The Blue Moon Review - Fiction

"He locked the door and pocketed the key, saying he didn't want anyone to hear or interrupt us."

He locked the door and pocketed the key, saying he didn't want anyone to hear or interrupt us.

We chatted awhile and then I said maybe we should open the window to get some air. He said the air outside was polluted and foul-smelling. He went on about it for a good ten minutes, until I said let's talk about something else. He said there's nothing else really worth talking about.

Then he said how stuffy the air in the room was, and he didn't understand why. I said it's because you've locked the door and shut the window. He repeated how foul the air outside the window was, and how dreary everything was outside the room. I said well keeping the door and window closed was also making the air in the room stuffy. He asked me why he was having such a hard time being comfortable in this room, what was he doing wrong? I told him he'd closed the door and the window. He said that was the only thing he'd done right.

So I again said let's talk about something else, because this discussion about the air wasn't getting us anywhere, but he repeated that there was nothing else worth talking about.

I realized that if we were to change the subject, I had to be the one doing it, so I asked him how his writing was going.

He said his writing was terribly painful to do, and he hated doing it, so I asked him why he was torturing himself by doing it every day. He said it was the only thing he knew how to do, that he'd spent most of his life working nights in the post office and writing days, and now that he was retired there was nothing else to do but write. I said if it's so painful mightn't you find other things that weren't, but he insisted that anything else would be worse. I said what else have you tried, and he answered that he hadn't tried anything else because he didn't know how to do anything else.

He spoke dispassionately and his complaints were without anger. He spoke as calmly as I'm speaking now, so I let our talk continue.

I said how could you possibly know that there's nothing else you can do unless you try something else. He asked if I would stand in front of an oncoming train to see if I could do that. I asked him if he thought trying something new was that threatening. He said if he tried something new, he'd have to stop writing, and if it didn't work out, he might not be able to pick up the writing again, and that would be dangerous, because then he'd have nothing at all.

So I asked him what was so painful about his writing. He said he wasn't sure, but he was certain that if he got published he would feel a lot better about it. He said he'd been submitting stories to magazines for five years and hadn't had one accepted, and he had no idea what was wrong with them. I asked if he shouldn't join a writing workshop or take a class, and he told me he'd tried that but found no one who could help him, so what was the point. He said that for that matter neither could he help anyone else, because no one ever took any of his advice, and this angered and frustrated him, and he'd had enough of it all. I suggested that maybe it took a while to find the right group or the right teacher, but he said there's no one out there who knows how to teach writing, and there's no group that has anyone knowledgeable enough to lead it or to give worthwhile criticism, so he'd long ago stopped looking, stopped wasting his time.

I asked if he ever got comments from editors about the stories he'd submitted. He said he had, but he didn't trust them. He thought the editors were jealous. Once he got five evaluations of a story he'd submitted. He told me all five of the criticisms said more or less the same thing, that his characters weren't real, and his protagonists' dilemmas weren't credible. He said all five editors were wrong, and it only proved to him how little anyone knew. He said they did make one reasonable comment about a flaw in his viewpoint, but he didn't want to change the story. He preferred to incorporate their suggestions into the next pieces he wrote.

I said well maybe if you change the story one of them would publish it. He said he didn't want to give them the satisfaction--that if he did, they'd think they knew something, and he didn't want them to think that, because they didn't know anything. He said they were a bunch of amateurs--how could they know anything about how to write a story. I said but they're the ones who decide whether or not to publish your work. You want to be published, don't you? He said he wanted one of his own stories to be published, and if he made changes to accommodate them, it would be their story and not his.

By this time it was getting stuffier in the room, and I insisted he open the window. He insisted that the air outside would poison us and he said he would definitely not open the window. I said I'd faint, and he said I could faint if I wanted, but he wasn't going to open the window.

So I said to him you're not very bright are you. He said he was bright enough, after all he'd been able to support himself all his life and here he was able to retire at sixty and spend all his time writing, which is what he'd always wanted to do. I reminded him that he was now spending all his time doing what he said was terribly painful, so what kind of an accomplishment was that. He repeated that he didn't know how to do anything else.

I said this conversation was getting nowhere and I had other things to do, so would he please unlock the door and let me be on my way. He said there was no place outside worth going to, so I said that might be true for him but it wasn't true for me--there were plenty of places outside I could go, and would he please let me out. He said I was fooling myself, that this was the only place worth being, for both of us, and who wasn't being very bright now.

I said you don't mean to tell me that you think your attitude is the only one possible, and that no one else might feel otherwise. He said he knew his attitude wasn't the only one, but it was the best one--why else would he have it. He said he wasn't stupid, was he-- if there were a better attitude he would surely have adopted it, and how stupid I was to think otherwise. He said he knew he was a little pessimistic, but life had shown him his point of view was correct, so his pessimism was really an optimism in disguise. He said his attitude had worked for him, for look at him now, free to spend all his time doing exactly what he wanted. What could be better proof of his wisdom?

I said I understood what he was saying but I wasn't interested in discussing it further, I just wanted to leave. I said it wasn't funny anymore. He told me that nothing he'd said was meant to be funny, that he'd spoken sincerely, and he was offended that he'd shared these feelings with me now that he saw I wasn't taking him seriously. He suddenly frowned at me, which made me take a step away from him.

After a silence, he took a step away from me, and then turned his body to face me. His eyes were slightly crossed now, and the corner of his lip was curled.

I told him that now that I thought about it, and now that I remembered what the city air was like, now that I recalled how everything outside the room had been, that he was right, yes, this room was the best place to be, and we should therefore stay here. I asked if he had enough food for the two of us, and if there was a place for me to sleep.

He said it was a small place and I couldn't stay there; he didn't have enough food for the two of us--and I'd have to leave. I asked him how could I leave if the door was locked. He thought about it and said I had a good point there, that he hadn't thought of that. He told me how clever I was, and how he wished I would return sometime to have another little chat like this.

I said yes, I liked our little conversation, and I would love to get together again sometime--and talk some more about him and his ideas and his writing.

He unlocked and opened the door for me, and I stepped through. I took a deep breath in the quiet hallway--and as I headed for the stairs, I could hear the sound of him locking and then bolting shut his door.

Paul Oratofsky was born in 1943 in Brooklyn, in a particularly thick stretch (strength) of moody white sunshine. His mother came from DjunDjush, Hungary, and his father from Zvenegorodka, Ukraine. They met in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 1920's, when they were teenagers, he in his laundry for her, and she pretty, cool, and coy, until their first mental (marital) apartment in Bensonhurst (where Paul Oratofsky was born.) His language came from England.