Balzac
by Simon King

 

 

It was four in the morning in Passy, a neighbourhood in Paris. Whilst several embassies resided there, it was also home to one of the foremost novelists of France, Honore de Balzac. Outrageously prolific, Balzac would work here at night and churn out novel after novel, all part of the Comedie Humaine series.

Balzac kept his books in his bedroom, but the kitchen where he worked was rather drab. He wrote his novels with quill and ink, on the kitchen table. Pages and pages of notes were festooned all over it, but the main work was in the centre of the table. He had started this untitled work and he had written ten thousand words for it – the project was in its infancy – and he was enjoying it. He was portly, so his overweight body struggled to fit in between the chair and the table. The black coffee often splashed onto his black moustache.

He had finished his nineteenth cup of coffee, so he was ready for a new one. He drank coffee incessantly and he was known to drink up to fifty cups in a day. He kept an endless supply of Turkish coffee in the kitchen. He went over to the drip brewer, where hot water dripped into a filter filled with coffee grounds. Water pressed the filter into the coffee pot below and kept it warm with a heating pad.

Once the cup was ready, Balzac took it with him to his desk. It was frothy, bubbly and very black. Coffee energised him and it made his mind race with thoughts. He always had ideas, but he found that he had more of them the more coffee he consumed. There came a point when, upon reaching the twentieth cup, he would start to shake. This is precisely what was happening now, he experienced paroxysms of shaking. He gripped the mug, but his arm was shaking so much that he lost his grip on it. The mug fell on the table, spilling the coffee all over his nascent manuscript.

Balzac panicked. It was so blotched with coffee that several of the words were illegible. He could not believe it. The work appeared to be irrevocably lost. He would have to start again from scratch. He was so highly-strung on the coffee that he could not calm down and rationalise the situation. He paced around the room, thinking through the dreadful situation.

He decided to go to bed and sleep and wake up the following afternoon. Despite consuming copious amounts of coffee, he always managed to sleep. So, this is precisely what he decided to do.

He woke up at twelve the following afternoon. He sauntered over to the kitchen and saw the ruined manuscript. Some words were vaguely legible, but on the whole the manuscript was lost. Balzac decided to go the centre of Paris to seek out his agent, Jean Allard, and inform him about the situation.

Balzac walked through the derelict boulevards of his district and felt forlorn. He saw children playing hopscotch in the street. They looked content, but he felt devastated. It was now ten years after the revolution of 1830 and, although things had calmed down, you always felt unrest in the city. Balzac already felt tense because he had not consumed a cup of coffee yet.

He knocked on house number thirteen in the street of Rue-Saint-Rustique. Sure enough, Allard opened the door. ‘Oh, Honore. Fancy seeing you here.’ He had a long nose, bushy eyebrows and brown eyes. He was wearing a white suit and some breeches.

‘You have to come to my house. I have to show you something.’

‘You have been up all night writing one of your masterpieces again,’ Alland said, with a smirk on his face.

‘Yes, it concerns my latest manuscript. I want to show it to you,’ Balzac replied.  

So, Allard and Balzac walked through the boulevards again. They saw the children playing in the street, people talking in cafes and people walking in the street, generally minding their own business.

They finally arrived at Balzac’s house. He pointed at the brown manuscript. ‘Look.’

Allard walked over and looked at it. ‘Oh… It’s completely illegible.’

‘Yes, I spilled coffee all over it. It’s ruined. I am going to have to start it all over again. I can’t believe it,’ he said.

‘Well, how far into it were you,’ Allard asked.

‘I was quite well into it. Twenty-five pages,’ Balzac said.

‘I think you really need to cut down on your consumption of coffee. I mean, it is not good for your heart. You stay up all night with these racing thoughts, so it is not good for your mental health. Good grief, it is even affecting your literary work! You have lost a manuscript because you spilled coffee all over it!’ Allard exclaimed.

‘I like drinking coffee,’ Balzac said.

‘Yes, but you need to cut it down. Moderate it, it is excessive,’ Allard replied.

‘I find that I only start getting great ideas once I have had ten cups,’ Balzac said.

‘Well, cut it down and you might find that you still get great ideas,’ Allard went on. ‘Look, I am your literary agent. My job is to review your manuscripts and edit them. They are so good that I rarely have to modify them. They are often serialised in newspapers anyway. You are a great writer, a great artist. I even think that you are the greatest living French novelist. My job is not to be your carer, my job is not to look after you. My job is to edit and publish your novels. You are clearly unstable, but I am the last person that you should consult.’

‘Yes…’ Balzac looked at the floor. ‘You know something, Jean?’

 ‘What?’

‘Do you want me to make us a cup of coffee? I have not had one so far and I am really craving it,’ Balzac said, sheepishly.

Allard broke out laughing. ‘Go on then.’

Balzac went over to the drip brewer and prepared two cups of black coffee.

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