WALTER: A SHORT STORY

On a cold and rainy night, Walter, a world-weary thinker stayed up to write a short story about a writer. At first, the idea seemed absurd. Even so, his obsession with absurdities made it desirable. Before him was a blank sheet of paper, time-yellowed, resting somberly on his reading desk. The light from his lamp was growing dimmer and dimmer; but he had to write. He had learned to exploit his growing sleeplessness by writing—writing anything.

He named his protagonist “Okoro” and plunged immediately into the burden of whys, how, where, when, and who did what. At first, his mind was blank, blanker than the paper before him. He knew nothing about this creation of his, other than this: that he was a writer, with a name like that of a typical village chief.

He was not very good at details, especially at faces, and heights, and other things of that sort. He was not actually a writer, so to speak. He was a thinker, a master of the abstract, the metaphysical, and of countless existential absurdities. Old age and insomnia, and a little touch of madness, had drawn him into the thorny field of literature. If he had stayed up to piece together a philosophical treatise, he would have done so with astonishing ease. But this night was different. It was a night of characters and plots. And his task was to dictate the course of things, as deities do.

So he decided to focus a little further on his story. Okoro, he thought, would have to be a successful writer, an adorable Faulkner, with countless accolades to his credit. As a writer, Okoro would succeed where his creator had failed. He would be the exact opposite of Walter.

“Is that possible? Can I create something that is different from me…qualities I do not possess?” Walter muttered to himself, shivering with the cold. “Yes. Yes, I can. I can do whatever I like with my characters. I can make and mar them. I, Walter, can. I can.” He paused and chuckled idly. Then, he fell back to his usual somberness. And in that state, he doubted the literary omnipotence he had just professed.  

All his previous stories had been unavoidably dull and drab, no matter how hard he tried. His best attempts were bad and terrible; and he knew they were. This night’s story, as such, seemed to him like an impossible, mad venture.

He decided to try, anyway.

And try he did, struggling at first against distractions and idle abstractions, as his mind wandered into its usual transcendent wisdoms.  He shook his head and shut his eyes like one in great pain, hoping for a miracle, a sort of deliverance. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Walter, there's light at the end of the tunnel” he assured himself, and started writing, slowly at first, then rapidly.  After a while, he found himself wallowing in the flow, writing for hours, scribbling away pages.  But at the end, things turned out awry. The story he was telling, he realized, had no resemblance whatsoever with the sweet tale that had formed  somewhere in his mind hours before. 

The writer’s writer was different from the original Okoro, the happy young writer. He acted not according to Walter’s plans but according to some inexorable, supernatural schemes. And Walter, now but a helpless observer, marveled at his creation’s obstinacy.  Where the old thinker expected him to act like a saint, he exhibited savage traits; where he ought to have worn a cheerful look, he sank into melancholy. He wrote none of the romantic tales and otherworldly accounts Walter had stuffed into his mind. Instead, he, in his growing strangeness, wrote about solitary tramps, insane, suicidal thinkers, and wretched writers who spent entire lifetimes telling woeful tales.

Walter paused in thought, stopped writing, and dropped his pen on the desk. He put his elbow on the desk and leaned his head on his hand. “This is nonsense. Rubbish—what is the word?—in fact, nonsensical. I can’t stand it!" He went wild with rage and self-loathing, shredding the sheets upon which he had written the story.

The lamplight on the desk was now faint and flickering. The wind that poured in through the window was glacial and numbing.  The rain, and the storm that came with it, had stopped, but the tumult in Walter’s soul went on and on.