Of fairy tales and modern man
Ivan's favorite fairy tale theme was that of the shipwrecked sailor. It appealed to his nautical nature, his fantasies of being completely self-sufficient and his romantic love of sleeping under the beach under the stars.
"I'm not romantic," he interrupted me.
"You are and it is my story so stay out of it, I shall depict my character as I please," I told him firmly.
"Yes but the character's name is 'Ivan' and he quite clearly is me so I shall ask you to be fair in your representation."
We were sitting back to back on the couch which allowed him a view of my work. I sighed and crossed out "romantic".
A learned man he longed to escape his proscribed urban lifestyle and return to a primitive instinctual existence.
"Isn't much of existence 'instinctual'?" he queried.
I sighed louder, marked out the entire paragraph in bold harsh scribbles and started again.
"You'll never get anything done if you continue like that," he warned me.
"Ivo, are you writing this or am I?" I complained.
"I was simply offering input," he sniffed, offended.
"And I thank you for your help but 'tis not a group assignment!"
I chewed on my pencil and he pretended to read. I could feel the rigidity of his spine and knew he was watching me from the back of his head.
"Alright," I sighed, "If you were to write a tale of a shipwrecked sailor, what would it be?"
He was instantly animated, placing his own book down and commencing as if he were at the lecture podium. "So many of the great novels have come from this very theme – Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, Candide, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time."
"You are completely making that last one up!" I exclaimed, thoroughly amused by his antic nature.
"I am not! It is a novel by Gabriel García Márquez first published in the Spanish quarterly El Espectador in 1955."
"Alright, don't tell me any more about that one. I need an original tale."
"I would look at the psychology of the characters – what happens when man is stripped of all he has known and must now rely on his ingenuity to stay alive against great odds. What do we become when we are placed in such a setting? Which aspect of our nature will win out – the determination to survive or that of maintaining one's humanity? To what lengths will we go – slashing the throats of gentle turtles to drink their blood? Murdering our fellow castaway to eat his flesh? The tales of such true episodes abound and suggest that there is no clear cut behaviour, that responses vary even in the same environment, even in the same person.
"Thus I would subject my characters to extremes and explore the duality that resides in each of us. I'd be curious to see which nature wins, the savage or the civilized."
I frowned at him. It was good. "I quite like that concept, Professor Steadman," I said, "May I have it for my paper?"
"Of course," he said modestly, pleased to have dominated me once again. "Don't forget to include me in your 'thank-yous'," he added quickly.
"I won't."