The Epigone:
Parts 11 & 12
by John McGroarty
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Jimmy descends further into madness. Nothing is real any more. His life has become a fiction, his characters having taken it over. But can he find a way back to reality?
Swearwords: None.
Description: Jimmy descends further into madness. Nothing is real any more. His life has become a fiction, his characters having taken it over. But can he find a way back to reality?
11
The next few weeks I threw myself into my translation work. I even asked to work in the evenings too and the boss was well pleased. He had me and Hans working on a three-way dictionary for tourists. German-English-Spanish. He had reached some deal with a publishing company and hoped to make a good profit. I also had a tight deadline for the introduction to an annual general meeting glossy brochure and a third rate crime novel to complete by November, so I was kept busy. The novel was entertaining and fast-paced and I enjoyed translating it. It was set in Barcelona in the years of the property boom and was about a desperate call centre worker with gambling debts who one day sees an old man paying in a large amount of money in cash at the bank. He observes that this is a regular occurrence over many weeks and decides to rob him. The old man accidentally dies in the act and the perpetrator escapes but has been seen and is later blackmailed by a gang of hoodlums who are working for a property speculator. They force him into murdering a politician who is in their way. The main character then spirals down into the underbelly of Barcelona crime and politics and like all good noir novels there is a beautiful femme fatale and the rottenness of the corruption goes to the very top of the police and political life. I also continued my run of writing and had a few stories accepted by online magazines. I did have a few lapses and thought I saw Miriam a couple of times on the street or on the Metro. I even had the strange feeling that she was following me. But it was just a ghost, a shadow of my mind. Then one evening when I got home from work she was waiting for me outside my flat. Sorry to bother you, Jimmy, but could I speak to you for a few minutes? she said. I stood there in silence. I didn’t know what to say. Jimmy, don’t you remember me? I’m Miriam from the reading club. We spoke a couple of times about literature. Can you shake my hand, I said. She extended her hand out and I grasped it tightly. I held it until I felt her resisting and pulling away. Okay, let’s go upstairs. We went up into my apartment and I got us a couple of beers from the fridge. She sat down on the sofa and sighed heavily. I am really sorry to intrude like this, she said, but I am desperate. I sat down at the table and motioned her to go on. I need money, she said. My husband is having an affair and I want to leave him. I plan to take the children and go back to Argentina without his knowledge but I can’t get a bank loan. If he discovers, he won’t let me take the children out of the country. I’ll return it all to you. I hope to reconcile with my family. I also want to go back to writing. I have an idea for a novel. About expatriate life in Barcelona. I sat there with a stupid grin on my face. Are you playing some game with my head? I asked. She shook her head. Looked at me strangely. No, no, I promise. What are you talking about? She stood up. Look, I just don’t know anyone else. I am shy and I don’t make friends easily but I can’t continue with him. He never pays any attention to the children. Doesn’t want to find a job. We are better off without him. If you can’t help, I’ll try someone else, or swallow my pride and call my family. She started to make for the door. I was looking on my phone to see if her number had somehow miraculously reappeared but it hadn’t. I moved between her and the door. Ok, I’ll give you the money. But I don’t want it back and I don’t want you to contact me again. She assented. Thank you, I knew you were a good man when I first saw you. Someone who loves literature like you do must be good. I cut her off. OK, fine. Meet me tomorrow on the Rambla del Poblenou at the corner of Llull and we can go to the bank and I’ll transfer the money. She gave me two kisses and went downstairs. The next day I was there early. I watched her coming up the Rambla. She was wearing a flowery summer dress which accented her figure. I closed my eyes and tried to look into my interior mind to see if she fitted any fantasy I might have had. I found no match. Then she was right there in front of me. She kissed me on both cheeks and thanked me again. This kindness will come back to you, she said. I plan to leave in two days. I’ve looked at flights. I tried to stay cold and business-like but an internal panic was building up. I have a question. She nodded. How did you find me? I mean know where I live. She looked embarrassed. I was desperate, she said. One day I saw you in the supermarket and I followed you home. Then I followed you a few times waiting for my chance to speak to you. I’m sorry. I know it’s a bit weird. Okay, one thing, I want you to speak to a friend of mine. She looked puzzled. I called Hans and asked him to ask her some questions in German. It’s for work, I said. I handed Miriam the phone and she spoke to him for a minute and handed me it back. She smiled weakly. Did you speak to her, Hans? I asked. What language did she speak? Despite myself I sounded frantic and my voice was shrill. Are you okay, Jimmy? Perfectly, just tell me you spoke to her. I did but her German is non-existent. Thanks, I’ll tell you what it’s all about later. I rang off. I made the transfer and quickly left the bank. I almost ran home. I was afraid I was losing my mind. There was something demonic about the whole thing. I bolted the door when I got in and put on some music and lay down on my bed. I tried to reason with myself. Hans had spoken to her. They had seen her in the bank. I sprang up and lunged at the table. The receipt paper for the transfer was there. I read it over and over again and then I went into the kitchen and attached it to the fridge with a magnet. I still felt uneasy. It was as if I was being haunted by something. I went out for a drive for a few hours and when I came back I sat down to do some work on the noir novel translation. I was on chapter eight. I started to translate without thinking too much. I had chosen a staccato early Chandler style and I was quite pleased with the voice that was emerging. The Catalan novelist liked it too. My pride made me think it was even better than the original. I had to resist making changes and adding things. Suddenly it dawned on me that the name of the main character had been changed to Hans and that he didn’t work in a call centre anymore but was a translator in a small company along with an American and a guy from Scotland. In the scene I was translating the femme fatale, Marion, had convinced the Scottish friend of Hans to make a transfer of money into Hans’s account to launder some money for them. They had met on the Rambla del Poblenou and had made the transfer from a bank there together. I stopped writing. I was beginning to sweat. Something was seriously going wrong with my mind. I picked up the phone to look for Hans’s number but couldn’t find it and just then my buzzer went. I normally don’t answer as it’s usually some conmen trying to trick you into changing your domestic supplier of gas or electricity. I stole out onto the balcony and looked down. The buzzer sounded again. There were two men in casual clothes. One sensed my presence and looked up. We’re from the police, he shouted. I had to let them in. I closed over my laptop and opened the door. Sorry to trouble you, sir, they said, can we come in? I ushered them into the living room and got some iced water and poured us all a glass. I was half expecting them to ask me about the transfer from the novel but they pulled out a photograph and showed it to me. Do you know him? It was a photo of Marco. Not a very good one but it was him. I might have seen him around the neighbourhood, I said. Why? We’re trying to find his wife, sir. I am sorry to say that he committed suicide last night. Jumped in front of a train at Clot Station. Nobody seems to know anything about him. There was a short note in his wallet addressed to you. One of them held the note out. I unfolded it and read. It said that his wife was leaving him and that he couldn’t live without her and that he chose death over going back to being alone. That he wanted me to know why. I gave them the note back and splayed my fingers out. I really don’t know anything about him, I said. I’m sorry. We know he had two children. There were photos in the wallet. He wasn’t carrying a phone. We tried his address but no one was there. Why do you think he addressed it to you? I thought for a few seconds. Well, yes, actually now I remember, I said. He was looking for a job and I gave him an interview a few months back. He’s a musician. I work for a translation company and we have a history of music to translate from English to Spanish and he’s an expert. We often use experts like this, as advisors. I really don’t know why he addressed it to me. I had the feeling he liked me. Maybe he didn’t know anyone else. I apologised again. This seemed to satisfy them and they drank down their water and left. I bolted the door again. I sat down at my desk and opened my short story about the woman and the musician. I was cracking up. I was sure of it now. Everything was overlapping in my mind. I had the idea that if I finished the story all of this madness would end. I got the text up on the screen and reread the last couple of pages. I was at the part where the woman discovers that her husband is having an affair and he storms off into the night. I started to write.
12
I don’t know exactly how many days I spent writing. The story ebbed and flowed and the characters moved around with and without purpose and did logical and incongruent things all at the same time. My prose went round in mystical circles and then followed a straight narrative line for a while and then went back into a loop again. It passed without impetus through long wakeful days and became lost in desiccated dreamland nights and wandered alone through boundless cityscapes and ventured into silent lost valleys and climbed up mountain ranges soaring over plains that ran down through deep green forests to a faraway blue sea. I became tired of it and came to hate it and felt that I was chained to the keyboard and enslaved to the writing of it. I longed to break free and to forget it all. To recover my old life. Everything was unreal now. I suspected that even I had never really existed. Had never lived in Scotland, never been married, never had two children, had never come to live in Spain or worked as a translator; that everything, every tiny detail of my life until that moment, was false. I had no real thoughts of my own anymore. No reliable memories. No name. No identity. No one knew me. I had nothing whatsoever except what I created on the screen. That was the real meaning of the acceptance of the call. The way it had come to me. It was a curse not a gift. It didn’t bring me freedom and peace and love of the world. Just more confusion and anxiety. I finally gave up on the story and went to my room to sleep. In the hall I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror but there was no image. Just an empty reflection back of the front door and the cupboard. I no longer existed. I had slowly but irrevocably fallen out of the world and into a shadow land. I was trapped in a universe peopled by ghosts of my own invention. I lay down on my bed. I think I must have fallen asleep for a couple of minutes but I was immediately awoken by a loud banging on my front door. I went to answer but hesitated. Maybe it was the police or that crazy boy from upstairs. But they didn’t exist. I finally opened up the door. Miriam and Marco were standing there. They pushed past me and went into the living room. Marco went into a corner and started to practise his cello and Miriam sat down at my desk. She turned to me. Can you get us all a glass of wine, Jimmy? I want to write a story for you. One the way you would like it to be written. What you have been trying to do all your life but have always been too weak and too afraid to accomplish. You cannot write about me and Marco any longer. You know nothing about us. You idolize us and try to put your own dated perfections into our lives. To redeem yourself through us. You don’t even know that we cannot be married. Cannot have children. Cannot afford to pay for a flat. Cannot find a decent job. That amid all this wealth and progress we cannot even live a dignified life. That the world is at its end and we have no future. You were right, you can’t reject the call. And you can’t accept it either without total honesty and integrity. That’s what it means. It doesn’t set you free from pain. It’s not a compensation for anything. Or an atonement for imagined crimes. It doesn’t relieve your guilt, it heightens it. For it comes with responsibility. To God and to Humanity. That’s what it has always meant. Miriam then opened a new page and started to write. I pulled the cork of the wine and poured us a glass. I sat on the sofa watching her work and listening to Marco play over and over again the same piece. It was now truly divine and I couldn’t imagine that he could play any more perfectly but still he pushed on, seeking greater and greater perfection. He smiled knowingly at me. Miriam wrote for three straight hours. When she finished she stood up and filled her glass. She motioned to me to sit. It’s for you, Jimmy. As promised. I sat down and looked at the screen. The story was called “The Epigone”. It was perfect in every way. Poetic and balanced and multi-layered. It was about a writer. It was about me. But not only about me, I think. It was an old story. The oldest one there is. It was set somewhere in Argentina. At the start of the story the writer is young and idealistic. He believes in the power that flows through his fingers and hopes that his words will help to change the world and relieve its suffering. To make it better. To make people think. He writes many stories denouncing the injustices of the world but has no success and is unable to get even one story published anywhere. He slowly becomes embittered and gives up on the world and starts to turn inwards and to write from free association and flow of inner consciousness, becoming increasingly more and more obscure as time passes. Still he is driven on and starts to cannibalize everything and everyone for his own artistic purposes. He withdraws from life and only uses people as types for models in his stories. He renounces all human relationships and comes to live in his imaginary world until one day he realizes that he is going mad and that his stories have become his whole mindscape and that fiction has replaced reality and that nothing is real and nothing is true. Yet he is unable to stop himself. He writes and writes until he is completely dried up. Then he starts to feel a strangeness in himself. A feeling of being completely alone in the world. That life has no purpose or meaning. That he is the last man. When he looks in the mirror, there is no reflection. He tries to make changes but it is too late. He tries to adapt but he is already an epigone. There is no redemption. No happy ending. No real meaning to anything. I stopped reading. You can’t use us any longer, Jimmy, Miriam said. You must find your own way. Find your own way back into the world. Build your mind up. Become a human being again. Then you can accept the call with courage. She poured herself another glass and sat down to listen to her husband’s playing. I sat down at the computer. Promise me, Jimmy, she called. Her voice was already fading. I do promise, I said. I will find another way. I deleted everything I had written over the last few years. The room was empty and silent and I was alone with just the blank page in front of me. I promise, I said again under my breath. I will change everything. Start over again. I must stop writing now.
The next few weeks I threw myself into my translation work. I even asked to work in the evenings too and the boss was well pleased. He had me and Hans working on a three-way dictionary for tourists. German-English-Spanish. He had reached some deal with a publishing company and hoped to make a good profit. I also had a tight deadline for the introduction to an annual general meeting glossy brochure and a third rate crime novel to complete by November, so I was kept busy. The novel was entertaining and fast-paced and I enjoyed translating it. It was set in Barcelona in the years of the property boom and was about a desperate call centre worker with gambling debts who one day sees an old man paying in a large amount of money in cash at the bank. He observes that this is a regular occurrence over many weeks and decides to rob him. The old man accidentally dies in the act and the perpetrator escapes but has been seen and is later blackmailed by a gang of hoodlums who are working for a property speculator. They force him into murdering a politician who is in their way. The main character then spirals down into the underbelly of Barcelona crime and politics and like all good noir novels there is a beautiful femme fatale and the rottenness of the corruption goes to the very top of the police and political life. I also continued my run of writing and had a few stories accepted by online magazines. I did have a few lapses and thought I saw Miriam a couple of times on the street or on the Metro. I even had the strange feeling that she was following me. But it was just a ghost, a shadow of my mind. Then one evening when I got home from work she was waiting for me outside my flat. Sorry to bother you, Jimmy, but could I speak to you for a few minutes? she said. I stood there in silence. I didn’t know what to say. Jimmy, don’t you remember me? I’m Miriam from the reading club. We spoke a couple of times about literature. Can you shake my hand, I said. She extended her hand out and I grasped it tightly. I held it until I felt her resisting and pulling away. Okay, let’s go upstairs. We went up into my apartment and I got us a couple of beers from the fridge. She sat down on the sofa and sighed heavily. I am really sorry to intrude like this, she said, but I am desperate. I sat down at the table and motioned her to go on. I need money, she said. My husband is having an affair and I want to leave him. I plan to take the children and go back to Argentina without his knowledge but I can’t get a bank loan. If he discovers, he won’t let me take the children out of the country. I’ll return it all to you. I hope to reconcile with my family. I also want to go back to writing. I have an idea for a novel. About expatriate life in Barcelona. I sat there with a stupid grin on my face. Are you playing some game with my head? I asked. She shook her head. Looked at me strangely. No, no, I promise. What are you talking about? She stood up. Look, I just don’t know anyone else. I am shy and I don’t make friends easily but I can’t continue with him. He never pays any attention to the children. Doesn’t want to find a job. We are better off without him. If you can’t help, I’ll try someone else, or swallow my pride and call my family. She started to make for the door. I was looking on my phone to see if her number had somehow miraculously reappeared but it hadn’t. I moved between her and the door. Ok, I’ll give you the money. But I don’t want it back and I don’t want you to contact me again. She assented. Thank you, I knew you were a good man when I first saw you. Someone who loves literature like you do must be good. I cut her off. OK, fine. Meet me tomorrow on the Rambla del Poblenou at the corner of Llull and we can go to the bank and I’ll transfer the money. She gave me two kisses and went downstairs. The next day I was there early. I watched her coming up the Rambla. She was wearing a flowery summer dress which accented her figure. I closed my eyes and tried to look into my interior mind to see if she fitted any fantasy I might have had. I found no match. Then she was right there in front of me. She kissed me on both cheeks and thanked me again. This kindness will come back to you, she said. I plan to leave in two days. I’ve looked at flights. I tried to stay cold and business-like but an internal panic was building up. I have a question. She nodded. How did you find me? I mean know where I live. She looked embarrassed. I was desperate, she said. One day I saw you in the supermarket and I followed you home. Then I followed you a few times waiting for my chance to speak to you. I’m sorry. I know it’s a bit weird. Okay, one thing, I want you to speak to a friend of mine. She looked puzzled. I called Hans and asked him to ask her some questions in German. It’s for work, I said. I handed Miriam the phone and she spoke to him for a minute and handed me it back. She smiled weakly. Did you speak to her, Hans? I asked. What language did she speak? Despite myself I sounded frantic and my voice was shrill. Are you okay, Jimmy? Perfectly, just tell me you spoke to her. I did but her German is non-existent. Thanks, I’ll tell you what it’s all about later. I rang off. I made the transfer and quickly left the bank. I almost ran home. I was afraid I was losing my mind. There was something demonic about the whole thing. I bolted the door when I got in and put on some music and lay down on my bed. I tried to reason with myself. Hans had spoken to her. They had seen her in the bank. I sprang up and lunged at the table. The receipt paper for the transfer was there. I read it over and over again and then I went into the kitchen and attached it to the fridge with a magnet. I still felt uneasy. It was as if I was being haunted by something. I went out for a drive for a few hours and when I came back I sat down to do some work on the noir novel translation. I was on chapter eight. I started to translate without thinking too much. I had chosen a staccato early Chandler style and I was quite pleased with the voice that was emerging. The Catalan novelist liked it too. My pride made me think it was even better than the original. I had to resist making changes and adding things. Suddenly it dawned on me that the name of the main character had been changed to Hans and that he didn’t work in a call centre anymore but was a translator in a small company along with an American and a guy from Scotland. In the scene I was translating the femme fatale, Marion, had convinced the Scottish friend of Hans to make a transfer of money into Hans’s account to launder some money for them. They had met on the Rambla del Poblenou and had made the transfer from a bank there together. I stopped writing. I was beginning to sweat. Something was seriously going wrong with my mind. I picked up the phone to look for Hans’s number but couldn’t find it and just then my buzzer went. I normally don’t answer as it’s usually some conmen trying to trick you into changing your domestic supplier of gas or electricity. I stole out onto the balcony and looked down. The buzzer sounded again. There were two men in casual clothes. One sensed my presence and looked up. We’re from the police, he shouted. I had to let them in. I closed over my laptop and opened the door. Sorry to trouble you, sir, they said, can we come in? I ushered them into the living room and got some iced water and poured us all a glass. I was half expecting them to ask me about the transfer from the novel but they pulled out a photograph and showed it to me. Do you know him? It was a photo of Marco. Not a very good one but it was him. I might have seen him around the neighbourhood, I said. Why? We’re trying to find his wife, sir. I am sorry to say that he committed suicide last night. Jumped in front of a train at Clot Station. Nobody seems to know anything about him. There was a short note in his wallet addressed to you. One of them held the note out. I unfolded it and read. It said that his wife was leaving him and that he couldn’t live without her and that he chose death over going back to being alone. That he wanted me to know why. I gave them the note back and splayed my fingers out. I really don’t know anything about him, I said. I’m sorry. We know he had two children. There were photos in the wallet. He wasn’t carrying a phone. We tried his address but no one was there. Why do you think he addressed it to you? I thought for a few seconds. Well, yes, actually now I remember, I said. He was looking for a job and I gave him an interview a few months back. He’s a musician. I work for a translation company and we have a history of music to translate from English to Spanish and he’s an expert. We often use experts like this, as advisors. I really don’t know why he addressed it to me. I had the feeling he liked me. Maybe he didn’t know anyone else. I apologised again. This seemed to satisfy them and they drank down their water and left. I bolted the door again. I sat down at my desk and opened my short story about the woman and the musician. I was cracking up. I was sure of it now. Everything was overlapping in my mind. I had the idea that if I finished the story all of this madness would end. I got the text up on the screen and reread the last couple of pages. I was at the part where the woman discovers that her husband is having an affair and he storms off into the night. I started to write.
12
I don’t know exactly how many days I spent writing. The story ebbed and flowed and the characters moved around with and without purpose and did logical and incongruent things all at the same time. My prose went round in mystical circles and then followed a straight narrative line for a while and then went back into a loop again. It passed without impetus through long wakeful days and became lost in desiccated dreamland nights and wandered alone through boundless cityscapes and ventured into silent lost valleys and climbed up mountain ranges soaring over plains that ran down through deep green forests to a faraway blue sea. I became tired of it and came to hate it and felt that I was chained to the keyboard and enslaved to the writing of it. I longed to break free and to forget it all. To recover my old life. Everything was unreal now. I suspected that even I had never really existed. Had never lived in Scotland, never been married, never had two children, had never come to live in Spain or worked as a translator; that everything, every tiny detail of my life until that moment, was false. I had no real thoughts of my own anymore. No reliable memories. No name. No identity. No one knew me. I had nothing whatsoever except what I created on the screen. That was the real meaning of the acceptance of the call. The way it had come to me. It was a curse not a gift. It didn’t bring me freedom and peace and love of the world. Just more confusion and anxiety. I finally gave up on the story and went to my room to sleep. In the hall I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror but there was no image. Just an empty reflection back of the front door and the cupboard. I no longer existed. I had slowly but irrevocably fallen out of the world and into a shadow land. I was trapped in a universe peopled by ghosts of my own invention. I lay down on my bed. I think I must have fallen asleep for a couple of minutes but I was immediately awoken by a loud banging on my front door. I went to answer but hesitated. Maybe it was the police or that crazy boy from upstairs. But they didn’t exist. I finally opened up the door. Miriam and Marco were standing there. They pushed past me and went into the living room. Marco went into a corner and started to practise his cello and Miriam sat down at my desk. She turned to me. Can you get us all a glass of wine, Jimmy? I want to write a story for you. One the way you would like it to be written. What you have been trying to do all your life but have always been too weak and too afraid to accomplish. You cannot write about me and Marco any longer. You know nothing about us. You idolize us and try to put your own dated perfections into our lives. To redeem yourself through us. You don’t even know that we cannot be married. Cannot have children. Cannot afford to pay for a flat. Cannot find a decent job. That amid all this wealth and progress we cannot even live a dignified life. That the world is at its end and we have no future. You were right, you can’t reject the call. And you can’t accept it either without total honesty and integrity. That’s what it means. It doesn’t set you free from pain. It’s not a compensation for anything. Or an atonement for imagined crimes. It doesn’t relieve your guilt, it heightens it. For it comes with responsibility. To God and to Humanity. That’s what it has always meant. Miriam then opened a new page and started to write. I pulled the cork of the wine and poured us a glass. I sat on the sofa watching her work and listening to Marco play over and over again the same piece. It was now truly divine and I couldn’t imagine that he could play any more perfectly but still he pushed on, seeking greater and greater perfection. He smiled knowingly at me. Miriam wrote for three straight hours. When she finished she stood up and filled her glass. She motioned to me to sit. It’s for you, Jimmy. As promised. I sat down and looked at the screen. The story was called “The Epigone”. It was perfect in every way. Poetic and balanced and multi-layered. It was about a writer. It was about me. But not only about me, I think. It was an old story. The oldest one there is. It was set somewhere in Argentina. At the start of the story the writer is young and idealistic. He believes in the power that flows through his fingers and hopes that his words will help to change the world and relieve its suffering. To make it better. To make people think. He writes many stories denouncing the injustices of the world but has no success and is unable to get even one story published anywhere. He slowly becomes embittered and gives up on the world and starts to turn inwards and to write from free association and flow of inner consciousness, becoming increasingly more and more obscure as time passes. Still he is driven on and starts to cannibalize everything and everyone for his own artistic purposes. He withdraws from life and only uses people as types for models in his stories. He renounces all human relationships and comes to live in his imaginary world until one day he realizes that he is going mad and that his stories have become his whole mindscape and that fiction has replaced reality and that nothing is real and nothing is true. Yet he is unable to stop himself. He writes and writes until he is completely dried up. Then he starts to feel a strangeness in himself. A feeling of being completely alone in the world. That life has no purpose or meaning. That he is the last man. When he looks in the mirror, there is no reflection. He tries to make changes but it is too late. He tries to adapt but he is already an epigone. There is no redemption. No happy ending. No real meaning to anything. I stopped reading. You can’t use us any longer, Jimmy, Miriam said. You must find your own way. Find your own way back into the world. Build your mind up. Become a human being again. Then you can accept the call with courage. She poured herself another glass and sat down to listen to her husband’s playing. I sat down at the computer. Promise me, Jimmy, she called. Her voice was already fading. I do promise, I said. I will find another way. I deleted everything I had written over the last few years. The room was empty and silent and I was alone with just the blank page in front of me. I promise, I said again under my breath. I will change everything. Start over again. I must stop writing now.
About the Author
John McGroarty was born in Glasgow and now lives in Barcelona, where he works as an English teacher. He has been writing short stories for many years. His long short story, Rainbow, his novel, The Tower, and his two short fiction collections, Everywhere and Homo Sacer, are all McStorytellers publications.