The Novelist in the Attic

Before the first signs of dusk show in the sky, the editors start to call it a day, stacking the pages of their half-finished manuscripts and clicking off the green-lampshaded lights above their desks. Offices fall dark one by one. The corridors connecting these offices clear a floor at a time. At his usual hour, the security guard appears – this house of culture promises no shocks, no surprises, nothing to fear – and by the time he has completed one lackadaisical patrol of the building, leaving a single lamp lit on every floor, the sky outside is pitch black. The small building that houses the publisher has fallen absolutely still. This is when the novelist chooses to step out of his room.

Through the attic door, he descends, down a flight of black marble stairs, around the landing corner and down another flight to the floor below. He strolls leisurely along the deserted corridor, under old fashioned chandeliers hung from exquisitely carved ceiling panels; past one office door, after another – all shut. At the end of the corridor, he stops. Fourteen tall, slender windows, set side by side, occupy more than half the wall before him. Through them he can see the line of wutong trees planted along the roadside. From spring to autumn, their green proliferates, steadily deepens, then just

as steadily wanes; in winter only spindly, skeletal branches remain.When the leaves burgeon again into shady luxuriance, he can be found at these windows, watching for hours as the leaves sway here and there with every slight breeze, a dizzying spell that sets his head rolling as if aboard a ship sailing over verdure waves. This winter evening, however, windless, waveless, serene, he looks out onto the stark-naked treetop that is almost level with him. Then he continues down the staircase, stopping at each floor to wander aimlessly, before lingering briefly at each corridor’s end to look afresh at the window-framed scenery: the wutong treetop; upper branches; lower branches; the broad trunk descending all the way to the ground. Finally he comes to the ground floor where the on-duty guard has just finished a patrol and is sat behind his walnut counter, ready to idle away his tedious empty hours, flicking through a newspaper, drinking tea, sitting until sometime between eight and nine when he will perform the final patrol, then retire to the off-duty lounge and not emerge again until his next shift.

The security guard has been listening to the sole remaining footsteps in the publishing house since their steady pad began far above him, resounding through every inch of the building. Decades ago, when the guard was still young and new to the job, he had felt compelled to exchange words with the novelist, if only to ascertain how many lines he had written that day. As time passed, to simply see the novelist’s expression was enough. And now, with years of experience, he only need hear his footsteps. Having written plenty, the novelist, satisfied with himself, walks slowly; having written little, encumbered by distress, he walks slower still; either way it’s slow, but the security guard has learnt to tell the difference. ‘Today’s been productive.’ He makes his first assessment based on the sound of the footsteps alone. Then, seeing the novelist stride down the final flight of stairs, he expands:‘He’s been on a roll recently, the writing is clearly going smoothly.’ Beside the former director, the security guard is the person who understands the novelist best, a fact which has escaped the notice of all three.

The two share a brief greeting.Then the novelist, stopping in the building threshold, fastens the collar of his old overcoat, pushes open the door, steps outside and walks into the small, alluring avenue on which the publishing house stands. Passing the wutong tree that he has already contemplated from three tiers of perspective – high, middle, low – he now adopts a pedestrian’s point of view to contemplate the tree once more. After all, a novelist should look at any one thing from every possible angle and, more importantly, never weary of doing so. He has ventured out to eat dinner. After dinner, he will take a long walk, then return to the publishing house, to his attic.

The novelist lives in the publishing house, permanently.

Many years ago, the novelist requested an office from the publisher. Previously, he had published his debut novel with the press – a bestseller as it turned out. Before that, no one had thought anything of the book, nor much of him. His presiding editor had treated him with intense indifference; there was no shortage of writers like him, so no reason for high hopes.

But the book enjoyed a good run of luck. After selling steadily for over six months, by pure coincidence, an issue it addressed became a hot topic, a big social talking point, catapulting the work into the public consciousness. Copies flew off the shelves, stocks were cleared out, and after a swift reprinting, another swiftly followed. The novelist accepted invitations to several readings and Q&As, during which he presented the audience with a sufficiently fleeting impression of himself that none could ascertain whether they liked him or not. But that wasn’t in the slightest bit important, because before long, film rights for the book were sold. Third-rate filmmakers, it seemed, recognised a greater talent in him than the novelist himself.The resulting movie was mediocre at best, yet still sparked a new wave of sales that launched the novelist into the upper echelons of bestselling author lists. Eager to capitalise on the momentum, the novelist released a second book which sold a seventh as well as the first. Not good enough, but passable. Then, partway through his third book, he asked the director to assign him a temporary space for writing in. The director wasn’t a stickler for regulation and liked making friends. Right then, the novelist fitted the bill for friendship perfectly. They had discussed how once the new book was complete, his three works should be marketed as a set – a trilogy – to better draw eyes, win prizes and, ultimately, sell, never mind that there was no explicit link between the three – a shrewdly-chosen series title would fix that. The novelist put forth the quite innovative suggestion too that the cost for renting the space be deducted from the agreed upon fee for the new book. The director approved.

‘Writing in-house can only be good for you.’The director reeled off the names of eight well-known writers from the previous generation, ‘…they all did it. It used to be the norm that writers were good friends with their publishers, their relationship transcended a business transaction, authors would be continually in touch with their editors; they’d go on walks together, share ideas, exchange advice and together produce great books.’

‘Is that right?’ replied the novelist. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss companionship, he only wanted to explain his intention for renting the space, ‘I’ll come at nine in the morning and leave at five, there’s nothing to disturb me here, and I’ll have a writing routine. I want to give this life a try.’

The director approved, ‘Well, it can only be a good thing. There’s no other way to write a book as far as I’m concerned. You have to write one hundred characters a hundred times to have ten thousand characters, and write ten thousand characters twenty times to have the two hundred thousand characters to make a book. There should be no talk of two hundred thousand characters’ worth of talent, only two hundred thousand characters of effective work. A writer must exert themselves.’

‘Exactly,’ said the novelist.

The director led him around several floors. Sections of the stair-rail sprouted artfully curved copper balusters that snaked down to where their leather shoes beat out a four-step rhythm against the black marble, like two pairs of hands playing the black keys of a piano. They ascended one flight of stairs, then another, then several more. Finally, they arrived at the top floor. ‘Not bad.’ The attic room was small with a slanting ceiling beneath which, at the highest point, a person could easily walk up and down, and at the lowest point, were he to put a writing desk there, he would have to stoop to stand or sit. Sitting at the desk would virtually lock a person in place, ideal for someone who needed to write a lot. He gave the director his sincere thanks, ‘It’s ideal for work.’

The wutong tree was not as tall back then – from the attic the novelist had to descend two floors to be able to look through the corridor windows directly at the treetop. The next floor down was the optimal spot for viewing the upper branches, and in the middle of that corridor was the break room where he installed the midrange coffee machine he’d gifted the publishing house as a token of thanks, as one might a landlord upon moving into a new residence. The new machine replaced the awful instant coffee that used to be found in there, and the novelist supplied a range of coffee beans of varying quality for a time as well. Every afternoon, after writing a little, he went downstairs to make a cup of coffee to drink with the ever-present biscuits that he ate as if he were owed them. Eventually, because of the sheer amount of coffee being consumed, the publisher started to buy their own beans, which weren’t to his taste, so he stopped coming for coffee, although he continued to come for the biscuits, and for the soft sweets. On the stairs, the biscuits and sweets still close at hand, he would pause to chat with editors, both sides crystal  clear  on what  topics  were  off  bounds: How many characters have you written today? How much have you written already? When will you finish? The consensus among the editors: leave him to it, there’s no use in hurrying things, bringing it up would only lead to embarrassment. Instead, just to be polite, they talked about the real world – weather and emerging voices in the literary scene – before returning to what they were doing.

Early on, the novelist’s work hours lined up exactly with the editors’ nine to five. They often spotted the back of his pensive figure, making its way along the wutong tree avenue

– messenger bag over the shoulder and neatly dressed – as if he had to clock in and clock out like the rest of them. After some time, his hours shifted to 8am to 6pm, morning and evening – from then on only the most diligent editors ever saw him on the avenue. Then more time passed, and he pushed the start and end of his day further in either direction, to seven and seven – now no editors saw him arrive, or saw him leave. He gave everyone the impression that he materialised out of thin air. On the weekends, he appeared according to that same schedule. And on holidays too. Soon, one inadvertent all-nighter opened the door for countless more, and as he spent ever more time at the publishing house, he slept curled up on a sofa in the attic and even bought a simple wardrobe to keep a few clothes in. Eventually, he was there round the clock, day and night. By now the editors, particularly the younger ones who joined after he’d moved in, all shared the same unshakable misconception: the novelist was no longer a guest. He had merged with the building. He was the real head honcho, higher in status even than the director.

Still, part three of the trilogy refused to be finished.

The director verbally agreed to extend the lease twice, ‘Stay a little longer, write some more. You can’t rush good work.’ Later, he simply kept his mouth shut and allowed the novelist to continue living there. One reason was that the room given to the novelist had been otherwise unused, so the publisher had incurred no further costs. Another was for the story. Once the right opportunity presented itself, the director planned to tip off a reporter that such-and-such novelist permanently resided in his publishing house where he wrote single-mindedly, and as his publisher, he was fully behind that decision. He was confident that the story would stew with time to become even juicier, and someday when the novel was complete and sold well, it would be people’s favourite go-to anecdote, thereby fuelling word-of-mouth.

If these first two incentives demonstrated the cunning integral to any business mind, then the third reason was really quite pure and noble: the director admired the novelist. Over the years, they had become genuine close friends, and to the director’s mind, the novelist was the truest embodiment of fulfilling the literary dream there was. He had met too many writers to count, big and small, yet not one possessed a tenth of the novelist’s moral dedication to the art. The novelist had so devoted himself to the act of creation that he had relinquished all other aspects of life, his sole remaining material need was a poky, square room with a sofa to lay his head on, and his willpower never faltered no matter how much time passed – all qualities that the director admired. Walking the corridors of the publishing house all these years without turning over a manuscript, the novelist never showed even the slightest hint of shame and maintained a free, unencumbered demeanour. Until he ducked into the director’s office that is, and the two of them shut the door; only then would his anguish spill forth from behind the mask, onto his shirt front, his knee, the floorboards, scattering everywhere like ash. He bared his heart for no one but the director, the friend who had walked with him shoulder to shoulder for so many years down this road of creation.

‘This man…’ The novelist sunk weakly into the chair. He had entered the office with his head high, shoulders squared

– one would have been forgiven for thinking him a different species entirely to the frail looking editors – then lowered himself down to fill the chair’s back and sides. Once settled, his body started to droop and shrivel and shrink, a circle of blue cushion spreading inchmeal from under his bottom. He was talking about the dilemma of his main character, ‘He needs to enter the room, the room where what sparks his whole destiny awaits him. But I don’t know how to make him enter; he has been stuck in that corridor since last Friday, a whole four days.’

Sometime later, the novelist was slumped again in that same place, even more feebly, more diminutive than before, the blue cushion resembling a sea rising to half swallow the island of his rear end. He and his protagonist faced a new quandary: ‘Yesterday, he made it into the room at last, then instantly I was lost again, what to do with him next? What do I do, I asked myself over and over, so many times I shifted my own anxiety onto him. In an attempt to buy some thinking time, I wrote: “Now inside the room, he asked himself, what do I do?”The moment that sentence was on the page, I hated myself thoroughly. Just because I, the writer, am simple- minded, my protagonist has turned out to be a dumb fool too. Imagine that, my sole contribution to this world, nothing but the passing on of my own imbecility into fiction. It’s unforgivable.’

How the novel should unfold ‘next’, however, was to be the least of his worries, he could simply leave the protagonist to wait a few days in the corridor while he cogitated and, eventually, a solution would come to him. It was the already ‘completed’ section that was truly daunting.

As time ebbed away, so did the self that had penned the novel’s very first line. Each passing day saw the novelist’s views of things change, and his thinking morph beyond recognition, become that of another mind entirely. He balked at what he had written the month before, scorned every word from the year previous and beyond, and anything written over a decade ago left him simply incredulous. He couldn’t believe he had once had the audacity to put such things down on paper. He was at war with himself, a war that saw casualties on all sides. Every moment was a tussle in which he grabbed some earlier self of his by the scruff of its neck and lambasted it about how this or that section was so badly written it needed to be torn up and restarted. But why the past self had written what it had was clear, that same self retorted; the section more than stood up to scrutiny, was well written in fact, and as the successor, it was his job to bridge the past and future, not simply to scratch a line through everything that came before.The past self made a convincing argument – by thoroughly rejecting the past, one thoroughly rejected the present too, and the future, and spending all that time rejecting things left no spare time to create. On the one hand, the selves were waging a war against each other; on the other, they simultaneously scrambled to arbitrate their own face-off as neither knew which self to declare the victor. But before a conclusive winner and loser could be announced, from a new thought emerged a new self, a new self who leapt, unhesitating, into the fray. A new self that also wished to sit in the umpire’s seat – the ensuing melee was even greater than before, more chaotic and even harder to judge.

‘All good writers have this problem, who doesn’t doubt themselves? Doubting your work can only be a good thing,’ the director gently consoled his friend,‘But I do worry about you. As I see it, writing calls for you to break out of your self- inflicted shackles, you know, transcend. Sometimes you just have to drop your scruples with your past self.You need to be truly alone, then you can take up your pen and write with abandon. That is unburdened joy.’

The novelist remained silent.

What had he been doing recently outside of ‘our little trilogy’? the director asked. The novelist started to enumerate his movements in the outside world, as if recounting a previous life in outer space before touching down on earth. He was beginning to doubt whether what he was saying was true anymore.

When he’d only recently moved into the attic, the novelist still kept in touch with his friends in the arts and literary scene, but quickly ‘see you later’ became ‘goodbye for now’ became ‘goodbye forever’. There was more than one occasion when he walked into a bar or coffee shop where they all were, to discover that, partly because of the change in his appearance, but mainly because it had been so long since his last public appearance, none of his old friends recognised him. He sat nearby, eavesdropped on their conversations and found the details so strange and unfamiliar, full of the names of writers he’d never heard of, of critics he didn’t know, of unheard-of book marketing strategies. Before barely a few minutes he lost interest. He reduced how often he visited such places after that, and when he went, he made sure not to listen in on his old friends’ conversations.

As for his home situation, he had been separate from his wife for years.‘When she wants a divorce, she’ll come find me,’ he told the director, ‘The publishing house is easy to find.’ One evening after dinner, roaming through the streets, he spied a bright-red telephone box in a secluded corner, slipped inside, fished some change out his pocket and called his wife. Hearing her voice at the other end, he said, ‘It’s me,’ then when his wife asked how the writing was going, he wasn’t sure how to answer, so said nothing. His wife changed the topic, asked how things were otherwise, he told her he had quit smoking with hardly any effort, started drinking filter coffee, and acquired a taste for jelly sweets which he ate nonstop every day. Keeping a handful of these sweets that so reminded him of his youth beside his unfinished manuscript made him feel a little better. Then his wife said his name and there was suddenly a spring in her voice. She laughed, ‘It’s as if you’re in a different world to me, I feel like I’m on the phone with my dead husband.’ Later that evening, he indeed was in another world. Lying in the attic, moonlight pouring through the small window whitening his face. He summoned his wife’s voice to his mind, her face, the feeling he had had each time she read his newly written passages as he waited for her to pass judgement. He sat up to jot a few lines describing his protagonist’s feelings.

What the character was doing and his most recent writer’s block were both endless sources of discussion for the novelist and director. But apparently when it came to his own life, there was nothing much he could say. He had no life to speak of. His old friends from the arts and literary scene had each moved on in their own way, leaving behind their old haunts. He never called his wife’s phone again, and his wife never bothered to divorce him. He was always too busy with his writing.

Seeing how tall the wutong tree had grown, the director felt rueful. He never pressed the novelist, but time was pressing him now. At some point, the circumstances seemed to slip beyond his control. His hands were tied. He could only watch, immobilised, as the loaf of bread tipped over the table’s edge. His worry had become reality. By the time the security guard had learnt to deduce the novelist’s daily output from the sound of his footsteps, the novelist had reached middle age and his looks were creeping toward the geriatric.The director too was getting on, it was time for him to retire.

Behind the scenes, the director did everything in his power to help during the handover; he even sat down specially with the new director to discuss the novelist.The new director was admiring the two broad, ceiling-to-floor bookcases in the office, on which every book was one of the prides of the publishing house – some had been awarded national or international prizes, others had sold consistently since their release, all were carefully ordered – the way he looked at them gave the impression each was a book-shaped tombstone leaning against the wall, the two walls like sections of a cultural graveyard. Among them was the novelist’s first book. As their eyes passed over it, the old director seized the opportunity to broach the subject: ‘We’re long accustomed to having a novelist live in the building. Myself and all the editors and other colleagues, we’re all used to it. It was a little odd at first, someone sleeping and eating here, never submitting any manuscripts while we’re the one invariably paying out. And it’s not just the zero return either, he never tries to keep you sweet so it feels like the whole workplace is losing out – this is a place of business, we do business here! But soon enough, I started to think it was great him staying here. Between us and the novelist, it’s like we’ve forged this old-fashioned relationship, you know like there used to be, a relationship that doesn’t just hang on punctual transactions, on both parties holding up their side of the bargain. We’ve shed the modern insistence on seeing immediate benefits, and as a result, I’ve discovered certain parts of my conscience are still clean, still bright and pure as ever. I’m more broadminded, more expansive-minded than I thought. I’m surer of myself in the task at hand. When I send whatever asinine, vanity title I’m working on to the printers, when I publish some new book not worth the wood pulp it’s printed on, I try to think of the novelist, and with him in mind I’m able to tell myself I’m still a dignified publisher worth my salt, who to my last day continued to promote good literature. Great literature. I’m more than qualified, and I’ve not a whit of regret for my career.’

‘How touching! That’s very touching! I hope one day to be able to look back on my own career in the same way, to speak with such magnanimity, with a clear conscience – but I’ve many years ahead before that. Before I can assert such things, there’s considerable real work to be done. Nonetheless, your words today will long stay with me, I’m sure. I only hope that I can profess a tenth of what you have at the end of my career.’ The new director spoke with forced admiration, then he asked: ‘But do you actually think he writes well?’

The veteran director did not respond right away. He waited a breath to allow the asker to reflect whether or not his question might be a faux pas. Then he replied, yet his answer was somewhat indirect. ‘It’s a shame we cannot fill every role, and lucky that we don’t have to. Us publishers publish. Commentary we can leave to the readers.’

The old director was driven away in a sedan car. The leaves overhead cast their shadows on the windshield, then onto his face, making the car’s interior flicker between light and darkness. In the moments of dark, there were several times he had the urge to look back toward the attic easily visible over the treetops. He resisted. There’s nothing more I can do for you now. My work is done.

The novelist had lost his champion and in no time at all, received repeated eviction notices. The new director always spoke very politely face-to-face and was never unpleasant, but he was serious about him leaving. He saw it like this, there was no other opportunity quite so convenient as this for stating his position: were he to let the novelist stay, for example, the suggestion would be that he was taking up the torch of his predecessor’s thinking, his way of doing things, whereas should he ask the novelist to leave, he’d be sending an unmistakable message to the staff about his determination for reform. Both were acceptable approaches, except, considering he was relatively young, presenting a face of reform would be more advantageous to his newly ascended seat.

From then onwards, the whole publishing house, top to bottom, felt a new wind blow through it. Rules and regulations changed, the length of meetings changed, the volume people spoke at changed. But the biggest change, the one that all those swept up in the midst of this overhaul saw unfold before their eyes, was the one they saw happen to the novelist – by comparison they were joggers watching someone else charge by at five times their speed, so fast they doubted whether they hadn’t been stood in the same spot all along. The novelist’s physique shifted daily, from fat to thin, young to old; even from one moment to the next during a single day, the wild metamorphoses happened too quickly to keep track. Editors would bump into him on the stairs or in the break room to find him desperately hungry for conversation, then minutes later his mouth remained sealed shut like a dead clam. There were days someone said they saw him on the second floor, only for an editor to claim they just spoke to him three floors up. And the sound of movement from the attic never stopped for a second. They tried putting themselves in his shoes: the novelist had been tormented by the new director just like everyone had; he had been pushed to both the point of making radical changes to his appearance and extreme adjustments to his writing regime. They observed another phenomenon under the new direction too, but none made the link to the novelist: biscuits and sweets in the break room were disappearing at a shocking rate, especially the sweets, as if someone were inhaling them.Virtually a moment after they were put out, they’d be gone. But because of the prevailing chaos keeping everyone occupied, no one had the presence of mind to pay proper attention, which let a lot of anomalies to pass by without a second thought.

Then one winter day, after the editors had clocked off at their usual hour and night had fallen, the novelist left the publishing house. First, he stepped through the attic door far later than usual and didn’t head directly downstairs.Whatever that meant he was doing instead, the security guard heard a much richer combination of sounds than the typical pad of footsteps alone. Noises that started in the highest reaches of the attic, noises the security guard had never heard before but would later recall as like the sound of someone filling a bag with eggs and swinging them against a hard surface, cracking some and spilling their yolks and whites over the rest – the sound of that whole process combined and blended into one. Next, the security guard heard the novelist walk out his room again, linger on each floor a good while as he descended, even heading back upstairs to the attic a number of times, and all the time the security guard believing the building to be safe as ever and relaxing in his chair.When finally the novelist made his way to the ground floor, he looked especially gaunt, his expression too grave for the guard to dare strike up a conversation, at which point, it occurred to the guard, whose recent worries about his low-skilled job being put at risk had robbed him of his usual perceptiveness, that several days had passed since the novelist last left the building to eat. How he had coped was unclear. As the novelist approached, he suddenly threw the bound-up wad in his hand onto the counter where it landed with a thud, and without a word, he stalked out.

The wad was his finished manuscript.

A week later, in line with the slow pace of the publishing house, the manuscript was still to reach the first proofing stage, and the novelist had not returned to the building. An administrative staff member had been sent to check the attic, where, upon opening the door, she let out a piercing scream discordant with the long-reigning quiet expected in such workplaces, on hearing which a group of editors raced upstairs, momentarily shaking the whole building. Shortly after, someone summarised the scene inside the room, piecing together the various accounts of editors crammed into the doorway, and provided a detailed report to the new director. Several days later, news of what they’d seen finally reached the ear of the former director. Beneath the slanting ceiling, corpses strewed from the lowest end to the tallest – slumped over the desk, slouched in the chair, laid spread eagle across the sofa, stood upright inside the simple wardrobe. And sprawled across the floor from end to end were a dozen more at least, each curled up side-by-side like ready-frozen shrimp in the supermarket. Every one’s neck was twisted, snapped. Every face was the novelist’s, taken from some different point in his life between youth and middle age. Every corpse’s right hand was raised, held out in front of the body, poised to write. Racing toward an end for the novel, swarms of selves, young and old, had sprung forth from the novelist, bent on wrestling control from him.The novelist had broken the neck of every last one of them, and finally completed the manuscript.

A fortnight later, an editor opened the little cabinet door beneath the break room coffee machine to take out a paper cup for her coffee, only for another dead novelist to come tumbling out. A month later, one of the circulation department moved aside a stack of unsellable books in the corner of an unfrequented storeroom to find a heap of the novelist’s corpses. Each one’s right hand was raised to write, mouth open as if mid-tirade. On that final evening, with the small room already piled high with corpses, the novelist had dragged the surplus bodies to various places around the building to hide. The security guard had heard this going on but never divined the truth of what was happening.

To this day, the novelist has never shown up, and his novel is still waiting for the world’s judgement. Many more corpses remain unfound in secret corners and hidden caches throughout the publishing house dappled by the waves of the wutong tree, each one another sacrifice in the name of writing.