The Migration of Ghosts by Pauline Melville

Author:Pauline Melville
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

The Fable of the Two Silver Pens

I am writing these words with a silver pen, or rather a silvery-looking pen. This year, on my birthday, my husband gave it to me as a present. In fact, it’s probably stainless steel but a handsome pen all the same, both beautiful and business-like, made by a firm of pen-makers centuries old.

Usually I write on a personal computer but for a while I had suffered from writer’s block, bogged down with notes and discarded ideas. Initially, I took up the pen to see if writing in longhand would help. Although the pen was supposed to be no more than an elegant symbol of my trade, I must say I enjoyed the physical act of writing once more and was pleased with the result. By using the pen I seemed to tap into some hitherto inaccessible source of energy and truth. For several days I wrote like a fiend. I found that, with incredible speed, I had completed a short story.

I entered the work for a literary competition. Soon after that the telephone rang and a pleasant voice informed me that I had won an award. I attended the ceremony. In addition to a substantial sum of money I was presented with a silver pen, or rather a silvery-looking pen. It was in all respects identical to the one given me by my husband. When I got home, I showed it to him and we laughed. It was indistinguishable from the one he had bought me.

Except that the second pen wrote lies.

It took me a while to discover this. Naturally, I assumed that it would make no difference whichever pen I used. But gradually I noticed that the prize pen wrote fluently and could always be relied on to produce something acceptable and polished but false. Whereas my gift pen either wrote feverishly and truthfully or it did not write at all. Once I had discovered this, I took care to keep the two pens apart, keeping the gift pen always about my person and the prize pen in its case in the bureau drawer.

When the gift pen started to write incoherently, as it did with increasing frequency, I was tempted to rely more on the ever plausible prize pen. I found myself hovering around the desk which contained the pen like someone who has given up smoking but knows that there is still a pack of cigarettes in the drawer. After an immense effort, I finally resolved to use only the pen which my husband had given me. Despite its writing in fits and starts, its tendency to scribble gibberish, its refusals to write at all, I knew that somewhere within itself it contained the real stuff of writing. Even in fictional terms, it wrote the truth. I have used it ever since.

The question is: With which pen am I writing this fable?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.