The Last Word

Thirty-three

The last time Harry saw Mamoon was a few months later at a lavish dinner in a grand hall for another writer. Harry didn’t even know Mamoon would show up; he only wanted to spend the evening with Lotte, with whom he was living.

Just before everyone sat down, a dignified Liana, with her head bowed, wheeled the old man, trussed up in a dinner jacket and wearing his literary medals, into the magnificent room. Everyone turned to look, to whisper, to murmur and acknowledge that they’d been in the presence of the writer at least once. There wasn’t a decent bookshop in the world which didn’t carry this man’s work, nor a serious reader who had not heard his name. Someone began to applaud and cheer, and then everyone stood spontaneously; Liana looked up at them and wept while Mamoon moved his mouth soundlessly.

Harry went with Lotte to Liana and kissed her. He bowed to Mamoon and took his hand. Harry had written the book he’d wanted to write, without traducing the old man, and he hoped the writer knew that. Mamoon was badly shaven, and smiled lopsidedly; his eyes were milky. He appeared to greet Harry with a warm if not weak handshake, though looking at him, Harry doubted whether Mamoon had much idea of what was going on.

Liana said Mamoon slept a good deal of the time, and could barely speak or hold a pen. But his eyes were expressive as she fed him, and she loved him, she said, as much as she had the first time they’d met. Not that she had anticipated this kind of isolation or the necessity of such selfless devotion for so long. Alone in the country with Mamoon, Ruth and Scott, she was desperate for visitors, she said; why did no one come? She had spoken to Marion on the phone. As Marion had requested to say goodbye to Mamoon, Liana had invited her to stay: they would talk and talk. Poor Mamoon on his deathbed, thought Harry, surrounded by women he hated. No better way to go: that’s how he would have liked it.

Liana begged Harry to come for the weekend, but he wouldn’t be going back to Prospects House in the near future. He had completed his work, which was to inform people that Mamoon had counted for something as an artist, that he’d been a writer, a maker of worlds, a teller of important truths, and that this was a way of changing things, of living well, and of creating freedom.