A Ladder to the Sky(52)

‘Is that a new shirt?’ I asked as we made our way towards the classroom shortly before your talk was due to begin. ‘And new jeans? Have you bought all new clothes for today?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ you said, and I looked away from you because you were blushing and seeing people embarrassed has always made me embarrassed too. They were new clothes, of course. I couldn’t decide whether the fact that you were making such an effort for a group of aspiring writers was endearing or pathetic. Did you want to impress them that badly?

When we walked in, I noticed how the students – my students – looked at you with more reverence than they’d ever shown towards me. I don’t think I’m being paranoid, Maurice, when I say that it was as if they believed that, finally, a real writer had come to speak to them, simply because you happened to have a penis. Even the girls, who all liked to pretend that they were such staunch feminists, looked at you with more respect than they ever did me. Especially the girls, actually.

I began by introducing you, mentioning the names of both your published novels, and made some predictable joke about how easy it had been to persuade you to visit as we were sleeping together. Without any preamble, you reached for a copy of The Treehouse – you always favoured it over Two Germans – and read from a section of the book near the centre, where a young boy collapses through the floorboards of the titular building and hangs there for most of the afternoon until a passing farmer arrives to save him. When you were finished, they applauded ecstatically and I could see from the expression on your face how much their approval meant to you.

‘I’m not going to ask Maurice any questions,’ I said when they quietened down. ‘I already know everything there is to know about him.’

‘Not quite everything,’ you said, to laughter.

‘So, I’ll leave it to all of you instead.’

Maja started the questioning, as I knew she would. She had spent the entire reading staring at you, as if you were the Second Coming of Christ, and it was obvious from the expression on her face that she found you highly attractive. I’d like to say that she was undressing you with her eyes but it would probably be more truthful to say that she was stripping you naked and falling to her knees to fellate you. I can’t recall what she asked but I remember you took her question as simply a starting point for a monologue about the current state of the literary world, which, in your view, was appalling. I tuned out, thinking about where we might go for dinner afterwards. And yes, I allowed my eyes to rest on one of the boys, Nicholas Bray, who was very young but very cute and who I’d fancied from the start.

Several more questions were asked before Garrett Colby raised his hand and you turned to him with a look that said you recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t quite remember where.

‘I wondered whether you could tell us what you’re working on at the moment,’ he asked, and you shook your head.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ you told him. ‘As I told you before, Garrett, I prefer not to talk about work in progress. Just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’

‘Just in case someone steals my idea.’

‘But an idea is just an idea,’ he countered. ‘You could outline The Great Gatsby for us all right now and it’s not as if any of us could just sit down and write it.’

‘No,’ you agreed. ‘But still, I’d prefer not to.’

‘Of course, this leads us to a bigger question, doesn’t it?’ said Garrett.

‘Does it?’

‘Yes. The concept of literary ownership itself, or even literary theft. Of whether our stories belong to us at all.’

‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at,’ you said, but I could see where he was going and wondered how he had the nerve. Looking back, it was pretty rude of him to treat a visiting writer like this, let alone one who had achieved the success that you’d achieved.

‘Well, take Two Germans,’ continued Garrett. ‘It wasn’t really your idea, was it? You were simply telling Erich Ackermann’s story and presenting it as a work of fiction.’

‘But it is a work of fiction,’ you insisted. ‘Not everything in that book is exactly as Erich detailed it to me. I took what he told me about his own life, embellished some details, ignored a few others. There were several things he told me about Oskar G?tt, for example, that might have influenced the reader’s opinion of that character, but I chose not to write about them as I had a very particular idea of how I wanted to present the relationship between the two boys.’

‘What sort of things?’ he asked.

‘I’d rather not go into all that,’ you said. ‘Once I start down that road I become obliged to talk about every aspect of the story and to separate Erich’s personal history from my own creation. Ultimately, it’s a novel and you should treat it as such. Don’t expect facts in fiction. That’s not what novels are about.’

‘Then what are they about?’ asked handsome Nicholas, piping up now.

‘I’ve often wondered that myself,’ you said with a smile. ‘I don’t really know, if I’m honest with you. I only know that I enjoy reading them. And writing them.’

‘So you are working on something new, then?’ asked Garrett, persistent little Garrett.