Chapter 9: WRITING HER INTO THE STORY
During my six months in Knysna, I spent a considerable amount of time in its modest, but surprisingly well-stocked library, doing research on the place, its history and its people. At the front of the library there was a small, but prominent, display of books written by local authors, only one of which was instantly recognisable. The Amazon Code was a high-class, action-packed thriller, about a group of scientists who had discovered a secret code, written into the X-chromosome that, once activated, facilitated the breeding of a super-race of female warriors. The luminous-green DNA double helix glowing against a stark black background with the title picked out in large, gold-embossed capital letters proclaimed its status as a bestseller. The book, that had been written by South African author, Steven Small, had won two prestigious debut novel awards, had spent two weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and had enjoyed an intense spate of international popularity a couple of years earlier. It was still on the bestseller lists of most bookstores, albeit considerably further down the list than when it had first appeared on the bookshelves. The Librarian at the Knysna library breathlessly confided in me that the author, who had grown up in Knysna, was temporarily renting a holiday cottage just outside of town for peace and privacy so as to facilitate the process of writing his next book. “He personally signed the Library’s copy of The Amazon Code,” she whispered, clearly still completely star struck.
I wasted no further time thinking about Steven Small, as I was absolutely certain that an author of his stature would never be interested in contributing to the work of an unpublished, would-be debut author such as myself. But, as fate would have it, two months later I met the man himself as I was enjoying a beer at Harry B’s, a popular Knysna pub, on a Friday evening. It was actually my second beer that I was nursing as I waited for the young lady who was to have been my date for the evening to arrive. She was over thirty minutes late and was not responding to my text messages. I had just decided to write off the evening and to pick up a burger-to-go and some videos for a lonely night in, when a tall, stout man with a full red beard and a commanding presence threw open the door to the pub. He hesitated on the doorstep for a moment, as it waiting for his presence to be noticed, and then he swaggered in, checking the responses of the patrons seated at the small tables on the way to the bar. He had the air of one who was used to being recognized and who thoroughly enjoyed the attention. The man ordered his double whisky-on-the-rocks and threw the banknote at the barman, flamboyantly exhorting him to, “keep the change,” and only then did he deign to notice me sitting right there beside him.
“Quiet for a Friday night, hey?” he spoke in a deep, booming voice, his restless eyes roving the premises as if seeking out someone more important than I. Mildly amused at the man’s arrogance, and apparently having nothing better lined up for the evening, I decided to satisfy my curiosity as to his identity.
“You look familiar. Have I met you before?” I asked, deliberately pandering to his ego, but also telling the truth. The man did look slightly familiar to me in the manner of a celebrity, whose picture you have often seen, but have never met in person.
It seemed as if those were the magic words required to unlock my companion’s attention, as he swivelled around in his seat to face me for the first time, holding out his right hand to introduce himself, “Steven Small, by name, but certainly not by stature! I’m the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Amazon Code. Currently residing here in Knysna and writing my second novel.” I immediately realised that my expected role for the evening would be that of admirer, paying obeisance to The Great Author. But I decided to voluntarily play that role anyway as I secretly hoped that there might just possibly be some benefit to myself in spending time with a bestselling author.
“Wow!” I enthused. “Who would have thought that I would meet a bestselling author on a Friday night in sleepy, little Knysna! So, how’s it going? Your second novel, I mean?” My companion, who had been visibly preening at the first part of my response, began to scowl and lost some of his bravado at the second part. Clearly the writing was not proceeding as anticipated. I didn’t enquire any further about his current book, but ordered another beer and proceeded to pepper him with questions about his experiences with his first book that were designed to stroke his ego. By the time that he was downing his third double whisky, the first two having disappeared rather alarmingly rapidly, it seemed as if I had gained his trust, as the man’s confident mask had begun somewhat to slip. Steven admitted to me that things weren’t going that well with the book. Having made that admission appeared to unlock the real person inside of the larger-than-life persona and Steven proceeded to reveal to me a tale of woe, very familiar to the authors of successful books.
The writing of his first book had been so easy, he confided. It had just flowed directly from his mind onto the paper; almost as if he were taking dictation rather than actually creating the work. Although he had personally thought that the book showed some promise, he had never expected it to do as well as it had, particularly once the rejection slips began to flow back from publishers to whom he had sent the manuscript. “I thought: oh well, at least I’ve still got my day job, it’s not like I need this book to sell in order to be OK. It would be money for jam if it did, though,” he confided in me. It turned out that Steven had been teaching English at a small community college before his book was published and I thought to myself that he had probably needed the cash back then far more than he was now willing to let on.
But then, the miraculous occurred. It was the kind of story that inspires would-be authors to keep going, against all odds. A young assistant-to-the-editor of a small, but promising new publishing house that specialized in thrillers, seeking to make her mark in the competitive world of publishing, picked up Steven’s book from the slush pile to read during her summer vacation. When she returned to work a week later, she was gushing so profusely about the book, that the senior editor, who had his eye on the young woman, in more ways than one, agreed to take a look at the work. Well, it turned out that the editor agreed with his young protégé and, before too long, Steven found himself polishing his novel with the assistance of a competent editor; a modest advance alleviating some of the financial pressure that he had been under since his divorce had been finalized a year earlier. Steven’s book, when it was released, vastly exceeded all expectations and made the career of the lovely young assistant editor, as well as the fortunes of the small publishing house. The two awards that Steven garnered considerably boosted his sales and when the book landed on the New York Times bestseller list, his future as an author seemed assured.
The proceeds from book sales were sufficient to allow Steven to quit his dead-end job and to focus on the far more prestigious and, to him, fulfilling job of being a bestselling author. I could see that he had absolutely relished the attention and the accolades. It was clear to me that the book signings and readings, the award ceremonies and the book tours all offered the perfect boost to Steven’s burgeoning ego. He took to wearing crew neck sweaters, a goatee and small, wire-rimmed glasses that, I suspect, he believed conveyed upon himself an authorial air. He absolutely relished the awestruck fawning that he began to consider his due. He particularly relished the attentions of young ladies of a literary bent who were flatteringly eager to bed a bestselling author.
For a while it was simply wonderful but, of course, on one book alone is rarely an author’s reputation based and so, after a year or two, the pressure to produce another bestseller began mounting. The small publishing house that had initially optioned Steven’s book had subsequently been acquired by a massive, well-known publishing house, due, largely, to the success of Steven’s first book. Steven’s newly appointed agent was what he privately termed, “a real ball-buster,” who increasingly turned up the pressure for an encore to Steven’s debut success. He was given a generous six-figure advance on his next book, the first full draft of which was due in just under a year. But Steven was simply unable to produce the goods. When he sat down to write he found himself to be completely blocked. He spent hours developing wild plot lines on a series of brightly-coloured post-it notes stuck to a blank wall in his home. But, when he tried to write them in book form, they just didn’t work. His characters were not believable, his dialogue was clunky and his plots boring and predictable. Steven’s agent began phoning him almost daily for progress reports. Steven was in serious trouble, particularly since his advance had long since been absorbed into the increasingly luxuriant lifestyle which he had considered to be his due as the famous author of a New York Times bestseller. In short, Steven was in deep trouble.
In desperation, he decided to return to his childhood hometown and rent a modest cottage in a quiet, remote place outside of town, away from all distractions. But, by the time I met him, he had already squandered three months and was nowhere nearer to completing the work that was expected of him. “To tell you the truth,” he sadly confided in me, somewhat slurring his words due to the volume of whisky he had consumed, “I came here tonight to get plastered ‘cause I know it’s over. I can’t do it. I know that now. I’m a big, fat failure!” He lowered his head onto his folded arms on the bar counter and began, very loudly, to sob.
Thoroughly alarmed at this turn of events, I clumsily patted his shoulder, the masculine equivalent of a comforting hug, as I glanced around me, shrugging in embarrassment at the smirks and questioning glances. When the sobs showed no sign of abating, I realized that I would have to take some action to salvage at least some portion of my reputation in this small town. So I put my arm around Steven’s shoulder and heaved him to his feet, throwing a couple of bills onto the counter to cover the cost of our drinks and half-carried, half-dragged him to the door and into my car, which was conveniently parked just outside the pub. I took him back to my apartment, where I dumped him onto the couch, removed his shoes and covered him with a blanket. This was definitely not the way I had anticipated spending my Friday evening when I had so hopefully changed into my only clean shirt a few hours earlier!
The following morning, Steven was shamefaced and subdued as he accepted the large mug of freshly brewed coffee I handed him. This pale, quiet, diminished man was a very far cry from the bombastic egotist of the previous night and I fancy that he regretted sharing with me the many confidences of the night before. After Steven had tidied himself up a bit, I drove him back to his own car. Winding down his window he mumbled, face averted, “Sorry, man, for falling apart like that. You were a good friend. Thank you.” And then he put on a pair of dark glasses to hide his hangover from the cheery early morning light and slowly drove away.
I thought of Steven a few times in the following weeks but did not expect to hear from him again as I knew that someone with such an over-developed ego would probably have deeply regretted showing such weakness to a stranger. So, consequently, I was greatly surprised to encounter Steven whilst jogging on a deserted beach very early one morning about four weeks later. I hardly recognized him at first, as he had lost so much weight. He had also lost both the swaggering braggadocio and the hangdog self-pity I had previously witnessed in the pub and in my apartment, almost a month earlier. This new, streamlined, Steven was clad in a sweat-drenched tracksuit and sported a clear complexion and bright, hope-filled eyes. He looked, in a word, healthy.
I’m not sure that I would have acknowledged Steven, due to the less than felicitous circumstances of our last meeting, but, as it turned out, he recognized me, saying, “Peter, hey, it’s you! How are you? How strange that I should bump into you here. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately and I’ve been planning to give you a call!” Well, that certainly surprised me! Steven fell into an easy, relaxed jog, matching me pace-for-pace and, when I realized that there would be no escaping this interaction, I suggested that we grab a cup of coffee together at a beachfront coffee shop a few hundred meters away, which is exactly what we did.
“Peter, I’ve been told to share my story with you, for inclusion in your book,” were his first astonishing words to me upon sitting down with our coffees. That surprised me greatly, particularly since I had not told Steven that I was writing a book.
“Really? Who told you that?” I enquired.
Steven regarded me with a quizzical smile and said, “Just listen to my story and then you can decide if you want to include it in your book or not.” It turned out that Steven’s persona that I had encountered in the pub had concealed a high-octane secret! And, for some reason, I had been selected to be the means of revealing this secret. My heart pounded with ever-increasing excitement as Steven’s story unfolded.
***
Steven had never dreamt of being a bestselling author. In fact, he had never dreamed of anything much at all. Steven, despite the best efforts of his over-achieving parents and the teachers in the top schools to which he was sent, was the classic under-achiever. And proud of it. He simply couldn’t be bothered to take the effort to excel at anything much at school. And, though his ill-deserved final year marks (and the influence and legacy of his over-achieving father and grandfather) allowed him to scrape into a good university, he had absolutely no idea of what he wanted to do with his life once there. He knew that he really loved beautiful girls and that he liked beer and having a good time with his friends. But he couldn’t be bothered putting effort into anything other than these activities. It all seemed rather futile and a bit too much like hard work. He decided to study English; his reasoning being that he could already speak the language and so it would probably not require too much effort on his part! Steven’s undistinguished university career was spent indulging in all his favourite activities and doing the minimum work required to scrape through his courses.
Steven’s room mate, Darrell, was his polar opposite, being a quiet, intense, studious and socially inept pre-med student. Darrell spent every spare moment he had working on his manuscript, as he fancied himself as an author and was only in medical school due to the ambitions and sacrifice of his father, who was his only surviving relative. Toward the end of Steven’s third and final year at university, he entered the dorm room to pick up a jacket on his way out to a pub with a bunch of his friends. He was surprised to encounter Darrell in a state of feverish excitement.
“It’s finished, man! My book, I finished it today!” he crowed, before Steven could enquire as to why he was so agitated. “And, I want you to be the first to read it. Nobody else even knows that I’ve been writing a book! You’re studying English and so you can read it and tell me what you think. It might need a bit of editing and stuff, but you must be absolutely honest with me,” the words gushed from Darrell’s mouth. Well, Steven himself wasn’t overly excited to be accorded the honour, but he had grown fond of Darrell over the three years of their co-habitation and he felt sorry for the guy due to his lack of friends.
So he said, “Sure, man. I’ll read it when I have a moment,” and he tossed the manuscript onto the chaotic pile of papers on his desk.
Later that night when Steven returned to the dorm, Darrell wasn’t there, which was extremely unusual for his anti-social room mate. But Steven thought that Darrell had probably gone out to celebrate finishing his manuscript and could possibly, against all odds, have gotten lucky. And so he went to bed without thinking any further about it. However, the following morning, Steven heard the shocking news that Darrell and his father had been killed in a car accident with a drunken student, who had walked away from the accident absolutely unscathed, the previous night. Steven never did read Darrell’s manuscript at that time and it landed up in a box of papers and files when he packed up his dorm room a few months later, in possession of a degree in English, obtained by the skin of his teeth. He landed an uninspiring job teaching English at the community college where he met his future wife, Mary. Two years later they were married and Steven’s boxes of university papers landed up at the back of a cupboard in their modest apartment, where they were to remain until Steven and Mary were divorced twelve years later.
It was when Steven was sorting through all his old boxes and papers so as to decide what to take with him to his new, smaller bachelor pad that he rediscovered his old university room mate’s unread manuscript. In a bout of nostalgia for his earlier life, he sat down and began paging through the manuscript. Five hours of solid reading later, he finally looked up from the manuscript in astonishment. The writing was execrable, the characters wooden and unbelievable, the dialogue clunky in the extreme. But the plot line was absolutely brilliant! It caught Steven’s imagination in a way that very few books had done in the past and the germ of an idea began to rapidly develop in Steven’s mind. He could re-write this book and turn it into something really great. He felt unbelievably inspired and energized in a way that he had never before experienced. He would write the book that Darrell had not been able to! It would be the perfect distraction from the misery of living alone again for the first time in twelve years. And then he would attempt to have the book published as a tribute to poor Darrell’s tragically short and unfulfilled life. And that was exactly what he did. Except for one minor detail. Steven put his own name on the manuscript.
In writing the book, Steven had never before felt such enthusiasm or experienced such boundless energy. He could barely contain his impatience throughout his boring work day at the college and could hardly wait for the moment when he could return home at night and start on his real work. He worked through most of every night and more-or-less sleep-walked his way through each day. He took every last day of leave that he could spare and as many sick days as he felt he could get away with. Holidays and weekends were spent feverishly writing. He was completely in thrall to his muse and he had never before felt so alive and purpose-filled. Within a year the book was complete and within another six months Steven had been signed by the publishing house. Another year later he was able to leave his job, without a single backward glance, and devote himself to being an author.
There were moments when he felt guilty about stealing Darrell’s ideas and plot line for his own novel, but he justified this by telling himself that Darrell was dead and had had no other family who could have inherited his work. And besides, the book that Steven had written was all his own work… and it was brilliant! Darrell’s book had been dreadful and would never have been published. The manuscript would simply have languished in a drawer somewhere. At least this way it gained a life of its own, which Darrell would never, in a million years, have been able to give it.
“But, I guess that on some level I always felt bad that I had benefited so much from poor Darrell’s misfortune,” admitted Steven. “In some locked room within my heart was deep regret for what I had done. What I recently realized was that this was what had been blocking me as a writer. Which brings us to the events of that morning, four weeks ago, when I drove away from you, standing outside the pub.”
Steven had arrived back at his rental cottage feeling like death warmed over. In addition to the misery that was his life at that moment, he was also severely hung-over. He really had no clue as to what he should do next. After a shower and a couple of aspirin, he threw himself down onto a deckchair outside and morosely gazed, unaffected, at the beauty of the forest around him.
He must have been sleeping for some time because, when a sound awoke him, the sun had already begun to set. He opened his eyes to discover, to his absolute shock and amazement, that he wasn’t alone. Sitting in the other deckchair, backlit by a sky afire with brilliant streaks of cerise, burnt amber and gold was a strange-looking, green woman who winked at him as his mouth fell open in shock.
“At last! I’ve been waiting to speak to you,” she smiled as she spoke, without moving her lips, directly into his mind. “I’m just a dream, so don’t worry about it. Just be quiet and listen to what I have to say,” she reassured him. Steven found himself relaxing at her words and he leaned forward to better hear what she next had to say.
“Steven, you know that you are blocked by your guilt and shame over what you did. You are going to have to come clean about it because otherwise you will never reach your full potential as an author, which is vastly beyond what you can currently envisage. Your first book is nothing in comparison to what you will write in future.”
“But, if I tell my agent and publisher about what I did, they will demand that I repay my advance and they will never publish anything else that I might write,” Steven objected.
“They will publish your next book because it’s going to be brilliant and you will admit what you have done after the second book is published. Your reputation as an author will be established and they will never drop their cash-cow. Pay attention now, Steven. Peter Allen is the means by which you are going to tell your public about what you have done.”
“Peter Allen? But… what has he got to do with it?” asked Steven in some confusion.
“Peter is writing his own book, which you would know if you had been paying attention to anything else, other than your own ego,” she remarked, “Peter Allen is going to include your story in his book and you are going to give him all the assistance he requires to accomplish that. Your new book will be published long before his, as you already have an agent and publisher lined up and he is going to have to find his own way towards publishing his book.”
This was all very unexpected, but Steven had other concerns, “But, I’m completely blocked,” he objected. “I’ve been trying to write this book for months now and it’s going absolutely nowhere!”
“The book will be a best-seller because I’m going to tell you what to write. Now, stop feeling sorry yourself and get in front of your typewriter and listen to your heart, which is where you will hear my voice in future.”
Steven stared at the woman in astonishment, as a tiny flicker of hope ignited deep within his heart. “But… why would you help me?” he asked.
“Because I need something from you,” she answered. “I have my own story that I need to tell, and this story will be highlighted in your book, which will be a massive bestseller and will provide me with the largest possible audience for my message. Steven, I need you to write me into the story!”
“Well, fine,” Steven replied, still unsure about all of this, “But I can’t see people wanting to read a book featuring a Green Lady. Albeit a very beautiful one,” he hastened to add as he saw her frown appear.
“You idiot! Obviously you won’t be writing about me in the form in which I now appear to you! Your book will highlight the plight of forests all over the world. Now, get going, there is very little time left and much to accomplish!” she admonished.
“Wow, that is a simply incredible story!” I enthused, thrilled to hear that the Green Lady was aware of me and my book, “And how is the book progressing?”
“It’s simply brilliant!” he claimed, with a touch of his old arrogance. “It’s definitely going to be a bestseller, I can just feel it. And it certainly highlights many issues of concern to my lovely green muse.” More than that, he would not say and so I would simply have to wait, along with everyone else, for his new novel to hit the shelves within the following year. But, for the first time, I began to feel some real confidence in my own work and its possibility of being published. After all, if my book was to be the means by which Steven’s story would be told to his public, then surely my book too would eventually see the light of day?
***
But I realised that, as exciting as it would be to have my own book published, it would pale in comparison to the privilege of actually encountering the lovely Green Lady myself.