On Lives Spent Waiting

You chop wood, you carry water – both before and after.
(An insight reached in pain.)

***

I had to force myself to keep reading. It happened twice, many years apart, with two books whose greatness I had little reason to question: The Diary of Anne Frank and Never Let Me Go. I remember sitting over them, turning page after page, increasingly impatient without knowing why. It was not boredom in the usual sense, the kind that comes from having nothing to engage with. I wanted to know what would happen, although in Anne’s case I already knew, while Kathy’s fate became clear well before the novel ended. Yet something in me resisted, as though the books were asking me to accept something I had spent my life pushing away. I will not pretend otherwise: it was chiefly their reputation that kept me reading. Without it, I would probably have put them aside. Now I often wonder how much I would have lost if I had.

Anne complains about her mother, observes the people with whom she is confined, worries about Peter, loses patience, becomes hopeful, changes her mind. I knew how the diary would end. I wanted to warn her, however absurd that seemed to me, as though I could prevent something from which she had no way of escaping. Kathy H., the other heroine of inexpressible everyday boredom, recalls friendships, jealousies, petty cruelties, misunderstandings, objects that had once seemed priceless to her. She and her friends are raised so that their organs can be “donated”. And yet their principal occupation seems to be hurting one another over such insignificant things, again and again. I kept reading, filled with an increasingly urgent expectation of some refusal, some desperate gesture, however futile. I was demanding The Plague, yet I was still reading Never Let Me Go. Why did all these people go on talking about everything imaginable, but never about the important things?

The question is unfair to Anne. Hiding is already an act of resistance, and she desires her future with a ferocity that shows through on every page of the diary. Kathy’s submission belongs to another, imaginary world, in which children have been taught not to ask how far the boundaries of what they can imagine might extend. I knew the difference. But that did not put me at ease. I kept demanding the moment when the scale of the catastrophe would finally sweep away the pettiness of the everyday lives unfolding before my eyes.

Instead, the little things continued. Another quarrel, another disappointment, another small gesture preserved in memory. Nothing came to satisfy my impatience. Gradually the books began to grow heavy in my hands. Until…

I cannot identify the moment when I stopped resisting. The sense of immobility did not disappear, but acquired a density I could now feel physically. There were days when I read only a little, put the book down, only to discover that its characters still filled my room. Their concerns had become neither grander nor even acceptable. I had simply spent too much time among them to be able to dismiss them as insignificant any longer.

For twenty-five years now, I have been trying to win recognition for my literary work. I have written several books, published most of them in Bulgaria, sent manuscripts to literary agents and publishers more times than I care to remember. I have explained them, defended them, waited for replies, and started all over again. Do not misunderstand me: there are readers who understand what I am trying to do, sometimes with astonishing generosity. But otherwise the silence continues. I still sit at my computer and write letters to strangers who have little reason even to open them. I correct a sentence, attach a manuscript, click “Send.” Sometimes I feel ridiculous. More often I am angry. Then I look for the next address.

I want my books to become visible beyond the narrow circle in which I have grown accustomed to finding them. I want the years spent working on them to leave a trace. I have never regarded this desire as something I could simply give up, although I can see the vanity in it, as well as the absurdity of believing that persistence must necessarily be rewarded. Resistance has become the very form of my everyday life. Even my discouragement has its routine: I check my email, reread a rejection, return to work. It is astonishing how much of a life can pass in refusing to accept its apparent limits.

I want Anne and Kathy to stop concerning themselves with trifles and face the whole truth of what awaits them. But I, too, have spent years concerning myself with trifles: a phrase in a letter, the silence after sending it, an encouraging message, another disappointment. I go on, of course. That is, I go on sitting at my desk, with yet another letter.

There is something disturbing about this resemblance that I could not manage to name. Gradually, though, something began to become clearer to me…

***

Knowing Anne Frank’s fate while reading about her quarrels in the Secret Annex, her relationship with her mother, her first love for Peter, feels almost indecent. That foreknowledge makes me unfairly impatient. What do these trifles matter when the Germans could arrive at any moment?

But Anne lives in the present. Her mother, Peter, the others are there every day, with their habits, grievances, and anxieties. The danger cancels none of this. Anne dreams of becoming a writer, revises her diary with a view to future publication. Even in hiding, she lives with the thought of that tomorrow which will never come.

Kathy’s memories are different. Hailsham comes alive in them with its rules, rituals, and childhood treasures, with the works of art whose significance the children do not understand. Ruth tries to dominate the others, Tommy loses his temper, Kathy deciphers glances and things left unsaid. I catch myself becoming irritated with Ruth as though she were someone I knew from school, and suddenly remember what awaits them all. But I still want to know whether Ruth is lying, whether Tommy understands, whether Kathy will admit her feelings. The novel stubbornly brings me back to the trifles from which I am trying to escape.

Ishiguro leaves no room for the grand scene I had been expecting all along. There are rumours, half-glimpsed possibilities, stories passed from mouth to mouth. The hope that love might win them a deferral becomes important because the characters have nothing else to hope for. Even their ideas of salvation remain unbearably modest. When Kathy and Tommy finally ask whether deferrals exist, the answer closes the only door that had seemed half-open. I remember how painfully this confirmation struck me. It seemed unbearable that a person should bargain for a few more years with a system designed to use their body without leaving them any choice.

I keep thinking about the things I myself bargain for. Not that I am comparing my life with theirs, of course. And yet there is something particularly humiliating about seeing how easily your imagination adapts to the conditions the world offers you. “A publisher might reply. A literary agent might ask for fifty pages. Someone might read the manuscript to the end.” You begin with the conviction that your work deserves a place in literature, and years later you catch yourself hoping that someone might at least open the attachment. Expectations grow smaller and smaller, yet continue to absorb you with the same inevitability. At least a little attention, at least some sign that the door has not closed completely.

***

There is one detail in Never Let Me Go that continues to torment me. At Hailsham, the children are encouraged to draw, write poetry, and develop whatever talents they possess. Their best works are collected by a mysterious woman known as Madame. Only much later do we learn that the purpose of this collection was to prove that the children had souls. Apparently, their humanity needed proving. But even this evidence changes nothing. They are still expected to surrender their organs and die.

I often think about that strange little Gallery. For so many years, I too have been sending my works out into the world, hoping to convince strangers that behind my name there is something worthy of their attention. The comparison disturbs me, but I cannot free myself from it. There is something almost comical about this stubborn need to present evidence of your own worth to people who have never promised to examine it. And yet I continue to send out my manuscripts, as though somewhere there existed a Gallery in which they might finally find a place.

Anne Frank also dreams of becoming a writer. She revises her diary with publication in mind, imagining the strangers who will one day read it. She is fifteen when she is arrested. Her book reaches millions of readers, but she herself never learns of it. Sometimes I think about the cruel irony of this fate: the future Anne imagines for her diary actually comes to pass. Except that for her, there is no future.

Sometimes I wonder whether I mistake the strength of my resistance for proof that it must necessarily lead somewhere. Perhaps the struggle has become so inseparable from my existence that I can no longer imagine life without it. Asked once why he kept playing music, Keith Richards reportedly said something like, “What else am I supposed to do? Go fishing?” I understand him perfectly. I have absolutely no intention of going fishing either.

***

Lately, I have been thinking more and more often about how easily a person can spend a lifetime waiting for something that never comes to pass. Anne waits to leave her hiding place and begin the life she has imagined. Kathy and Tommy hope that love will win them a few more years. I keep waiting for my books to find their way into the world. And all that time, the days keep passing, indifferent to what we expect of them.

Anne’s future was stolen from her. Kathy’s future was decided before she was even born. Mine is still open. I can change direction, give up, begin something else. But the more I think about these three lives, the more I am troubled by the thought that waiting can consume the present so quietly that we barely notice how much of our lives we have surrendered to it. We go on quarrelling, falling in love, being disappointed, doing our usual work. One day everything will be different, we tell ourselves. Until then, life must go on.

For a long time, I have thought about my own years in this way. I have written my books, worked, travelled, loved, argued, experienced far more than I ever expected. And yet somewhere behind everything I have lived through, there has always been the thought that the real thing is still to come. The next letter, the next manuscript, the next reply that might change everything. Sometimes it seems to me that I have lived two lives at once, and that one of them, the one spent waiting, has gradually begun to steal time from the other.

I remember Kathy in Norfolk, standing before the field where rubbish has gathered along a fence. For a moment she imagines that everything lost might somehow have ended up there, that Tommy might appear in the distance. Then she returns to her car. She has work to do. Her own end is approaching. Once, I found this scene almost unbearable. These days, I think more and more often about that perfectly ordinary movement towards the car. Kathy has nothing left to hope for, and yet she still has somewhere to go.

Tomorrow morning I will sit down at my computer again. I will check my email, look for the next address, perhaps begin another letter. I will read what I have written, hesitate over a word, replace it with another. I will probably decide that it is not quite the right one either.

And I will try once more.