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.)Another way he might distinguish himself was through investments—that is, by buying things.Gercheszky considered himself a canny investor.When he had money, he spent it fiercely, as if the stuff scalded him.He saw expense as proof of value and a guarantee of good return on investment.The more overpriced an object the better; he often haggled up.Some of his friends saw in this allergy to money the absentminded unworldliness of the artist.Others, less charitable, called it stupidity.Still others believed Gercheszky desperate to acquire the symbols of status and success.The truth, I believe, lies elsewhere.Gercheszky often called himself lazy—an adjective that no one who had seen him would ever think to apply to a man so obviously brimming over with schemes, ambitions, and energy, and that no one who had read him would ever use to describe an author in whose torrential prose even the punctuation marks are washed clean away.Nor was Gercheszky prone to false modesty; his was genuine enough.He may occasionally have painted himself in his stories as more down and out than he actually had been, but this was for dramatic interest.The flaws, obsessions, and weaknesses that he gave his narrators really were his own.Assuming, then, that Gercheszky believed himself to be lazy, it makes sense that he would go to such lengths to stay broke.Poverty forced him to keep busy.Desperation lit a fire under him.He wanted to be rich and famous, but he dreaded the indolence that riches would allow.Later, at yet another party, some girl was talking to him.His attention wandered violently, shooting out in all directions like a frightened hunter lost in the woods.Everyone who came in the door was famous, beautiful, and powerful, but to Gercheszky they seemed ugly and dull because they had all heard his stories already, and had even told him some of theirs.“… put people on diets,” the girl was saying.“Yeah? Maybe you could put me on a diet.People say I eat too many batteries.”When he had explained this joke, the girl said, “No no no, I’m a dietician.I don’t put people on diets.That’s what people think I do.”“Uh-huh.” Why was he talking to her? Because from behind she had looked beautiful but her face was plain, and he had been puzzled and intrigued by the contradiction.And because he had never seen her around at any parties, and had assumed therefore that she hadn’t heard his stories.But it turned out that she’d read them.Why had he ever written those novels? Why had he let those publishing sons of bitches bleed him dry?Some thumping came from the ceiling and the girl said it sounded like they were having more fun upstairs.“Don’t count on it,” said Gercheszky.“It’s the same all over.You just can’t hear the parties happening downstairs.”The girl assumed he was drunk.He wasn’t like this on TV.On TV they could hardly get him to sit still long enough to answer a question.It was strange, standing so close to someone she had seen so many times on TV.Even though she had only a small television set, she’d assumed he would be much taller.She felt an overwhelming urge to grab him by the ears and pull him close to see if he was real.Gercheszky was not drunk.In fact, he had never had a drink in his life.His father had been an alcoholic; but that fact—never spoken, never written down—he had forgotten long ago.He’d never had a drink because he’d never needed one.“Oh Christ,” he said.“My ex.”His ex-wife said to the girl that she could see that Paddy, as usual, wasn’t letting anyone else get a word in edgewise.She was bitter because she had loved him once, worshipped him even, before realizing that while he gave a very convincing impression of being fascinated by her, he had never in fact heard a single word that had come out of her mouth.It was as if she’d married a carnival, or fallen in love with a movie—something thrilling and larger than life that could not, by its very nature, take any notice of her.It was the loneliest experience of her life.Gercheszky told the girl a little about the marriage and the divorce.“Oh!” The girl clapped her hands.“You’re ‘Eva’!”Gercheszky’s ex-wife told the girl that certain facts had been distorted in the novel, and cited several instances.Gercheszky explained to the girl the concept of artistic license.His ex-wife explained to the girl the concept of eating shit and dying.They had a beautiful argument, which everyone gathered round to watch.Later, at another stupid party, Gercheszky read aloud passages from his fourth novel, breaking in periodically to explain how today he would write it differently.His haggard audience (the host and the hostess—everyone else had gone home hours ago) listened obediently, with the respect they believed due a great novelist, till long after the sun came up and Gercheszky’s voice grew hoarse.When he caught them nodding off, he tore the book in half and threw the halves at their heads.“Go!” he screamed.“Sleep! Who’s stopping you?” He stormed out of the apartment, then immediately returned, contrite.“I’ll stay on the couch.Not even a peep will I make.I’ll cook us all breakfast, the real traditional Jewish breakfast of Old Montreal.”Everybody knew by this time that Paddy Gercheszky was neither Jewish nor Québécois; that he had grown up in a suburb of Toronto; that he was not an orphan; that he was not even Paddy Gercheszky—his real name was Patrick Gurchase.But they all pretended not to know, because they liked Paddy, more or less, and anyway had known him longer than they had known his biographer (whom they no longer invited to their parties).Also, perhaps, they did not want to admit that they had been fooled.They chose to believe that they had always known there was something fishy about Paddy’s stories, and that it hadn’t mattered because he’d told them so well.As they say in Yiddish: You don’t ask questions of a story.But now his friends just wanted some sleep.“Aw, come on, Paddy.Don’t be like that.There’ll be other parties.”Long ago, at a better party, someone else had said words like these to him.He’d been the life of that party: telling jokes, singing and dancing, trading insults with his uncles, entertaining everyone—his parents, his eight older siblings, and all their friends.And then they’d sent him to bed.Alone in his room while the fun went on without him, he felt angry at first, then frightened, then strange.He felt tingly and insubstantial—like he didn’t have a body, like he didn’t exist.Later, his mother sat with him amidst the wreckage—apparently he’d thrown a tantrum—and ran her fingers through his hair to calm him.“Paddy, Paddy,” she said, “won’t you ever go to sleep? The world will still be here in the morning.”But that was what he was afraid of: that the world would always be there; there when he woke, there when he slept; that it would just go on being there, whether he was part of it or not.Riding down alone in the elevator, Gercheszky remembered none of this.He popped a sleeping pill so that he would pass out as soon as he got home.He had no more novels to dictate.Downstairs in the lobby, the night watchman recognized him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]