Inaction man

In Competition No. 2460 you were invited to submit a short story with the title ‘The Man Who Did Not’. This assignment gave you the opportunity to step into the shoes of the doomed young writer Konstantin in The Seagull (though, given his fate, you’d perhaps have chosen not to). Konstantin’s Uncle Sorin suggests the title of a short story which reeks of frustrated dreams and failed lives. In the Martin Crimp version now running at the National it is rendered as ‘The Man Who Did Not’, while Michael Frayn, in his adaptation, translates it as ‘The Man Who Wanted To’, which strikes me as marginally less bleak. The standard of the entry, though, was far from depressing. The prizewinners, printed below, get £30 each. The bonus fiver goes to Frank McDonald, whose story is heartening to those who, like Sorin, berate themselves for hovering on life’s sidelines.

Robert had visited the mountain many times, unsuccessfully seeking the wondrous portal. One day, when he went down the dusty path, he encountered a strange old man, dressed in a garment of faded colours. He was sitting on a bridge.

‘It’s not there,’ the old man said with a grin. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘You know what I’m looking for then?’ Robert asked sadly. ‘Why was I the ordinary boy who never got to see anything?’

‘Ordinary? You were hardly that. A hundred ordinary children passed through the portal. You are the man who did not.’

‘But why? It seems so cruel.’