I Hate Martin Amis et al. (9 page)

‘Often I do,' she said, quite without shame. ‘What I'm saying is' – she was trying to get back on track – ‘I don't know where this relationship of ours is going, but I do know it's not working.'

‘Count yourself lucky I'm a janitor,' I said, trying again to get us off the track she wanted to be on. ‘If I were a genuine writer, I'd be on the dole. I wouldn't waste my time even being a janitor.'

‘You're not listening to me, Milan. I'm being serious.'

This wasn't about my job, or not entirely, I could see that. It was summed up in that sneaky second sentence: ‘I don't know where this is going.' I knew with absolute certainty that the ‘commitment' word was hovering above our heads somewhere, waiting for an opportunity to insinuate itself into the conversation. She wanted to get married. She wanted to settle down. She probably wanted babies. And sure enough, she added, ‘I'll be twenty-five next year, and I want more than this, before it's too late.'

I looked at her. I frowned. I pretended not to understand what she was talking about. It wasn't difficult.

‘Our relationship …' she started, but stopped. She changed tack. ‘You're not happy, Milan, and I'm not happy. That's about it right now. It's that simple.'

‘Don't put words into my mouth.'

‘All right then: I'm not happy.'

Which is when I made the mistake of asking, ‘And why's that? Why aren't you happy?'

It all came out, pouring out, in a flood. How selfish I was, how I used her, how I was never there for her, and that the only thing that interested me was my writing. ‘You don't have time for a relationship, Milan, that's as clear as day to me. You're totally caught up with your writing.'

I denied it all, of course; I felt obliged to. I didn't like this new person, this creation of mine, like a rather pretty Frankenstein stepping down from the operating table and telling me, its creator, what was wrong with me. The script was wrong; it certainly wasn't anything I'd penned.

‘I've tried so hard to make it work, but it has never been enough for you.' She had her handkerchief out now and was twisting it into horrible shapes in her hands, obviously wanting to have it ready for eye duty when required. And I knew it would be required if her body language was anything to go by: she was beginning to sag, to make a round shouldered retreat, to return to the little girl of her past. But she hadn't quite given up. ‘I've thought about this a lot recently. I feel you observe me, watch me, all the time, Milan. It's like I'm some kind of experiment you're involved with, and it freaks me out. We're not together, not like a real couple is together. We're separate.'

‘Who wants to be like other couples?' I appreciated immediately this was a somewhat feeble response, especially when, in all likelihood, it was Bridgette's sole ambition in life.

‘You know what you say to me sometimes when we make love?' She looked at me and now there were tears forming in her eyes, being drawn up from that deep emotional well women seem to possess. The handkerchief was being untwisted in preparation for use. ‘You say, “Give yourself to me.” You cry it out. You shout it out, so urgently, always so urgently. “Give yourself to me. ”'

‘So? That's not so weird, is it?' I wasn't sure, to be honest.

‘But it's you who doesn't give yourself to me. You hold yourself back – and all the time, not just in bed.'

‘But you have orgasms now. And you told me you never used to.'

She shook her head. ‘You don't understand, do you? You really don't understand. It's not about orgasms, Milan. It's about being with someone, the two of us being one. Together. I don't give a damn about orgasms.'

She started to cry. I lit another cigarette – it gave me something to do – and I thought: ‘She should have said, “I don't give a
fuck
about orgasms.” That would have sounded better, certainly been more literary. I must remember that line.' I felt a little sick. I've never been able to cope with women leaving me, I have to leave them. That's how it was supposed to work, that made it more bearable.

‘You're after perfection, Milan. Nothing's ever good enough for you. No woman is ever going to live up to your ideals, it's an impossibility. No woman will ever be beautiful enough, loving enough, clever enough for you. It's all in your head. It's all in your imagination. I want someone who'll accept me for who I am.'

‘Please don't use clichés,' I said.

With her head down and her voice gone all quiet and the handkerchief carrying out mopping-up duties around her face, I could barely hear her. When she started again, after a moment's silence spent dabbing her eyes, I had to lean towards her to catch what she was saying. I shouldn't have bothered. ‘The fact is, our relationship has been very ordinary, nothing special.'

Even months later those four words are still burned on my conscience: ‘very ordinary, nothing special.' She'd dismissed our three years together with such finality, summing them up with just four words.

‘Well, see how special it is with one of your fucking creatives!' was the best reply I could come up with at the time – and I call myself a writer.

A minute later, when she stood up to leave, her handkerchief still clasped in her hand, I said, ‘I want my letters back.'

She looked taken aback, momentarily lost for words. ‘But they're mine,' she finally said. ‘You sent them to me, you can't ask for them back.'

During our time together I'd sent her many letters. I'm not sure why. I think it was a part of being in love – I told myself it was what lovers did, but it was also a part of how I saw myself – as a writer. A writer should write love letters, that's what writers did. I asked for the letters back because I wanted to punish her: I knew she'd want to keep them, probably to read through in her old age. But I also thought they might be useful to me one day. I might put them in a book. A collection:
Milan Zorec's love letters
– no, better to say,
Love Letters
. Milan Zorec. Or maybe just include them in my collected correspondence, possibly a companion volume to my
Rejection Letters
.

‘I don't want to give them back. I want to keep them.'

I had this rush of hatred, a desire for revenge. I wanted to hit her then, hurt her, smash her complacency and her niceness, and her betrayal. I could see her leaping into one or other of the
creatives'
beds within days. She was pinned against the wall just inside my front door, and I had my fists either side of her head, our faces almost touching. ‘I want my letters back. You'd better send them to me, otherwise I'll come round and get them.' She had her head down and her hands up to her face and she was crying now, really crying. I was happy I was making her suffer, but I was also, perversely, unhappy that there was now nothing left between us. It had all evaporated. I didn't hit her, and I didn't get my letters back, and that was it, finished, all over between us.

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I
t's late April (I'm not sure of the exact date, and rarely am), and this is the scene that confronts me most days.

The city is covered by a grey mist. The dark cobblestoned streets shine damply, and the river tumbles between stone embankments and ancient bridges. I'm reminded of a Scottish town. It has the same old-world feel, like something out of a Victorian novel. Probably it would be more accurate to say it's a city from the end of the Second World War, a Dresden or a Berlin. It's almost impossible – unless I look towards the outer suburbs – to see any building that's remained untouched by the bombardment. Like soldiers returning from the front, heavily scarred and with limbs missing, or bandaged carefully in a vain attempt to stop their guts falling out, the faces of the skeletal buildings are gouged by shrapnel and bullets, complete walls have disappeared, and windows have been blown away and replaced with plastic sheeting. They could fall at any time.

Packs of scavenging dogs are the only creatures at home in these surroundings. Like a flock of birds in the sky, the pack swings this way and that, ebbing and flowing, keeping perfect formation as it casts first one way then the other for prey, wheeling and swooping through the deserted city streets it now rules. Sometimes, if there are no people around, a sniper will pick one of them off, out of sheer boredom. When this happens, it's interesting to note how the victim's companions scarcely break their stride. There might be the smallest of hesitations, as if they were saying, ‘Oops, Rover's caught it!' but then they continue on their way. If they react at all, it's to run faster, as though to distance themselves from their unfortunate friend. They return eventually, when they think it's safe to do so, to claim the victim, having carefully studied the body – their dinner – for some time from the end of the street, doubtless with much salivating and rumbling of stomachs.

When I was young – I don't remember what age, but under ten for sure – I would build pyramids with other boys, usually of stones, cans or bottles, and sometimes all three, and then stand a certain distance away – this had to be agreed on by all of us and strictly adhered to – and we'd proceed to throw rocks at this edifice. Having constructed it, we then attempted to knock it down. Always it ended the same way: with each boy creeping closer and closer as the pyramid crumbled before our onslaught – a whoop of triumph greeting every direct hit – until, at the end, we'd be standing on top of the site trying to smash the last rock, can or bottle from point-blank range. It wasn't possible to knock this lone object off anything because it was the last remaining one and was already lying on the ground. The fun lay in pulverising what had already been weakened. It struck me the other day that this is what we're now doing to Sarajevo. There's barely anything left standing, so we're just trying to flatten what's already been flattened. We're like kids jumping up and down on a mound of dirt, screaming with glee, throwing bombs and bullets instead of rocks at the dust at our feet, trying to destroy what has already been destroyed.

Skeletal people, certainly short of food and possibly starving, dressed in dusty, dirty rags, wearing shoes made from strips of carpet or pieces of wood, continue to go to the wells for water and to their offices for work. I ask myself why they don't give up and leave. For that matter, why don't we give up and leave? I've only been here a few weeks, but already this siege strikes me as pointless. I don't say this to the others because I know they'd disagree with me –
they
are having a very enjoyable time. So long as I continue to gather material I guess I'll stick it out. If that's what the besiegers of this city want to do, and if that's how the inhabitants of the city want to live, good luck to all of them. I'll continue to jump up and down on this pile of rubble with them. I'll continue to destroy everything in my path. It's mad, but like most madness it has a certain appeal.

I think of Dante. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. And I wonder at which level of hell we are living here.

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T
oday, for the first time since I arrived here, the sky is a brilliant blue. The weather is definitely getting warmer. There are still cold snaps, and at night it's usually freezing, but sometimes, during the day, weak sunshine spills like a Turneresque watercolour across the sky. The snow and slush have been replaced by grass. The green startles. There are buds on the trees up in the mountains, and every now and again I see a smattering of flowers – no, an
explosion
of flowers, an explosion of colour that matches the explosions in the town. Crocuses and cyclamen, primroses, and blue flowers whose name I don't know are scattered amongst the trees. Nature, I've noticed, doesn't make any sound around here. With the almost incessant sighing of shells overhead and, a second or two later, the
krrrump!
as they hit their target, it has taken me a while to realise this. It's as if Mother Nature has been shocked into silence by the shelling, regarding the events happening around her with dumb stupefaction – unlike me. I feel at home in this noisy bedlam, quite accepting of the outlandish lullaby.

Even the cemeteries that litter the city landscape have taken on a refreshed, resurrected air. It's possible, with spring almost on us – maybe already here – that those who lie there have found new hope and may soon rise from their coffins in jubilation. They're the lucky ones, I guess, those in the cemeteries, because corpses are now being buried in the main sports arena. The playing field, like a badly made bed, is a mass of bumps. Today I'm shooting from the Jewish cemetery high up above Grbavica. The irony doesn't escape me – I lie amongst the dead and attempt to add to their number. They are my allies, my friends, we are on the same side. The dead provide excellent cover: the grass clusters at the base of the white, smooth stones like pubic hair around a penis. The tombstones lie skew-whiff, as if the bodies lying beneath them have stirred in their sleep and pulled their blankets out of place. The sounds of the mortars whistling overhead, from the wooded hills behind me, and the explosions from the streets below are muffled by the mantle of death under which I sit. I'm writing this resting on a grave at the back of the cemetery, beneath a tree that grows alongside a high brick wall.

The cemetery is on a steeply rising hill. Halfway up the hill is a memorial to the fight against fascism from 1941 to 1945. The white marble slab has a black band around its middle. It's the perfect sniper's resting place, in both senses. Directly below me, across the Pale road, are higgledy-piggledy houses of every colour: pink, white, yellow, stone, orange, blue and green. Few roads run from the main road down to the river, and those that do are steep and winding.

I've been telling my neighbours lying quietly around me about the novel I bought at the airport. I thought it might interest them, but it doesn't seem so. The novel has many pages about the planets and stars, about the universe, about astrology and astronomy, and I've been trying to work out the relevance of these planetary paragraphs. I believe Amis is making a link between the cosmos and this nebulous, hard-to-pin-down information, whatever that might be – although I suspect it's man's awareness of his mortality. His book could therefore be about the place of literature, of man, in the universe, and about whether the writer receives or does not receive this information, this information which is everything and nothing. When I asked members of my reading group if they'd like to discuss this particular point, they snorted derisively. I took that as a no.

The Information
is good. I study, and think about, the plot. On the surface the book is about literary success and failure, and about the humiliation of novelist Richard Tull. The latter has to suffer the success of his friend, also a novelist, Gwyn Barry, just as I have to suffer the success of Martin Amis. He's eaten up by envy, just as I am. Creating the plot wouldn't have been too difficult: it's simply the story of two writers, one with talent who's unsuccessful, and the other with no talent who's successful. The writing is masterful, the descriptions, metaphors and similes – the way it's all tied together in a rich tapestry of words – is typical Amis. He pleasures his readers on every page.

The book is excessive – but of course, can Amis be anything but? That's what makes him so enjoyable to read. The author is angry, an angry, middle-aged man, still raging, still ranting, delivering artistic, beautifully phrased tirades against anyone and everyone. In that respect, Richard Tull must be his surrogate. This character despises everything and, with the exception of his wife, possibly everyone. He could come to Sarajavo, take up sniping and immediately feel at home. The place would fuel his hatred and anger in a most satisfactory manner.

I tell all this to my neighbours, the Cohens, Baruchs, Fursts, Gluckseligs, Brankos and Engels who once lived in this city, but who now lie quietly at my feet and never say a word. It seems they're not interested. They certainly have no opinions to offer up. I suspect they must be bored – dead bored. They'd make good publisher's readers.

I, of course, lie at the feet of Mr Martin Amis, whose parents – both writers, as is well known – even went to the extraordinary length of getting the word ‘art' into their offspring's name. This Martin Amis – why didn't they simply name him Art? – doesn't know that I exist, yet I know him so well. I also know that he's a published writer and I'm an unpublished writer. That's the main difference between us. He has a public, and I have none.

I'm dazzled, nevertheless, by his book. It's so well written I'm in awe. I continue to skip back through it to re-read passages, to check what I've already read against where I'm up to now. I want to understand the book and discover the secrets of its construction. I'm determined to miss nothing. Having all the time in the world, I can study the novel at leisure – unless someone puts a bullet in my head tomorrow, which is always a possibility. Hopefully, I'll finish the book before that happens.

His writing is as distinctive as ever. It's clever, good writing. I wonder how easily these metaphors and similes come to him. Does he sit at his desk and write them straight off, or does he have to write them again and again, puzzle over them, worry them – worry
over
them – and try every combination of words until he finds the solution? When he first writes a passage, is it mundane and clichéd, and does he spend a long time thinking about how to make it different? I'd be happier to know he had to work hard rather than discover that such phrases and sentences just rolled off his pen without any thought or effort on his part, purely as the result of inspiration.

Because inevitably, reluctantly, I do compare myself to him. Surreptitiously, even furtively, like men in a public shower, I compare our bodies of work. It's his word against mine, his sentence against mine, his paragraph and chapter against my paragraph and chapter, and every time he wins. He's bigger than me. He has more length and breadth, more bulk. And yet, like him, I build. We're both builders. Words are the building blocks with which we construct or design our phrases, sentences and paragraphs. I start with three bricks: subject, verb, object. I place one on top of the other and, ho hum, I have a sentence. And it is ho hum – or so the likes of Mulqueeny, the odious Mulqueeny, would have me believe. Whereas Amis starts with the same three bricks, subject, verb and object, places one on top of the other and has an edifice, a thing of beauty, something of interest that stops people, makes them stare in wonderment, and quite takes their breath away. How does he do it? We have the same materials and yet the results are so different. I'm told that I've constructed a sixties block of council flats, grey, flat and monotonous, straight out of Brixton, while those supposedly in the know declare that he has built an ornate palace with balustrades, gargoyles and fancy crenellations, a Brighton Pavilion of words. Mine will be torn down tomorrow, but his will be left standing, if not for all time, then for many, many years to come.

The big story about
The Information
is that he received a £500,000 advance for it. He hadn't even put pen to paper, or so I understand, when some publisher walked up to him and said, ‘Mr Amis, we'd like to give you £500,000 for your next book.'

‘But I haven't written it yet,' he replied. (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here, trusting he recognised the absurdity of the situation.)

‘That's all right, you just hang onto the £500,000 until you do write it.'

‘But I don't even have an idea for my next book.'

‘That's fine, old chap. Keep the money, have a good time, go shopping, splash out at the dentist's, just let us know when you have a book ready for us.' And the publisher would grovel and fawn (could that be the company name, I wonder) as he backs out of the front door, mightily pleased with his investment.

I understand that only one out of every eight novels will pay for itself, so publishers try to limit their risks by advancing huge amounts of money for just a handful of titles. It works on the theory that the public hears about these vast sums – in fact they're put out there as publicity, as part of the pre-launch hype, virtually shouted from the rooftops – and is so intrigued that it buys the book. The reading public associates price with worth. How cynical is that of the publishers?

And what about all the struggling writers, the ones trying to start out? We're the ones who should be encouraged with substantial advances, not writers like Amis: he's probably a millionaire already, lives somewhere like Holland Park, eats caviar for breakfast, lunches at Langan's, bathes in champagne or ass's milk every evening, and every day, for a spot of fun and entertainment, visits either the tennis club or the dentist.

Yes, this is what's truly astounding – it was all over the media, too. He supposedly requires the advance for his teeth. His teeth! What kind of dental work costs £500,000? I admit to having a problem getting my head around this. It was like one of those unbelievable scenarios he's so keen on in his novels – imagination stretching. He was about to undergo major dental work in the US, that's why he needed the money. It's obvious we're not talking fillings here, certainly not a dental hygienist, and I suggest even a crown or two would be unlikely. We must surely be talking jaw reconstruction at the very least. Possibly his whole mouth is to be filled with exquisite, hand-carved ivory from the tusk of an Asian elephant – softer, whiter and more opaque than the African variety, or so I'm told. I'm ashamed to say I was both fascinated and enthralled, like the general public. It stayed in my head; Martin Amis's teeth stayed in my head. I couldn't get rid of them. I chewed over them. It annoyed me to spend so much time thinking about such a frivolous subject. Frivolous to me, but I guess not to him. Now that I think about it, he's always had a thing about teeth, especially in
Dead Babies.
What was the character's name? Giles Coldstream? He was very funny, a great comic creation, always having nightmares about his teeth and imagining terrible things happening to them. He would imbibe copious amounts of gin in order to anaesthetise his mental torment. Perhaps that's how his creator feels.

This fascination with an author's teeth, with the minutiae of his life, means no more and no less than this: our Martin Amis is a star. He's all American glitz and Hollywood glamour. He's red-carpet fodder for
People
and
Variety
magazines, a source of gossip for tabloid columnists. A writer who's a star, now there's a thing. Like a twentieth-century Dickens or Byron. Like Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Not many writers get to become stars, where readers are as interested in them and their lives as they are in their books. Not even readers, just people. People who would never dream of opening a Martin Amis book, nor any other book for that matter –
Sun
readers. They forage for titbits about his daily life and devour what he has to say on any subject under the sun. It doesn't have to be about writing, it can be about planting petunias in the spring, his favourite restaurant or pub, what he thinks about bringing up children, or his opinion about the merits of pilates. He is a star.

Whereas I am a sniper.

If Art only receives that £500,000 for
The Information
(and the likelihood is he'll receive much more), and the book has 150,000 words – I'm guessing, just to make it simple – then for every word he has written he'll receive £3.33 recurring. He receives £3.33 for every word he writes, while I receive 500 Deutsche Marks (or around £175) for every person I kill. This means he has to write about fifty words to earn the equivalent of what I get for one victim – and most of those words will just be
a
or
the
,
and
or
but
.

It's hard to imagine, even for me, how the people in the city, scurrying through the streets down there, would feel if they were told that each one of their lives, to which they cling so enthusiastically and earnestly, is worth only fifty Martin Amis words. Mind you, to give the man the benefit of the doubt, a Martin Amis word has a certain cachet: few people will understand it and some dictionaries may think it too esoteric to even list. One is not talking here of a common-or-garden
mot
.

Those people in my sights will be more appreciative of my talents, that's for sure. I'm good at sniping, and it's a real craft. It's as much a craft as putting pen to paper, in some ways more of a craft. It's a skill I've become increasingly proud of, and one that I work hard at to make myself even better.

I attempt to bolster my self-esteem by frequently reminding myself of the difficulty of what I do. A bullet spins as it flies through the air. It leaves the barrel spinning at around 2500 revolutions a second, and the resistance it encounters on its path warps its flight ever so slightly to the left or right. Gravity also does its best to take the bullet off course, pulling it downwards. These factors mean that its trajectory is below and to one side of where the barrel's pointing. I must therefore ‘lay' my rifle, adjusting the sights so that the bullet strikes its target. That is the skill, the artistry of what I do – and could Art do that? The accuracy, the threading of the needle, is absolutely up to me. I like the scientific exactitude of this, the mathematical precision. I like knowing that over six hundred yards, if the calculations are a fraction out at my end, then it will mean the bullet will strike several inches out at the other. I like knowing that. It's not intuition, it's not guesswork, it's fact. It's the difference between putting my bullet in someone's heart and putting it in their upper arm. It's a matter of life and death – for both of us.