The Writer
After my espresso, I sat down at an empty table in the corner, to collect my thoughts and attempt to work for a while. Although I came here often, I never lingered, much less sat down. Usually I would take my espresso outside to the curb and drink it quickly, content to be a nameless body in the public sphere for a few moments. Today was different; unable to write at home for months, I had decided to try something new: writing in public. Granted, countless people did it every day, hunching over laptops and nursing lattes for hours on end, but until today I could never have imagined myself doing such a thing. In some sense, I felt defeated already, ashamed to be defiling the café with my thoughts and implements.
Nevertheless, I prepared myself to work, setting out my pad and pen. Immediately, I became self-conscious, that is, I became aware of how I must look to the others, a slightly unkempt yet not altogether undignified man preparing to write in the too dimly lit (it must be admitted) corner of a café: the caricature of a writer. I remembered all the times I had seen such a figure and inwardly judged them, either with contempt or with pity.
Suspiciously, and in spite of myself, I looked around the café, to see whether anyone was paying attention to me. That’s when I saw him, seated opposite me in the far corner of the café, a younger man, dressed smartly but without ostentation, writing in a notebook with singular focus and momentum. Unlike the shadows of my dingy corner, the table he had chosen was surrounded by large windows, which let onto the street. Encased in sunlight, framed by glass, he looked to be on display, like an animal in an exhibit. However, the effect ended there. Unlike animals at the zoo, who always betray somehow their knowledge of their captivity, the man seemed totally aloof to his exposed position. In fact, he seemed so absorbed in his writing as to be entirely unaware of his surroundings.
My first reaction to the man was jealousy. How could he manage such concentration in a place like this, amongst all the noise and bustle of bodies all around him? Not only was he subject to the passing of each and every patron of the café (his table was near the front door) but he also had to contend with all the activity beyond the windows, the hustle of the city at mid-morning. Even with his head downturned and his eyes upon the paper before him, his peripheral vision would be swarming with colors and distractions of every kind. Yet he seemed oblivious. Perhaps he was even inspired and enlivened by the commotion. After all, he had chosen the table in the corner. There were plenty of other places to sit (the table I’d only now just occupied, for example), yet he had chosen that one, in the very heart of the action. The fact that he was unscathed by everything going on around him was too much for me to bear. At home I struggled to get any work done if even an unseen fly was buzzing, or a delicate (one might even say pleasant) draft were blowing.
My jealousy turned to wonder, then admiration, and I sat observing him for many minutes, my pen and pad forgotten. Given the angle and the morning light shining through the windows, I could not make out his features, which were washed out in the glare. Instead of a detailed, distinct human being, he sat as an animated silhouette, a nameless body in the public sphere, as it were. However, unlike myself in the grubby corner, or on my typical days outside on the curb, sipping my espresso without participating in the scene, this man had taken an active part, devoting himself to his performance. How nobly he held his head, how humbly he bent his back, how decisively he moved his hand. Every once in awhile, he would touch his face in some way, running his free hand through his hair or along his jawline, not nervously but quite naturally, as if to remind anyone watching that he was human.
And there were people watching, I realized with some envy. I wasn’t the only one taking notice of the man writing; in fact, nearly everyone who entered the café acknowledged him in some way, either covertly, with a nod of the head in passing, or overtly, with a pause and a knowing smile. Due to the man’s location, even the busiest, most hurried customers could not avoid him, because they had to sidle past, and several such people were brought humbly to a stop when they realized what it was that the man was doing—writing, that most respected of tasks in all of human activity. One particularly flustered businessman stopped in his tracks on his way out of the door, as if floored to find here a man so dignified, so quietly talented, as to be hard at work writing in the middle of a busy café. The businessman looked the writer up and down, his face noticeably sobering, and before he left he saluted the writer by raising first his coffee, then his briefcase.
The writer of course noticed none of this, but I did, to my disgust. The deference and attention being paid to the writer were beginning to make me sick, and my admiration for him began to sour. Was it so remarkable that a man should sit and write in a café, that people should pay him so much respect? Wasn’t writing in a café cliched and thus contemptible? It was for this reason that I had always refused to do it (or so I told myself), yet here was a man being worshiped for it.
It was next that I noticed the crowd beyond the window, which until then had been a faceless blur, a kinetic smudge of colors. What I now saw was this: every few moments, from amongst the passersby, someone would stop outside the café windows to observe the writer. Again I was reminded of a zoo exhibit; the faces of the people who stopped were filled with the same enchantment one sees at the zoo. For example, just now, a beautiful woman had stopped to watch the writer at work. By the look of awe upon her face, one would think she was witnessing an event of monumental importance, when in reality the writer was likely penning an abysmal sentence, worthy of no one. To make matters worse, the beautiful woman held a child by the hand, an impatient child who tugged at her with all his might. She began to speak, or rather, she opened and closed her mouth, beyond the pane of glass, and I imagined their conversation. What’s he doing, mom, the child asked, and she replied, he’s writing, honey, probably a very nice poem or perhaps a novel, a rather ambitious one, by the looks of him.
Suddenly I realized that my body had stood up, of its own volition. There was nothing unusual about this in itself, but I must have done so abruptly, judging by the startled looks around me. Ignoring them, I made towards the counter to order another espresso. Actually, the thought of another espresso made me nauseous, but I needed an excuse to get closer to the writer. I wanted to confirm my suspicions, that he was an ordinary college student, or in fact not writing at all, but doodling harmlessly.
The situation seemed to be conspiring with me, for the line was quite long at that moment, and my place in it would put me within arm’s reach of the writer’s table. However, as I approached (with some nervousness), I realized that something was very wrong. The page he was writing on was blank! At first I assumed it was a trick of the light, an effect of the glare, but as I got closer the glare melted away to reveal an absolutely empty page. I was right beside him now, reeling, barely able to control myself. But how could I not stare—the page was blank! This might have been excused; perhaps he had turned a fresh page and stopped to think, but no, his hand was still moving across the page, pen in hand, yet no words were appearing on its surface, no ink was darkening its white expanse, and as I gaped in confusion I noticed another detail which filled me with dizziness. The pen was not even touching the page! It was hovering just above it, a millimeter above the paper, moving furiously along as if actually writing. A clever and masterful feat, I had to admit, but a sight which finally loosed my tongue.
But what’s this, he’s not writing anything (I barely whispered, my voice quivering in shock), the page is empty, for all we know the pen isn’t even filled with ink, for all we know the pen isn’t even a real pen, yet he’s sitting here moving his hand as if it were, moving his pen above the page as if he’s writing something, but he’s writing nothing (my voice now gaining strength, commanding the dumbfounded attention of everyone in the café), no, we can’t even say that he’s writing nothing, because he isn’t writing at all, he’s merely pretending to write, going through the motions without producing anything, look, I’ll bet his entire notebook is full of empty pages, yet here he sits pretending to be a writer, basking in the attention being showered upon him, it’s actually perverse, the whole scene is grotesque (my tirade running away from me now, verging on lunacy), businessmen kowtowing to the distinguished writer hard at work at his craft, beautiful women gazing doe-eyed upon him, impressionable children looking up to him, wondering whether some day they might grow up to be a man like him, a dignified man, an artist, but he’s nothing of the sort, he’s nothing more than a swindler, a con artist, an impostor, sitting here soaking up the sunshine while the real writers like me are back there in the dingy corner, without a single word in our heads, my point being that while I may not be writing anything, I at least have the decency to keep it to myself back there, instead of flaunting it front and center, pretending to be a writer!
I had run out of breath, and gripped the man’s table to steady myself. The café was quiet; everyone had turned to face me, listening to my outburst with varying looks of perplexion and annoyance. My strength recovered, I turned to face the impostor, whose pen had ceased to move during my speech. He looked up from his notebook and turned to me with a vacant stare, devoid of recognition, the gaze not of a blind man but of a man who sees everything yet comprehends nothing. This vacant look lasted but a fraction of a second, at which point it surrendered to, or was obliterated by, something, some thought which broke through the pane of his stare, shattering it into focus.
Without a word, he looked back down at his notebook. He turned to a fresh page, his pen hand moving as effortlessly as before. I started to cry out, to appeal to the crowd to toss out this impostor, but my words were cut short as I realized that something had changed. The page, his page, was filling with words now, real words, actual words, a torrential stream of words in black ink, and I could not help but read them as they poured from his pen, the crowd’s eyes bearing down coldly upon me: after my espresso, I sat down at an empty table in the corner, to collect my thoughts and attempt to work for a while…