A Widow for One Year (52 page)

There should be something concerning what the woman writer likes and dislikes about men; possibly she asks the prostitute how she is able to overcome her physical abhorrence of certain types of men. Are there men the prostitute says no to? There
must
be! Prostitutes can’t be totally indifferent to . . . well, the
details
of men.

It should happen in Amsterdam. A.) Because prostitutes are so available there. B.) Because I’m going there. C.) Because my Dutch publisher is a nice guy; I can persuade him to see and talk to a prostitute with me.

No, stupid—you should see the prostitute alone.

What I like: Allan’s aggressiveness, most of the time. (I like the limits of his aggressiveness, too.) And his criticism, at least of my writing. I can be myself with him. He tolerates me, he forgives me. (Maybe too much.) I feel safe with him; I would do more, read more, go out more with him. He wouldn’t force himself on me. (He
hasn’t
forced himself on me.) He would be a good father.

What I don’t like: he interrupts me, but he interrupts everybody. It’s not that his eating habits, I mean his table manners, embarrass me; it’s more that I find the way he eats repellent. There is the fear that I would find him sexually repellent, too. And there’s the matter of the hair on the backs of his hands. . . . Oh, get over it!

[In a postcard to Allan, which was of an 1885 Daimler in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.]

DO YOU NEED A NEW CAR? I’D LIKE TO TAKE A LONG DRIVE WITH YOU.

LOVE,
RUTH

On the flight from Stuttgart to Hamburg, then in a car from Hamburg to Kiel. There are a lot of cows. We are in the state of Schleswig-Holstein—where the cows of that name come from. My driver is a sales rep for my publisher. I always learn something from sales reps. This one explains that my German readers expect me to be more “ political” than I am. The sales rep tells me that my novels are political in the sense that all social commentary is political. The sales rep says: “Your books are political but you aren’t!”

I’m not sure if this is offered as criticism or simply stated as a fact, but I believe it. And the subject comes up in the questions from the audience, after the reading in the Kunsthalle in Kiel—a good crowd.

Instead, I try to talk about storytelling. “I’m like someone who makes furniture,” I tell them, “so let’s talk about a few things that have to do with chairs or tables.” I can see by their faces that they want this to be more complicated, more symbolic than it is. “I am thinking of a new novel,” I explain. “It’s about that point in a woman’s life when she decides she wants to be married—
not
because there’s a man in her life whom she truly wants to marry, but because she’s sick and tired of bad boyfriends.” The laughter is sporadic and discouraging. I try it in German. There’s more laughter, but I suspect the laughter is because of my German.

“It could be my first book with a first-person narrator,” I tell them. Now I see that they have lost all interest, in English
and
in German. “Then it would be called
My Last Bad Boyfriend
.” (The title is terrible in German; it is greeted with more dismay than laughter:
Mein letzter schlimmer Freund
. It sounds like a novel about an adolescent disease.)

I pause for a drink of water and see the audience slipping away, especially from the seats in the rear of the hall. And those who have stayed are painfully waiting for me to finish. I don’t have the heart to tell them that the woman I’m going to write about is a
writer
. That would
really
kill their interest. So much for the craft of storytelling or the concrete concerns of the storyteller! Even I am bored with trying to entertain people on the subject of what it is I really do.

From my hotel room in Kiel, I can see the ferries in the bay. They are en route to and from Sweden and Denmark. Maybe one day I could go there with Allan. Maybe one day I could travel with a husband and a child, and with a nanny for the child.
The woman writer I’m thinking about: does she truly believe that marriage will be the death of her freedom to observe the world? If she were already married, she could have gone with her husband to see and talk to a prostitute! For a woman writer, having a husband could give her
more
freedom of observation. Maybe the woman I’m writing about doesn’t know that.

I wonder if Allan would object to observing a prostitute with her customer with me. Of course he wouldn’t!

But the person I should really ask to do this with me is my father.

[In a postcard to her father, which was of the prostitutes in their windows on the Herbertstrasse, the red-light district in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg.]

THINKING OF YOU, DADDY. I’M SORRY ABOUT WHAT I SAID. IT WAS MEAN. I LOVE YOU!

RUTHIE

The flight from Hamburg to Köln; the drive from Köln to Bonn; the grandeur of the university.

For the first time, someone in the audience asked about my eye. (In my interviews,
all
the journalists have asked.) This was a young woman; she looked like a student, and her English was almost perfect.

“Who hit you?” she asked.

“My father,” I told her. The audience was suddenly hushed. “With his elbow. We were playing squash.”

“Your father is young enough to play squash with you?” the young woman asked.

“No, he is
not
young enough,” I told her, “but he’s in pretty good shape for a man his age.”

“I suppose you beat him, then,” the student said.

“Yes, I beat him,” I answered.

But after the reading, the same young woman handed me a note.
I don’t believe you. Someone hit you,
the note said.

This I also like about the Germans: they come to their own conclusions.

Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label—to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.

And I can just hear Allan on the subject of my writing two novels in a row about women writers; yet I’ve heard him say that editorial advice should
not
include recommendations or caveats about what to write or not write about. Doubtless I shall have to remind him of that.

But more important to this new novel: what does the bad boyfriend
do,
as a result of observing a prostitute with her customer, that is so degrading to the woman novelist? What
happens
to make her feel so ashamed that it’s enough to make her change her life?

After watching the prostitute with her customer, the boyfriend could be so aroused that the way he makes love to the woman writer makes her feel that he is thinking about someone else. But that’s just another version of bad sex. It must be something more awful, more humiliating than that.

In a way, I like this phase of a novel better than the actual writing of it. In the beginning, there are so many possibilities. With each detail you choose, with every word you commit yourself to, your options close down.

The matter of searching for my mother, or not; the hope that, one day, she will come looking for me. What are the remaining major events in my life? I mean the events that might make my mother come to me. My father’s death; my wedding, if I have one; the birth of my child, if I have one. (If I ever get up the nerve to have children, I would want only one.) Maybe I should announce my forthcoming marriage to Eddie O’Hare.
That
might get my mother’s attention. I wonder if Eddie would go along with it—after all, he wants to see her, too!

[In a postcard to Eddie O’Hare, which was of the great Cologne cathedral, the splendid Dom—the largest Gothic cathedral in Germany.]

BEING WITH YOU, TALKING WITH YOU
. . .
IT WAS THE MOST
IMPORTANT EVENING IN MY LIFE, SO FAR. I HOPE I SEE YOU AGAIN SOON.

SINCERELY,
RUTH COLE

[In a postcard to Allan, which was of a magnificent castle on the Rhein.]

BE AN EDITOR. CHOOSE BETWEEN THESE TWO TITLES:
HER LAST
BAD BOYFRIEND
OR
MY LAST BAD BOYFRIEND
. IN EITHER CASE, I LIKE THE IDEA.

LOVE,
RUTH

P.S. BUY ME THIS HOUSE AND I’LL MARRY YOU. I THINK I MIGHT
MARRY YOU, ANYWAY!

“I’m a novelist,” I will doubtless say at some point. “I’m just a storyteller.”

Looking over the list of my fellow panelists—other authors, all promoting their books at the book fair—there is an atrocious American male of the Unbearable Intellectual species. And there is another American writer, female, less well known but no less atrocious; she is of the Pornography Violates My Civil Rights school. (If she hasn’t already reviewed
Not for Children,
she will—and not kindly.)

There is also a young German novelist whose work has been banned in Canada. There was some charge of obscenity—in all probability, not unmerited. It’s hard to forget the specific obscenity charge. A character in the young German’s novel is having sex with chickens; he is caught in a posh hotel with a chicken. A terrible squawking leads the hotel staff to make the discovery—that, and the hotel maid had complained of feathers.

But the German novelist is interesting in comparison to the other panelists.

“I’m a
comic
novelist,” I will doubtless say at some point; I always do. Half the audience (and more than half of my fellow panelists) will take this to mean that I am not a
serious
novelist. But comedy is ingrained. A writer doesn’t choose to be comic. You can
choose
a plot, or not to have one. You can
choose
your characters. But comedy is not a choice; it just comes out that way.

Another panelist is an Englishwoman who’s written a book about socalled recovered memory—in her case,
hers
. She woke up one morning and “remembered” that her father had raped her, and her brothers had raped her—and all her uncles. Her grandfather, too! Every morning she wakes up and “remembers” someone else who raped her. She must be exhausted!

Regardless of how heated the debate on the panel is, the young German novelist will have a faraway expression on his face—as if something serenely romantic has just crossed his mind. Probably a chicken.

“I’m just a storyteller,” I will say again (and again). “I’m not good at generalizations.”

Only the chicken-lover will understand me. He will give me a kindly look, maybe mildly desirous. His eyes will tell me: You might look a lot better with some reddish-brown feathers.

In Frankfurt, in my small room at the Hessischer Hof, drinking a beer that isn’t very cold. At midnight it becomes October 3—Germany is reunited. On the TV, I watch the celebrations in Bonn and Berlin. A moment of history, alone in a hotel room. What can one say about German reunification? It’s already
happened
.
Coughed all night. Called the publisher this morning, then the publicist. It’s such a shame to cancel my appearance on the panel, but I must save my voice for my readings. The publisher sent me more flowers. The publicist brought me a package of cough drops—“with organically grown Swiss alpine herbs.” Now I can cough through my interviews with my breath smelling of lemon balm and wild thyme. I’ve never been happier to have a cough.

On the elevator, there was the tragicomic Englishwoman; from the look of her, she’d doubtless awakened with the recovered memory of yet another rape.

At lunch in the Hessischer Hof, there was (at another table) the German novelist who does it with chickens; he was being interviewed by a woman who interviewed me earlier this morning. My interviewer at lunch was a man with a bigger cough than mine. And when I was alone, just sipping coffee at my table, the young German novelist looked at me whenever I coughed—as if I had a feather caught in my throat.

I truly love my cough. I can take a long bath and think about my new novel.

In the elevator, like a small man inflated to grotesque size—with helium—there is the atrocious American male, the Unbearable Intellectual. He seems offended when I step into the elevator with him.

“You missed the panel. They said you were sick,” he tells me.

“Yes.”

“Everyone gets sick here—it’s a terrible place.”

“Yes.”

“I hope I don’t catch something from you,” he says.

“I hope not.”

“I’m probably already sick—I’ve been here long enough,” he adds. Like his writing, it’s unclear what he means. Does he mean he’s been in
Frankfurt
long enough to catch something, or does he mean he’s been in the
elevator
long enough to have been exposed to what I’ve got?

“Are you still not married?” he asks me. It’s not a pass; it’s a signature non sequitur of the kind the Unbearable Intellectual is renowned for.

“Still not married, but maybe about to be,” I answer.

“Ah—good for you!” he tells me. I’m surprised by his genuine fondness for my answer. “Here’s my floor,” he says. “Sorry you weren’t on the panel.”

“Yes.” Ah, the little-heralded chance encounter between world-famous authors—is there anything that compares with it?

The woman writer should meet the strawberry-blond boyfriend at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The bad boyfriend is a fellow fiction writer—very minimalist. He’s published only two books of short stories—fragile tales, so spare that most of the story is left out. His sales are small, but he has been compensated by the kind of unqualified critical adoration that often accompanies obscurity.