The Clumsy Writer

The Clumsy Writer

Short Story

Once upon countless times, there lived a man named Elias Norberg who longed to be a writer but failed at every turn. Words evaded him, slipping through his grasp like shadows at dusk. His mentor in Innsbruck, a man with indigo-tinted spectacles and a voice that never quite echoed, once asked him, “What is the most astonishing pursuit of your life?” This question did not lead him to literature but to an obsession with the mentor’s second daughter.

Shobqas was luminous. At night, her silhouette shimmered with an otherworldly glow, as though she were made of fireflies trapped in human form. Elias, clumsy and restless, found himself unable to look at her directly for too long—some part of him feared she would dissolve if he did.

At home, he was no less peculiar. He folded pages from books into tiny boats and set them adrift in the bathtub, watching them vanish. He spent nights inside cupboards to understand what darkness meant.At school, he sent miniature kites soaring through the air during lessons, yet no one ever saw his hands move. The teachers only heard the wind.

One day, the principal, a crow-headed man with a voice like rustling paper, handed him a book without a title. “Read this,” he commanded, “but do not let the words escape.” The writer obeyed, but by morning, the pages were blank—the words had fled in the night.

He relocated to Austria, where the mountains murmured secrets. The Großglockner towered in the distance like a slumbering deity, while the jagged summits of the WilderKaiser cast elongated shadows like oblique remarks over. He encountered his coach again inInnsbruck, though this time, as a man of no reflection. His beard floated freely in mirrors, separate from his form. They engaged in deep discussions, innuendos,wordless talks.InInnsbruck, language was superfluous.

Vienna was a different story. He roamed the narrow alleys of the Innere Stadt, sipping coffee at Café Central, where the spirits of bygone writers hovered in the atmosphere. Hestrolled along the Danube Canal, observing street artists transform walls into canvases oflost aspirations. In the evening, he stood before St. Stephen’s Cathedral, tracing the designs of its mosaic roof with his stare, as if decoding an ancient calligraphy known only to him.

Shobqas remained distant. Desperate to understand longing, Elias read Kafka’s Letters to Felice over and over.The words haunted.Kafka’s endless yearning. Elias saw himself in them and began writing to Shobqas,his feelings into ink, sending page after page into the abyss. But no replies. Instead, she invited him for coffee in the company of her brother, a man who dressed  in white neck tie and blue stripes .He gifted her an early Mozart recording, while her brother presented a shirt woven from spider silk and the sentiments of forgotten scholars. The writer tried it on and felt the weight of unread books pressing against his chest.

He sent a picture of himself wearing it to his parents, who had lived under the same roof for twenty years without uttering a word . His mummy , whose fingers moved like whispers, said he looked like a lost virtuoso from a forgotten era. His dad, a man made of newspaper clippings, scoffed that he resembled a madcap whose jokes had gone astray waiting for the manager’s rebuke.

Before leaving Austria, he purchased a blue sofa that hummed lullabies and a pedestal fan that turned pages when his father read aloud. He asked his mother, “What do you want, a washing machine or a fridge?” She chose the washing machine—she preferred fresh food to preserved.

His mentor—flickering between forms—once again asked about his career.

“Make it meaningful,” he said. “Even if no one notices.”

“I want to write,” Elias said.

His mentor sighed, “None of them knew the color of the sky,” quoting The Open Boat.

“I’ve written twenty openings,” Elias admitted, “but none compare.”

“Then let Keats guide you,” the mentor said. “And if nothing else, you can read Shakespeare.”

Before leaving Vienna, he once again confessed his love. His guide asked, “But does she have the same feeling?”

He used some ambiguous words as reply.

At the airport, his mentor embraced him and said , “You will know love when an uncontrollable fire ignites in your stomach. And you will win nothing before nuptials .”

A decade passed. He married, but there was no fire, only a simple warmth, like embers that never turn to ash. His wife, a woman who smelled of radio waves, laughed too loudly at comedies, startling guests. They had two daughters, sharp-tongued,quick witted and bright-eyed.

He wrote stories, many of them. No one paid attention.No one asked his autograph.

One day, on a train, he met a lady—a reader. She devoured books like a brute starved of words, fiction allegory or non-fiction, all alike

“Tell me a story,” she said.

“I have written many,” he replied. “But they all slip through my fingers.”

She read a few of his works and frowned. “ Zeltelkasten.You must surprise the reader,” she said.

Elias struggled. He tried, again and again, but failed to shock.

One evening, the reader fell ill. Feverish, delirious, she was taken to the hospital. Elias visited her daily. He brought warm soup when she could not eat, read aloud when she could not speak. He adjusted her pillows, whispered words that did not try to impress, and stayed long after visiting hours ended.

One evening, he sat beside her with a pomegranate in his hands, breaking it open with slow, careful fingers. The ruby seeds spilled onto the white plate like drops of blood.

As he offered them to her, he recited

• “Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of incense.” (Song of Songs-4:6)

“You have shocked me,” she whispered at last.

“How?” he asked.

“With your kindness,” she said.

That night, as she cruised into slumber , Elias walked to the window. Below, the vineyards thickened far and wide,ripe and full, packed with the season’s reap.In a swift glare he saw King Solomon drinking pomegranate juice from his chalice and Queen of Sheba reading from the Book of Wisdom.He gazed more into the silence till the emperor’s orb reached his in that golden space of boundless vineyards.