A short story on the theme of War and Peace would naturally feature two lovers. A would love B more than B loved A. They would quarrel, and they would have sex. There would be no room for small gestures, for sniping, for passive-aggression. Only the great emotions would be good enough for A and B. Fury, lust, and wracking despair.
The story would have to be serious, pompous even. Over-intellectualised and priggish, with descriptions of sexual acts that would make the reader squirm and wonder what sort of a person the author really, and I mean really was. Rough, unnatural sex and laboured dialogue.
It would start with an explosion, with B accusing A of infidelity. Despite or because B is the less deeply in love, he or she would be ferociously jealous. And yet B would be mistaken, A would not have had an affair. A loves B entirely, devotedly, but would be unable to convince B of this, and all the while, B would be spewing venom, and imagining and then describing worse and worse depravities that A had committed with the invented C.
B’s temper would calm under the mass of A’s protestations. Then B would start to cry, and get angry again, and then throw A into the bedroom to act out those imagined violences against A’s body. This represents War.
The next day, or a week later, the author wouldn’t care so much about the continuity of time, A and B would be holding cups of coffee in their kitchen which would be a large one, because although neither of them are wealthy, they could not be constrained into a small apartment, but, as artists, writers probably, they must have space and high ceilings.
A would say something mundane in an interesting way, showing depth by restraint, and B would take a sip of coffee before replying. Probably B would need to consider every facet of the statement like a chess player or a particle physicist. Almost undoubtedly, at some point in the story, the author would reference, or make his characters reference, some aspect of quantum theory.
After we had read about B’s microscopic examination of A’s statement, B would reply, and he would either take this opportunity to say how nothing is knowable, because of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, or Gödel, or he would say something as flat and uninspired as A’s opening gambit. This latter would be the author’s way of showing B’s great intellectual depths, and that he, the author, knows quite enough about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, or Gödel, but is comfortable enough in himself that he doesn’t need to go banging on about it all the time. This represents Peace.
I suspect that the author would, as much as space allows, alternate these two scenarios, building towards a crescendo in which A finally breaks under B’s constant accusations, and finds a C to have graphically described fetishistic sex with. Possibly it could be something like they only have sex under a canal bridge with A dressed as a female tramp, after which C would urinate into the canal while declaiming either ancient Chinese proverbs or Frank O’Hara poetry.
This would be a good image for the author to close his short story with, and he might well do that, perhaps while mentioning entropy, and explaining it as systems breaking apart, or down.
If the author wanted to pad the story out a little longer, I think he would go back to discussing B. B would either have been so broken, like with entropy, the author could write, that he or she actually fell into tramphood, and had taken to dressing like a woman, no matter what gender B was, and lived under a canal bridge. This would have a nice ironic resonance with A’s sex games. Also this result would, I think, be described as War.
Alternatively, B could have used the break-up of the relationship as an opportunity to grow, spiritually and mentally, and become at peace with the world. This would be described to the reader in a scene where B is alone in an empty kitchen, one with even higher ceilings than the last. However, where preciously A and B had drunk coffee straight from the percolator, this time B would grind the beans in an old wooden hand mill, then make coffee in an Italian stovetop espresso maker. Lastly, B would add warm milk from a gunmetal coloured Le Creuset milk pan.
The story would close with the poignant depiction of B drinking this coffee, sitting at the head of an enormous country wooden table, and the expression on his face would be at once beatific, and at the same time concerned with all the sorrows of the world. In the final sentence, the right side of B’s mouth would flicker upwards, just slightly, as B realised, in that instant, exactly how to cure all of them.
© Edward Sandling, 2008.
A Short Story on the Theme of War and Peace was read by Tom Mallaburn at the Liars’ League War & Peace event on Tuesday November 11, 2008.
Edward Sandling lives in North West London. He has written three novels, one of which was really quite good. Much to his regret, none of them have been published. He is married, and has two cats. He works at an international auction house, and wishes he could buy what he sells.
Comments