Plum collected the treasured objects and ducked into his cabin. He heard spear thunks. They were not very simultaneous, after all.
For an hour afterward, Wodehouse found it impossible to write. The story was to have circled around an American rubber-toy magnate who funded a cult combining health and religiosity, a son of Seventh-Day Adventism. The chap had a happy-go-lucky twin with a thirst for alcohol….
Both twins were Hakim, the good Hakim and the bad one. But Plum’s juices froze at any thought of that awful man, mat vortex of contradictions. He only thawed out by parking that story on a mental shelf and starting something new.
In what language? Arabic. And if so, make it a short story. Plum wasn’t up to being clever for over five thousand words in his adopted language.
Using what script? Plum was illiterate in Arabic. He threw down his pen and stood. Talk about adversity! Phonetic Roman, then. If all the whilom inhabitants of
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Planet Earth decorated the landscape somewhere on Riverworld, there must be dozens, even hundreds, who would enjoy a good Arabic screed penned by guess and by gosh. He returned to his table and started to scribble.
Plum took days to get up to speed. Even under better circumstances a five-thousand-word story needs a week to write. Hakim the Patient failed to understand. On his sixth visit, he tapped Wodehouse’s finished pages. “I make nothing of your foolish ciphers. If this bears sense at all, read me this to prove it.”
“I—I’m fairly horrible,” Plum responded. “I’ve been told on good authority I should never read out loud.”
“Try.”
With a grimace Plum plucked up page one and began to orate. He faltered and droned, skipping lines, backtracking and scratching his head.
“Hah!” Hakim barked after two minutes of torment. “Give it to me! I know what needs to be done.”
He left with Plum’s half-finished work. Wodehouse sank in defeat. He had failed—and why not? How did he ever think otherwise? Would Hitler laugh at witticisms in pidgin German, penned in Hebrew? Gents like Lenin weren’t famous for their senses of humor, were they? Hakim was no different. Hakim, who could keep him from reaching any audience at all!
In Plum’s frame of mind the sight of his worktable was hateful. He got up and plunged into the garden, walking fast loops around the periphery, averting his face from the central tree. What had Hakim done with his wretched manuscript? Used it for toilet paper? Thrown it into the river?
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Every fifth time he changed directions. Clockwise— counterclockwise—clockwise again. From the women’s side of the wall, he heard laughter. The word “guffaw” sprang to mind, hard as it was to imagine girlish lungs guffawing. Life was sweet over there. The sun shone.
Perhaps if he spread-eagled himself across the tree, some guard would obligingly chuck a spear in his direction. “Hakim’s a fake!” he’d shout to encourage the blighter. “He never wrote your scriptures! It’s all lies!”
That would do it. Plum left the path he was burning in the grass, the better to make a target of himself.
As he reached the tree Hakim appeared at the labyrinth entry, his face creased with smiles. “Excellent! Wonderful!”
He handed over Plum’s pages and left again, a man with a penchant for sudden departures. So it is with your general run of critic, Wodehouse thought to himself. You want them to omit no details of your excellent wonderful-ness; this line, this joke, this felicity of expression, and instead they zoom off.
The world had just turned a hundred eighty degrees, so to speak. Plum did too. He went back into the hut….
Girlish laughter. Girlish laughter at his story? Then they knew about him over there. Someone knew. What would she look like?
Perhaps a bit hearty. The sort of woman who brayed. Ah, no. Assuredly there was a bray-er, but why not another woman too? Who knew the density of population over there? Dozens of ears may have heard. Lips were lisping: “Wodehouse. Could it be the same? That Wodehouse?”
Plum was a lonely man, kept company by the creatures of his imagination. Take that dashed wall away, and he’d still be lonely. It was better this way. He could pretend
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