Ithaca (19 page)

The best twenty thousand quid I ever spent, Zach thinks to himself. He has no idea whether he will ever come into such good fortune again – but you never know, publishing has its own mad logic and those who know the least about it are publishers themselves.

“Do you mind if I tell you a bit about myself, Mr. Thomas?”

“Zach, please. Sorry I should have asked earlier, are you free for supper?”

“Supper – I love the fact that you English still use that word. Language is turning flabby and inexact, don’t you think, soon we’ll call all the meals we eat dinner irrespective of when we actually take them.”

She locks up, and they walk in silence to a French restaurant nearby. It is deserted at this hour, and after they have placed their orders Caryn returns to her story at the same place she left off.

“I was talking about how the fidelity of language is being given short shrift today, Zach, because that is one of the things that I have obsessed about all my life. I suppose I wanted to be a writer once, but fortunately after three failed attempts I realized that I wasn’t good enough. Then, for a lark, I translated the first chapter of
The Leopard
, Massimo’s favourite as I would learn.”

“Yes, I know, he told me it was that novel which inspired him to write his early work.”

“The experience of sinking into the voice of a great writer and then playing with words and concepts to come up with a faithful but new creation satisfied my longing to be a writer, even though I suppose it was at one remove. I then wrote to every Italian writer I admired, attaching a copy of my Lampedusa translation, and asking if I could work with them. Massimo, who was working on his second novel at the time, was the only one who replied. Soon after, he fired the translator of his first novel, and I worked with him for the rest of his career.”

“Did you know he was working on the quartet when you signed on?”

She shakes her head. The waitress brings the food; she waits for it to be served and then does that thing he had remarked upon to himself – picking up the conversation exactly where she had left off.

“Massimo was very particular about the way he wrote. Every book went through four drafts, and he wouldn’t show a word to anyone until the last draft was edited to his satisfaction. Except for me. Did you ever wonder how it was that you received the English translation of his latest novel at
exactly the same time his publisher in Palermo received the Italian version?”

“I did wonder, yes,” he says.

“When he finished his second draft, Massimo would e-mail it to me and I would begin translating it as he began to work on the third draft. As you know no good translation is precisely literal. And because Massimo’s second drafts were so close to the final version it was not difficult to get the translation going. He would let the third draft sit for three months, and that was all the time I needed to make a first pass at the translation, which he and I would then discuss. It worked very well,” she says, a wistful note in her voice. He wonders again if there was anything more to their relationship, and as if reading his mind she provides him with the answer.

“Massimo and I were never more than friends and collaborators.” She pauses, takes a bite of her steak tartare. “I hope you do not think I am giving you too much information?”

“No, no, not at all,” he says hastily.

“I thought I should tell you,” she continues, “because I want you to know exactly what my relationship with Massimo was. We were not lovers but we were if anything closer than lovers. He lived for his work, the
Angels
quartet in particular; in fact he often talked about repudiating his earlier novels, except you publishers wouldn’t permit that” (she says this with a little smile to take the sting out of the rebuke), “and I shared his absolute commitment to the work. In fact, I often thought the translations went so well because we seemed to be drinking from the same fount of inspiration.

“Anyhow, I was his sole confidante and this is why what I am about to tell you, Zach, will be the first time that anyone besides Massimo and I knows that he was on the verge of completing a fifth
Angels
book when he passed away. He had completed the second draft and had begun revising it before he became too ill to continue. The novel was under contract to no one, and he left all rights in it to me in a note he wrote by hand in his final days. You see, Zach, Massimo was extraordinarily correct in everything he did, correct to the point of absurdity. This was why he was not very keen about demanding a greater share of royalties or removing territories or rights that you were not doing very much with. For him a deal was a deal. In the same way, he felt obligated to leave his millions to his cousin Giuseppe, who did not care about him at all, the only blood relative he kept in touch with after his mother died.” Her tone has sharpened, is bitter.

“I would get a bequest and no more, not that I am complaining. He bought me the house I live in and use as an office, and set up an ironclad trust fund that would provide me with an income of two thousand dollars a week for the rest of my life with provisions made for hospital care and any expenses that would need to be met after I was gone. It was a very thoughtful and handsome bequest, although it was a tiny fraction of his fortune.” Her tone is still laced with anger.

“But that is not very material anymore. What is, is the fact that the fifth book was his gift to me, to our lifelong collaboration. I have it here.” She holds out a flash drive. “And according to Massimo’s handwritten addendum to his will I
was to allow you to read it if you came to Toronto to meet with me. You are not allowed to make any copies, you are not allowed to share it with anyone, and once you have read it you are allowed just one opportunity to make an offer for all rights except Italian rights, which I am to sell direct to the son of his Italian publisher if we are able to agree terms. I would like to tell you, Zach, that I tried very hard to dissuade Massimo from selling all the rights to you but his punctiliousness and stubbornness won the day. All I was able to wrest from him was the agreement that if you failed to make an offer that matched the one he thought was appropriate I could go elsewhere.”

Zach is stunned into silence by Caryn’s revelation and then his mind starts racing with questions. He manages to say, “We will pay you whatever you want!” And of course they will – even if he and Gabrijela need to sell themselves as sex slaves to raise the money.

“I am sure you will, Zach,” she says smoothly, “but Massimo was very clear that your offer could only be made after you had read the manuscript. If you genuinely liked it I am at liberty to sell it to you but, as I’ve said, only if your offer was within ten per cent of the number he had in mind.”

“Anything you say,” he says, eyeing the flash drive in her hand. He wants to leap up and hug her, kiss her even, but his Indian and English propriety militates against such an unseemly display. He stays seated, says, “This is perfectly extraordinary, how very exciting!”

“It is, Zach,” she says. “What does the date 21 December, 2012 mean to you?”

“Isn’t it associated with doomsday scenarios?”

“Exactly. According to the Mayan calendar the world will end on that day. The Book of Revelation says something that’s close enough, and other major faiths have cryptic messages that could be interpreted to mean the same thing. Massimo’s final book in the quintet starts and ends on 21 December, 2012.”

It was perfect, how could the concluding book not be set during the Apocalypse? They could run a year-long marketing campaign that would start as soon as they had acquired the book, that would cleverly interweave doomsday prophecies along with teasers from the book – but he was getting ahead of himself, first they had to acquire the book.

“The book is called
Storm of Angels
, and for the first time God makes an appearance along with the four archangels from the previous books. Their mission this time is to save the human race not from catastrophe but from itself.”

“Judgment Day?”

“Correct, and it is a book unlike anything that has been written before on the subject – whether gospel or secular literature. In it, finally, Massimo was able to fuse his love of storytelling, his faith, and a high literary style. Do you recognize this line, Zach? ‘It was a cold, clear day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ ”

“Orwell,
1984
.”

“Indeed. Massimo thought that was an extraordinarily perfect first sentence, especially for the sort of mood Orwell was trying to create, and the first line of his new book pays homage to the master – ‘It is a cold clear day in December and in every capital in the world the clocks are striking
twelve.’ Naturally chaos ensues but I’m not going to take away from your pleasure in discovering the treasures of the book for yourself.” She hands him the flash drive.

“Would you like some dessert? Coffee?” he asks.

“I am sure you have more important things on your mind than hanging out with me, eh,” she says with a mischievous smile.

He finishes all 797 pages of the novel at 3:48
A.M
. by the bedside clock in his room at the Empire Suites Hotel on King Street. The late hour barely registers, he has read without stopping, fuelled by more cups of coffee than he has been able to keep track of, and the combination of caffeine, engrossing storytelling, and the massive flow of adrenalin that is released when he is on the verge of a major acquisition has rendered him almost incoherent with excitement. He phones Gabrijela, it’s about nine in the morning in London. She picks up her phone on the first ring, it’s clear she has been waiting by the phone ever since he e-mailed her with news of his meeting with Caryn.

“So?”

“It’s astonishing. The style is somewhat different, but it’s quite amazing. It’s got a tremendous amount of stuff in it that people can relate to because it’s so contemporary: we are in the last years of Obama’s first term, the Afghan war is escalating, India and Pakistan are on the brink of nuclear war, Iran and North Korea announce within weeks of each
other that they have test-fired intercontinental nuclear missiles, China decides to the consternation of the G8 that its currency will no longer be pegged to the dollar –”

Gabrijela cuts in, “What about the archangels, Zach, we’re not talking about a current events book here.”

“Oh, I was coming to that, they are here all right, and for the first time we’re also able to see the face of God. It’s quite remarkable, I tell you. The narrative style is a bit more ornate than Seppi’s other books but it fits the subject matter like a glove. My feeling is that this will be the biggest book of the series by some distance –”

Gabrijela interrupts him again. “What do you think she wants?”

“I said we would give her anything she wanted, but she was really specific that we should make an offer that meshes exactly with what Seppi thought the book was worth.”

“Well, I’ve had Olive run some numbers, and he has earned around twenty-four million pounds from the four books to date, which makes it approximately seven million quid per book. What if we offered her ten million?”

That is five times his annual advances budget, he thinks. “We have to be sure that our offer is within ten per cent of the number he had in mind, give or take,” he reminds her.

“Is there anything that he might have said to you, which she might have let drop yesterday, that can make us zero in on the figure?”

“Not really. I was wondering if we should work on a multiple of the 20 K we paid him for the quartet?”

“Two million, twenty million, is that what you were thinking?”

“Sort of. And I think we should probably be thinking in terms of Canadian dollars, not pounds, both Seppi and the translator were probably thinking in terms of dollars.”

“Quite so.”

“I’m not sure about the multiple of our first advance though.”

“Fine, what about a figure based on the number of words then?”

“It’s a little over 250,000 words long.”

“So that gets us to two-and-a-half or twenty-five –”

“I’m not sure, Gabrijela, it’s just seems too round a figure.”

“So, what do you think?”

“I wish I knew. No, actually wait, you know the central conceit on which the novel is based is the day of the Apocalypse.”

“Which is?”

“The 21st of December 2012.”

“Which would make it 21,122,012, twenty-one million dollars and change.”

“Don’t the Canucks write the date the American way, with the month first?”

“I think they do which would make it 12,212,012, a tad over twelve million dollars.”

“Maybe that’s what he had in mind.”

“Well, make the offer then, the P&L should hold it easily. I’ll confirm that by e-mail in just a second, and if for any reason it’s off the mark, beg, threaten, seduce, do whatever is necessary to make her sign on the dotted
line. By the way, are you sure she controls the rights?”

“She says she does, apparently she has a handwritten letter or something.”

“Make sure she shows it to you. I’m not going to drop twelve million dollars on this book and then find we don’t have the right to publish it. Take her and whatever documentation there is to the lawyers I told you about, and make sure everything is in order before you head home. Oh and, Zach, don’t get on that plane without closing this deal, OK!”