Abandoned Novella: RIP
Here is a fragment of the novella. A bit of background information, it was an experiment in longer fiction which failed. I was so invested in the concept of discipline that I didn’t realise it had failed until I had poured an immense amount of time into it. But I have no regrets. It was a very worthy exercise which exposed all the areas in which I am clumsy.
I know its a bit odd to read it out of context. I can tell you that he’s a narcissist, very emotional too.
1.
‘I don’t think she understands me,’ he said casting two yellow tablets down his throat with carbonated lime. He imagined that they were sea shells washed down his throat by waves. In Berlin, Roman had discovered, it was possible to get anything with just a look. It was not like Missouri, where looks were inevitably misinterpreted by angry or lustful people as an invitation to take you to whatever den they had in mind. No, in this world, a look communicated simply knowingness, it communicated that you were part of an ever growing cult of pleasure whose membership was limited only by the number of willing members.
And as he cocked his eyebrow to give that knowing look, he had sat with one leg crossed over his knee surreptitiously opening his genitals to the world. But his eyelids were peeled wide enough to convey the vulnerability alloyed to his manliness. And this woman with her straw-coloured hair and creeping scar down her forehead had come to him, perhaps overwhelmed by desire and pity.
Roman confessed his gravest fear: that he was unlovable.
‘How do you know that? Maybe you just don’t communicate very well.’
His jaw ground to stillness.
‘No, that’s not it. We talked all the time.’ He locked his eyes into hers. ‘Believe me all the time. I don’t hold things in.’
He could tell her these things because he sensed that she too had known tragedy. It was something about the way she sat with her back straight and he palms splayed over her knees. It was though her body were fixed in place somehow, like those butterflies you see under glass at museums. Maybe she had an injury, fell off her bicycle and underneath a bus. Or maybe it was a botched transplant, a robotic part that was not properly assembled, or was not a match for her human core. If that were the case, then it was all the more likely that she lived in aching awareness of the flawed corpus she carried herself in. That would make her vulnerable to compliment. Yes, he would put a rose in that joy-starved cheek.
‘You are really beautiful. Not like everyone else.’
He hadn’t meant to say so dripping with desire but she gobbled it up as bait.
‘Not like your girlfriend?’ She asked raising her eyebrows and slowly parting her lips to reveal rows of teeth straight as dominoes. He needed to fall back.
‘No, she is beautiful. I miss her.’
He couldn’t help it that people found him irresistible. His body spoke a language he wasn’t in control of. And it had a god-like effect on the Berliners, who bit their lips and turned their eyes as he passed.