Writing has always been an effort. It’s painful. Having my toenails pulled out would be a welcome alternative; to die of the Ebola virus, seeping blood from every orifice, would be a relief. When I’m confronted by the blank page, I suffer. And yet, despite the suffering, despite everything, I have always dreamt of being a writer. It’s all I’ve ever thought about, a thought that’s been with me every moment of every day; my religion. The truth is, writing’s been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I mulled over plots as I mopped the school corridors, puzzled over what motivates a character as I walked home in the evenings, tried to decide on the importance of various scenes as I cooked myself a meal. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and write an idea or a line in the notebook I kept by my bed. People talked to me, but I didn’t hear what they said; they waved to me in the street, but I didn’t see them; they stopped in front of me, but I walked right past them. Writing involved me body and soul. Sometimes it caused the outside world to cease to exist.
Many times Bridgette accused me of not listening to her, and went home in a huff because I didn’t give her enough attention. And it was all, this total absorption with writing, with one aim in mind: to be published. Yes, I know people say that once you’ve achieved your goal in life, no matter what it is, you won’t be satisfied. I don’t believe that. If I walk down Oxford Street one day and pass a Waterstone’s bookshop and in the window see my novel – hopefully even several copies of it – I swear I’ll be happy. I’ll be in heaven. Being published will give meaning to my life, to an existence which increasingly strikes me as being without meaning. It’s all I’ve ever dreamt of, all I’ve ever wanted. To see my name in print has always been my sole ambition.
It’s my destiny to write, that’s what I feel. It’s why I’m here on earth, as well as in Sarajevo. It may have taken Van Gogh thirty years to get around to realising that he wanted to be a painter, but I’ve wanted to be a writer from the time my mother started reading me bedtime stories at about the age of three. I remember sitting on the bed, snuggled up next to her, her arm around me, as I listened to her quiet, soothing voice. And the point I’m trying to clarify, sitting here now against the bare wall of an apartment in a deserted city in a foreign country, is that I remember those stories. They continue to give me comfort even today, they are what’s important. And when I was little, leaning against my mother in bed all those years ago, I thought I’d like to write stories such as those. Whoever wrote the stories, whoever magicked me away to strange and wondrous worlds – through wardrobes or down rabbit holes – was clever, and they made me want to be like him or her. Imagine making up a story, weaving all those words together into a tempting trap in which to catch a reader. To hold power like that over another being and make them follow your path, your will, that would be quite something. I thought, when I grow up, that’s what I want to do. That feeling has never left me. It is part of my being, an ever-present dream. And for a time – certainly when I was young – it was my mother’s dream too. She encouraged me, in her bookish way, to be a writer, to pursue my dream. And I think she did so because she believed in me, that I would succeed. It was only many years later, I’m not sure when, that she stopped believing in the dream and started to try to encourage me to follow more conventional careers. I think my father had finally won her over to his view, and she then deserted me.
All of the books in our house were my mother’s. And they’re still there, fiction mainly, but also biographies, poetry and non-fiction, on shelves that line every room. Most of them were bought from library sales or at second-hand bookshops. They were all dog-eared, with broken spines, loose pages and worn edges. In the front they sported ex-libris and library stickers. Few had covers, and those that did were torn or had pieces missing. The margins of many were covered in my mother’s notes in pencil or biro, and often had whole paragraphs underlined; most of them were from her youth. Only rarely in my life have I held a new, spotless first edition, and when I did their unblemished state and special smell, their purity and originality made my heart beat violently with excitement. It was a very precious thing.
It’s strange that my father was never seduced by the thousands of volumes that he walked past every day. The house was, and still is, more like a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye than a home, and it touched me, influenced me, but never him. For me, it’s a museum of my reading history. Those are the books that have shaped me from when I was young. I read many of them again when I was older. In my youth I read The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, Robinson Crusoe and Tom Sawyer … I could tick them all off. When I was older I read Tolstoy, all of his books, and Dostoevsky, just some of his. I read bits of Dickens, lots of Shakespeare, most of Jane Austen, Goethe, Mann, Joyce (but neither Finnegans Wake nor Ulysses), Balzac, Zola and Flaubert. Some of these books were borrowed from the local library, others came off my mother’s bookshelves. I read many when I was far too young and didn’t fully appreciate their artistry. I’d put Crime and Punishment and Madame Bovary into this category. I thought I was being adventurous in my reading at the time, but looking back now I see that it was nothing but conservative. They were the books one was expected to read. I didn’t venture far off the well-trodden path of the classics.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Catch-22, The Naked and the Dead, Steppenwolf, Confessions of Felix Krull, The Counterfeiters … Those are the titles that come to mind now, but the list is endless, as are the shelves on which the worn, well-read (‘much loved’ is probably what they’d say today) books gather dust. These are the books that have touched my soul in the past and now accompany me through life. They’ve left an indelible mark on my being and influenced my every thought and action. I haven’t read them, then put them away to forget them; I haven’t been able to. They’ve stayed with me.
I’ve read modern authors, too, like Banville, Proulx, Updike, DeLillo, Bellow and, of course, Amis. I’ve read all of them, and some of that talent and artistry must surely have rubbed off on me. I can’t have been impervious to it, can’t have been immune.
My mother has always been a great reader. The fact that my father has never read at all possibly explains why he’s so bigoted and narrow-minded. It’s obvious to me now, in Sarajevo, that he’s typical of his countrymen, unable to see any point of view but his own. He’s little different to Santo in that respect, who, after I’d been in Sarajevo only a week, told me with great enthusiasm how the Serbs had bombed the majestic, Egyptian-style National Library with incendiary grenades for three days – three whole days. ‘Two million books went up in flames,’ he said. ‘You should have seen it, Milan. The sky was black with ashes. Sheets of burning paper floated upwards, blotting out the sun, then descended like black snow.’ He let his hands drift through the air, his fingers piano playing to some wintry tune in his head, eyes wide with the wonder of the scene. ‘It was like confetti falling on a newly married city.’
He gave his machine-gun laugh, as if embarrassed by his eloquence, his hands settling onto his lap, while I wondered where the metaphor had come from. It surely can’t have been his.
‘Now they have no history,’ he said, ‘now they have no past. Without that, they cease to exist.’
At that moment I think I truly hated Santo. I wanted to shoot him.
Mordo, sitting on the other side of the novel hater, periodically and vigorously rubbing his bald head, leant forward to say to me: ‘It was Nikola Koljevic who ordered us to destroy the library. He’s Karadzic’s deputy, but he is also our most famous Shakespearean scholar. He’s a professor, and much respected in academic circles. What do you make of that, Milan, a writer destroying all those books?’
I could make nothing of it at the time. It was beyond my comprehension. I was disgusted and, the more I thought about it, horrified. I imagined my mother’s reaction. She, also, would have been appalled, and doubtless disgusted to see her son sitting around the fire with such men, talking to them like old friends. She’d have hated them and their ignorant vandalism – perhaps me too, now.
I wondered if Amis’s books had been in the library – translations. It was possible. Along with all the rare manuscripts which the library doubtless owned, his words would not have survived. His ideas would have gone up in smoke, disappeared from this part of the world, his art expunged.
Mordo, giving me the quickest of glances, as if he thought it would be rude to stare for too long, added: ‘They burnt their own books after that. They did our work for us. Now there’s not a book left in the city, except for those they’ve used to build shelters, to stop the shrapnel. Books are good for that, to stop shrapnel.’
‘They burnt the books to heat their homes,’ Santo explained. ‘Mainly novels,’ he added, winking at me as if I’d find this news particularly amusing. But I felt sick. Hearing those words, the proximity of the men who’d helped perform the deed and were now telling me this tale – yes, it was a story about the murder of stories – made my stomach turn.
‘And after they burnt all their books, they burnt all the trees,’ said Mordo. I could tell he was excited because he was rubbing one of his hands across his bald head, backwards and forwards, as if trying to build up enough friction to also start a fire. ‘They have little else to burn now. They have burnt everything.’ And he threw a small branch onto the campfire as if to emphasise their deficiency.
From those ashes, from those blackened pages, I told myself, a work of art would arise – mine. I’d show my father, whose pessimism dogged my life, whose lack of belief in me killed my every dream, how wrong he’d been. Nor would I disappoint my mother.
I will write, I can write, I’d succeed in doing a Martin Amis, even if I haven’t got the word ‘Art’ buried in my name.