Read Writing in the Dark for Free Online

segment” of the program (culture, as we know, should always be confined to a segment, so that it does not swell and seep into the more important news), a stage actor read an excerpt from my novel. The passage described Gisella, Momik’s mother, sitting at her sewing machine, a well-known Singer model, her foot moving up and down on some sort of pedal that Uncle Shimmik had installed for her at the bottom of the machine.
    At that moment, the bus driver, who apparently could no longer tolerate the story’s gloom and doom, turned the radio dial and switched us all to a more upbeat channel playing Israeli music. I imagine most of the passengers breathed a sigh of relief, but I was left distraught, because of the private insult—mine and my book’s—but also because I could not understand which pedal the excerpt was referring to, and why on earth Uncle Shimmik had installed an extra pedal. The Singer I remembered had its own perfectly comfortable metal treadle, and I am not in the habit of throwing accessories or instruments into my stories for no reason. I could not comprehend what had made me add this device when I wrote the book.
    I was on edge for the rest of the journey. When I finally
got home, I quickly opened the book and found the excerpt. Indeed, shortly after the point at which the bus driver had cut the segment off, I found out that Gisella’s foot simply did not reach the original Singer treadle. In another part of the book, I learned something that had somehow escaped my memory: Gisella was an extremely short woman.
    I remember being filled with happiness, because I had suddenly discovered something simple and profound about writing. If I had a broken blind at home, for example, or a door handle that needed fixing, it would undoubtedly take weeks before I found the time to repair it. My wife would have to remind me every few days, I would leave myself notes in all sorts of places (and promptly forget about them), and finally, when I no longer had any choice and the family members’ protests were jeopardizing my already rather tenuous standing as head of the household, I would give in and fix it. But when I write a story and a short and stocky woman named Gisella walks around in this story, then, when I write her, I become Gisella . Even if she is a marginal character, even if she only passes through for a few pages, I must, I want, I long to be Gisella. And when I write Gisella, I walk like Gisella and eat like Gisella and toss and turn in my sleep like Gisella. I run after buses heavily, like her, and I measure every walking distance by the steps of her short, thick, bandaged feet. And when I sit my Gisella down at a sewing machine, the extra pedal practically comes into being on its own, because without
it she could not reach the Singer treadle. I know full well that if I had not added that extra pedal, most of my readers would not have noticed its absence when they read the description of Gisella using the machine. Moreover, I myself, were I to read the excerpt after some time had passed, would not think anything was missing.
    Yet something would have been missing. A small space, the size of one foot pedal, would have been exposed in the story. And poor Gisella’s foot would be hanging forever above the Singer treadle, never able to spin the wheel. It is entirely possible that similar tiny spaces would have emerged in other parts of the book too, and in their quiet, hidden way they would have joined forces to create a bothersome void in the reader’s mind, and a dim suspicion of some negligence on the part of the author, and even of a breach of trust. But if the writer allows himself to be Gisella, in body and soul, if he accepts the rare and wonderful invitation to be such a Gisella, then the extra pedal will naturally occur, as will thousands of other sensations and nuances and accessories that the writer gives the characters.
    The materialization of these elements is a process mostly unnoticed by the