Short Story: The Reader Digests

The Reader Digests
By Nicholas Andreyev

"Hitherto he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women."

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 1905

I do not believe in diaristic thinking. Kierkegaard once said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” But that does not mean we must look back and understand. 

***

It was September. I was coming home from work and decided to take the scenic route. Usually, I came home in the dark, passing invisibly through the evening in my black suit. Though I am a bad worker, an incurable daydreamer and a reader of public domain novels on my computer, I try to remain at least physically present in the office from nine to five. But that day, I had used my lunch break to finish a task and could therefore justify stepping out half an hour early.

The world can change a lot in so little time; I saw the city as I rarely did those days. It was like peeking behind the curtain, seeing the sets change and the actors prepare for their cues. I felt a sudden rush of sensitivity to my surroundings, though I have never been in touch with nature. I have never known the names of local birds, flowers or rivers; nor have I known, definitively, when the seasons change or if the sun sets in the East or West. I must constantly check, using little mnemonics, like a child miming left and right with their hands. Sometimes, I’ll use the compass app and point it at the fading purple sediment on the horizon. West. I try to remember. I forget. It does not matter. 

But that evening, the sun rested on the horizon and glared out. The facades of the buildings as I crossed Pyrmont Bridge were gilded a luminous orange; the light returned an ancient feeling to the porous stones; I felt like I was emerging from a cave. The clouds were sun-dyed, suspended in the air like a blanket. It reminded me of a game my brother and I used to play: I would lie on the bed, and he would send the sheet parachuting over me. 

At Blackwattle Bay, I sat on a memorial bench. I did not see who it commemorated; I doubt I knew them. I fished for cigarettes in my bag. The Door’s “Soul Kitchen” played low in my headphones. 

Speak in secret alphabets
I light another cigarette
Learn to forget, learn to forget

Runners passed in a berth behind me on the path. I exhaled blue breaths at ANZAC Bridge; Parramatta glittered between the parallel lines of the bridge and the horizon. The image of the shoreline shimmered in the wake of a rowing club.

***

I had my first cigarette in Italy. It felt like the cosmopolitan thing to do. I was travelling with my brothers, Hugh and John, seeing the continent, spending our money. I had graduated high school, and Europe was the threshold I passed between Adelaide and university in Sydney.

The days were mostly the same. We found a cheap café in the morning, searched up if it was rude or rude not to tip. Then, we would walk through the streets, staring into the windows of nicer cafes or at cobblestones and cathedrals older than Federation. In public gardens, I sat and watched mist gather in the bare branches of trees, reading Byron and Shelley. If it was too cold, we went into galleries and museums. But, through some coincidence of scheduling, we always seemed to happen upon these places on public holidays, so they had an excuse to close their doors on us in the cold. My entrée into the world of fine art deferred by the death of some historical personage two hundred years ago.

Europe has no shortage of dead people.

In Rome, we visited the Keats-Shelley House. I stood in the room where Keats, brilliant, bronchial, had died of tuberculosis, overlooking the Spanish Steps. At the Basilica de Santa Croce in Florence, I sat where Machiavelli, Galileo and Michelangelo were buried. And at a café in Milan, I read that there had been a stabbing in the municipality near our hostel.

Florence was my favourite. The Arno River caught the sun like a blade, cutting through the city. Venus on the conch shell; Perseus and Medusa; countless Madonnas; and a replica of David in the forecourt of a plaza. In a second-hand bookstore, I bought Ellis’ Less Than Zero and Atomised by Houellebecq. The limited storage made books impractical, so I had taken to buying copies on the cheap, stuffing them in my back pocket, and then donating them later. I read on trains and buses, in cafes while my brothers shopped, and I finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being in line for the Peggy Guggenheim. These, and more like them, initiated me into the canon of experimental, cynical, self-consciously masculine literature which Sasha later derided as ‘Dick Lit.’

One night, Hugh matched with an Australian girl on a dating app, and he arranged for all of us to visit some of her favourite spots. Her name was Sarah, but I don’t remember forming a real first impression. I was preoccupied by a comment, or criticism, that Hugh had made earlier that day: that I was self-absorbed and indifferent to how other people felt. The first bar was at the intersection of the train station and a tent community, bursting with twenty-somethings, their strident voices and the clinking of glasses filling the room. I quietly finished two pints and didn’t pay much attention to the conversation. Instead, I listened to the music, a college post-punk radio station, and watched the waitresses.

My attention returned to the table when Sarah excused herself to go smoke. I had never met a young smoker before. I tried to picture her, standing on the sidewalk, by the tents, looking glamourous, like something out of a Nouvelle Vague film.

‘No wonder she coughs like that,’ said John.

She had a terrible cough. It rattled her whole body like a can kicked down the road. But, back then, I was intrigued by idiosyncrasy, and the pretty girl in the blue coat who hacked like Tom Waits beguiled me.

In the next bar, I continued to watch the waitresses but paid more attention to the conversation. Sarah was twenty-five, had been on exchange, and had chosen to remain on the continent before returning to a firm in Sydney where Hugh wanted to work. She was also, I learnt, a patron of second-hand bookstores. When we ended up on the same side of the booth, she spoke passionately about Anaïs Nin, Louise Glück and Simone de Beauvoir. I replied that the best women’s books were written when they pretended to be men.

‘George Eliot, Currer Bell, whatever Austen’s pen name was.’

‘“By a Lady”’

‘Yes, I know she was. That’s not the point.’

At an underground club, or subterranean, as I put it, two Chilean men tried to teach me to drink tequila. I had no natural talent for it. Later, Hugh and John were diverted by a group of English blokes, and I ascended to the street for some air. Sarah was already there, smoking. 

‘I’d kill for some gelato,’ she said and lit her cigarette. ‘It’s my biggest vice.’

We went in search of ice cream; lost in streets gravid with history, art and commerce. She talked about how law bored her and that her passion was writing. She may have said vocation. She had read Rilke’s letters. In one, he said that a real writer could not live if they did not continue to write. I nodded sagely, though I had never written anything. The whole time, I gathered the courage to ask for a smoke.

‘The trick is to inhale twice,’ she said.

I tried, coughed, and tried again.

‘Very debonair. I feel like I’m corrupting you.’

I saw her again, much later, in Sydney. The details are unimportant, and the meeting’s clandestine nature was only revealed to me recently. It transpired that she had asked Hugh for my number in exchange for a recommendation to the firm she was leaving. Apparently, my aloofness had made a strong impression. Though, honestly, my disaffection only came about because the idea of her attraction to me had never entered my head. But this impression, which I have never been able to consciously affect again, had stayed with her. Of course, the actual date didn’t lead to anything. I was eighteen, and the seven-year difference lay between us, an irreconcilable gulf. I don’t know why she ever found me interesting, but if I were to guess, I would blame Nin or some other author. She was a reader, and bad taste in partners is a kind of inherent vice in poetry and prose.

I never met her again, but I had learnt what I needed: to inhale twice.

***

I think I was messaging Prudence around then. Yes, it would have been then, because I remember listening to a lot of Belle and Sebastian and reading Flaubert. She was also from Adelaide and had attended a nearby school. My friend, Benny, had met her at an orchestral competition. He mentioned her here and there for months, and gradually, I began to build up an image in my head: tall, Irish-Catholic, fan of brit-pop and musical theatre. Soon, I had become a little attached to her too, though I didn’t tell him.

Then, graduation. Benny went to Brisbane, and I flew to Austria with my brothers. Two months later, I arrived in Sydney to begin my collegiate life.

Before I moved into the dorms, I stayed with Hugh for a week. I killed time in the pool, or by reading Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. One day, I found Prudence on Facebook and friended her on a whim. She accepted. Apparently, she had heard of me from Benny as well.

For six months, we corresponded daily. I felt for the first time I possessed what could be called an intimate relationship (state lines be damned). She had left Adelaide, gone to Melbourne for university, and stayed on campus in some Catholic college. I would recommend a film, and she would share a song or poem. These seeds would then grow and branch out into long calls.

‘I think seeing that at fourteen made me realise I was bisexual,’ the phone said.

‘Dracula? The one with Winona Ryder?’

Prudence’s voice was the only discernible thing in the darkening room, as the sun set (West?) and I lay in bed, eyes closed, with my phone on the pillow.

The relationship offered security against the instability of life in a strange new city; a friendly voice echoing shared anxieties and pleasures. She used it as a bridge from the familiar into the unknown, every day more and more secure in Melbourne and her new life. Inevitably, I felt the cord connecting us begin to go slack, and, finally, I had been given enough rope.

On the phone, I mentioned that I would be in Melbourne for a few days. I wanted to see the gallery, visit some stores, and, if she happened to be free, would she like to meet? I told the few people who cared, and some who didn’t, that I was going because I needed some time away from Sydney, I hadn’t been to Melbourne in years, and I missed hostels. 

She had classes the four days I was in Victoria. She could only spare a couple of hours in the morning. Fine. I continued to assume that our meeting, so anticipated, would cause her to drop everything and leap into our new life together.

We met outside the State Library. I arrived half an hour early and tried to read One Hundred Years of Solitude on a bench. It was cold, my hands trembled, and I had trouble remembering the sprawling family tree of colonels, cousins, parents, siblings, and lovers (often intersecting and simultaneous).

Then, she arrived. She was taller than me, a couple inches more, wearing a leather jacket, her father’s, and a knit scarf. There was no embrace or hand taken in hand. Instead, we started walking almost immediately: taking fast laps around the Carlton Gardens. I can’t remember what she said. Meeting her in person made everything feel unreal, like there was an inverse relationship between the physical and emotional distance. She said she had to get to class soon. We went to the university. Numbly, I watched her wave goodbye as she entered a lecture on the geopolitics of Eurovision.

For the rest of the trip, I was tormented by questions: why hadn’t I brought up what I had flown, economy, emergency exit aisle, to ask her? I began to retrace the path we had taken just an hour before. I had a headache. I felt ill. I went to a bar. The beer went right through me. I switched to spirits and cigarettes. I began frantically writing sonnets on the napkins, writing about Prudence, the virtue and the girl.

For the next few days, we barely messaged. I was waiting on her intervention, an invitation or explanation. I thought that, as if to compensate for my interstate stalking, I could at least leave her phone unmolested, if not her city. I walked 25,000 steps each day, listening to Wu-Tang Clan (the predominantly white indie rock I usually listen to reminded me too much of her), and left Marques unread. 

A week after my return, she said we were through, that it had become a little unhealthy. She wasn’t wrong: I had felt sick for weeks. I wrote and deleted half-a-dozen paragraphs; in the end, I sent I understand. Thanks for the feedback. It was 11 PM. I went for a run. For the next few months, I continued running at midnight, and, luckily, no crimes were committed then, for I would have had no reasonable alibi. My sleep dilated between mere hours and whole days, my body atrophied, and my social life with it. I ate once a day, chain-smoked, and called my grandmother constantly.

*** 

After suffering my lack of judgement, I tried to meet more girls.

There was Mary, from a law course I audited, who gave me mono. In a bedridden delirium, I believed it was divine punishment for moving on. Then, there was Tracey, whom I met at a student magazine launch. She was fashionable, political, quoted Paglia, recommended bands I had to listen to, and made me feel extremely out of my depth. One night, she came over to watch Buffalo ‘66. I stared nervously at Vincent Gallo’s face and suggested we smoke on the balcony. Later, when we had kissed for a bit and then gone to sleep, an incredible paranoia came over me that she would find out I was a pseud. The next week, I tried to play it off like nothing had happened. I believe she was unimpressed.

Two months later, I started dating Claire.

*** 

‘That’s the filter,’ Sasha warned.

‘I think it was Pushkin who said only a rich man can walk away from an unfinished meal,’ I replied.

The group of teenagers who had been sitting behind us were exiting the cinema. Jamie and Calvin were still quoting lines back and forth. Sasha and I stood on the kerb with our bad habits.

Later, we went to the basketball courts on campus to get high. The university was empty. I found a ball, and Jamie and I tried to play a disoriented game of one-on-one. I almost rolled my ankle trying to dribble in boots. Sasha and Calvin sat on the bleachers, commentating.

The boys went home, and Sasha and I lay in the stands quietly before going back to hers. She had bright, cartoon-red hair, and her perfume mixed with the second-hand smell vintage clothing has. She wore a special T-shirt to dye her hair in; the back and shoulders were splattered a blood-red, like she had been decapitated.

After putting on a condom, I made eye-contact with a poster of Kate Bush. Suddenly, I felt a little guilty for making Claire sleep with me under a poster of Jim Morrison, shirtless, his arms spread wide, like he was being crucified.

‘Do you want to play something?’ I asked.

Sasha turned off a lamp. ‘Sorry, my speakers are broken.’

I preferred having music on. When I was seeing Claire, we would listen to The Cure in bed. Maudlin, I know. It started as a joke: I thought the album names Pornography and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me sounded like fitting soundtracks for sex. But, honestly, Seventeen Seconds would have been more fitting; and, in the end, Disintegration.

***

I had met Claire a short while after Prudence. There is nothing much to say here. She was kind, pretty in a pale way, and seemed to like me. We were together for six months, beginning after she had moved home to Canberra and started TAFE. At the end, I just remember feeling annoyed whenever I had to put down what I was reading (at the time, Decline and Fall, not Waugh’s best) to respond to a message.

The day after Luca’s twenty-first birthday party was the perfect time to break up with her. She was already coming down to Sydney for it, so it’s not like I had brought her just to end things. The party was in an abandoned warehouse, with a makeshift DJ booth and lights strung up in the rafters. The Uber had cost $42 split four ways.

I got very drunk and tried to avoid her as much as possible. At some point, someone offered me a line of something which I had to snort off my phone. It switched on when my nose touched the screen: 12:06. It was officially the day I had to end things with Claire.

There were no real problems with her or our relationship. It was just another time I failed to feel much of anything other than apathy or paranoia. I felt no compulsion to frantically walk around the city or risk receiving sidelong glances from bar staff as I composed napkin sonnets.

 *** 

I know that I may sound superficial. But I only treat people how I am comfortable being treated. There is not much more to me than meets the eye. I do not promote an image of myself that is intricate or subtle; it is other people who insert nuance or complexity where there is none. I am clear about who I am; if you listen, it should be obvious that I do not mean what I say. It is a kind of game.

I read something once which explains just what I mean. Some words that really capture and distil who I am. Just give me a minute, I’ll remember. It was a really good book.