the doorknob, it screeches, the head on a neck being wrung. The door swings slowly open, hinges creaking. When it closes behind him, I can’t hear a sound.

  #

  To get back to you, should you still be with me. Now you know why I had to tell this tale. As I’ve done.

  #####

  a note about the writer

  John Wheatcroft has published seven novels, three short story collections and eight

  volumes of poetry. His fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and

  literary journals in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, England, and Scotland, and he has also

  appeared in numerous anthologies. His novel, Catherine, Her Book was chosen as one

  of the best novels of the year by The New York Times, and he is also the author of the

  award-winning play, Ofoti. During his distinguished career he has served as a juror

  for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Mr. Wheatcroft is a WWII veteran and professor

  emeritus at Bucknell University. He lives in Lewisburg, PA.

  other books by

  JOHN WHEATCROFT

  FICTION

  Edie Tells

  Catherine, Her Book

  The Beholder’s Eye

  Killer Swan

  Mother of All Loves

  Trio with Four players

  The Education of Malcom Palmer

  Slow Exposures

  Answering Fire

  POETRY

  Death of a Clown

  Prodigal Son

  A Voice from the Hump

  Ordering Demons

  The Stare on the Donkey’s Face

  Random Necessities

  Gowpen: A Double Handful of Poems, with Karl Patten,

  (limited edition)

  Declaring Generations, with Peter Balakian (limited edition)

  The Fugitive Self: New and Selected Poems

  DRAMA

  Ofoti, a play for stage and television

  A Fourteenth-Century Poet’s Vision of Christ, a poetic drama

  for voices and instruments, music by Thomas Beversdorf

  INTERVIEWS

  Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking

 
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