The Epigone:
Parts 7 & 8
by John McGroarty
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Jimmy’s plan to convince Miriam not to squander her gift develops into an obsession – an obsession that will jeopardise their friendship.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Jimmy’s plan to convince Miriam not to squander her gift develops into an obsession – an obsession that will jeopardise their friendship.
7
Over the next few weeks we became close friends and she gave me more of her stories to read. I had been right, we were kindred spirits. And maybe without her family around she needed a dad and so trusted me more. We became inseparable. Many of her stories had been published in Spanish language magazines in Latin America, mostly in Argentina and Chile. She taught me about Argentinian literature. She favoured Sabato over Borges. And Cortázar over them both. Paz over LLosa. And Márquez over all the rest. Neruda was the great poet of the continent and of the whole world. I can write the saddest lines tonight. Write, for example, “the night is full of stars and trembling, blue are the heavenly bodies so far away. The wind of the night turns in the sky and sings.” She had had that translation included in an online Hispanophile magazine out of California. Her English was excellent and she had read all of the greats and could quote Shakespeare. But above all she loved the Russians. We spoke for hours about Dostoevsky’s characters as if they were real people taken from history. And for her they were. One of her ideas about literature was the channel role of the writer. How the spirit of the age passes through writers and takes form in time. She told me about the philosophy she had studied. About Kant and Hegel. About Schopenhauer’s unknowable world of noumenon. The place from where all inspiration comes and a trap for the unwary. It made me happy to hear her speak like that. To see her lose the worry lines and smile again. Through her I rediscovered my passion for literature and for life and I think my writing improved and some of the muses returned. She read and positively critiqued many of my stories, though I could tell she didn’t really think much of them. However, she stubbornly refused to write anything herself. I tried everything to convince her but she just shook her head. My life has changed. I have other things, other responsibilities, she always said. We were already into July. The heat was up and the city burned all of the day and half of the night. I sat up all night trying to write but I came to realise it was no use. There was nothing but reflections of my own shadows from the past. It was too late. I was unable to break through the personal. To swim in the ocean of the universal. To serve it. To tell its stories. To be the channel. It was all just about me. I was afraid. Too afraid to let go of the temporal world. I had rejected the call. I stopped writing and concentrated more on my plan to convince Miriam not to waste her gift. Not to squander her great talent. I reflected on it day after day and night after night. It came to be an obsession. An unhealthy obsession. I reasoned that her duty to art was higher than everything else. I knew I was a hypocrite but I was unable to stop myself. I came more and more to hate her husband. He was a far lesser soul. Little more than a jobbing musician to my mind and she was giving her life to him. The way I had given my life to making money. How ambition had taken hold of me. My youth had been wasted thinking of schemes for making money. The sleepless nights. Checking over and over the books. Going down to the bank in the middle of the night to get readouts on my accounts. When Eddie died in his sleep the first thing I thought about was his clients. Nothing about his wife or his children. Only about our bottom line. And how suddenly one morning it all went. I was forced to see that it had become my safety net. My fetish. My grandmother’s clock ticking out notes and shares and government bonds. And then there was Elspeth. The daughter I had ignored. The person for whom I was supposedly doing it all. We hadn’t spoken for ten years. I wasn’t even sure of where she was. Of how she was. Of whom she was with. I only knew she was somewhere in London. My wife had long since found another life. My son was in the Middle East. He never answered the phone or my emails. I knew I had forced them to do things they didn’t want to. That I had pushed too much and too hard. Had passed my madness onto them. Towards the end of my time in Scotland I had come to hate myself. To despise the person I had become. What had saved me was my writing. The thing I had turned to as a child. The only real thing I had ever had. How I had neglected it so long. Then I decided to give everything up and move abroad. To get away. To try to purify and save myself. I did save myself but it was too late for the writing. The world had changed. You don’t realise how quickly it all goes. I had to make Miriam see that. So I decided to offer her some cash. If she had more money, she wouldn’t worry so much. Then she would write. I was sure of it. It had only been a dry spell of a year. Nothing compared to the decades she still had in front of her.
8
One day Miriam arrived to meet me and she was ecstatically excited. Her face was glowing and her eyes were shining. I’ve got a job lined up, she told me with real enthusiasm. In Renfe, the train company, as a ticket seller. Over a thousand a month. I start next week. Our money worries are over. Full time? I asked her. Yes, forty hours. What about the kids? Marco will look after them till I get home. He’s been a lot better lately. And when will you write? Her eyes narrowed and she exhaled slowly. I told you, Jimmy, I will never write again. She was quiet. Then she said, you’re crazy, Jimmy. I can’t devote my life to it. You’re not the only one to get the call. I don’t want it. I turned my back on it. Just like you. I just want my life. I don’t want to be a writer; I just want to have a normal life. Okay, okay, I said, you don’t want to write, that’s fine. She recomposed herself. I thought that maybe once Marco gets settled I would finish my studies and perhaps do a doctorate. Maybe teach literature eventually. I only turned to writing because I was depressed and ashamed. I was angry with my family. Estaba muy enojada. ¿Sabe? That’s the real reason why I left Argentina. My grandfather was involved in everything, all the horrors, and my mother didn’t care. Everything we have is rotten. She stopped for a few seconds. I just wanted to get away. The calling of literature would have meant accepting it all. Don’t you understand? Making it all poetic. Forgiving. There is no forgiveness for that. Not even in art. I have no right to it. It reminds me of my life then. I don’t want it, okay? I want a life. An ordinary life. To live. To forget. I don’t care if we have nothing. I love Marco. I give him a hard time sometimes but he is my whole life. One day he will be a great musician. I just know it. She was starting to get emotional. Yeah, yeah, I know, I said. All the things we talk about are just intellectual ideas. You can’t dedicate your life to that. Es una locura. You’re really crazy, she said again, shaking her head. Lonely, lost, and out of your time. You’re a terminal case melancholic, Jimmy. You’re looking for a world that no longer exists. You’re trapped in the world of noumenon. You have to change everything! Even your style is antiquated. You’re the last of the modernists. All that inner voice stuff! Live your life, go and find your daughter, and leave me alone. Joder, Jimmy! To break the rhythm, I guided her into a coffee shop. She shut up for a bit and we ordered coffee and croissants. She didn’t look at me. I imagine she felt bad about what she had just said. Then she started up again. Look, Jimmy, I like you, I like having you as a friend. You’re an interesting man. Erudite. Funny. Stop trying to control my life. Okay, I said shortly, I promise. But it wasn’t okay. She was right, I was really crazy. I had decided that she was going to become a great writer. She would be my channel. My factotum. Later, after all that happened, I realized that I hadn’t changed at all. I had just moved to another place. It was the same as with my wife, and then my daughter and my son. I had to control everything. Though this time I had convinced myself that it was different. That I was doing it all for selfless reasons. For art. For the world. For I always knew better. Some demon deep inside me made me do it. Would not let me change. Look, Miriam, I said, can’t Marco get a job? No, I’ve told you a thousand times, he has an audition in October for the Barcelona Symphony. I want to work. To support him. It’s a long way away, I said quietly. I have a friend who busks on the metro and he told me you can make some good money. A few days a week, maybe he could try that? Miriam laughed curtly. What? ¿Qué? She was trying to control her voice when she finally spoke. He used to busk and he taught in a school. We saved up the money so he could take a year to improve and try to get into an orchestra. But I heard you fighting. You said he was a bad father. She shrugged. I get like that sometimes, it doesn’t mean anything. Then she told me her whole Spanish story. How she had lived in Galicia for a year with a distant aunt on arrival and then left without saying goodbye to come to Barcelona. She lived cheaply in a small room the size of a cupboard with five other Latin Americans. She took many odd jobs. As a waitress. In hotels. Making beds. In the reception. How her depression had returned. How low she had felt. Like the world had swallowed her up. The price of escape is a high one. Eventually she had to leave the house after hitting one of her flatmates in a burst of rage over an insignificant trifle. She had a violent side she couldn’t control. It made her depression even deeper. She had come over ten thousand kilometres but her grandfather was still with her. Inside of her head and inside her body. In her actions and in her deeds. She tried to set up a business taking photographs. Arty black and white ones of the city- all Argentinians are photographers or psychiatrists, Jimmy, didn’t you know?- but nothing worked. Then she met Marco. She was passing through the metro tunnel between Passeig de Gràcia and Diagonal going to her job making beds in the hotel when she heard him. He was playing in the middle of the tunnel and all the people were rushing past taking no notice. She stopped and stepped out of the multitude. Into a nowhere place. She leant back against the opposite wall and stayed until all the rush hour crowds had thinned out. Then she stepped forward and put some money in the cello player’s box. They went for breakfast together and quickly fell in love. They both wanted the same thing. To forget their origins and to make a new life. To create a family of their own. An untainted one. A fresh start. A new beginning. They were two sailors sighting a new continent through the eye of a squall. Two nineteenth century Europeans heading West in a wagon to California. They made a pact of love and mutual support. They lived for each other and then when the children came they lived together through them. But slowly Marco had become discontented. He had ambition. More than just to live an ordinary life of work and love and children. It seeped into their lives and threatened to destroy everything. So they saved for a year to give him the chance to improve his playing and try to become a serious musician. But the cost of living was too high and they hadn’t saved enough. That and the day to day of two young children to support. Strife came to settle in their lives. Marco slowly withdrew into his own obsessional world of music. They started to argue and to fight and Miriam’s violence and depression came back. Yet she had gritted her teeth and held fast. Had found a job. In her mind they would make it to October now and all would be well. I won’t be able to see you so much from now on, Jimmy, she said. What if he doesn’t get accepted in the orchestra, I asked? He’ll get a job in a school again. We’ll survive. He’s been a lot better. He looks after the children and helps more at home. We’re happy again. You don’t need to work, Miriam, I said, trying to conceal the desperation in my voice. I’ll give you money. How much do you need? Three thousand, four. You just need to promise to discipline yourself and write. She was silent. Then I played my last card. You could go back to Argentina. I’ll pay for the flights. Take the children. It will be easier with your family around. He’s never going to change. Discontented people are always looking for something new. Believe me, I’m one of them. There was a look of horror in her eyes. Go back to Argentina? No, no. She shook her head. You haven’t been listening to anything. She handed me a bag with some books that I had lent her. Maybe in a few months we could see each other, she said, but for now I can’t see you anymore. Before I could say anything she got up and weaved her way through the tables and out the door. She didn’t look back. I sat finishing my coffee and thinking for the first time that I shouldn’t have interfered in her life like that. That I had stuck my nose where it wasn’t wanted and had acted stupidly. Our friendship was over and I was back where I had started. Alone and friendless and abandoned by the muses. And that was worse than anything. I looked around the café scanning for a friend and saw no one I knew. Then I thought about the ultimate loneliness and purposelessness of life. I couldn’t stop myself. It’s not a good story. We all want more than that. Miriam’s right to want more than that. And so are you. And so am I. Yet I know it’s the only story there is. I paid for the coffees and went home alone to my empty flat.
Over the next few weeks we became close friends and she gave me more of her stories to read. I had been right, we were kindred spirits. And maybe without her family around she needed a dad and so trusted me more. We became inseparable. Many of her stories had been published in Spanish language magazines in Latin America, mostly in Argentina and Chile. She taught me about Argentinian literature. She favoured Sabato over Borges. And Cortázar over them both. Paz over LLosa. And Márquez over all the rest. Neruda was the great poet of the continent and of the whole world. I can write the saddest lines tonight. Write, for example, “the night is full of stars and trembling, blue are the heavenly bodies so far away. The wind of the night turns in the sky and sings.” She had had that translation included in an online Hispanophile magazine out of California. Her English was excellent and she had read all of the greats and could quote Shakespeare. But above all she loved the Russians. We spoke for hours about Dostoevsky’s characters as if they were real people taken from history. And for her they were. One of her ideas about literature was the channel role of the writer. How the spirit of the age passes through writers and takes form in time. She told me about the philosophy she had studied. About Kant and Hegel. About Schopenhauer’s unknowable world of noumenon. The place from where all inspiration comes and a trap for the unwary. It made me happy to hear her speak like that. To see her lose the worry lines and smile again. Through her I rediscovered my passion for literature and for life and I think my writing improved and some of the muses returned. She read and positively critiqued many of my stories, though I could tell she didn’t really think much of them. However, she stubbornly refused to write anything herself. I tried everything to convince her but she just shook her head. My life has changed. I have other things, other responsibilities, she always said. We were already into July. The heat was up and the city burned all of the day and half of the night. I sat up all night trying to write but I came to realise it was no use. There was nothing but reflections of my own shadows from the past. It was too late. I was unable to break through the personal. To swim in the ocean of the universal. To serve it. To tell its stories. To be the channel. It was all just about me. I was afraid. Too afraid to let go of the temporal world. I had rejected the call. I stopped writing and concentrated more on my plan to convince Miriam not to waste her gift. Not to squander her great talent. I reflected on it day after day and night after night. It came to be an obsession. An unhealthy obsession. I reasoned that her duty to art was higher than everything else. I knew I was a hypocrite but I was unable to stop myself. I came more and more to hate her husband. He was a far lesser soul. Little more than a jobbing musician to my mind and she was giving her life to him. The way I had given my life to making money. How ambition had taken hold of me. My youth had been wasted thinking of schemes for making money. The sleepless nights. Checking over and over the books. Going down to the bank in the middle of the night to get readouts on my accounts. When Eddie died in his sleep the first thing I thought about was his clients. Nothing about his wife or his children. Only about our bottom line. And how suddenly one morning it all went. I was forced to see that it had become my safety net. My fetish. My grandmother’s clock ticking out notes and shares and government bonds. And then there was Elspeth. The daughter I had ignored. The person for whom I was supposedly doing it all. We hadn’t spoken for ten years. I wasn’t even sure of where she was. Of how she was. Of whom she was with. I only knew she was somewhere in London. My wife had long since found another life. My son was in the Middle East. He never answered the phone or my emails. I knew I had forced them to do things they didn’t want to. That I had pushed too much and too hard. Had passed my madness onto them. Towards the end of my time in Scotland I had come to hate myself. To despise the person I had become. What had saved me was my writing. The thing I had turned to as a child. The only real thing I had ever had. How I had neglected it so long. Then I decided to give everything up and move abroad. To get away. To try to purify and save myself. I did save myself but it was too late for the writing. The world had changed. You don’t realise how quickly it all goes. I had to make Miriam see that. So I decided to offer her some cash. If she had more money, she wouldn’t worry so much. Then she would write. I was sure of it. It had only been a dry spell of a year. Nothing compared to the decades she still had in front of her.
8
One day Miriam arrived to meet me and she was ecstatically excited. Her face was glowing and her eyes were shining. I’ve got a job lined up, she told me with real enthusiasm. In Renfe, the train company, as a ticket seller. Over a thousand a month. I start next week. Our money worries are over. Full time? I asked her. Yes, forty hours. What about the kids? Marco will look after them till I get home. He’s been a lot better lately. And when will you write? Her eyes narrowed and she exhaled slowly. I told you, Jimmy, I will never write again. She was quiet. Then she said, you’re crazy, Jimmy. I can’t devote my life to it. You’re not the only one to get the call. I don’t want it. I turned my back on it. Just like you. I just want my life. I don’t want to be a writer; I just want to have a normal life. Okay, okay, I said, you don’t want to write, that’s fine. She recomposed herself. I thought that maybe once Marco gets settled I would finish my studies and perhaps do a doctorate. Maybe teach literature eventually. I only turned to writing because I was depressed and ashamed. I was angry with my family. Estaba muy enojada. ¿Sabe? That’s the real reason why I left Argentina. My grandfather was involved in everything, all the horrors, and my mother didn’t care. Everything we have is rotten. She stopped for a few seconds. I just wanted to get away. The calling of literature would have meant accepting it all. Don’t you understand? Making it all poetic. Forgiving. There is no forgiveness for that. Not even in art. I have no right to it. It reminds me of my life then. I don’t want it, okay? I want a life. An ordinary life. To live. To forget. I don’t care if we have nothing. I love Marco. I give him a hard time sometimes but he is my whole life. One day he will be a great musician. I just know it. She was starting to get emotional. Yeah, yeah, I know, I said. All the things we talk about are just intellectual ideas. You can’t dedicate your life to that. Es una locura. You’re really crazy, she said again, shaking her head. Lonely, lost, and out of your time. You’re a terminal case melancholic, Jimmy. You’re looking for a world that no longer exists. You’re trapped in the world of noumenon. You have to change everything! Even your style is antiquated. You’re the last of the modernists. All that inner voice stuff! Live your life, go and find your daughter, and leave me alone. Joder, Jimmy! To break the rhythm, I guided her into a coffee shop. She shut up for a bit and we ordered coffee and croissants. She didn’t look at me. I imagine she felt bad about what she had just said. Then she started up again. Look, Jimmy, I like you, I like having you as a friend. You’re an interesting man. Erudite. Funny. Stop trying to control my life. Okay, I said shortly, I promise. But it wasn’t okay. She was right, I was really crazy. I had decided that she was going to become a great writer. She would be my channel. My factotum. Later, after all that happened, I realized that I hadn’t changed at all. I had just moved to another place. It was the same as with my wife, and then my daughter and my son. I had to control everything. Though this time I had convinced myself that it was different. That I was doing it all for selfless reasons. For art. For the world. For I always knew better. Some demon deep inside me made me do it. Would not let me change. Look, Miriam, I said, can’t Marco get a job? No, I’ve told you a thousand times, he has an audition in October for the Barcelona Symphony. I want to work. To support him. It’s a long way away, I said quietly. I have a friend who busks on the metro and he told me you can make some good money. A few days a week, maybe he could try that? Miriam laughed curtly. What? ¿Qué? She was trying to control her voice when she finally spoke. He used to busk and he taught in a school. We saved up the money so he could take a year to improve and try to get into an orchestra. But I heard you fighting. You said he was a bad father. She shrugged. I get like that sometimes, it doesn’t mean anything. Then she told me her whole Spanish story. How she had lived in Galicia for a year with a distant aunt on arrival and then left without saying goodbye to come to Barcelona. She lived cheaply in a small room the size of a cupboard with five other Latin Americans. She took many odd jobs. As a waitress. In hotels. Making beds. In the reception. How her depression had returned. How low she had felt. Like the world had swallowed her up. The price of escape is a high one. Eventually she had to leave the house after hitting one of her flatmates in a burst of rage over an insignificant trifle. She had a violent side she couldn’t control. It made her depression even deeper. She had come over ten thousand kilometres but her grandfather was still with her. Inside of her head and inside her body. In her actions and in her deeds. She tried to set up a business taking photographs. Arty black and white ones of the city- all Argentinians are photographers or psychiatrists, Jimmy, didn’t you know?- but nothing worked. Then she met Marco. She was passing through the metro tunnel between Passeig de Gràcia and Diagonal going to her job making beds in the hotel when she heard him. He was playing in the middle of the tunnel and all the people were rushing past taking no notice. She stopped and stepped out of the multitude. Into a nowhere place. She leant back against the opposite wall and stayed until all the rush hour crowds had thinned out. Then she stepped forward and put some money in the cello player’s box. They went for breakfast together and quickly fell in love. They both wanted the same thing. To forget their origins and to make a new life. To create a family of their own. An untainted one. A fresh start. A new beginning. They were two sailors sighting a new continent through the eye of a squall. Two nineteenth century Europeans heading West in a wagon to California. They made a pact of love and mutual support. They lived for each other and then when the children came they lived together through them. But slowly Marco had become discontented. He had ambition. More than just to live an ordinary life of work and love and children. It seeped into their lives and threatened to destroy everything. So they saved for a year to give him the chance to improve his playing and try to become a serious musician. But the cost of living was too high and they hadn’t saved enough. That and the day to day of two young children to support. Strife came to settle in their lives. Marco slowly withdrew into his own obsessional world of music. They started to argue and to fight and Miriam’s violence and depression came back. Yet she had gritted her teeth and held fast. Had found a job. In her mind they would make it to October now and all would be well. I won’t be able to see you so much from now on, Jimmy, she said. What if he doesn’t get accepted in the orchestra, I asked? He’ll get a job in a school again. We’ll survive. He’s been a lot better. He looks after the children and helps more at home. We’re happy again. You don’t need to work, Miriam, I said, trying to conceal the desperation in my voice. I’ll give you money. How much do you need? Three thousand, four. You just need to promise to discipline yourself and write. She was silent. Then I played my last card. You could go back to Argentina. I’ll pay for the flights. Take the children. It will be easier with your family around. He’s never going to change. Discontented people are always looking for something new. Believe me, I’m one of them. There was a look of horror in her eyes. Go back to Argentina? No, no. She shook her head. You haven’t been listening to anything. She handed me a bag with some books that I had lent her. Maybe in a few months we could see each other, she said, but for now I can’t see you anymore. Before I could say anything she got up and weaved her way through the tables and out the door. She didn’t look back. I sat finishing my coffee and thinking for the first time that I shouldn’t have interfered in her life like that. That I had stuck my nose where it wasn’t wanted and had acted stupidly. Our friendship was over and I was back where I had started. Alone and friendless and abandoned by the muses. And that was worse than anything. I looked around the café scanning for a friend and saw no one I knew. Then I thought about the ultimate loneliness and purposelessness of life. I couldn’t stop myself. It’s not a good story. We all want more than that. Miriam’s right to want more than that. And so are you. And so am I. Yet I know it’s the only story there is. I paid for the coffees and went home alone to my empty flat.
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.