For expats, foreigners and other species
My name is Cornel George Popa but my friends, wife and cat all call me Bill. I'm a 67 year old writer from Romania and I have 15 books published so far. I'm quite well known and I have a good reputation in my country.
"Snowing on Haydn themes" is about a writer with inoperable brain cancer and the last ten months of his life.
After receiving the doctor's diagnosis, the writer decides not to tell anyone, not even his wife and children. The fight with cancer is also a fight for keeping this secret. To spare his family from financial hardship after his passing, he resorts to writing a cycle of six detective novels, leaving behind the themes that once defined him - life, humanity, existence.
Alongside the cycle of six detective novels centered around Inspector Marcel Gafis, the writer embarks on another book, inspired by Kafka's Metamorphosis. Only this time, Gregor Samsa is replaced by the same inspector but completely transformed. The impulse to write such a story outweighs his fear of death and is part of his fate.
In a huge effort to not lose his mind, the writer revisits his uncompleted works, remembers his literary beginnings, attempts to finish old projects and wanders around his past.
His cancer and his writing take up all his time. His cancer especially, is a full-time job, not a job between other jobs.
A drawer-novel and a library-novel, "Snowing on Haydn themes" is a book about life and death, about literature and creation, about God and faith.
I believe with all of my heart that "Snowing on Haydn themes" can be a literary success that will intrigue a lot of people, no matter if they've faced cancer or not.
Snowing on Hadyn themes
First chapter
“Night would soon be falling.
The lights in the neighbourhood were already flickering on.
Beyond the last apartment block, on the vast wasteland between the city and the rail lines, beneath a sky that is almost black, a number of people bustle about. They move back and forth, focused on their tasks.
Until several years ago, this place was empty. You could gaze into the distance and see the world’s edge. It was astounding that nobody had invested a cent in building something on that immense vacant site. But things had changed since then. Numerous apartment blocks had sprung up in the distance, the rail lines had been dismantled, and a road constructed. Sidewalks had even been built in places for the new inhabitants of the quarter, though nobody used them because they began and ended haphazardly. Still, it hinted at some kind of urban planning.
In any case, nothing but a vast yellowish-brown wasteland, void of roads or trees or buildings, remained between the last neighbourhood at the edge of the city and the new apartment blocks.
A black, unmarked private car moves tentatively down the narrow dirt track parallel to where the railroad used to be. The track is formed from the wheels of the trucks which once traversed the field long ago. The car goes as far as it can and halts roughly in the middle of the empty expanse.
It is little past nine in the evening.
Chief-inspector Gafis slowly got out of the car. He reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved his cigarette-case, then put it back.
He had been trying to quit smoking for several days and had begun by smoking less, but his reflexes were stronger than his willpower.
He repeatedly forgot what he has promised himself to do and continually reproached himself for this.
- Where’s the body? he asked Rooney, who had a helpless expression, as though he had just dropped from the sky.
Rooney, fat Rooney, still staring at him as though he’d never seen him before, walked a few steps away, bent down beside one of the blue police cars, and came back with something wrapped in a green tarpaulin.
Standing in front of the inspector, he drew back the edges of the tarpaulin to reveal a forearm, that of a woman or a child, severed below the elbow.
Gafis stared at the object, then at Rooney, who had a lopsided grin and the air of a complete idiot.
- What’s this? he asked, pointing at the hand.
- A hand, replied Rooney, with his usual acuity.
- Right, said Gafis, I know that much. But, remember, I asked where the body was. Meaning, the corpse. The corpse, Rooney, not the corpse’s hand.
- Over there, said Rooney, gesturing towards a general area that could have been to the left and right, up and down.
The inspector had taken his cigarette case out again. He looked at it and put it back.
- Is there anything else besides the hand, Rooney? He asked. Like a body, a head, legs...
- Yeah, said Rooney, as though he were very drunk or had just woken up. There’s a body too…
- Excellent, Rooney, said the inspector. Want to be kind enough to show us where? But more precisely, if you can... sergeant…
The last word, enunciated cuttingly, shook the fat man awake for a few seconds.
Rooney stood roughly to attention, swayed, turned about-face and made his way towards the middle of the field, moving like a wind-up toy.
Christ’s sake, thought Gafis, following him, such talent the police force attracts… If the criminals don’t turn themselves in first, they’ll end up dying of old age in their beds…
Hermes, Avastopulos and Cony were already by the body, their backs turned to him, staring wordlessly at the ground.
- Hey, guys, said Gafis.
- Hello, chief, responded Avastopulos, tipping his hat.
- What’s up with Rooney today? he asked. He seems more witless than ever… And when I asked him where the body was, he brought me a severed arm. What’s this?
- The rest of it, said Hermes.
- And more besides, added Cony.
Gafis looked at him with rising fury.
- Is Rooney’s bug contagious or did you all catch it a long time back? he asked sarcastically.
- Chief, look, said Hermes from the side of his mouth, with a strange expression on his face. Take a look... and you’ll understand…
They’ve all gone nuts, Gafis thought to himself, getting down on one knee over a bloodstained sheet.
He recoiled with a sudden jolt, half-turning to his three colleagues.
Avastopulos, Hermes and Cony maintained a cool silence. Cony, the end of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, observed Gafis’s reaction.
He spat out the cigarette butt and asked, almost cheerfully:
- Whaddaya think? Rooney saw it too, by the way… Probably explains why he’s a bit…
Damn morons, said Gafis under his breath. Then he leaned over the sheet again.
The deceased, a woman, had been decapitated and the head had been set back in place, but backwards, with its face in the grass, and both arms, severed at the elbows, had been aligned with the stumps. Two more forearms, those of a man, judging by their dimensions, lay alongside them.
The two pairs of limbs touched at the fingertips, as though caressing each-other or in farewell.
The woman’s blonde hair gleamed unnaturally. The hair was very clean, in stark contrast to the sectioned body, stained with dried blood.
The image was simultaneously so absurd and grotesque that the inspector, despite his years of experience, when he had seen dozens of dead bodies, made an immense effort not to vomit from horror.
Also, the woman appeared to have been rather young and physically attractive.
Gafis now understood the subdued manner of his three colleagues and Rooney’s distracted air, but he was still furious that nobody had warned him of what he had been about to see.
- So, what’s up with the arm the sergeant brought? he asked, finally lighting a cigarette.
- That’s on its own, said Cony.
- What do you mean, on its own?
- I mean, that’s all we found, replied Cony in the same tone.
Cretinous fool, thought Gafis, once again, looking into his adjunct’s eyes.
Hulking and puffy-faced, his clothes crumpled and his hat dented, Cony looked like he’d climbed out of a trash can already rummaged by dogs.
Observing his stooped posture, as though about to keel over, the inspector experienced a moment of pity for his subordinate. Cony could have been a good cop if his wife hadn’t left him and if he hadn’t then taken to drink… He’d been a promising young man… Look at the state of him now: more worn out than my father…
Hermes shrugged as though he felt like laughing.
Rooney appeared beside the group, with the same green tarpaulin in his hand.
- Hand that item over, said Gafis, with a surge of irritation.
Rooney handed over the package, stood almost to attention, saluted, then turned on his heels, lumbering away to a destination known only to himself.
Under the ambulance’s blinding headlights, Gafis opened the tarpaulin and examined the limb.
He noted vague traces of nail polish and a narrow line on the ring finger where the skin was paler than elsewhere. The arm had belonged to a woman.
Another woman, and not that of the mutilated corpse.
- So, guys, he said, turning his back to the ambulance, we’re not dealing with a single murder, but with a triple murder…
- That’s what we were saying too, rasped Hermes.
- This arm, the last one, is a woman’s, he continued, ignoring Hermes, and in addition to a homicide, we have to take into account a theft…
- A theft? said Avastopulos, surprised. What theft? A triple-murder is good enough for me…
- Yep, we do have three murders, at least, and an eccentric, violent, sadistic and calculating killer. And we have a theft. A minor one, true, but a theft all the same…
- You mean the killer stole the extra arm from another killer? asked Hermes, without blinking.
- No, smartass, Gafis replied sourly, I don’t mean the arm. I was talking about the ring the victim was wearing prior to being killed… An old ring, probably a wedding band…
Struck by a sudden intuition, Cony threw himself down beside the corpse, examining the hand that had belonged to a man.
- This one was wearing a wedding band too! he announced several seconds later. So maybe they were husband and wife…
- And the blonde corpse was the guy’s lover, right? Hermes shot back, deadpan.
Gafis gave him a sharp look but did not rise to the provocation.
Rooney, standing between them, looked back and forth at each one as though watching a tennis match.
The arrival of another vehicle was heard.
- The pathologists, declared Avastopulos. Now we’ll find out something…
- Are we hanging around much longer? asked Cony. His tongue was dry and he needed a drink.
- Have you looked everywhere? Gafis asked.
- Yeah, replied Avastopulos, but in this darkness we’d need a few more hands on the job…
- Oh, we’ve got hands, alright, said Hermes. We’ve even got a spare pair…
Rooney flinched from surprize.
- You’re a cretinous idiot and an imbecile, said Gafis, emphatically. Is this a time for joking around? Are we police officers or clowns?
Stunned, Hermes let his head drop.
- Sorry, he said. I think it’s the pressure… I don’t know what got into with me…
- Create a perimeter, seal it off, put some guards on it and we’ll come back in the morning, said Avastopulos. We’re not likely to find anything now…
- No, said Gafis. Now. I have a feeling we’ll find something, if we focus…
- The missing arm? asked Cony.
- No. Something else. Something just as horrible…
- Well, this beats anything I’ve ever seen… What could be worse…?
The inspector opened his mouth, about to speak, then closed it.
- Turn on the headlights of all the vehicles, he shouted to the people behind him. I want it bright as day! Got it, sergeant?
- Yes, sir, said Rooney, who spun on his heels and hurried to the edge of the field, where the drivers stood huddled.
A few moments later, the nervous hum of motors engines starting up was mixed with Rooney’s exclamations as he guided the vehicles into place. Then the wasteland was bathed in light.”
The alarm suddenly begins beeping very loudly.
The man looks at his phone and hits the stop button.
Slowly, painfully, he rises from in front of the laptop and goes to the kitchen.
He swallows a number of pills with a full glass of water.
He’s a very thin, prematurely aged man, his face criss-crossed with fine lines.
His blue eyes gleam dully.
He is wearing shoes, a loose pair of jeans and a large sweater.
His grey hair is close-cropped. He is tall and retains an athletic build. Probably, in his youth, he caught the eye of many young women.
He is pretty much a shadow of what he once was.
It’s winter outside.
It’s been snowing good and hard the past few days.
Everything has been covered in a thick blanket of snow.
The neon lights in the street gleam through the pitch darkness.
The snowflakes are tiny threads of white gold.
Nobody is out walking and no cars are passing.
A globe of soft glass has covered the world.
It looks like a scene from a Christmas card.
The man looks out the window in wonder.
His troubled face is brightened by the vaguest smile.
Such grace, he whispers, such grace, Lord…
The thought hits him that at this time next year he will no longer exist.
The doctors have given him eight to ten months.
He’s still lucky: he’s able to write. He has not reached that serious stage of blackouts, unbearable pain, delirium and coma.
Death still has a bit to wait. A bit.
He tears himself from the window and returns to the laptop.
He has to take care of his wife and children, even if he’s not going to be around for them.
He has set out to write at least six detective novels in eight months.
Detective novels sell well. The public gobble them up.
He has already written two.
This was the third. And with the same team: Gafis, Avastopulos, Cony, Hermes and fat Rooney.
If he’s lucky, when he’s dead, these characters will become famous, the books will be reprinted, translated and adapted for film.
His family will have nothing to worry about, at least financially.
He’ll be relieved, in the next world, knowing that.
If he’s lucky. After he’s dead.
Of course, a long time ago, when he was young, he wrote other works, involving people, dramas, joys and sorrows, but now he’s not writing for himself, he’s writing for his family’s future.
That’s all he can do, and if detective novels are generally more in demand than the other stuff, then that is what he has to write.
So that his family and children do not suffer any privation after he is dead, because they will suffer enough by losing him.
He has not yet shared with anyone that he had ten months at most to live, and his wife and kids are happy whenever they see him at his desk.
Break’s over. Back to work. There are four books left to write. Four books and that’s it.
Over.
He resumes his place in front of the laptop.
He looks for a moment at the bookshelves in front of him and resumes typing:
“Gafis studies the field, bathed in the beams of white light. Somebody behind him shouts:
- There’s something there! Something moving!
At least three hundred metres away, a grey shape slips across the land.
Despite the tension, a number of the men laugh: it’s a hare. A damn hare bounding across the field.
- Will we book him, boss? asks Hermes, the master of stupid jokes, who then instinctively apologizes.
Gafis gazes after the hare. Incredible, he whispers, hares, here between apartment blocks, and the commotion of vehicles, footpaths and construction work. The area is still wild. It has potential, but is in the initial stages.
He is suddenly struck by an idea: the killer put considerable effort into reaching this place. Which means he wanted to draw attention to it, either to grant it some significance or to create a false trail. A lot of building was going on. Certain people were investing their money in this desolate-looking site which had lain neglected for years. If the press got wind of what happened, would the investments continue, or would they be paused, at least temporarily? It wasn’t great publicity. Gavis figured that if he were a prospective buyer, with a wife and kids, he’d think twice about it before jumping in.
See how something safe and promising can suddenly change.
Was the killer acting alone? Gafis wondered. Or were others involved, a team, as the clues suggested? Two rival factions? A leader and those following orders? What was the motive? Who was the suspect? A single mind or rival interests?
The inspector turns his head to the side, looks behind himself. This is how he thinks. You should have emptiness before you rather than familiar things.
While looking around, he catches Rooney watching him. Like a trusting, faithful dog watches his master, ready to obey any request.
Hm, he murmurs, Rooney expects miracles from me. He wants to see me pull rabbits from a hat with these very hands.
A harsh tremor moves through his body: bare hands... There are rather a lot of hands here. Extra ones, indeed. And the killer, or killers as it now seems, were careful to draw attention to them. By arranging them in a particular manner. Creating an almost aestheticized take on death, where the hands, probably, had particular significance. The title of a book he’d read long ago came to mind: “The hands that for so long...”.
“The hands that for so long...”
And that head, turned around, eating dirt…
Such a diabolical mind! What a perverse, obscene picture!
The area is deserted, particularly now, at night. But the killer got here by car. He unloaded the body of the decapitated woman, those hands, too many of them, ensured that the fingers were touching, took the trouble to place the head the wrong way around, regarded the tableau from a distance, made some adjustments with the scrupulousness of an artist who wishes to render his work perfectly then, satisfied with the effect, departed.
He could have been caught in the act.
He worked slowly, almost without haste, as though he were at home in his own yard. If somebody had stumbled upon him? Astounding, such cold-bloodedness in the face of the possibility of being seen, with the city a stone’s throw away. Why now? Why here?
Forgetting his resolution to cut down on smoking, Gafis opened his cigarette case with an automatic motion, put a cigarette between his lips and lit up. His first smoke, after so many hours of abstinence, seemed to settle him immediately.
Rooney continued to stare at him.
The inspector looked back at him long and hard. In fact, he was looking through Rooney, because behind the fat man he saw a thought.
He beckoned the sergeant closer.
Rooney, attentive, approached with small, careful steps, like a ballet dancer on ice.
- How was the crime reported? he whispered.
- An anonymous 911 call. The number was checked out. A Prepay card, used once, now destroyed I reckon, no owner.
- Straight to 911?
- Yes. It’s recorded, but the voice is muffled. Handkerchief over the mouth.
- Male?
- Male.
The inspector made a guttural sound and took a last drag on his cigarette. He’d have liked to smoke another and opened his cigarette case without thinking. Then he shut it and put it back in his pocket.
- So, the press has been around?
- A couple of them, on motorbikes. They were already leaving when we arrived...
- The usual ones?
- Same, nodded Rooney. You know them. The ones who are always eavesdropping on the police frequency...
- So we’ll see some pictures in tomorrow’s paper…
- And some theories…
- It’s a story alright, said the inspector…
- It is that, agreed Rooney, in a whisper.
- OK, sergeant, dismissed.
- Sir!
Rooney gave an almost formal salute. When he’d walked five metres, he turned on his heels and approached Gafis again, with that same look of a pointer on the scent of a quail.
The inspector passed his hand over his face. Good Lord, he whispered to himself…
As Rooney clearly venerated him, he gave the fat man a little smile of thanks, and at the same time gestured eloquently with his hand that he was to move along.
People were swarming across the field.
Illuminated dramatically by the headlights, they bustled about like phosphorescent ghosts,
Rooney hurried to join them.
Gafis remained standing almost on his own. He would have liked a coffee, but where would you get one in this desolate wasteland?
The inspector again gazed at the apartment blocks at the city’s edge, then at the new ones on the horizon, as though laid out in a parallel row. He passed his hand over his face again.
How close they are though, he whispered to himself.
Does the killer have a connection with one of these two areas? he wonders. From here it would be simpler to get to with a car and to go back. A car loaded with corpses, maybe, and severed arms, since the cutting up had not taken place here, there was as yet no evidence of that, and if any did turn up, it would be further proof of madness. Madness, sadism, premeditation, calculation and artistry. That sinister arrangement of the hands with the fingers almost touching, an aesthetic sign, in any case. Alright, it’s a clear message, it shows an intention.
You kill at least three people, chop them up, drive into a wasteland between two residential areas, running the risk of being spotted, unload the bodies and, instead of getting the hell out of there, you start arranging them nicely!
You make a little improvement, adjust an element in the “ensemble”. Cast a last critical glance at your work. Yes, it’s fine. You leave, at the wheel of the same car you came in, then call 911 on a prepay card, pre-bought because you want the police to find your “composition” exactly as you left it. If there are hares about, probably there are also dogs, rats, hedgehogs and whatever the hell else…
And when you do call, it’s to the general emergency number rather than a specific branch, to ensure the press gets wind of it.
The guy is clearly looking for publicity. Or guys. They want to be stars, want to be talked about. Or is he alone?
The inspector experiences a revelation: the man is acting alone. A team would have needed a leader, several cars, a coordinator and several look-outs in the area while the operation was taking place. And who could have trusted a team that size?
You have to motivate them, pay them, make the risk worthwhile.
In a simple robbery, the robbery is the incentive. You give it a shot and hope you end up rich.
Nobody got rich here. Despite a major investment.
Why would anybody do such a thing?
Could it be somebody with significant financial resources, able to pay and maintain such a team, for concrete reasons, yet unknown, over the long term?
Perhaps. This possibility had occurred to him right at the start. But you still needed a mastermind, a designer of the plan, an eminence grise, aside from all the money invested in your perverse, demented plan.
This angle certainly had to be investigated. It looked unlikely, however. Everything pointed to a solitary, disciplined, sadistic, intelligent killer. Somebody with artistic pretensions, or actually an artist. In the most pejorative sense of the word, but an artist by intention and in behaviour.
But what is this maniac trying to demonstrate? Gafis wondered. That he’s crazy? Yes, he’s certainly crazy. That he’s smart? He’s smart too. That he has no scruples? Accomplished. That he, in his sick mind, does not see others as people, only as objects, to be used as sinister decorations? No, he does not care about others. To him, people are just pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
Does he think he’s God? Is that his issue? Does he want to be God?
Damn him, the dangerous pervert and lunatic!
Gafis feels hatred for the guy already. But hatred is no good. Hatred alters your perceptions and clouds your mind. You act instinctively instead of rationally. You become worked up instead of clearheaded.
The inspector took a deep breath.
He took out his cigarette case, considered it for a few moments, put it back in his pocket, took it out again, looked at it again, sighed deeply and lit another cigarette.
People swarmed across the wasteland, into the distance.
Suddenly, a shout is heard:
- Over here! Over here! A head!
The inspector flinches. A number of people are converging on one area. Then he finds that he too is walking there, then running. He hasn’t run in twenty years. He’s holding a cigarette. He stops, reflexively, to take a drag. Sudden exercise and the cigarette are a bad mix. He’s seized by a terrible coughing fit. He tosses the butt in fury. Damn habit! he mumbles. No more running, he’s not in shape, but he walks quickly.
A large group of people has formed, and they standing around something, looking down on it. They are silent. They step back for Gafis to make his way through. Their silence is unsettling. They’re cops, and they’ve seen a lot in their time. And they come across corpses on a daily basis.
Gafis feels his stomach tighten. He reaches what everybody has been looking at.
It is a human head, over which the killer, presumably, has placed a wide-brimmed man’s hat, like something an actor might wear in a film set in the old days.
Despite the hat, it is a woman’s head. This is clear from her delicate features, her pale skin and her beautiful full lips.
One of the woman’s eyes is closed.
The killer has plunged a corkscrew in the other. The mother-of-pearl handle is angled perpendicular to the face.
The inspector suppresses a shout, and a violent shudder. He does not want the others to register his shock.
He doesn’t want to attract attention, but a brief electric shiver passes through his body.
His mind is a white desert.
He feels like a rabbit blinded in headlights.
He has seen this before, a long time ago, at the outset of his career.
Not the entire composition before him, but the corkscrew in the right eye, its handle parallel with the line of the nose.
The same signature.
So, he’s back, says Gafis, frozen.
He hasn’t died, he hasn’t disappeared, he hasn’t given up.
That crime, nearly thirty years ago, was never solved.
And crucially, the distinguishing feature was the corkscrew.
The killer, proud and eccentric, made a point of leaving his signature again.
This is no longer an ordinary job. It’s a personal matter.
This absurd butchery is for me, with a dedication.
Everybody stares, dumbstruck.
The scene is horrifying.
Like something from a nightmare.
Like a tableau.
Fucking artist, thinks Gafis.
He takes a couple of steps forward and slowly lifts the hat off the woman’s face.
A cascade of long blonde hair.
The inspector behind himself.
Without a word, he drops the hat and returns in the direction from which he came.
- Sir? said Rooney, approaching from behind. Sir?!
The sergeant is himself uncertain what he wants to ask.
He only knows that he has to follow the inspector.
Gafis quickens his pace.
Some members of the group stay where the head is, others follow Gafis.
The inspector reaches the first corpse.
The head, here, is placed the other way around, downwards towards the grass.
The same long, blonde hair is visible.
Bent over the corpse, Gafis grips that unnatural blonde hear and pulls.
Just as he expected. The head is clearly that of a man. He doesn’t need to turn it around to be sure. The wig was a trick. Or a decoration.
Everybody freezes at the sight.
Now, without the wig, it looks even more grotesque than before, when they thought it was a woman. A young woman, beheaded, with her cranium inverted.
For all the pairs of hands around, nobody is allowed to touch the body, any of the bodies, before the arrival of the pathologists, in order not to contaminate any potentially important evidence.
Afterwards it is allowed, it’s required, because a pathologist sees one thing and an experienced cop with a bit of skill sees something else.
The pathologists are on their way, or already here, but the inspector is running out of patience.
However, everybody is waiting for him to do it. He has to. He’s the chief.
The tension is palpable.
Over there, by the other head, there are still two or three people.
All the others are here: drivers, stretcher-carriers, sergeants and simple cops who’ve come to gape, Hermes, Cody and particularly Rooney, with his pained look and body of an ex-boxer.
Nobody dares breathe too loudly.
Gafis looks around at them slowly, as though seeking their consent, kneels down and, with his bare hands, against all the protocols, takes the head placed with the woman’s corpse and turns it face-up.
Gafis almost drops the head in shock.
A general gasp is heard, mixed with other various other exclamations.
Everybody recognizes the face.
- It’s Hugo Fritz, somebody shouts. Hugo Fritz, the TV star!
Incredibly, it really is Hugo Fritz. Or his head at least.
Well, the paparazzi - those detested vultures who feed on corpses, explosions, collisions and suicides for their filthy, bloodstained money – missed this. Otherwise, the place would already be teeming with reporters.
Hugo Fritz - extraordinary!
Colossal.
The initial news is no longer the news.
Hugo Fritz is the news.
If this gets out, thinks Gafis, the entire wasteland will be swarming with TV cameras and curious onlookers within minutes. He shouts out:
- Everybody back. Secure the area. Off limits to everybody. Direct order. Not even a fly. Nobody. Anyone who disregards my order will be looking for a new job in the morning, and not on the force. Got it?
- OK, boss, reply several voices, off limits…
- Not even a fly! Gafis barks.
- Not even a fly! concurs Rooney enthusiastically.”
The alarm goes off again.
Time for an injection, apparently. He has to do this three times a day. It would normally be too big a dose for someone who was just sick. But he is not just sick, he is actually dying, and the doctors have said that in his case it can’t do any further harm. The harm is already there, in the brain.
In the brain!
He would have accepted a tumour anywhere else in his body, if forced to choose, gun to head. But a brain tumour immediately struck him as a bad joke. A terrible joke.
- What’s your occupation? he was asked, after receiving the diagnosis.
- I’m a writer, he replied automatically, then regretted it when he saw the doctor’s reaction.
- Woops! he said. That’s rough!
Then he apologized:
- Sorry. That just slipped out.
The doctor was a young bespectacled man with a pained expression, as though he had a toothache. He always hurried about, stooped, swinging his elbows. He gave the impression of being either very clever or autistic. Or both. His professional gravity was undermined by the utter sincerity of his apparently uncensored reactions. He would laugh for no apparent reason, slap his head, or suddenly turn gloomy. Feelings burst from him spontaneously, like tears from children.
The writer privately nicknamed him Kramer, after the goofy “Seinfeld” character.
Kramer looked at him with concern, sincerely affected.
- Brain cancer isn’t good for anyone, but for someone who works with their mind it’s even worse.
- In what way? Asked the writer.
- In every way, said the doctor drily, refusing to elaborate.
Kramer has permitted him three injections a day. Other doctors would not have done this, as it contravened some norm or other he’d come across on the net, researching the condition. It stimulated blood circulation, increased brain activity, made him feel he’d drunk a litre of strong coffee instead of a small cup.
Now he might die of a heart attack and cancer.
Which do you choose? Do you have a choice? Is it even a choice?
And he chose the lesser of the two risks. In fact, he didn’t have to choose. Life, whatever time he had left, chose for him. Without three injections a day, he “couldn’t function”.
The expression dated from his student days. Then, it referred to coffee. I can’t function without coffee, he would say, especially in the morning. In his present condition, it refers to the injections.
But the risk of a severe stroke, with his blood pressure, which had always been low, and his permanent state of exhaustion, are small. A risk exists, the doctor emphasized, but it wasn’t something he needed to worry about. A combination of factors might create complications, but if you avoid alcohol and coffee, don’t exert yourself or have wild sex, don’t take drugs or other stimulants, and follow your treatment plan, we’re on the right track.
Outside it’s still snowing.
A tremendous snowfall.
“Snowing on Haydn themes”.
He has had this title in his head for over thirty years. He’d liked it very much the first time he heard it: “Snowing on Haydn themes”…
Always, in the winter, when it’s snowing hard and silently, he calls it a Snowing on Haydn themes.
In his youth, he thought that one day he would write a “great” book and, no matter what it was about, this was the title he would give it.
Now, unfortunately, it’s too late for making plans, apart from the one he already has: to write six detective novels in eight months.
He has already written two. Four more to go.
The story he’s working on is the third in the series.
He had nothing in mind when he began. That was how it usually went. He started writing, stayed close to the text, focused on it, and the ideas started to flow from nowhere, steadily and obediently.
Sometimes, the ideas could be surprizing, shocking or absurd, but he had learned not to disdain away.
He got the first version that animated him down on the computer screen, just to have something to think about later, when the text started to settle and assume its own form.
He proceeded in the same way this time.
He began work on the book in the evening. Night would soon be falling.
He looked out the window then wrote: “Night would soon be falling”.
The lights in the neighbourhood were already flickering on.
He looked out the window then wrote: “The lights in the neighbourhood were already flickering on.”
Then he remembered a car journey to the edge of the city.
But everything that followed that was pure imagination.
It seemed to flow from him effortlessly.
The sentences, with their particular cadence, fell from him like rain.
His sick brain was still working.
The writer injects himself.
He goes to the kitchen for a fresh cup of tea.
He looks out the window.
Tomorrow, he thinks, this big city will be gone. And in its place will be an ocean of fresh snow. White, white, white and only white. Cleansing white, the white of renewal, the white of starting out, of hope for the world.
A new day, a new world.
How beautiful the world is, he whispers, how beautiful…
Out of nowhere, there are tears in his eyes.
He grits his teeth hard.
His jaw clenches.
Later, he murmurs, later…
He lights a cigarette. No restrictions there. Developing lung cancer within the next few months is out of the question. He can smoke all he wants. He’s up to three packets a day, but it doesn’t matter. That’s something, at least.
“Snowing on Haydn themes”.
He can’t get the title out of his head.
It would be a good title for a novel “with people”, as he terms them, emphasising estrangement, not for a detective novel with multiple homicides and a vicious killer.
Still, as it seems he can’t manage without it for now, he puts the title at the top of the manuscript, on the first page.
He’ll change it later, of course.
It can sit there quietly for now. It doesn’t bother him.
The important thing is to carry on.
He glances out the window.
Lord, what a snowfall, he thinks, surprized, slightly amused, as though he’d only just noticed.
“Snowing on Haydn themes”, the writer says aloud and almost giggles.
He likes it that he’s feeling cheerful. It means the work will go fast and well.
Hm.
In India it doesn’t snow. It never does. Neither on a theme by Haydn, nor on any other theme, he smiles, musing to himself, as usual.
Just as well he abandoned the idea, as his original plan was to write two or three simple, exotic, amusing books – half-adventure, half local mysteries – set in the Far East. The protagonist, the same one in each book, was a writer; a spontaneous, oddball, adventurous type.
One began kind of like this:
“My last novel was a dud. The critics panned it, the public ignored it.
I was a nobody again.
To top it off, my wife announced to me that she’d received an offer she couldn’t refuse: two years in New York, meals, accommodation and transport covered.
Two years? I simpered.
Two years, she said, her eyes already bright.
Alright, I said, and opened a bottle of gin. I continued opening bottles of gin, at least one or two a day, until the morning I said enough, you have a life to live. Live it. Put aside your whining and resentment. Find a way to live.
Easy to say, hard to do.
One day, at lunchtime, I was lounging on the balcony, cup of coffee in my hand, watching the kids in the park across the road. Among the trees, like an illusion, I thought I could see a giraffe. A giraffe in the park? I wondered, vaguely, and in the next second the word INDIA flashed across my consciousness in big yellow-on-brown letters.
In my excitement, I spilled coffee on myself. My mind was working feverishly.
India, yes, I said, India, an excellent idea. Instead of seven years in Tibet, two years in India. While my wife is in America, I can spend the time in Asia. It’s big enough. India for starters, then we’ll see what happens.
I packed a small bag, took the first available flight and approximately 22 hours later I was gaping at Bombay. Everything was so new; it was as though I’d never left home. Oddly, I felt as though I had been born there.”
After a few dozen quickly and easily written pages, he stopped.
No, he said, writing this kind of thing is risky. The public might go for it, or just as well might not.
Detective stories are a safe investment. They always sell.
Then a name came to him: Marcel Gafis. Marcel Gafis, police inspector. A police inspector had to have a team. Again, he noted down what came to him: Avastopulos, Cony, Hermes and Rooney. Rooney would be a chubby, likable guy, the heart and soul of the team.
And then the words began to flow.