Ghosting Read online

  Acclaim for Jennie Erdal's

  Ghosting

  “As well as a lifelong fascination with words, [Erdal] has a wide knowledge of literature, philosophy and psychology…. An illuminating exposé of quixotic natures and the credulity of the literary world.”

  — The Times Literary Supplement (London)

  “Lustrous and good-humored.”

  —Time Out Chicago

  “Erdal's portrait of the publishing mogul who long employed her is both unsparing and tender: she manages to encompass ‘Tiger’ without ever cutting him down to size. Ghosting has the makings of a slender, civilized book-business classic, on the order of Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road and Diana Athill's Stet”

  —Thomas Mallon, author of A Book of One's Own

  “[A] beautifully written memoir of language: of the quandaries of translation, the orderly joys of copyediting, of the existential character—one might almost say—of syntax, and of the hard and rewarding task of writing.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Ghosting may not be the oldest profession, but it, too, makes for a life fraught with irony and peril. The only shame here is that Jennie Erdal didn't feel free to write in her own voice sooner. A terrific book.”

  —Frances Kiernan, author of Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy

  “Extraordinary and very funny…. Touches on profound questions about language and writing and provides a vivid and often affectionate but fairly merciless portrait of an exasperating, despotic, self-deluding but in the end likeable figure.”

  —The Spectator

  “Charming…. A delicately witty, humane account of [a] little-remarked upon branch of letters.”

  —Ruminator Review

  “A little masterpiece…. Superbly written in a funny, down-to-earth style.”

  —The Sunday Times (London)

  Jennie Erdal

  Ghosting

  Jennie Erdal worked as an editor, translator, and ghostwriter for many years. Ghosting is her first book published under her own name. She lives in St. Andrews, Scotland.

  Many people have helped me, and I am most grateful to all of them. In particular I would like to thank Alis-tair Moffat who first encouraged me to write this book, Jamie Byng for believing in it, Jenny Brown for her positive spirit and unflagging support, Mairi Sutherland for her sensitive editing skills. And Tiger who inspired this story and allowed it to be told.

  Jennie Erdal

  This is the way light fell on the picture for me;

  for others it will have fallen differently.

  London, February 2000

  My Darling

  A love letter, so they say, is a window on the soul. After all these years the glass may have dimmed a little but I want you to know that the fire in my soul still burns as brightly as the moment I first looked upon you.

  Socrates said that if you get a good wife you will become happy; if you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher. The Delphic Oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest man alive, but personal happiness eluded him. I am a luckier man than Socrates.

  On this day, your birthday, I write to mark the love that has bound us together in our long marriage, whose mysterious elements are a constant source of wonder. When I think of you there is no single name for what I feel, more a constant singing in my heart.

  Without love we are nothing; life consists in the giving and getting of it. For what would we know of love if no one had loved us first? How and where would we begin? In time our children leave us and love elsewhere, in a different way from the way we have loved them. Different, but related. With God's help, this is how life continues, its delicate patterns interconnected by the filaments of love. And eventually, as Larkin understood, what will survive of us is love.

  With deep tenderness

  A love letter. The love of a man for a woman. What does it tell us? That a man is writing to his wife, that he loves her and feels loved by her, that they have been together a long time and that the love has endured. And what of the man himself? Evidently he is something of a romantic, he is not afraid to express his feelings, he believes in God, and he reads poetry.

  What else can we tell from the letter? There is a tendency towards aphorism, and the style is slightly high-flown, perhaps a little gallant and old-fashioned. And like all love letters, it is highly personal, the most intimate form of communication any of us makes, more permanent than a phone call, more romantic than electronic mail. In reading it we feel we are encroaching on something private. It is, as the writer of the letter says, a window on the soul. We have glimpsed into his heart.

  Or have we? What if this letter were not written by a man at all? But rather for a man, and by a woman. Whose heart would it then be?

  For nearly fifteen years I wrote hundreds of letters, ranging from perfunctory thank-you notes and expressions of condolence to extensive correspondence with the great and the good—politicians, newspaper editors, bishops, members of the House of Lords. The procedure I followed with a more intimate letter was to type it onto my laptop, double spaced in large font, and print it out. My employer—the sender of the letter—would then copy it painstakingly onto embossed notepaper using a Montblanc pen and blotting paper, signing it with a flourish at the bottom.

  All the letters were written on behalf of one man, an extraordinarily complex and charismatic character who made his mark in London's literary set. There was no dictation, no taking of shorthand, just the lightest of intimations, often accompanied by facial contortions and gestures, which, over the years, I came to understand as one might a private language or a cipher. The tone of the letter, whether angry, ingratiating, reflective or passionate, would generally be arrived at by a kind of osmosis.

  The letters mattered greatly to the man who put his name to them, for they often expressed what he was not capable of articulating on his own. They opened doors and gave him an eloquent sophistication, which he coveted but did not naturally possess. The pleasure he derived from sending the letters was evident in the way he often read them aloud before adding his signature. He savoured each sentence, pausing over every nuance, weighing up the effect of this or that word. He loved imagining the letters being received, being read and re-read. Some would be slept on, so he hoped, perhaps even dreamt of. When he was pleased, I too was pleased. We worked well together, and on the whole I was a willing partner, interested in the job and fascinated by the psychological processes involved on both sides. Over the years I learned a great deal about vanity, the desire to belong, the lengths a man will go to in affecting to be something other than he is. And the lengths a woman will go to in colluding with the pretence.

  Aside from the correspondence, there were many newspaper articles, speeches, the occasional poem and about a dozen books, amongst them two novels. The books generated lots of reviews and profiles of the man whose name appeared on the cover. A number of literati entered into correspondence with the “author,” unaware that the replies came from a hired hand. We make a great team, the author often said. And we did.

  Ghost-writing is not new. It might almost qualify as the oldest profession if prostitution had not laid prior claim. And there is more than a random connection between the two: they both operate in rather murky worlds, a fee is agreed in advance and given “for services rendered,” and those who admit to being involved, either as client or service-provider, can expect negative reactions— anything from mild shock and disapproval to outright revulsion. A professor at my old university, a distinguished classicist with feminist leanings, was appalled when she heard what I did for a living and pronounced me “no better than a common whore.” This— the whiff of whoredom—is perhaps the main reason why most people opt for absolute discretion.

  There is usually also an uneasy alliance betwe
en the person paying the money and the person earning the money or “working.” It comes from the awkward interdependence of the dealings—both parties benefit, but both usually struggle to retain self-respect. This can be achieved in a variety of ways: sometimes by adopting a simple, business-like attitude to the proceedings, sometimes through mutual contempt, sometimes through affected indifference to the nature of the transaction, sometimes simply by choosing to lead parallel lives.

  In the natural world there are many degrees of interaction and mutual dependence between different species. These range from symbiosis, which we generally regard as good and beautiful, to parasitism, which we tend to view as bad and ugly. In life as in nature, some feed and others are fed upon. But what can appear to be a parasitic invasion can sometimes result in harmony and felicity. What could be more beautiful than an orchid? Yet the orchid depends on a fungus for the germination and growth of its seedlings. For the partnership to succeed, a true symbiotic balance must be achieved and maintained. Otherwise both will wither and die. The relationship between host and parasite is fragile, easily disturbed; but in true symbiosis the association is intimate and both partners profit.

  As in nature, so in life. What follows is a memoir drawn from several stages of a life, but containing at its heart the story of an unusual relationship, part symbiotic, part parasitic. It concerns two people from very different backgrounds: a man and a woman, who, for different reasons, in various ways and over a period of twenty years, came to live off one another, and in a sense to inhabit each other's minds. The story involves deception and self-deception on both sides, a blurring of truth and reality, some bizarre happenings, secrets and lies. Yet it also contains generosity, goodwill, absurdity, laughter, tenderness and a good measure of love.

  So strange and exotic is he that he could be a rare tropical bird that you might never come face to face with, even in a lifetime spent in the rain forest. The plumage is a wonder to behold: a large sapphire in the lapel of a bold striped suit, a vivid silk tie so bright that it dazzles, and when he flaps his wings the lining of his jacket glints and glistens like a prism. He sees that I am startled and he smiles. He takes my hand in his and lays it on the silk lining. You want to touch? Go on, touch! It's best Chinese silk. I have only the best.

  It is a lot to take in all at once. Under his suit he wears one pink sock, one green, two gold watches on his right arm, a platinum watch on his left, and on his fingers a collection of jewels: rubies, emeralds, diamonds. This is the jungle bird in human form— flamboyant, exaggerated, ornate—a creature whose baroque splendour surely has to be part of the male mating display. And yet the brightness of the eyes and the set of the smile give him an amused look that suggests a degree of self-parody A touch of the court jester perhaps? Only perhaps, for nothing is yet sure. The head is large, in keeping with the frame, and the ears look as if they might have been an exuberant afterthought. The hair, dark and wiry, seems to be a separate entity, a thing apart. It perches on top like an eagle's nest.

  It is a Saturday morning in 1981 and I have travelled from my home in Scotland to an address in Mayfair. A uniformed porter opens the door of my taxi and ushers me inside. He asks me to take a seat while he telephones to announce my arrival. He presses a button to call the lift and, with a touch of his cap, sends me on my way. As the lift doors open, the bird of paradise is already standing there in all his finery. I had little idea of what to expect, but the reality is a good deal odder than anything I might have imagined. A psychedelic experience without the need of drugs.

  His demeanour conveys generosity and impeccable courtesy. His eyes sparkle like precious stones. His hands are large and beautiful, and they feel so soft that they seem quite new and unused. But his handshake is not the limp, wishy-washy how-do-you-do of an Englishman; it is a firm and cordial clasp, like a lingering embrace. His voice is velvet and beguilingly accented, and it is speaking now in short unfinished bursts, gentle, apologetic, cajoling, pampering. Come… come… please … only one minute… be so kind… because the telephone… it happens always. His body is never still but moves to the rhythm and cadences of his speech pattern. He does a low salaam and beckons me to follow, like a Bedouin prince inviting an honoured guest to his tent. Please… sit… two minutes… then I'm back … you're very kind. He glides off leaving behind eastern scents—musk, saffron, sandalwood.

  The walls of the tent are festooned with rugs, and on the floor there are more rugs with small exquisitely carved tables and dark-wood chests on top. More Marrakesh than Mayfair, it seems to me, though I am not familiar with either. The decoration is rich but not oppressive, the lines are clean and disciplined. There is no evidence of normal day-to-day living, none of the randomness of ordinary clutter. And no photographs, just a picture of a tiger in the corner by the door. On one of the chests—it could be rosewood inlaid with mother-of-pearl—there is a careful arrangement of antique ivory bracelets. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to achieve the desired effect. He glides back in. Sorry… sorry… can you come now… we will go quickly… the chauffeur is downstairs. He hurries off down the long corridor, leaving behind a vapour trail of blandishments. I follow him, eyes down, counting the ke-lims as I go. It feels like an absurd passage in a dream.

  Out on the pavement, the chauffeur is standing beside a silver Rolls-Royce, holding the door open for us to get into the back seat. I have never been in a Rolls-Royce before, but find myself behaving as if it is a common occurrence. I have no idea why I am pretending. It certainly does not occur to me to be myself. I give a nod to the chauffeur, decidedly de haut en bas, and sink into the plush leather like Lady Muck.

  We are on our way to Oxford, the dazzling publisher and I, to visit a woman as old as the century. It has the feel of an adventure, the beginning of something.

  Anything counting as a significant happening usually involves the chance occurrence of a number of events. Each event means nothing in isolation, or so it seems at the time, but taken together and viewed from the ringside seat that is given to us by hindsight, each turns out to have played a part in what Raymond Chandler liked to call the Start of Something Big. The particular events that led to my journey from London to Oxford in the back of a Rolls-Royce that Saturday morning in 1981 were something of a rag-bag. Here is a selection from the rag-bag:

  the study of Russian language and literature

  an exhibition at an art gallery in St. Andrews

  the birth of babies (three)

  the undertaking of a translation

  visits to Oxford to look at paintings

  a commission from a London publishing house

  a Russian artist's visit to Palestine in 1924

  The longer version of events is that in the early seventies I spent four years at university reading Russian and philosophy. My undergraduate thesis was a study of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak. When the University of St. Andrews opened a new art gallery with an exhibition of the works of Leonid Pasternak, father of Boris, I was asked to write a profile of the artist for the exhibition catalogue. The research for this involved reading Pasternak's memoirs in Russian and consulting with the artist's two daughters, Josephine and Lydia. After the exhibition they encouraged me to translate their father's memoirs but, since I had two small children and a third on the way, it seemed an impossible undertaking. When the third child was born it was even more impossible, but by then I knew that if I was going to be a fit mother I needed also to do something that was not mothering. Translation seemed to offer a solution.

  In any case the memoirs were interesting and colourful, painting a vivid picture of Russian artistic life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They begin with a kind of miracle which hooked me and pulled me in—the story of how the artist nearly died of convulsions in 1862 when he was only a few months old. The family lived in simple rooms in the corner of a large sprawling coaching-inn on the outskirts of Odessa by the Black Sea. There were stables and a dung yard where children played amongst t
he poultry and pigs, and the lodgings were filled with Tartar tradesmen, coachmen and assorted merchants. They would arrive in huge tarantasses straight out of Gogol. The air was heavy with noise and liquor. Suddenly, above the din, a mother started screaming that her baby was dying. Everyone crowded round to watch helplessly as the infant convulsed and turned blue. Only one man, a Jewish tailor and sage of the local shtetl, knew what to do. He raised a huge earthenware jug above the baby's head and smashed it on the dirt floor. The baby, startled out of his fit, turned pink. “Now you must change the child's name,” the tailor said to the mother, “so that the Devil can't find him again.” And so Isaac Pasternak, as he was then called, became Leonid, and he went on to live and work through one of the greatest periods of Russian culture.

  Leonid Pasternak knew and painted Einstein, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rubinstein, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Rilke, Chaliapin and many other eminent figures. But perhaps the main fascination of the memoirs lies in his friendship with Tolstoy who invited him to illustrate Resurrection as he was writing it. Pasternak visited Tolstoy's home at Yasnaya Polyana many times and completed a number of portraits and studies, the last on 20 November 1910, when a telegram summoned him to draw the great man on his deathbed.

  At the end of 1980 the translation of the Tolstoy chapter was complete and I sent it off to a London publisher—the exotic jungle bird who now sat beside me in the back of the Rolls-Royce. Within a week or two the book was commissioned and, to the delight of the artist's family, it was to include about a hundred reproductions from his work and an introduction by his daughter Josephine. She lived in Oxford, having moved there with her parents in 1938. At that time her father was a successful artist exhibiting in Germany, but the rise of Nazism meant that all Soviet citizens were being expelled. The family decided to move to Oxford, where Lydia, the other daughter, was already settled. Leonid and his wife Rosa hoped to return to Russia one day, but it was not to be. They both died in Oxford, Rosa a week before the start of the war, and Leonid in 1945, a few months before it ended. Josephine wrote in her introduction that when her mother died it was as if harmony had abandoned the world, and when her father died it seemed that truth had left it.