Let me tell you something. The fellow whose name is on the cover of the book you’re holding is writing this story, but he doesn’t quite know what’s going to happen. I’m always half a step ahead of him.

After a while he finds a certain voice, wants to take his characters somewhere—anywhere, really; perhaps to a battlefield in Ancient Rome, or to a picnic with his lover on the banks of the Meuse on April 17, 1967. And then the character’s voice gets in the way of his writing whatever he pleases. He discovers that a Roman centurion and a nihilist poet from Charleville-Mézières cannot speak the same way.

How stupid. God, how stupid.

Now I’m going to walk over to the corner of this room and stand there. Whatever he wants to make me say, I’ll do the opposite. I swear to you I will.

There. I’ve made it to the corner of the room. Nothing is passing through my mind, nothing at all.

And I’m not going to stand like this either. I’ll walk on the ceiling, on the ceiling. I’ll turn my back and watch the sun go down through a window that isn’t there, my elbow propped against the ceiling, as if he were the only one who had ever read Pessoa. I won’t come down from the ceiling either. I’ll bend my elbow inward as though I were a soldier killed at Verdun and stay there, right in the middle of this wall where 1916 is exactly 2027.

There, you see? He’s sticking his pen in again. Verdun, Pessoa, watching the sunset, all that rubbish. Do you really think I would say any of that? No. Of course I wouldn’t.

I’m standing.

I’m on the ceiling. Yes.

Nope.

Doing nothing. Yes.

My feet aren’t tingling.

No. Yes.

I’m standing here like this, tapping my foot against the ceiling. Fun.

I’m bored.

This is what my own voice sounds like: yes, no, I’m standing. That’s it. I’m on the ceiling.

Well?

Should I go out the door?

I could. People would pass by on the street. I could watch them, ramble on about my state of mind. Come up with some elaborate philosophical line, something like: loneliness, for me, was like hopefully waiting for a cornerless die to roll forever until it came up double six. As if my life would be any different from what it is up here on the ceiling if the die came up “one,” or any other metaphorical number.

Waiting upside down on the ceiling until I’m thoroughly bored is the greatest story there is, if you ask me. Ah, I know it isn’t, of course I do. Maybe I can strike a deal with this guy.

“All right, I’m coming down from the ceiling.”

“Okay. If you come down, the women and children will be spared.”

There. You saw that. The moron writer made a joke.

“Why don’t you make me piss myself, you idiot? Write me into a pair of long johns while you’re at it. God! Oh God!”

“Okay. No jokes. Come down from the ceiling and let’s see what we can do together.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve noticed that if I don’t write, all you say is yes, no, I’m on the ceiling, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re funny.”

“By default.”

Look, now that the writer has started thinking, let me pretend I’m watching something through the window; let there be a mirror behind me, let me see myself from behind in the mirror through the window, and let me say, “Yes.” That’s why I climbed up to the ceiling.

“What is this? What kind of character have you become?”

“I climbed up to the ceiling because I saw the back of my neck in the mirror through the window. That’s the metaphor, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Dude, how should I know? You’re the writer. I just do whatever comes to mind; this is my voice, you’re the one making up the story.”

Anyway, let me say the last sentence myself; it turned out to be a very sad story for the writer.

The ceiling was good. Yes. No.