Bartleby

- Ankan Kazi, English-III

As if balancing the fly on his nose, a bit of lather stuck under his ears, he walked down the steps and stared at the gaping crack in the wall opposite. His landlady heard his stare and came out with her hair undone. That dress, he says, don’t that look a bit previous, love? conscious of an identity early in the morning. Why don’t you eat with us, I’ve been frying all morning, she says, slightly hurt by his attack. He grins at her and says that he has to work on this thing he’s planning to write. Why do I think I’ve heard that before? she wonders aloud.

Opposite his small window, hangs the picture of a whale. His desk is extremely well-kept. Three rows of books, a picture of himself taking a picture of a fort, a desk calendar which only says 17 and a box of writing materials. A pigeon squats outside his window and grunts. The sill is already caked with shit. He takes out a small pad and writes down a few lines he thought about, turning in his bed, while sleeping. The first one is a general insight on life, like Life is like a… but he doesn’t know how it fits into anything. It definitely doesn’t fit into the half-dozen ideas he has for a story. Nor is it good enough to be an opening for a poem. It’s trite and useless, he decides and scratches it out. The other sentence he writes down could be the beginning of a novel. It does not reveal anything about any plot or character, but looks like a whole. It looks like it could encapsulate any story, location or even emotion. It lends itself to a structure, he says aloud to himself, smiling. He chews the end of his pencil for a minute and then thinks that if it indeed reveals so much, it’s possible that it may also not reveal anything. Seven years of exercise and trying to think literarily has taught him to think like this. One of the problems with writing early in the morning is that it’s antithetical to whatever I think of at night. He hates himself for thinking up such childish aphorisms. He decides to keep the line, however, and gets off his bed.

He peeps inside Padma Pickles Fresh (in blazing red) and sneezes at the dust. I have always wondered, he tells Padma, if it’s pidgin or present continuous. Shut up and come back later, yells Padma. She is wearing a bad temper on her eyebrows and a yellow shawl over her head, which she takes off and beats violently on the rickety counter. Small jars of pickles, arranged neatly around her, shudder for a moment. Padma, he says, emotionally, I’m hearing voices- so many voices- inside my head. I am not falling for that again, she says irritably. I meant it when I said you're nothing but a numbskull. I’m going to be a writer, he replies, I just need you to tell me- but Padma has had enough. She pulls her hair back and tries to jump at him.

He drums his fingers on the desk and begins: It was a dark and stormy night… no, that’s too easy. He looks at a brooding pigeon outside his window and begins: You are reading the latest novel by so-and-so… Is that a good reference or too recondite? Re-con-dite, he says slowly and twirls his tongue around the word. Con, he says. A low whistle escapes from his lips. Suddenly, he is blinded by sleep.

His friend and poet, who likes to call himself The Faun, encourages him to expand his horizons. There is literature outside literature, he says and pauses tritely. Why don’t you watch art films? I have been greatly inspired by- and he reels off names from east Europe, central Europe and east Asia. I have been greatly influenced by Mallarme, but no less by this excellent Swedish filmmaker (have you heard of him?) and so on…

He goes for a session of world cinema at a small, sparse theatre. He falls asleep in the first half hour of almost every film. He tries to look interested and awake, he reads up on concepts but fails to relate to most of them, including the nudity, which he thinks is uncalled for in a serious film. Finally, after three months of wading through incomprehensible slush, he watches a striking film that arrests him completely.

It was also slow, but I was getting used to that, he tells Padma. This average guy- since he is bored- lets himself be used as a double for a film shoot. He has to pretend he’s dead and lying face down on this dirty, big river in Taipei or,… I forget, anyway, so the river is dirty, very dirty- but he does it anyway and they pay him off in a way… although, before that I think he meets this girl who takes him to the shoot in the first place. After the shoot, however, he comes down with this massive pain in his neck- which completely throws him off- and his parents- it’s a nuclear family- come together and it was touching how the father… no, I can’t say that- that’s a plot give-away. But the pain is the focus. It was beautiful.

Why can’t you tell a coherent story? Padma asks. I still have no idea what you’re talking about. He mumbles something about his pain. Her hair shines light brown in the sun. If you want to write, why don’t you do it? Padma asks. I don’t want to be a stupid scrivener, he says, haughtily. I hate to quote him, but Faun says: man is poem: you’re either a verse, /or averse/ to it.

What wonderful role models you have.

This reminds me of you, he says and reads:

‘Anglares began to tell a moving, stupid and somber tale. A man enters a hotel and asks for a room. He is given room 35. Coming down a few minutes later, he tells the clerk: I have a bad memory, so every time I come in, I’ll tell you my name… Mr. Delouit… and you say my room number. The clerk agrees. Shortly after, he returns and says: Mr. Delouit. -Room 35. –Thank you. A moment later, a man, extremely agitated, covered in mud, his face bloodied beyond recognition, stumbles in. ‘Mr. Delouit’, he says. ‘What? Mr. Delouit just went up’, says the clerk. ‘Yes, but I fell out the window. My room number, please?’’

She doesn’t say anything.

He tries to pretend he is in great pain. It is a strange affectation. He twists around in his bed, clutching his jaw, or his ears. He grimaces to himself. He lies still for a minute and starts twisting again. He could have sworn his tooth grew up into the roof of his mouth. Is that blood, he shrieks.

…at any rate he lifted his feet uncommonly high, and _______ was dumbfounded at the enormous size of his shoe soles… the beetle’s soft, warm body was pressed on the cool glass.

Can I write something as monotonous and beautiful as this? he asks himself. Did Sara not write because of her father?

He developed a habit of talking to a picture called Rrose Selavy. Did you know, he tells Rrose, that Kafka is my direct predecessor? Rrose snorts and flicks his fur over his shoulder. No one, not even the rain has such small hands, he tells Rrose. Rrose pouts and looks away.

“On reviewing my earlier childhood I find the predominant reflection. . . .”

Most of her life was spent under the shadow of her father. Like most of her father’s works, she was also a fragment. Or perhaps even- a figment. As if something to work himself in opposition to. When she was just a baby, her father wrote about her: “Send me the very feel of her sweet Flesh, the very look and motion of that mouth—O, I could drive myself mad about her.” She was a delicate creature, as Griggs informs us, dressed in lace and muslin. She hated growing up in the rude farmhouse, being bathed in a room where men came in and went out. Her father wanted her to dress in white, although his more famous friend insisted on colourful dresses. Sara’s father loved her very much and told her fairy stories when he slipped into her bed at nights. In spite of all this, when her mother came visiting, she flew to her and wished never to be separated from her. Her father was hurt. As he fought with imaginary visions of splendor and decay, he also fought against this separation from his flesh. Like most of his works, she was also a fragment. A figment that floated far away from him.

At the age of twenty, she came to visit her father again at Highgate. Griggs, in his dramatic prose, writes that nobody was prepared “for the dazzling vision of loveliness which stepped across the threshold one cold December day”. Her father was left spellbound. He was also crossed with deep agitation when she took up with a cousin who had written a stupid book on the West Indies. Griggs allows us to interpret this agitation as ‘jealousy’. Jealous about what? Another masterpiece being snatched away from him? Another masterpiece like Christabel, also unfinished? Caught in this spell, anxious to bat it away, he talked to her. Or, as Sara says, he discoursed. For she did not remember a word of it. He traversed “the star–paved road, taking in the whole heavens in his circuit”. The erudition of a man of letters or the desperation of a drowning castaway clutching at the stars?

Sara intended to end each section of her autobiography with a reflection- usually of a moral nature. After about twenty-six pages, she wrote “on reviewing my earlier childhood I find the predominant reflection. . . .” and stopped. She never wrote anything after that.


So that, in the end

So that, in the end, he doesn’t know how to end. He sits up and stretches. A pigeon squats in his window sill, caked with shit, dozing. There is nothing to write about, except this obligation to write, he murmurs to himself, petting his dutch wife. Did this need any utterance? Was this not, perhaps, filtered through the ages until spoken out loud? He looked out of his window through a tea strainer. A gimmick he picked up from a film. He heard an ambulance in the distance, shrieking at the night, shot through with pain.