Some weeks later, on the first day of summer, the old typewriter lost its 't' as well. Paul thought: I am going to complain. I am not just going to ask for a new typewriter, I am going to demand one. I know she can afford it. Of course he would ask Annie for nothing and certainly would not demand. Once there had been a man who would at least have asked. That man had been in much more pain, but he still would have asked. He had been that man and he supposed he ought to be ashamed, but that man had two big advantages over this one: that man had two feet . . . and two thumbs. Paul sat quietly for a moment, staring at the typewriter, and 56 then simply continued to type. It was better that way — better not to ask, better not to protest. Annie had become too strange. He had known for a long time what she was capable of doing; but these days he couldn't guess what would make her do it. So he continued to work, but after five or six pages the typewriter lost the letter 'e', the most common letter in the English language. Paul could hardly believe it. What shall I do now? he thought, but of course the answer was obvious. He would write by hand. But not now. The hole in the paper - the hole through which Misery and Ian and Geoffrey lived - had closed with a crash. He listened to the sound of the lawnmower outside. Annie had a lawnmower which was like a small tractor. As soon as he thought of Annie he remembered the axe rising and falling, her calm face splashed with his blood. He remembered every word she had spoken, every word he had screamed, every sound and movement. Why couldn't he forget? You're supposed to forget, aren't you? People who have car crashes forget what happened and arc surprised when they wake up in hospital. So why couldn't he forget? Because writers remember everything, Paul, especially the things that hurt. If you point to a writer's scars, he will tell you the story of every small one. From the big ones you get novels. Perhaps memory would heal him. But why should he bother to remember? She had done it, and all the time between then and now had been painful and boring, except when he had worked on his silly book in order to escape feeling pain and being bored. There was no point in remembering, no point in anything. Hut there was. The point was Misery, because Misery kept him alive. As long as he was writing the book Annie let him live. But he wasn't writing the book for Annie; he wasn't writing the hook to please Annie, but to escape from her. And then he realized that as long as he was writing the book he let 57 himself live too. He could have died that day, the day of the axe, but he didn't - and he didn't because he wanted to finish the book! It wasn't just Annie: he wanted to know what happened too. He was a writer, and writers remember everything, so he let himself remember. This time the cloud had been darker, thicker, smoother. There was a feeling not of floating but of sinking. Sometimes thoughts came and sometimes, dimly, he heard Annie's voice. She sounded afraid: 'Drink this, Paul . . . you've got to!' How close had he come to sinking on the day of the axe? He didn't know, but he felt almost no pain during the week after the 'operation', which seemed to show that he was close to death. So did the fear in Annie's voice. He had lain there, hardly breathing. And what brought him out of it, out of the cloud, was Misery. The book was unfinished. Paul didn't know what the ending was going to be and he didn't know how some of the details fitted together. He never knew everything about the novels he wrote; he always waited to find out as eagerly as any reader- And this meant that there were unfinished questions in his mind. Those questions worried him - and so he came out of the cloud to find out what would happen to Misery. He chose to live. She didn't want to let him return to work - not at first. He could see in her eyes that she had been frightened and was still uncertain. She had come closer to killing him than she had intended. She was taking extraordinary care of him - changing the bandages on his stump every eight hours, washing him down. While he was unconscious she also filled in all the 'n's in the typescript. It was as if she was saying to him: You can't think that I'm cruel to you, Paul, when I look after you so well and even write all those 'n's. He was finally able to persuade her that returning to work would help him, not harm him. And she too wanted urgently to 58 know what was going to happen in the book. This was the one thing the two of them in that house shared this crazy interest in Misery's adventures. He had always known he could write good books - books like Fast Cars - and that the Misery books were just a way of making money. But why had he written so many Misery books? Ho had plenty of money. It was - and he almost hated to admit it to himself - because they gave him something his other books did not: the Misery books gave him the excitement of needing to know what would happen in the adventure. He shared this with his millions of readers, who eagerly turned the pages; he shared this with Annie. It was crazy. He was going to die anyway; she was going to kill him. But he still had to write. It was more than just a way of escaping the cruel reality of his situation: he had to find out how the story would end. And it was the best Misery novel he had ever written, just as Annie had said it would be. At first, sitting and typing were extremely painful and he could work only for short periods of time. The pain in his stump would burst into flame and it would flash through his body. But gradually he was able to work more, and he was right: he ............