He wrote to Carlotta. He wrote that he had loved her from that first moment. He wrote that he had been afraid of her. It was this fear that had caused him to stand idly by as she fell into the arms of another man. He described a habit he had: at the end of a long writing session, when he would go back to read aloud what he’d put down that day, he would pretend that she was sitting in front of him. He would read to her, watching her facial expressions in his mind, listening to her laughter or gasps. That was how he knew something was right, if the Carlotta in his mind liked it. He had done this every day of his writing life, even when he was married. He had done it while writing his novel. Originally, he confessed, he had patterned the novel’s love interest after her, but he had worried that she would know and that that would be the end of seeing her, and he wanted her in his life one way or the other, any way he could have her. So he changed the book. It had been a mistake, he wrote, because everything he knew about romantic love came from her, so in writing away from her, he was writing falsely. It was a costly decision, in that it had informed everything since. He had not written a word of truth until now. He was happy she had married Bill, for Bill had provided her a life he never could have. And he was happy she had reentered his life at a moment when they could give to each other unselfishly. He wrote that he enjoyed making love to her. They had lived long enough to know what that act did and did not mean. He wrote that he didn’t care if she was a spy. It was sexy, actually. Nor did he regret coming to rescue her. He was sorry only that he had botched it so badly.
He wrote to his daughter. He wrote about the unreal spectacle of her arrival into the world. The change that took place within him felt physical. He felt it: felt his heart ripen. Like anything ripe it was swollen and delicate and prone to split. In one instant the world went from a place of no consequence to an endless series of life-and-death decisions. Everything mattered. Her face was slightly smushed and he worried. The nurses gave her supplementary oxygen and he worried. He put her in the car seat and worried. The worry burned underneath him and distilled him to his essence. Joy was real joy and fear was real fear and anger was real anger and happiness was the real thing. He revisited the coffee-colored sofa, the one that had springs exploding out of it before they finally got rid of it, and he told her that once upon a time it hadn’t been a wreck but a nice new piece of furniture that he liked to sit on with her in his arms, the sun coming up blue, her warm little head squirreled against his bare chest, her lips pursing and sucking in her sleep. Those hours had seemed endless then, but now he cherished them as the last moments he had had her all to himself. He wrote about the first time he accidentally pricked her foot while pinning on her diaper. She had barely bled and she hadn’t made a peep but it destroyed him to see what he could do to her if he wasn’t careful. He wrote that he was sorry. He wrote that it was silly of him to have insisted on cloth diapers. He wrote about how he had studied her as a child, collecting her every gesture and feature. He wished he had taken the time to write more of them down. He remembered her first day of school. She had thrown up from anxiety. He’d made her go anyway. At the time he had wondered if he was making a mistake but in retrospect it seemed like the right thing to do. He wrote that he was glad he hadn’t gotten everything wrong. He wrote of the triumph he felt at her triumphs, the agony of her disappointments. He remembered soccer practice and dance practice. He remembered father-daughter dances. He apologized that he had never danced at these dances, and that they’d always ended up standing on the side of the gym. He remembered the first time a boy broke her heart. He wrote that it was the first time in his life that he had honestly wanted to hit someone. He apologized that he had sometimes been angry at her for no reason other than that she made him acutely aware of his own shortcomings. He remembered the look on her face during those few months, long ago, when he was making progress on his lame attempt at a mystery novel. He had seen that she was happy, and he knew that her happiness came from thinking that he was happy. That kind of generosity made her special. She could be as smart and as beautiful as anybody in the world—she was that smart, she was that beautiful—but nothing made him prouder than her decency. He couldn’t take too much credit for that. She had always been that way, even as a baby. Some people were born pure, and somehow, in defiance of all the odds, she was one of them. He wrote that he was glad she had found someone who could take care of her. She deserved the best. She always had. Her wedding was the best investment he had ever made. He apologized that he had not articulated his feelings more clearly and more often. He had never had the right words. He still wasn’t sure he did, but it was better to try than to remain silent. In all his years, he wrote, he had produced nothing of value save her. She was his life’s work. He considered himself a successful man. He wrote that he loved her, and he signed it your father.
98.
With less than forty-eight hours left until his deadline, Pfefferkorn stood up from the desk and cricked his neck. A few days earlier, he had struck upon the idea of using the last chapter of Shade of the Colossus as a model for the ending of Vassily Nabochka. It was either the best idea or the worst idea he’d ever had, and since he had nothing to lose—at that point he’d come to a complete standstill—and since Zhulk liked the novel well enough, he had made up his mind to give it his all. Nonstop toil had pushed the total to more than seventy lines. So far he had the beleaguered and road-weary prince coming to his dying father’s bed, magical root vegetable antidote in hand. Then followed an internal monologue worthy of Hamlet, as the prince debated whether to give the antidote or to let the old man slip away peacefully. In the end the prince dropped the antidote into a chamber pot. These events were meant to correspond to the novel’s young artist pulling the plug on his father. To be on the safe side, he’d also thrown in some flattering references to Communism. With the remaining two dozen lines, he planned to have the prince ascend to “a most bitter throne.” He had thought of the phrase the day before and, liking the sound of it, had jotted it down in the margin. In Zlabian it was slightly less mellifluous: zhumyuiy gorkhiy dhrun. He thought it worked all right. He couldn’t tell. He was under pressure and he felt himself losing perspective.