A Prince of a Fellow
A Prince of a Fellow by Shelby Hearon
(Page 2 of 3)
"We're very informal," I tried to put him at his ease. "I'll ask a few questions, play some music. We'll let the listeners call in their comments. They like to feel they're taking part in the show."
Which in fact they did. The weekday interview hour was now the station's most popular feature, and the high point of Otto's and my shift. This was satisfying to me as last year, returned home and job hunting, I had sold KPAC's managers on the idea that visiting dignitaries and celebrities from San Antonio and Austin, and even stammering ordinary citizens from Prince Solms, telling their versions of daily events, would create a wider advertising market than followed their existing mix of country sounds, news, and weather.
"You can ask me about my book," the writer told me. "That's why I'm here."
I was more interested in him than in his proposed translation of himself into fiction, but, guessing he wanted a dress rehearsal, I asked, "What is your novel about?"
He cast about as if he hadn't thought of it before. "It's about these people."
Clearly he needed to warm up. Some writers obviously grew tongue-tied in the morning. Leaving his work, I moved to him, a matter of more concern to me anyway.
"How long have you been away from Texas?"
He studied his cup. "Uh—since I left high school. Several years."
"Do you have family back here?" The Dobie grant as I recalled had to be bestowed on a native Texan.
"Uh—that's right. My mom's folks are from Veramendi."
"Czech?"
He looked relieved, as if the business of disguises bothered him. "How could you tell?"
"Long practice at observing dissembling."
"I guess I do that. Writing, I mean."
"Is Albrech your real name?"
"Actually it's Billy Wayne Williams." He looked sheepish at this admission.
"Why did you change it?"
"Who reads books by Billy Wayne Williams? If your name is Gruene Albrech they take you seriously. They give you a grant to the Dobie Ranch." He grinned. "They ask you to appear on radio shows."
"So they do." I smiled my blondest smile.
"Besides, I thought the German name would prepare me to tell my story."
"About these people—" I chided him.
"I'll tell about it when we're on the air. I don't want to waste myself now. I'm saving up for when it counts."
"Is that the way you write?"
"What?"
"Keeping it all inside until it goes down on paper?"
"I guess so. I never thought about it."
His crisp just purchased clothes must also be a way to get into his tale and into this part of the country again. They did not look like the tweeds and Shetland sweaters I imagined for Connecticut. "How do you like being back here?" I asked.
"That's part of what we'll talk about." With that, he went back to the guest chair and turned his attention to waiting. Moving his knees apart and planting his feet squarely as a peasant, he simply sat.
It came to me I was observing an actor, off stage, getting into his role. A fine development, and one that I had missed.
Most people did not know that when the first sounds gave the cue that the curtain had gone up, we were on our invisible stage. Most people played to me, thinking me their audience. Most gestured to me, looked to me for confirmation, took my silent nods as answers. Most people did not believe that anyone was Out There; it would be grand to work with an actor again.
It took me back to another actor who had seemed, for a time, to be a prince of a fellow. An actor with a fine hairy belly against which I slept for five years of weekends. Remembering that earlier tale (or perhaps a later one) made me wonder about the writer before me—did he make love as the Czech rodeo rider or as the moody German?
However, I knew that such thinking was unproductive. After all, I had only taken one guest to bed, and he was no prince. Still, you had to consider it again each time; otherwise you ceased to take the risk that goes with looking.
Otto wrapped up his good tidings of local news with, "It vill be a goot day, as ve shall see." Popping his alpine suspenders, he plugged in a public service cartridge and signaled for me to take over.
"Pronounce my name Green." My guest spoke up suddenly. "That is the German way."
Then back in the booth the sorcery began again; we were crackling out over the air waves into the waiting ears. "Hello out there, this is Avery Krause on KPAC, Keep Peace, the station which brings you morning. Our guest today is that distinguished novelist Gruene Albrech, returned to the land of his forefathers in search of an ancient tale. You at home refill your freeze-dried and you in your economy cars move closer to your FM while we listen to his story. It isn't every day we get a real live word wizard on our show, so stay tuned and be sure to call in your own questions for him." At home in my eyeless world, I beamed myself to my unknown intimates.
"Tell us, Gruene, how does it feel to be back here in your homeland coming to terms with your past?" I fed him the cue.
With the first answer he was before the floodlights. His hands led him; his planted stance anchored him. He was Everyman, struggling to find himself and, in the process, each of us. As he talked he brushed his brown hair continually away, as if brushing aside deception or falsehood.
In the heavy tones of a Günter Grass he shared the anguish of going home again. He was the tortured expatriate, returned to wring the truth from the meager lives of his ancestors.
"And what is your novel about?"
"My book is a fable of a grandfather blinded by his villagers. It is a parable; for we are all that grandfather, the world is that village. Do you know the works of —?" He plunged into a comparison of himself and a little known but powerful German writer, exiled from his home soil, writing of alienation.
Now I was not thinking of him in bed, but with his pencil and pad. Wondering if he wrote as this fine actor, the tormented Albrech, or as the golden cowboy. Most of all wondering did he write well?
"Do you write from your own experience?"
"I am everyone I invent, but they each transcend me."
"How do you know when your writing is good?" This was something I had never understood, as the actor is dependent on immediate response. The kids would put on a tablecloth, a bandit's cape, and ride their chairs backwards, and it was a good performance if their watchers shouted and clapped. And if they didn't, it wasn't. But for a writer the lapse from entrance to applause required a far vaster attention span to approval.
"Not until it's read. And then, if it comes from your deepest level of consciousness, you can only hope it will speak a truth to the deepest level of the reader."
He spoke then not of theater but of a message in a bottle, of himself stolidly gathering clams until the tide went out and came in again. Nodding my admiration of such patience, as well as such fine answers, I gave us both time to catch our breath and myself time to answer the blinking red phone that flashed a listener's call. Putting on John Prine's bittersweet ballad of "Donald and Lydia," I spoke into the off-air-receiver. "Good morning, Keep Peace."
"How would you like to interview me tonight?" It was the all too familiar voice of the mayor of San Antonio. I felt a flush rise to my face. Wasn't it enough that I was still engaged in a shabby affair with this burgher in white socks; did he have to intrude himself into my ear as well on that ultimate invasion of privacy, the telephone?
"I can't talk now, Sterling, I have a guest."
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