Waiting is inspired by the style of Ernest Hemmingway in which he focused on reporting the immediate events and providing only a minimum of context and interpretation, believing that the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should remain unsaid and implicit, thereby leaving the reader to imagine the rest. Waiting focuses on four men who are waiting. While the reader gets to understand their current situation, it is for the reader to imagine why they arrived and where they will go when they leave.
© Martin Marais 2019
Martin Marais has asserted his rights
under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work.
This edition published in 2019 by Martin Marais
The edge of the backrest of the wooden chair cuts uncomfortably into my spine, but not sufficiently to cause me to shift my position, and anyway my mind is distracted from the discomfort by other, more important matters.
The young man beside me, however, does shift to relieve his discomfort. His chair creaks, the noise seems loud and shrill in the silence.
Curious, I half-turn my head towards him. He is on the periphery of my vision, and I observe him surreptitiously. He stares at his hands, and picks at the dry cuticles and rough, broken skin around his nails. His nails are in good condition, he is not a chewer, instead he picks and scratches at his skin: a perpetual cycle of scratching away the hard, dry skin that his own actions cause.
His clothes are of some rough grey material, wool maybe. Once they might have been his best suit, but now they show the ravages of time, his trousers rubbed smooth across his thighs and the grey jacket’s seams faded to ivory. His brown shoes are scuffed to such an extent that even an attempt at polishing them has not been able to disguise the roughened leather. But an attempt to shine them has been made and maybe, I surmise, it is still his Sunday best, although, of course, it’s not Sunday.
I turn a bit more to study the side of his face.
He tenses and stops his scratching, as though suddenly aware of my scrutiny.
I look away.
I catch the eye of the man sitting opposite me. But we both quickly break the intimate moment. He returns to staring at the man looking out of the window.
I follow his gaze.
The man at the window is tall. He is the only one still wearing his hat, a trilby, set at a confident, jaunty angle. It is dark blue, almost black, but the stark sunlight streaming through the window highlights the hat’s blue hue, and the band around the base of the crown is a bright blue, almost the colour of the cloudless sky beyond the closed window. The lightness of the distant, broad sky seems to emphasis the smallness of the airless room. The man’s hands are clasped behind his back. They are soft-looking and small, almost delicate. The hands of a clockmaker, or perhaps a jeweller.
I look at my own hands. They are big hands, but their palms are soft and uncalloused. They are traversed with deep, continuous lines. Continuous, except, that is, for the life-line which has a major discontinuity, crossed by a few thin, faint lines. At some point in time, my life will become ‘challenging’ and then return back to normal – whatever normal means – or so I was once told by a gypsy palm reader. I remember she called herself a chirologist. I have always liked that word. It has a musical quality to it, especially the way she said it. I can almost hear her tongue vibrating around the ‘r’ – ‘Chirrologist’.
I wonder if my life is normal, or ever has been. I suppose it depends on what you compare it to. I don't believe in all that mumbo jumbo anyway, at least generally I don't, but maybe what she said is about to happen. I look at the door, the one opposite the entrance – the one I entered through and the one I shall leave through. It’s a very plain, ordinary-looking door, but it is the door behind which my future … my destiny might be determined.
I steal another look at the young man sitting beside me. He has at least ten, maybe fifteen years on me. Younger, that is. But his more youthful features are marred by worry lines, ‘crows-feet’ my grandmother would have called them. The skin beneath his eyes is bruised by deep shadows. His jaw seems to be in a continuous, tense clench, the muscles twitching under the strain. His scratching at the ragged skin around his thumb nail is the only movement in the room.
I wonder how long I’ve been waiting, sitting and waiting. I look up at the large, white clock on the wall, even that, I now realise has stopped; the second hand pointing lifelessly almost at the ten, the hour hand stuck between the two and three, and the minute hand hanging down towards the six. Halfway between the twelve and the centre-point is the maker's logo. A sphere … no a planet, Saturn. The arrangement of the clock face is unsettling. It reminds me of the crucifix in my childhood church. Mother did not approve. ‘It’s too modern,’ she would say, ‘not at all in keeping with the history and style of the historic building.’
The man standing by the window suddenly moves. The man opposite me starts, his eyes are anxious and fixed on the ‘jeweller’. The jeweller's movements are slow, controlled, deliberate. He takes a few steps to his right. The young man stops his scratching and watches. The jeweller stops in front of some chairs set against the wall – all the chairs are set against the wall, they are all made of wood and are all uncomfortable – but, he does not sit. Instead he leans forward to examine a small painting on the wall. He scrutinises it.
The young man returns to his nervous scratching and picking.
I look at the man opposite. He starts twisting a cloth cap between his hands, and he does not take his eyes off the man staring at the painting. He is wearing workmen's clothes – denim overalls and heavy, scuffed and dusty brown boots. Small flakes of white material, masonry perhaps, have fallen from his boots and from the turn-ups of his overall trousers. They lie, like bread crumbs, around his feet. I can imagine him sitting in a park with pigeons scavenging around his feet for the crumbs, but the dull, wooden floor is devoid of any life. The whole room seems devoid of life; the four of us are like mannequins in some bizarre art installation – lifeless … except for the man opposite’s twisting hands and young man's scratching and ... and my leg, which is jigging up and down rapidly. My "nervous jig", Amy called it. But it’s not. I have always done it, ever since I was a teenager. I have seen other men do it in all sorts of places, bus stops, cafes, waiting rooms ... all sorts of places. But I am the only one doing it today, I am the only one doing it now. And I am nervous. Who wouldn't be?
"Next!"
The sudden scratchy squawk of the intercom makes us all start, except the jeweller. He stares at the painting. The young man stops scratching. The man opposite turns his anxious gaze on me. The young man half turns his head. I can sense his hidden eyes looking in my direction.
"Next!"
The man opposite remains motionless. His eyes are dark pools of anxiety. The eyebrow of the young man lifts to give his hidden eye a better view of me. The jeweller's feet remain rooted to the wooden floor as he rotates, like an automaton, from the waist. His hawk-like features come into view. His eyes are large, they search for me, lock onto me.
My leg has stopped twitching. I place my hands on the arm rest. My fingers brush the grey, woollen sleeve of the young man. I see his eyebrow drop as his looks at my hand, with its calloused knuckles. I push myself up. In a few strides I’m at the door. It’s painted white. I can see the lines left by the painter’s brush. I notice a single long, straight bristle buried under the paint. I place my hand on the door handle. It is made of cold steel. I push the handle down. I hesitate. I can feel their eyes on my back.
"Next!"
I push the door open and enter.
Author’s Note
This short story was inspired by The Dumb Man by Sherwood Anderson, a free (at the time of writing) short story, which can be found at www.theshortstory.co.uk. The style of the story, however, arose from reading about a theory for writing short stories that was developed by Ernest Hemmingway. It was a style he developed as a result of his journalist background, where he focussed on reporting the immediate events and providing only a minimum of context and interpretation. Hemingway conceived the idea of a new theory of writing after finishing his short story Out of Season in 1923. He coined the term Iceberg Theory, because the writer presents only a very small part of the narrative, leaving the reader to imagine the rest, and he carried this minimalist approach through much of his writing, especially his short stories, in which he focussed on the surface elements without explicitly discussing the underlying themes or context. Hemingway believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly. One of his stories that is a particular example of this is A Clean Well Lighted Place. On the surface, the story is about nothing more than men drinking in a cafe late at night, but, in fact, it is supposed to be about what it is that brings the men to the cafe to drink, and the reasons they seek light in the night. A Clean Well Lighted Place is written in a manner that gives none of this background or context within the surface layers of the story, instead it lurks in the background, unsaid. Waiting is my attempt at writing in this style.