Lend Me Your Character

From the author of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg and Thank You for Not Reading

From the story of Steffie Cvek to "The Kharms Case," the pieces in Dubravka Ugresic's collection Lend Me Your Character are always smart and endlessly entertaining. The former story paints a picture of a harassed and vulnerable typist whose life is shaped entirely by cliches. She searches endlessly for an elusive romantic love in a narrative punctuated by threadbare advice from women's magazines and constructed like a sewing pattern. The latter story is one of Ugresic's funniest and is about the strained relationship between a persistent translator and an unresponsive publisher. The stories collected in Lend Me Your Character, the novella "Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life," and a collection of short stories entitled "Life Is a Fairy Tale" solidify Ugresic's reputation as one of Eastern Europe's most playful and inventive writers." 

LEND ME YOUR CHARACTER

 

Is a pen a symbolic penis?

 

Relations between Writers

 

You should never have anything to do with writers. But I’m afraid I did. One day I ran into Petar, a writer. He gave me a friendly thump on the shoulder and invited me for a coffee. “By the way, I read that story of yours,” he said.

“Really?”

“It’s good.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah. Especially the main character. I was wondering . . .”

“Yes?”

“She’s a great character, and I thought. . .”

“You thought what?”

“I’m writing a story, you know, and . . .”

“What is it, for heaven’s sake!” I burst out.

“Can you lend her to me?”

“What?!” I was dumbfounded.

“I need her for my story,” he went on.

“What does my character have to do with your story?”

“I need her, well . . . for coital purposes,” Petar said stupidly.

“Wait, you want my character for some character of yours to screw, is that what you mean?”

“Right,” said Petar.

“Who is he?”

“Who?”

“What do you mean Who? That character of yours!”

“No big deal, just a guy who likes sex.”

I took a deep breath and said decisively:

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not going to have my character screwed by some maniac!”

“Actually,” Petar dug in his heels, “a published literary work, whether yours or Shakespeare’s, is public property. Everyone has the right to draw on it. It’s called intertextual relations, you know what intertextual relations are, don’t you? Besides, what I’m writing isn’t erotic really, it’s more fantastic, kind of magic realism.”

“Absolutely not!”

I drank my coffee in a huff, lit a cigarette, and looked at Petar. He was looking back at me with a calm, open face, as if his proposal were the most natural thing in the world.

“Listen,” I said, more gently, “why doesn’t your character get it on with Anna Karenina? What’s my ordinary little character compared to someone like her?”

“Come on now, you’re not as ordinary as all that,” the flatterer replied.

“Okay, it doesn’t have to be Anna Karenina. Why doesn’t he go to bed with Joan of Arc, that would be much more fantastic.”

“I don’t write historical novels,” Petar observed.

“Well, let him screw Mother Goose then!” I snorted. “Why can’t you understand,” said Petar. “A normal, basic character is just what I need. Besides, if you don’t mind my saying so, in your story she’s a bit, how should I put it, neglected?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that, sexually neglected. You must know what I mean . . .

 

“Huh! And your little hero’s the one to put that right!” I snorted again.

“Naturally,” Petar said with complete self-assurance.

I said nothing. Perhaps I should have noticed the signal; the little red light that always comes on when I meet certain members of the opposite sex. This time the light on the display panel was warning me that this guy has potential. But as usual I failed to notice it.

“Alright, pal, you can have her,” I blurted out so quickly that I surprised myself. That’s exactly what I said, “pal,” thumping Petar on the shoulder. I never do that and I have no idea why I did it then. But there we were, thumping each other.

And then we parted. It was quite an idea, I had to admit. I was sorry I hadn’t thought of it myself. On the way home I considered possible boyfriends for my heroine. Tom Sawyer? The Scarecrow? Winnie the Pooh? No serious writer would ever have names like this pop into her head. But I had often dreamed of a boyfriend like Winnie the Pooh myself, so I must not be a serious woman either—no serious woman would consider a brainless bear as boyfriend material. A serious woman would think of James Joyce.

Clearly I wasn’t a serious writer. I had written a little book called Alice Comes Home to Ozalj and the only thing I really liked about it was the title. I was proud of that title, I kept pestering people to guess how many other titles it contained. Things might have been better if I was a serious woman but that, as I say, was by no means certain.

 

The Writer and Life’s Roadblocks

On Saturday I ran out to the nearest kiosk and bought the Evening News. I could hardly wait to get home, settle down, and read Petar’s story.

His story had a promising title: “The Hot Tongue.” Its main characters were named Peter and Ulla. I read the story straight through and it took my breath away. I called Petar immediately.

“Terrible! ” I hissed into the receiver.

“You’ve read the story?”

“Yes. Crap!” I said telegraphically.

“You don’t like it?”

“Total shit.”

“Can I come and see you?”

“Yes, urk,” I gargled into the receiver, and hung up.

Still in shock, I hurried to straighten up my offended appearance a bit. I put on a respectable little black dress, as though dressing for the theater, and placed the Evening News into my left hand, rolled up into a truncheon. Petar appeared at the door with a bunch of flowers. I deliberately didn’t put the flowers in a vase of water, but I did offer Petar a drink and sat down, still holding the Evening News in my hand.

“You didn’t need to borrow her for a piece of trash like this,” I said.

“Why are you using such vulgar language to describe my work?” asked Petar calmly, like an elementary school grammar teacher, not a writer.

“Because my character gives herself to yours after a single . . .”

I opened the Evening News and announced, as though reading out a verdict; “‘After a single moist glance . . .’ Please! Talk about male fantasy! Who ever heard of such a thing? And the hero’s name is Peter! Come on, we’re not children.”

“Wait a second,” Petar tried to interrupt.

“Why should I wait! Male writers always take some female character just so their male character can end up on the floor with her, behind the counter, rolling in a pool of beer! And all they need is one moist glance!”

“What book does that happen in again?”

“It doesn’t matter which book! You’d all like to roll around in pools of beer, that’s what you’d like!” I shouted, waving the Evening News and taking a gulp of Petar’s drink by mistake.

“All this fuss over a simple erotic story,” said Petar in a conciliatory tone.

“You mean pornographic,” I specified.

“Why pornographic?”

I opened the Evening News again, as evidence.

“In just five pages Peter and Ulla moan fifteen times, they are flushed three times, he cries out with passion twice, she shrieks with pleasure twice. He enters her three times, while she surrenders to his caresses once. Hardness is mentioned four times, moist or moistening three times, sweat eight times, eight times!, gushing and flowing three times, animal is mentioned only once but in connection with biting. Then ecstasy twice, salivate twice, pleasure eight more times, and parts of the body—lips, thighs, loins, armpit, belly, belly button, breasts, tongue, moles, and little hairs—thirty-five times in all!”

I looked at Petar triumphantly, folding the Evening News into a truncheon again.

“I’m the author, I do whatever I want with my characters,” Petar flared up.

“No, you can’t, not where my character is concerned. I lent her to you! And I expected at least a minimal sense of responsibility on your part . . . By the way, how come she has two pairs of tits?”

“I told you my story has fantastic elements. Anyway, I have the right to exaggerate as much as I want!” Petar blustered again.

“It’s because of that male exaggeration of yours that sex is what it is!” I said, sweeping the truncheon through the air, in a gesture of accusation towards my non-existent male audience.

“And what is it?” Petar asked, offended.

“Shabby, that’s what,” I said, thumping the bed dramatically with the Evening News. Petar stared at the spot I had indicated with the paper, as though expecting to find some solution there. I followed Petar’s gaze myself. Then I felt something catch in my throat.

“My character deserved something better than panting and heaving under yours,” I said, barely holding back my tears.

“What’s the matter?” said Petar gently, sitting down beside me.

“You’re not going to cry, are you? Just because of an ordinary piece

of fiction? Besides, she’s not even your character. Didn’t you notice that her name is Ulla?”

“That’s true,” I said, looking for a tissue.

“Yours isn’t named Ulla, is she?”

“No,” I sniffed.

“There, you see . . . she’s not your character,” whispered Petar, embracing me tenderly.

“That’s not the point. I’m not crying over an individual case. I’m crying for all the female characters in the world! I’m crying generally, literary-historically, and globally, don’t you understand?” I began to sob.

When Petar wiped my tears with his lips, I cried harder and harder and felt warmer and warmer and saltier and moister and softer and . . .

“Come here . . .” whispered Ulla, giving Peter a moist glance.