Free Private Novelist by Nell Zink

his e-mail. There was a long message from his old friend Osnat. Secretly he hated her a little. When a girl like that hangs around a man like me, he knew well, saying she thinks I’m sweet, it means she doesn’t actually think of me as male. If she respected me a little, it would cross her mind that her behavior ought to be driving me insane. Doesn’t it occur to her that calling a man at six in the morning to cry about some fucked-up love affair is a tease? Why does she dress like that?
    Osnat wrote, Thanks for putting me in touch with Coppola’s people. I’m helping them scout locations. Call me when you get into town. Yigal, I hope you’re taking care of yourself—please play safe. . . .
    This motherly tone, Yigal thought, makes me sick. He wrote: What Coppola’s people? I forget things, you know. I may be coming home soon. Amsterdam always makes me miss the sunshine. I don’t think I’ve been outdoors in a week. I’ll call you.
    It’s true what she said about scouting locations—Osnat was taking Mary to every café in town. I went with them to Café Tamar. They sat talking for two hours while four young men, all with open notebooks, eavesdropped. I sat down with one and he froze like a rabbit.
    â€œAre you a poet?” I asked.
    â€œI’m a rapper, an MC,” he said in a wee, soft voice. “I can work better in a place like this. It helps me to let the rhymes flow.” He crossed his legs, above the knee. “That girl, she’s poetry in motion.”
    â€œYou’re an idiot,” I said, standing up. I tried the next one.
    â€œWhat are you writing, poetry?” I asked.
    â€œNot yet. It’s sort of a manifesto. I think the poetry of today is corrupt, bankrupt, meaningless—there’s nothing of significance left for it. We need a hard, merciless, thrusting poetry that won’t take no for an answer.” He fidgeted nervously with an empty sugar packet. I tried the next one.
    â€œIs that poetry?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s a letter,” the man said. “My girlfriend won’t marry me. I really love her, but she thinks because I’m already married, it’s not worth it for her. Well, I’m a man who can think for himself, and in this case I think I have rights. Let me show you.” He began to dig around in his book bag, and I moved on to the fourth and last.
    â€œAre you writing poetry?” I asked.
    â€œYes,” he said. “Here’s my latest poem. ‘Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers—’”
    â€œThat’s Delmore Schwartz.”
    â€œYou know it?” He looked disappointed. “Okay, how aboutthis. ‘The heavy bear accompanies me, honey covers his face, awkwardly staggering around—’”
    â€œAre all your poems translations of Delmore Schwartz?”
    â€œNo, right now, looking at your friend, I have an idea for a poem based on Ginsberg’s ‘Song.’” He began scribbling in the notebook. “The weight of the world is love,” I saw over his shoulder.
    I went back to Osnat and Mary. Osnat was trying to talk Mary into being tested for HIV.
    Thousands of miles off, the only Israeli in Eastern Bhutan was toiling uphill on foot, humming tunelessly and thinking about Piano Sonatas nos. 21, 23, and 26. At my suggestion he was carrying a plastic bag filled with water from the radiator—otherwise he would have died. I’d located a llama-trekking party from Portland, Oregon, just 250 miles away over the Nepalese border, and with the GPS ripped out of the Rover after the axle broke, he was making good time. Only once did he admit weakness. “I’m getting a hole in my sneaker,” he said ruefully, and my heart went out to my brave darling.

CHAPTER 6
    DANIEL DERONDA IS A SORT OF young, beautiful Jewish Mr. Pickwick. Critics actually say, “This novel is unrealistic because no one is as adorable as