Ithaca (15 page)

When the evening finally comes to an end, and Zach is juddering back to the hotel in an ancient Ambassador taxi, sated with the excellent food, drink, and stories he has ingested, he thinks somewhat sentimentally, about the profession he belongs to. What gratitude he feels to be on the inside, in whatever small way, of the epic effort to create literature. And the stories behind the stories! It is the burden and privilege of publishers to be part of (even if it is only to bear witness to) the human drama that goes into the making of immortal (and very mortal) stories and poems and plays. The world knows little or nothing about the minutiae of the culture of publishing, but they are what makes it fascinating. In the more mature publishing environments, England and America, some of the larger countries in Europe, Russia, Japan, anywhere that publishing has been in existence for a while, new incidents and anecdotes are generated constantly – both apocryphal and true, although it is hard to separate one from the other. The publisher who locked his bestselling writer in his hotel room in a last-ditch effort to ensure a deadline was met, the agent who moonlighted as a dominatrix until one of her own authors turned up as a client, the publisher who offered a writer a
seven-figure advance based on a paragraph, the memoirist who shot at (and fortunately missed) his agent, publishers and writers in love or in hate, novel ways of dealing with writer’s block, publishers’ feuds, agents at war, the politics of literary prizes … He finds all of this irresistible, and he is thrilled to see it beginning to happen in India, specifically in English-language writing and publishing; he does not know enough about the other great literary cultures of the country to comment about them. And what, if anything, is even more thrilling, is that everyone associated with the profession gets to see, at first-hand, the birth of a major publishing culture. In twenty years or so English-language publishing in India will be a settled and mature environment with its own orthodoxies, but at the moment it is still being born with the frenzy and missteps and wailing and gnashing of teeth and sheer bloody excitement that accompany every birth. It is fascinating to watch it come into being, and he hopes his company and he can be part of it in some small way.

There is a view, a minority view to be sure but one that is gaining ground, which holds that even though independent bookshops may be an endangered species, they will rise again in the not too distant future, when online bookstores become omnipresent. At this time, the theory goes, the powerful book retail chains, which are already in decline, will no longer be able to compete on price, product range, and cost, and will wither and die. This will clear the way for
the resurgence of independent bookstores with carefully picked stock and knowledgeable staff. They will become a haven for book lovers as they will be able to provide the only thing the online booksellers cannot – the human touch in the form of great indie booksellers whom the community of book people in every neighbourhood will support and celebrate for their taste and insight. As Apoorva and he settle down to some serious browsing at The Book Shop in Jor Bagh, Zach hopes that this prognostication is not just wishful thinking.

Rather like Ramesh’s apartment, the place reminds him of Prospero’s cave – small, book-lined, and filled with magic. He hasn’t seen KD, the proprietor, since his student days, but he recognizes him immediately, although he is much older now, the deep black beard he remembers turned completely white. As they enter he is laughing and chatting with an older lady who cradles an armful of books she is about to buy. The customer leaves, and he comes up to them, a smile on his face, “So, Apoorva, where have you been?”

She introduces the two men (unsurprisingly KD doesn’t remember him but seems glad to be reacquainted with Zach) and in no time they are all having the sort of conversation that is all too rare in bookstores. As they talk about the great Indian novelists who have tasted mainstream success for over a decade, customers wanting KD’s opinion on a book or who have just stopped in to say hello constantly interrupt them. The Book Shop offers no discounts and the bestsellers that dominate bookstores the world over get a single shelf in a corner. The bookseller asks him if he has read Mohsin Hamid
and Daniyal Mueenuddin, a couple of the Pakistani writers who have captured the imagination of readers in the subcontinent. He has read one but not the other and is happy to buy a copy of his book. This is an ordinary miracle, he thinks: scarcely six months ago Pakistani terrorists had laid waste to Bombay, today the stories of their countrymen are somehow helping the healing process. And it is a place like this that fosters that process, that slows the conversation about books to exactly the right pace and rhythm so you are able to fall in love with an author you might have never heard of but for the proprietor’s exquisite taste and encyclopaedic knowledge or to rediscover a writer you haven’t read in the longest time. Before Zach knows it he has bought three more novels, the Neel Mukherjee novel that Ramesh was talking about, and two that he has been meaning to read – only the fact that he will be on a plane tomorrow prevents him from buying more.

When they leave the store he has some time on his hands, so he and Apoorva decide to have coffee at the India International Centre, which is not too far away. After they have placed their orders, she quizzes him about a recent book on fiction by James Wood, one of the most astute commentators on the form, especially Wood’s contention that novelists will need to “outwit” what he describes as the “inevitable aging” of existing novelistic methods. Zach feels that while it is fine for writers to be strategic and innovative where technique and convention are concerned, it is not something to be unduly concerned about. The great writers of this time or any other time for that matter are not celebrated just because
of the perfection of their form; they are read because of the extraordinary stories they tell, and the truths they uncover for the reader.

“I’ve always meant to ask you this,” she says, “but how precisely did you find Seppi?”

It isn’t a question he is asked much these days. At one time he had his responses down pat, so he has to think for a moment before answering.

“I didn’t find him, he found me,” he says.

“Did you know he was destined for greatness, is that why you published him?”

He could lie, try to impress her, but he doesn’t. “No, I didn’t know, I knew he had talent, but I didn’t know he had that sort of talent in him. His early novels were good but not great. I have always wondered why young novelists, those who are starting out, don’t write great attention-grabbing books from the outset, it’s something that has always bothered me. Here they are, trying their luck at one of the riskiest professions in the world, a profession where only the top one per cent could be said to have made it in terms of commercial and critical success, yet they almost never just go for it.”

“Perhaps it’s because they can’t,” she says.

“That is the only answer which fits,” he says. “I think it was Rushdie who said every writer needs to have an unpublished novel in his desk, his first attempt that drains all the irrelevant autobiographical rubbish out of him so he is free to invent, to tell stories as he is meant to, to the limits of his talent.”

He beckons to their waiter, indicates that they would like refills.

“And the other thing that happens, of course, is that the more a writer writes the more confident he becomes, and the more material he draws from that mysterious place within him where stories are born.”

“But Seppi,” she says, “why were his first books so different from what came later?”

“He began by emulating a writer he admired, but the beauty of it is that as he was writing his early novels he was also finding his real voice.”

“And the process was automatic?”

He has always refused to teach at publishing courses, he does not think the basic skill it takes to make a good publisher can be taught; every aspirant needs to develop his own taste through a lifetime of good reading and by paying close attention to the way the great books work. What he does like, though, is talking one on one with someone who has the aptitude, the knowledge, and the desire to come to grips with the essence of his profession. All such a person needs is a nudge or two in the right direction, and the sort of pointers that can arise from the stories that everyone who has been in the game for long enough can tell.

“No, I don’t think there was a steady progression, but as he kept at it he was fashioning keys to unlock doors that led to his true subject matter. He told me, when I asked him why he was writing about angels, that he had always been fascinated by them – he was an altar boy, he was Catholic, he was Sicilian, and so on and so forth. However, he might
never have written the books but for the oddest thing. He had an uncle, a bit of a bad seed, who had been in and out of prison. He worked for a contractor who built roads. One day there was a tragedy. His uncle was driving a road-roller, one of those ungainly, prehistoric-looking vehicles which move at about two miles an hour, and he was leaning out of the cabin, yelling to one of his workmates, when he slipped and fell under the great front wheel of the machine. He must be the only person in the history of mankind who was run over by a road-roller. Anyway, Seppi said that soon after he heard the news he had a strange dream – the actual circumstances of his uncle’s death morphed into a vision of Satan falling from Heaven with the Archangel Michael standing over him with a flaming sword. He began
Angels Rising
that very night.”

“What a strange story!”

“Possibly just a bit stranger than how it came to be published.”

“How come?”

“Because Litmus was absolutely the wrong publisher for the books and I was absolutely the wrong editor for the books. I liked a very different kind of book, and I would have said no except I felt I owed Seppi so I took the manuscript home with me to read.”

“And?”

“I think the best way to explain is to paraphrase something Kerouac wrote about in
On the Road
, I don’t remember the exact words but the central character says something like all his life he has sought out the mad ones, the ones who were different from the common herd, the ones who when you
encountered them made you go
Awww!
Now transpose that feeling to books, there are some books that make you go
Awww!
, that’s what I felt when I read
Angels Rising –
there was no way I was not going to publish that book.”

“I hope something like that happens to me one day.”

“Oh, it will, just stay the course, it will happen to you; that is the greatest reward of our profession, everything else is just detail.”

It is time for them to go. He has asked her not to make appointments for a couple of hours this afternoon so he can catch up with work. The hotel is only about ten minutes away, so he decides to stretch his legs, especially as his route will take him through Lodi Gardens, a lovely ordered space of flowers and shrubs woven around the tombs of an ancient dynasty. As he walks along a path lined by Ashoka trees, the dark clouds overhead spit out a short sharp shower that ends almost as soon as it has begun; the rain is warm as blood and heightens the joy he had felt at the bookstore and at Ramesh’s. He is, he realizes, responding to the endless sense of possibility that India seems to offer. For the first time in over a decade he thinks seriously about returning. Not right now, there is much that remains to be done back in London, but if the opportunity presents itself he will consider it very carefully. And until that happens he will do what he can for Litmus India.

Before he grew up and went away to boarding school, Zach’s parents would take him every summer to his paternal
grandparents’ house in the seaside town of Kanyakumari. Behind the house was open ground dotted with casuarinas bent by the wind. The sandy soil, evidence that all this was once under the sea, was speckled with tiny biting ants and was reputed to have a resident cobra, so he was not allowed to play unsupervised, but it was easy to give the old retainer who was charged with watching over him the slip, and he would spend hours happily exploring the tangled wilderness. From time to time travelling troupes that enacted wild, colourful tableaus and skits drawn from the epics and folklore for the children and women of the neighbourhood would interrupt his solitary ramblings. Monkeys and decorated cows were pressed into service to help the heavily made-up actors tell stories as old as time. He doubts that the itinerant players have been able to withstand the onslaught of TV and the cinema but they wouldn’t have seemed out of place at the book launch Apoorva has taken him to; it is the sort of glorious spectacle that he has almost never encountered in all his years as a publisher in London. He is used to occasions where the family and friends of the author whose book is being launched gather in pubs or restaurants; the publisher makes a short speech, the author, a creature used to hiding in the shadows, responds stutteringly, and then a prolonged bout of serious drinking ensues. A variant is the launch in a bookstore where, unless the author is renowned, the event is little more than just another revolution of the carousel of that season’s events played out before bored store employees and a tiny knot of the author’s people.