I was at my desk, working myself up to reply to an email I’d been putting off for months, when I felt a cold prod in between my shoulder blades. Then I heard a dark, phlegmy voice:
‘Choose your favourite writer, now!’
I started laughing.
‘Really, now?
‘Yes!’
‘Come on, there’s no need for stick-up threats and violence, we can discuss this over coffee.’
‘This isn’t a discussion!’ the voice replied. ‘Off the top of your head, now!’
‘Well, I’d probably say Gogol, maybe Walser, Gombrowicz, or Kharms. On some days Kafka. When I’m depressed and want to feel worse, a few lines from Beckett usually does the trick, if I want to cheer up I read Svevo…’
‘Stop waffling! Choose one! Now!’
I kept my cool.
‘Let me think about it,’ I said, ‘come back in a week or so.’
‘A week?’
‘If you can do it online, tomorrow might even be possible.’ I felt the gun slither down my back.
‘Alright, I suppose…tomorrow then.’
‘I’ll send you a link to the meeting room,’ I said, ‘speak then.’
I heard footsteps, the slam of a door, followed by an increasingly weak cough.
I’m a man of my word and I’ve never missed a meeting in my life. But I didn’t know who to send the link to. So I sent it to everyone on my contacts list, presuming the menace, which was how I thought of this gun-wielding maniac with a sore throat, was someone I knew. Then I closed my laptop.
I spent all night agonising, making lists of writers I liked and then of the writers that they liked. (I like Bolaño, who reads Borges under the table, who reads Stevenson through an eyeglass, who reads Hazlitt despondently, convinced he’ll never be able to write so immaculately. Do I like Hazlitt? Yes, I think I do…) I forgot to eat dinner, and when I eventually drifted off, I dreamt I was working as a bellboy in hell, carrying the tattered suitcases of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake, who were staying in a twin room, and both of whom I’d omitted from the list.
In the morning, I still hadn’t made a decision. I called in sick at work, opened my laptop and entered the meeting room. I spent all day there, trying to imagine the press of cold steel against my head. But no one turned up, even after I re-sent the link.
At midnight, I collapsed into bed. This time I dreamt I was babysitting a young Thomas de Quincey and Marguerite Duras, who were siblings or possibly cousins, and got on badly. (They sat on the floor with their backs to each other and cried their eyes out). I woke up with a fever, which got worse over the next few days, until it confined me to my bed for good.
From then on, I kept the laptop open on my bedside table. I spent every moment in the meeting room, getting weaker and more deranged the day. Still, no one joined, not even by chance or out of curiosity. Also, even though I didn’t change the locks, the menace didn’t turn up in my room again either.
And there was no need for any of this, since my favourite writer is Gogol, and I could have just said that and left it there.
*