The Mountain Cage (29 page)

I stood up, realizing that I couldn’t respond without bursting into tears. Grasping at my last threads of dignity, I turned and walked slowly out of the room.

I could have applied to another trainer. Instead I moped for months. At last my father issued an ultimatum: I would have to move to a dormitory and learn to socialize or enter a competition.

Even my parents were deserting me. I moved out and rented an apartment in Montreal. I stayed inside for weeks, unable to move, barely able to eat. One night I tried to hang myself, but I could never tie knots properly and only fell to the floor, acquiring a nasty bruise on my thigh. Fate had given me another chance.

I had forgotten that the PanAmerican Games were being held in Montreal that year. Somehow, even in my hopeless state, they drew me. I found myself entering the qualifying meet in paragraphs. I lugged my typewriter to the amphitheater and sat with a thousand others at desks under hot lights while the spectators came and went, cheering for their favorites. Several writers made use of the always-popular “creative anguish” ploy, slapping their foreheads in frustration while throwing away wads of paper. Ramon Hogarth, winner of the West Coast local, danced around his desk after completing each sentence. My style was standard. I smoked heavily and gulped coffee while slouching over my machine. Occasionally I clutched my gut in agony, drawing some applause.

I qualified for the semifinals and was given a small room filled with monitoring devices. The judges, of course, had to watch for cheating, and spectators all over the hemisphere would be viewing us. I tried to preserve my poise at the typewriter, but gradually I forgot everything except my novella. I wrote and rewrote, rarely taking breaks, knowing that I was up against trained contenders. Whenever I became discouraged, I remembered the mocking voice of Phaedon Karath.

I made it to the finals. I recall that I envied the short-story writers, who had a four-month deadline, and pitied the novelists, who had to suffer for a year. I can remember the times when my words flowed freely, but there were moments when I was ready to disqualify myself. I agonized while awaiting the decision and wondered if I could ever face another race.

I placed sixth. Delighted, I got drunk and daringly sent off my sixth-place novella to Phaedon Karath. A few days later, his reply appeared on my telex: STILL COW PIES BUT IMPROVEMENT STOP COME TO ITALY STOP SEE IF YOU CAN TAKE REAL WORKOUT STOP.

At the villa I had to work on sentences for months before I was allowed to go on to paragraphs. Karath insisted on extensive rewriting, although constant rewriting could kill you off in competition as easily as sloppy unreworked first drafts. He rarely praised anyone.

We workshopped a lot, tearing each other’s work apart. Reina Takake, a small golden-skinned woman who became my closest friend, used to run from the room in tears. The more she cried, the more Karath picked on her. We would spend hours together planning tortures for him and occasionally writing about the tortures in vivid detail.

At last Reina packed and left, saying good-bye to no one. Karath told us of her departure during a workshop, watching us with his gray eyes as he said that Reina couldn’t cut it, that she had no talent, and that it was useless to waste time on someone who couldn’t take criticism.

I hated him for that. I stood up and screamed that he was a petty tyrant and a sadist. I told him he had no understanding of gentle souls. I said a few other things.

He waited until I finished. Then he looked around the room and said, “The rest of you can continue. Dorenmatte, step outside.”

Trembling, I followed him out. He led me down the hall and stopped in front of my room. He turned, grabbed me by the arms, and shoved me inside. I stumbled and almost fell.

“Stay in there,” he said. “You’re not coming out until you finish a specific assignment.”

“What assignment?” I asked, puzzled.

“The novella you’re going to write, and rewrite if necessary. You’ll write about Takake and about me if you like. Do it any way you please, but you have to write about Takake. Now get to work.”

He slammed the door quickly. I heard him turn the lock. I screamed, bellowed, and cursed until I was hoarse. Karath did not respond.

I spent a few hours in futile weeping and a few days in plotting an escape. Food was brought to me, occasionally with wine; the upper door panel would open and the amiable servo would lower the food into my room. At first I refused it but after a few days I was too hungry to resist.

I soon realized I’d never get out of my windowless room until I wrote the novella. I took a bath, then bitterly went to work. At first I rambled, noting every passing thought, incorporating some of the paragraphs Reina and I had written about torturing Karath. But soon a particular plot suggested itself. I outlined the story and began again.

I worked at least a month, maybe more, before I had a draft to show Karath. Oddly enough, I could not sustain my anger at him nor my grief at Reina’s departure. I understood what had happened and what I had felt, but these events and feelings were simply material to be shaped and structured.

I gave my final draft to the servo and waited. At last the door opened. I made my way downstairs to Karath’s study.

He sat behind his desk perusing my novella. I cleared my throat. His cold eyes surveyed me as he said, “It isn’t bad, Dorenmatté. It wouldn’t make it in a race, but there might be some hope for you.” As I basked in this high praise, he threw the manuscript at me. “Now go back to work and clean up some of your sentences.”

A year later I took the gold medal in the PanAmerican Games.

But it was Olympic gold I wanted, the high point for a champion. There would be publicity, perhaps other competitions if my health held out. But contests were for the young. Eventually I would become a trainer or sign contracts with the entertainment industry; gold-medal winners can get a lot for senso plots or dream construction. Maybe novelists can do serialized week-long dreams and short-story writers are better at commercials, but you can’t beat a novella writer for an evening’s sustained entertainment. Since practically no one reads now, except of course the critics, most of them failed writers who write comments on our work for one another and serve as judges during competitions, there isn’t much else a champion can do when the contest years are over.

The Olympics! Karath rode us mercilessly in preparation for them. He presented countless distractions: robots outside with jackhammers, emotional crises, dirty tricks meant to disorient us, impossible deadlines.

Two years before the Games, which like the ancient Olympics are held only every four years, I had to enter preliminaries. I got through them easily. The night before I left for Rome, Karath and the others workshopped a story of mine and tore it to shreds. I recall the hatred I saw in the faces of my fellow trainees. None had qualified this time, although all had won locals or regionals. They would undoubtedly gossip maliciously about me when I left and point out to each other how inferior my work really was.

I arrived in Rome the day before the opening ceremonies. The part of the Olympic Village set aside for writers was a scenic spot. The small stone houses were surrounded on three sides by flower gardens and wooded areas. Below us lay all of Rome; the dome of St. Peter’s, the crowded streets, the teeming arcologies. I wanted to explore it all, but I had to start sizing up the competition.

I sought out Jules Pepperman, who had been assigned a house near mine. I had met him at the PanAmerican Games. Jules was tied into the grapevine and always volunteered information readily.

He was a tall slender fellow with an open, friendly personality and a habit of trying to write excessively ambitious works during competition, a practice I regarded as courting disaster. It had messed him up before, but it had also won him a gold in the Anglo-American Games and a silver in the PEN Stakes. I couldn’t afford to ignore him.

His house smelled of herb tea and patent medicines. Jules had arrived with every medication the judges would allow. I wondered how he endured competition, with his migraines and stomach ailments. But endure it he did, while complaining loudly about his health to everyone.

I sat in his kitchen while he poured tea. “Did you hear, Alena? I’m ready to go home, I’m sick of working all the time, the prelims almost wiped me out. There’s this migraine I can’t get rid of and the judges won’t let me take the only thing that helps. And when I heard … you want honey in that?”

“Sure.” He dropped a dollop in my tea. “What did you hear?”

“Ansoni. He’s so brilliant and I’m so dumb. I can’t take any more.”

“What about Ansoni?”

“He’s here. He’s competing. Haven’t you heard? You must have been living in a cave. He’s competing. In novella.”

“Shit,” I said. “What’s the matter with him? He must be almost sixty. Isn’t he ineligible?”

“No. Don’t you keep up with anything? He never worked professionally and he wasn’t a trainer.”

I tried to digest this unsavory morsel. I hadn’t even known that Michael Ansoni was still among the living. He had taken a gold medal in short-story competition long ago and gone on to win a gold eight years later in novella, the only writer to change categories successfully. I couldn’t even remember all his other awards.

“I can’t beat him,” Jules wailed. “I should have been a programmer. All that work to get here, and now this.”

I had to calm Jules down. I didn’t like his writing, which was a bit dense for my taste, but I liked him. “Listen,” I said, “Ansoni’s old. He might fold up at his age. Maybe he’ll die and be disqualified.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I wouldn’t be sorry. Well, maybe I would. Who else looks good?”

“Nionus Gorff.” Gorff was always masked; no one had ever seen his face. He had quite a cultish following.

“Naah,” I responded. “Gorff hates publicity too much, he’ll be miserable in a big race like this.”

“There’s Jan Wolowski. But I don’t think he can beat Ansoni.”

“Wolowski’s too heavyhanded. He might as well do propaganda.”

“There’s Arnold Dankmeyer.”

I was worried about Dankmeyer myself. He was popular with the judges, although that might not mean much. APOLLO, the Olympic computer, actually picked the winners, but the judges’ assessments were fed in and considered in the final decisions. No one could be sure how much weight they carried. And Dankmeyer was appealingly facile. But he was often distracted by his admirers, who followed him everywhere and even lived in his house during races. He might fold.

“Anyway,” I said, “you can’t worry about it now.” I was a bit insulted that Jules wasn’t worried about me.

“I know. But the judges don’t like me, they never have.”

“Well, they don’t like me either.” I had, in accordance with Karath’s advice, cultivated a public image with which to impress the judges. My stock in trade was unobtrusiveness and self-doubt. I would have preferred being a colorful character like Karath, but I could never have carried that off. Being quiet might not win many points, but there was always a chance the judges would react unfavorably to histrionics and give points to a shy writer.

“At least they don’t hate you,” Jules mumbled. “I need a vacation. I can’t take it.”

“You’re a champion, act like one,” I said loftily. I got up and made my departure, wanting to rest up for the opening ceremonies.

We looked terrific in the stadium, holding our quill pens, clothed in azure jumpsuits with the flags of our countries over our chests. The only ones who looked better were the astrophysicists, who wore black silk jumpsuits studded with rhinestone constellations. They were only there for the opening ceremonies; their contests would be held on the Moon. At any rate, the science games didn’t draw much of an audience. Hardly anyone knew enough to follow them. And mathematicians—they were dressed in black robes and held slates and chalk—were ignored, even if they were gold medalists. The social sciences drew the crowds, probably because anyone could, in a way, feel he was participating in them. But we writers didn’t do so badly. No one read what we wrote, but a lot of people enjoyed our public displays. At least one writer was sure to crack up before the Games were over, and occasionally there was a suicide.

We marched around, the flame was lit, and I smiled at Jules. At least we were contenders. No one could take that away.

The race began. I worked methodically, meaning that I used my own method. During the first two weeks I wrote nothing. I saw a lot of Rome. A wisp of an idea was forming in my mind, but I wasn’t ready to work on it.

Jules was slaving away. He would creep along slowly and finish a draft, then take a week off during which he would feel guilty about not working. He had to rewrite a lot. “Otherwise,” he had told me, “I’d be incomprehensible.”

During the second month, I met Jan Wolowski while taking a walk. He was too intense for my taste. He was always serious, even at parties, and he had no tolerance for the foibles of writers. He was also dogmatic and snobbish. But he was competition.

I said hello and we continued walking together. “How are you doing?” I asked, not really wanting to know.