Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [50]
“Ah, Pharsin. You respond to our cries of ‘Author! Author!’ Step forward, sir, and be recognized. Now. If you’ll just sit yourself there, I’ll just …
“Now I’m not a writer,” said Rodney sternly, laying before Pharsin a glass of flat Pepsi. And a saucer with most of a Graham Cracker on it. Heartier and more various fare could have been plucked from the surface of Rodney’s burred blue robe. “I’m a painter, a visual artist. But as you have written elsewhere there is a certain … affinity between the arts. Now. The first time I read your book I was quite overwhelmed by this cascade of visual images. These things you describe—I felt I could reach out and touch them, smell them, taste them. Only on a second reading and, may I say, a third, uh, ‘perusal’ did I see that these images were, in fact, connected. In very intricate ways.”
Admiringly hefting the typescript in his hands, Rodney gave Pharsin a candid stare. So far so good. Pharsin’s wrath, while still manifest, had reached some trancelike register. Rodney knew enough about novels to know that they all tried to do something like that—to connect image with theme. Cautiously he continued with his own variations, feeling the spasms of unused muscles: his lits, his crits. Yes, he could still swim in that pool. He could still ride that old bike.
“… shaping the whole composition. I could step back from the fretwork, the moldings, the beadings, the, uh, flutings, and so on. I could step back from the gargoyles and see the whole cathedral.”
It looked for a moment as if Pharsin was going to ask a question about this cathedral: what it looked like or where it stood. So with a woozy roll of his head Rodney proceeded,
“And where did you find those characters? Quite incredible. I mean—take Cissy, for instance. How did you dream her up?”
“You like Cissy?”
“Cissy? Oh, Cissy! Cissy … By the time I was finished I felt I’d never known anyone as intimately as I knew her.” As he talked he started riffling fondly through the pages. “Her thoughts. Her hopes and dreams. Her doubts. Her fears. I know Cissy. Like you’d know a sister. Or a lover.”
Rodney looked up. Pharsin’s face was a screen of tears. Thoroughly emboldened, Rodney hunched himself forward and leafed through the text.
“That bit … that bit where she … when Cissy—”
“When she comes to the States?”
“Yes. When she comes to America.”
“The thing with Immigration?”
“Yes. Now that scene … Incredible. But so true! And then, after that—I’m trying to find it—the bit when she …”
“When she meets the guy?”
“Yes. The guy: now there’s another character. And there’s that great scene when they … Here it is. No. When they …”
“At the rent tribunal?”
“Oh now that scene. Can you believe that?”
“The judge?”
“Please,” said Rodney. “Don’t get me started on the judge.”
And so, for forty-five minutes, always a beat late, he somehow sang along with a song he didn’t know. It seemed like scurvy work, of course; and it was strangely shaming to see Pharsin’s face awaken out of hunger into vivid varieties of animation and delight (as at the chessboard, Rodney felt dwarfed by a superior force of life). It was scurvy work, but it was easy. He wondered why he hadn’t done it months ago. Then Pharsin said,
“Enough. Forget the laughter, the characters, the images. What’s The Sound of the Words, the Sound of the Words actually saying, Rod?”
“The Sound of the Words,