Will and Way
A story not like one by Zadie Smith
The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith
Will awoke as if someone had shone a torch, the kind they use to torture prisoners of war, into his eyes. These days, he often woke early and badly. It was always a shock to be awake, to be alive, for him. Will did not often dream but the dream that had just ended was a bad one. He’d had a commercial problem with someone with whom he was trying to do business. Someone Will had never met. And this man had been a rat, had done things Will did not like, and for many weeks now, Will had wondered about what it would be like to turn up at the address his investigations had indicated the man occupied; to turn up and to ask him a few questions.
Of course, one never can predict where questions will go. They might be answered fast and with courtesy. Will hoped that they would. But they could also go wrong. Now Will wondered how badly it would be possible for his turning up and asking questions to go. For weeks in his waking moments, Will had thought of this dilemma. Would he get away with some answers, or with something worse? He did not know.
Last night, Will had been unable to sleep. He had gone downstairs to make himself a drink but had sat in a chair for some time, not capable of going back upstairs and to bed. His mind had acquired double vision. Slowly, the birds had started to sing as the first flecks of light had arrived very distant in the morning sky. It was not yet four.
Will thought he would not sleep but he was very quickly gone. He thought he would not dream, but soon he was dreaming, and dreaming so vividly that he had no question, not question at all, that it was real.
And Will was arriving at the place where the man he wanted to question lived. And he was, Will was, knocking on the door, and the door was being quite incautiously opened, given the situation. And Will realised that, really without meaning to, he was putting his weight against the door and forcing it to open further and further and then — like a pistol shot — he was inside. In one of Will’s hands there was a letter, a ‘sorry we missed you’ notice, intended to be thrust with a final Parthian shot through the letterbox if the man he had wanted was not there — or had refused to come out and play.
What followed, Will thought he was not proud of. He beheld the man who had caused him trouble. The man was a head shorter than Will and had a thirty-year head start on him. Will, the younger man, told himself, even has he was hitting the other in the chest — not to hurt him so much as to get his attention — that there was no evil plan here. It was just the kind of thing a person who has been pushed beyond his limit tends to do, when he has no alternatives left. His back against the wall, and all of that. A good man pushed beyond endurance, beyond reason.
Now Will returned to the action and to himself to realise that he was grappling with the man whose house he was visiting. The man seemed afraid. He was on the floor now, his hands not visible beneath his torso. Will felt strangely pleased. He was winning. It had never occurred to him that he might do this and end up winning.
But Will noticed that the man he was attempting to pin had a hand free. The man was on the phone. He was calling someone! Will snatched at the phone and could not grab it. Later, quite some time later, he heard that the man who had been called was on stage at a trade show at the time. The fracas has been broadcast on speaker to hundreds of people, all of whom were, quite naturally, excellent and credible witnesses.
Will wrestled the phone away. It was at this time that his lawyers said sanity briefly deserted him. The man whose house Will had entered kept a low wall at the back which was topped with pieces of broken glass. The thought now visited Will that he could use the glass to scratch the face of the man who had wronged him. In for a penny, Will thought as he hummed to himself and started to drag the screaming man towards the pieces of discoloured, broken glass. As he cut great red lines into the old man’s face, Will didn’t think of much at all except that he was dexterous while holding a shrieking man than he was with a pair of scissors.
When the police arrived, Will was dragged off without ceremony. What surprised him, he thought, was when he was brought in. For some reason, Will’s brother was there. He’d heard about it, somehow.
How could you? Will’s brother was saying to him. How could you?
And for Will, before he woke, the answer to that question seemed so obvious that posing it was like a betrayal.
You’ve really done it now, he was thinking to himself — you’ve really done it now — as he woke up and realised with some relief that he was in his own bed.
It was four when Will finally slept and be was up before nine. Will often overslept. This was a miracle. He got up and started to think about work. He was already late, but he was always late. The boss man knew about Will and his ways.
En route, Will walked past a swimming pool. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two people who, to his mind, were not at all alike. They seemed to be on what Will thought was a date. They were a little older than Will. He wished them well.
Work was banal, meaningless, dreadful, torture. Will left it as early as he could. Straight home and into bed but he could not sleep. It was too hot to sleep. It might have been two in the morning when he finally disappeared into black dreamlessness and four when he awoke to a starting gun only he could hear. It was summer now, and the sun rose very early in the day.
Zadie Smith’s short story is one of those where nothing seems to happen. But her characters are well chosen, and well formed; and her language reads easily and hides subtleties. Unlike the story printed above.