Three out of every four Sundays, my paternal grandmother would choke on her Sunday lunch and the ensuing family drama would be repeated with theatrical precision. First, she would bring her hand to her throat – discreetly, so as not to alert my father – but inevitably the movement would be repeated a few seconds later, more quickly and more desperately. Then my father, who knew very well what the initial gesture meant, would stare at her, making my grandmother even more nervous. She would try to say something – we could never tell what – and in place of words came a strong, repetitive cough; cough after breathless cough. My father was the one who breathed, deeply – perhaps out of resignation, perhaps because he knew that she couldn’t – and, as my grandmother continued to try to speak, he’d give her advice: “Don’t say anything, don’t try to speak, mother, it’ll make it worse.” She would lean back and, as her suffocation grew worse and worse, shove back her chair, still struggling to speak – maybe she was apologizing, maybe she was saying that she wanted to be left alone, maybe it was something far more important. All this just made the choking even worse and by now my grandmother had been unable to breathe for far too long. My father, speaking more urgently now, would say “Be quiet, mother, please,” and he would shove back his chair from the table too, preparing himself for what would come next. By now my grandmother was as red as a tomato; she needed air. My father, furious now, his face almost as red as hers, would stand up and shout “Shut up and breathe!” Sometimes, perhaps because of the choking, perhaps because of my father’s furious shouting, my grandmother’s eyes would fill with tears as my father shouted ever more desperately; “Take a breath! Breathe!” I would watch on in terrified silence. With each occurrence, the possibility that she might not breathe again and just collapse headfirst onto her plate seemed more and more likely. When the danger was over and my grandmother had finally stopped coughing and trying to speak at the same time, when she had opened her mouth and eyes in immense surprise at finally being able to breathe, the relief was shared across the table. My grandmother and father would let themselves fall, exhausted, back onto their chairs and peer resentfully at each other out of the corners of their eyes.
Writing has a lot in common with breathing. Or more accurately; with stopping breathing. Every time I open my inbox and see phrases like ‘trip proposal’, ‘news and congratulations’ or ‘debt pending’, I unconsciously catch my breath. I open my email account holding my breath, and it’s not until I’ve scanned the first few lines and got the gist of the email that I can breathe again. We all do it. It’s the moment of suspense, the second before the impact. My karate sensei always said that a blow is received while one is holding their breath. That is how the body handles tension. And literary effort has a lot to do with reproducing that impact. At the Sunday lunch, during that harrowing, anguished moment when everyone was staring at my grandmother, an unconscious survival impulse also made us hold our own breath. I would pray silently for her to breathe once more. At the same time, for every never-ending second that she was unable to breathe, a door onto the unknown, to the never before seen, to horror and death, would open wider and wider with me standing in front of it, hypnotized.
Tension is created by having some of the information but not the whole picture. To know that there is news, but not what it is. It is the anticipation of the blow and the subsequent suspense until it is received. Everything gets suspended during the trance: the real world, the distractions, thought, breathing... Energy is left in suspension awaiting a resolution; the exact and improbable moment that my grandmother regained control of her disobedient body, her diaphragm opened and, finally, she was able to breathe once more. Tension offers us certain information, but it also denies us the rest. The writer writes on the paper that the reader will read, but also and especially they write in the head of the reader. That which isn’t written down on the paper isn’t then left to chance or the reader’s imagination. What is not written, what will be read in the reader’s head, is thought out with the same rigour as the words that have been written down on the paper. I very much believe in pragmatism so here is a tangible example: If a writer writes down on paper ‘It is cold and rainy outside’, the reader will read ‘It is cold and rainy outside’. In the proper context this could be a magnificent, poetic ending but, by itself, as an autonomous phrase, there’s not much more to be read than what is there on the page. The great authors, in contrast, write phrases like this: “A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.” That’s the first sentence of a story by Raymond Carver. I don’t know if you can feel the narrative power of that sentence: “A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.” A lot of information is given, but there’s also a lot of information suggested and we immediately have an urge to find out more. Tension is unleashed. The reader automatically asks themselves ‘Who is this man?’, ‘Why was he taking photographs of my house?’, ‘How did he take them if he doesn’t have any hands?’, ‘Why does he want to sell me a photograph of the house?’, I could go on. These questions are also sentences written by Carver, but were meant to be reproduced in the reader’s head. In the best literature, tension and an unwillingness to say everything keep readers glued to the words, holding their breath.
I now know that if I’m choking, if I lose control of my breathing, I have to focus on not saying anything, on not being intimidated by the people staring at me, on relaxing my body and just taking a breath. And yet, when the time comes, there’s a moment’s uncertainty. In my body, an invisible membrane urgently demands the entry of air but because of the fear and tension the body goes rigid, alert, waiting for the impact. When I close books that I have enjoyed, or when I finally manage to breathe, I am filled with the same sensation: although the danger in my body has dissipated, something latent remains and life flows back in; alert and openly perceptive.
