The Ghostwriter's Chapter

Dafne has been working with Jens for five months, and she knows his habits by now. He drinks his tea cold. He answers her questions with a short nod, as if every one of them were a referee's decision. And he writes in the margins in thick red pen, always in capitals. Today, beside the title of chapter nine, he has written a single word: CUT.

Chapter nine is called "The Winter Without a Win." It covers the season, forty years ago, when his youth team lost twelve matches in a row. Dafne has spent two weeks on it, working from a biscuit tin of old scoresheets that has never been shown to anyone. Each sheet is marked in his handwriting with the date, the score and the weather.

"Nobody wants to read about losing," Jens says, stirring his tea. "People buy a coach's book to read about the cups."

"People buy a coach's book to find out who he is," Dafne says. "May I tell you what I think?"

He shrugs, which she has learned means yes.

"The cup chapters are good, but they could have been written about anyone. If a stranger had won those games, the sentences would be the same. This is the only chapter where you sound like a man who is afraid." She turns the page toward him. "You wrote that you stood in the cold after the twelfth defeat and told the boys you were proud of them. And that you didn't know whether it was true."

Jens looks out of the window. Outside, a neighbor's children are kicking a ball against a garage door, over and over, the sound as steady as a clock.

"That's private," he says. "If I print it, the boys will read it. Some of them are grandfathers now."

"They will read what you wrote," Dafne says. "They will also find out that somebody remembered what that winter was like for them. You remember the weather, Jens. Every match. Rain, sleet, wind from the east. You couldn't have kept such records if you hadn't cared."

He is silent for a long time. Dafne had been expecting an argument, perhaps even a raised voice. She has prepared herself to lose this one, although she would hate to.

"My wife used to say the same thing," he says at last. "She said I only kept the records of the games that hurt." He pulls the page toward him, uncaps the red pen and holds it above the paper.

Dafne tries not to watch his hand. She looks at the window, at the children and their ball, at anything else.

When she looks back, the word CUT has a line through it, thick and straight. Beneath it, in the same red capitals, Jens has written another word: KEEP.

He slides the page across the table. "Fix the ending," he says. "It's far too kind to me."