W. wants to know more about my typewriter. What kind of typewriter was it? An electronic one, I tell him. It had a little screen where you could see the words you typed. it had a 70 character memory, I remember that. – 'So it wasn't a mechanical typewriter at least', W. says.
It was light, I tell him. You could take it anywhere. – 'And you did take it anywhere, didn't you?, says W. You took it to the Greek islands, didn't you? You slept with it near you in your rucksack, didn't you? There it was, in your rucksack: your electronic typewriter, how marvellous.
'What's the opposite of talent?', W. says. 'What's the opposite of ability? That was your curse', he says, 'to be possessed by the opposite of talent, the opposite of ability. It never stopped you, did it? Something in you didn't want to be stopped. And it led you to Greece, didn't it? It led you all the way to the Greek islands.
'Were you cursed, do you think?, W. says. Did you commit some terrible deed in a previous life? What accounts for it?' It interests him, he says, the question of my compulsion. He wonders where it comes from. There I was, with my typewriter. There it was, in my rucksack, ready for me to get it out, charge it up …
Did I have an adaptor? Yes, I had an adaptor. W. imagines me plugging it in, my typewriter, first into an adaptor, and then into the wall. There it was, humming away, W. says. He imagines it humming. Humming and ready, its LCD screen blank and waiting, with its 70 character memory.
'What were you going to write?', W. says. 'What were you about to write? Were you waiting for inspiration? Yes, that's it, isn't it: I was waiting for inspiration, for the divine afflatus. I was waiting like the author of the Book of Revelations to be touched by the divine. The apocalypse: that was always my favourite word, wasn't it? Images of angels and devils fighting in heaven …
'What's the opposite of talent?', W. says. 'What's the opposite of inspiration?' My typewriter! Did I ever get it out in Greece, during my trip to Greece? Did I ever once peer at its grey LCD screen, waiting for black characters (you could enter 70 at a time …), waiting for inspiration to type my black characters, my fingers too fat for the keys (W. always imagines that: my too fat fingers, my pudgy little fingers …)? Did I get it out to type in a cafe as I blinked in the sun? Did I open it in the building site where I slept rough?
I didn't open it all, I tell him. I didn't type a thing. And what did that teach you?, W. asks. What did you learn from the whole fiasco? 'Anyone else, W. says, would have been shamed in stopping writing and any attempt to write. They would have abandoned it there and then, without fuss. But the opposite of talent led you astray, didn't it?, W. says. The opposite of ability, which isn't simply inability'.
Radical stupidity, W. says, thinking of radical evil. Radical idiocy, which isn't simply idiocy, which is to say, the absence of intelligence. No, radical idiocy has its own force, its own momentum. In truth, nothing was going to make me stop, not then, despite everything. Nothing was going to make me stop, just as nothing prevented me from actually travelling out to Greece, with my typewriter.
With my typewriter!, W. cries. With my electronic typewriter!
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