On the other hand, the man sitting at that restaurant table, surrounded by people deep in animated conversation, says nothing. He’s been imperturbably silent for years. Other people’s views about his silence are, by now, accepting. They all respect the fact that he silently watches how they reason, argue, and refine shades of meaning which are themselves susceptible to refinement. Precisely because he keeps quiet, they don’t know that he thinks what they are discussing is banal, but they assume that must be the case. Generally, they also assume he doesn’t have a particular aversion towards them and that his evaluation of their banality isn’t at all contemptuous but is, in fact, agnostic. Agnostic in relation to others and himself. He’s not against them; he simply passes. He feels he is totally banal and dispensable, and that is precisely why he keeps quiet. He’d find it difficult to judge others for being banal when he himself is guilty of banality. He started to keep quiet the day when, in the midst of a conversation that was drifting into a disquisition on the degree of influence the fandango had exercised on the origins of the huapango, he suddenly found he didn’t know what to do. He knew nothing about the fandango or the huapango; they were subjects that had never interested him, and consequently, he had absolutely nothing to say. What was he supposed to do, stick his oar in and participate as expected? Invent an opinion on the matter and defend it? Rather than do that, for the first time in his life he preferred to keep quiet. Until that point he had always joined in, even with genuine interest, and forcefully, in all kinds of conversation and arguments. Although the others all looked astonished, he felt he had done no harm by saying nothing. And he didn’t find saying nothing at all unpleasant. The others didn’t act particularly aggressively towards him. He was used to defending entirely unexpected points of view, and he felt a sense of liberation when he allowed himself the luxury of keeping quiet and not saying a word. He saw how the others kept heatedly debating this or that, and now and again they looked his way, hoping to find he’d had a change of heart and would contribute an opinion. They only needed him to play his part in those ritual nightly conversations. The proof was that he could answer, as a matter of form, with a few predictable words. They found that altogether natural. Because they didn’t expect a really genuine or thoughtful response from him: the most formulaic reply sufficed, if it wasn’t out of place. His present silence, however, challenged the others’ chatter, and this was what upset them, much more than his silence in itself. Finally, a few hours and strange looks later, someone addressed him, asking if he had anything to say. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. The others continued their debate, reckoning that everyone has his day of silence. Nevertheless, he didn’t open his mouth in subsequent conversation. From that time on he has said nothing, ever, anywhere. He knows some believe he is being snobbish, that he is putting on airs and being unsociable. He doesn’t see it like that. He has absolutely nothing of interest to say; hence he says nothing and listens to the others’ heated arguments.
Like, for example, the guy at the other end of the table, who talks fifteen to the dozen, the most talkative of all the people sitting there, the one who won’t let the others get a word in edgewise, the one who rushes to speak first, so nobody can beat him to all the clichés available on today’s topic of conversation. He has an opinion on everything and wouldn’t, for all the tea in China, let himself be caught without a pertinent opinion on any issue whatsoever. He knows (or presumes to know) about economics and art, about stockbreeding and basketball. There isn’t a single subject on which he can’t express four pertinent ideas that may, sometimes, even scintillate. Given the wide range of topics he is obliged to hold forth on, his four ideas generally have to be transferable, polyvalent and sufficiently ambiguous to address a variety of issues simultaneously. It is not difficult to grasp that, as they have to be capable of adaptation to every possible issue, the insights and subtleties contained within these four ideas are hardly complex. The world is full of conversations where the man who talks fifteen to the dozen has to stick his oar in. He always has to be on the alert for whatever opportunity presents itself to allow him to say whatever comes into his head. Consequently, from time to time he observes the silent man at the other end of the table with a mixture of fascination and pity. How can he endure that almost vegetative existence, watching life pass by and never advancing his opinions? And there is so much to be said! Moreover, he can’t help thinking that if he keeps silent it is to make himself seem intriguing, to demonstrate the extent to which he despises everyone around him. On the other hand, he doesn’t pity the man he can see seated at the table who is talking to himself, and in fact feels a mixture of envy (because of the self-sufficiency he displays) and respect for what he deems to be a model of perfection.
Literature
He keys in the last sentence with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. It’s the first of his novels to end with a death. This is remarkable in itself because dead bodies had been notably absent from his books, a rejection of the facile solutions that so many writers resort to when they don’t know how to heighten the drama. Now, for the first time, and driven by the logic of his narrative, he has been forced to change this given and kill his protagonist. He wrenches the page from his typewriter, puts it at the back of all the others, and re-reads the beginning: “That early afternoon, when he was setting the table, the man dropped the salt shaker by chance and some salt fell on the serviettes. He was terrified.”
The writer’s contract with his publishing house obliges him to write a novel a year. He signed it seventeen years ago, and every January he punctually hands over the new novel to his publisher. He has by now published sixteen novels. He doesn’t think writing novels is particularly difficult, and he systematically makes fun of writers who take two years to write one. Sometimes he’s happier with some than with others. Sometimes the story flows, he feels passionate; it almost gushes out and is a pleasure to edit. At others the story is contrived; he writes as if it were a punishment (because, under contract, he must finish, come what may, before the year is up) and struggles to make a few edits. It makes no difference: nobody complains when it’s on the feeble side. Insistence on quality is minimal in this country; a situation that is so notorious its inhabitants like to joke about it. His constancy, then, allows him to earn a living—a precarious one, but he doesn’t have to get up at 8:00 a.m. His only prayer to this God he doesn’t believe in is that he should never have writer’s block. That wasn’t an option.
His publisher gives him some good news on the day the book is launched: They are going to re-issue his first novel in a new collection, and if he wants, as they have to re-set it, he can re-read it and introduce any changes that he thinks are necessary. He does just that. He has written so many novels that he’d forgotten the precise plot of his first effort and could only remember, rather hazily, some of the characters. He knew it was about a writer who is writing a novel, is quite successful, and that this allows him to publish a second novel the next year and a third the one after that. But when he reads it from one end to the other, he is astonished. The plot and the characters anticipate exact details from his life—events that happened months or years after publication. After sixteen years, he can pinpoint exactly which secondary character the protagonist’s wife falls in love with. Because soon after publishing his first novel, he met an identical character, and the woman who fell in love with him was his wife. And the protagonist’s struggle against pressure from the world around him was the very same one he faced after his first success.