(an old story of mine, just found to sound contemporary)
It must have been the raw mushrooms that I’d eaten, or that goose Helen that kept on passing peasantries at me, but anyway what it was must have been something as simple and ever-lasting as that, because on the morning after, I felt as new and fresh as if I had been poisoned dead and allowed a second life.
Or as if I made the New Year decision never to eat mushrooms again and to poison Helen to death, and had kept it.
But it was too early for decisions, with meddlers of about seven months between me and the New Year, and it was too early for a weekend, with five days of separation yet to go.
Only Helen was always close by, in all seasons, on all days.
As permanent as time.
And as unwelcome too.
The only thing the raw mushrooms gave me was a strong pain in the stomach and a slight hope that I would get sick, even half-poisoned, and would be taken to hospital where there would be strict visiting hours and strict doctors would accept no advice or instructions from non-professional staff.
This would give me two or three days without Helen.
I concentrated on the pain and thought about how much it hurt, and wondered if another raw mushroom would confirm the pain or kill me.
I felt sleepy, which was something, and I came up with the thought that the best position in which to be found by Helen, was in bed and semi-conscious.
I would have to leave the door open for she was apt not to intrude when she was wanted.
I remembered her saying once that she had taken up smoking the moment her boyfriend, off safe and sound now, had given it up. And it was not, I am sure, due to her goose intention to tease him.
With or without Helen, I had to propound myself.
Making a fool of myself with writing an article about me as a writer, and paying a newspaper reporter to sign it, take it to his newspaper editor and get paid for it, was close to the free professional training which the war veterans were offered to be rewarded with, but chose to wait for a deserved post-war rank promotion at a time when the army was being cleared of pre-war staff.
But it was worth the trouble and the self-pity.
I would be talked about, and my book would probably be bought and read.
There was no hope for anybody to write about me if I myself didn’t, and if I didn’t, my book would be seen as written by a nobody.
It was a good book.
With all the philosophy of my past years, with the temperament of my present, and the nostalgia of the future in it.
A good book, but it needed advertising.
The article I wrote about myself followed the accepted pattern of praise, advice, a hint at something not fully expressed, and a lure taking in the direction of something probably there but completely understood by the reader. I also introduced a pinpoint to take away from the general impression that cliché articles are written by the author’s friends as a favour returned, or by the friends of editors for culture strategist authors. I managed to subtly lead into the feeling that a well-mixing type like the author was not undermining, but was supporting, the work of other authors, and that what the article really was meant to achieve was to imply that it was worth taking it for granted, and a challenge to buy the book to check the incompatibility between the palettes of artistic norms utilized by the author and sensed by the critic.
There was a very personal and very pathetic tinge-and-tingle in my article about myself.
Reading it through to proof it, I somehow liked it much better than my book which sounded like a draft. That was why I kept the article and sent the book, hoping that the two were supplementing so much each other that no one would make the difference.
Anyway, the book being a bit longer than the article about it, the newspaper decided on publishing it in parts, under the name of the reporter whom I had paid to advertise my writing.
I still have the article, and if you want to read it, please contact the reporter.
V.P.Toucheva Sofia, Bulgaria