In the Country of Last Things

by Paul Auster

  Most of my time was taken up with interviewing prospective residents, putting their names on a list, organizing the schedules of who would be moving in and when. The interviews were held from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon, and on the average I spoke to twenty or twenty-five people a day. I saw them separately, one after the other, in the front hallway of the house. There had apparently been some ugly incidents in the past—violent attacks, groups of people trying to storm through the door—and so there always had to be an armed guard on duty while the interviews were taking place. Frick would stand out on the front steps with a rifle, watching the crowd to make sure the line advanced smoothly and things did not get out of control. The numbers outside the house could be breathtaking, particularly during the warm months. It was not uncommon for fifty to seventy-five people to be out there on the street at any given moment. This meant that most of the people I saw had been waiting from three to six days just for a chance to be interviewed—sleeping on the sidewalk, inching their way forward in the line, stubbornly hanging on until their turn finally came. One by one, they stumbled in to see me, an endless, unremitting flow of people. They would sit down in the red leather chair on the other side of the table from me, and I would ask them all the necessary questions. Name, age, marital status, former occupation, last permanent address, and so on. That never took more than a couple of minutes, but it was the rare interview that stopped at that point. They all wanted to tell me their stories, and I had no choice but to listen. It was a different story every time, and yet each story was finally the same. The strings of bad luck, the miscalculations, the growing weight of circumstances. Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies, and no matter how diverse they might be in their details, they all share an essential randomness in their design: this then that, and because of that, this. One day I woke up and saw. I’d hurt my leg and so I couldn’t run fast enough. My wife said, my mother fell, my husband forgot. I heard hundreds of these stories, and there were times when I didn’t think I could stand it anymore. I had to be sympathetic, to nod in all the right places, but the placid, professional manner I tried to maintain was a poor defense against the things I heard. I was not cut out for listening to the stories of girls who had worked as prostitutes in the Euthanasia Clinics. I had no talent for listening to mothers tell me how their children had died. It was too gruesome, too unrelenting, and it was all I could do to hide behind the mask of the job. I would put the person’s name down on the list and give him a date—two, three, even four months off. We should have a spot for you then, I would say. When the time came for them to move into Woburn House, I was the one who checked them in. That was my principal job in the afternoons: showing the newcomers around, explaining the rules, helping them to get settled. Most of them managed to keep the appointments I had set for them so many weeks earlier, but there were some who failed to show up. It was never very hard to guess the reason. The policy was to hold that person’s bed open for one full day. If he did not show up then, I would remove his name from the list.

  The Woburn House supplier was a man named Boris Stepanovich. He was the one who brought us the food we needed, the bars of soap, the towels, the odd piece of equipment. He showed up as often as four or five times a week, delivering the things we had asked for and then carrying off yet another treasure from the Woburn estate: a china teapot, a set of antimacassars, a violin or picture frame—all the objects that had been stored in the fifth-floor rooms and that continued to provide the cash that kept Woburn House running. Boris Stepanovich had been on the scene for a long time, Victoria told me, ever since the period of Dr. Woburn’s original shelters. The two men had apparently known each other for many years before that, and given what I had learned about the doctor, it surprised me that he should have been friends with such a dubious character as Boris Stepanovich. I believe it had something to do with the fact that the doctor had once saved Boris’s life, but it might have been the other way around. I heard several different versions of the story and could never be sure which one was true.

  Boris Stepanovich was a plump, middle-aged man who seemed almost fat by the standards of the city. He had a taste for flamboyant clothes (fur hats, walking sticks, boutonierres), and in his round, leathery face there was something that reminded me of an Indian chief or Oriental potentate. Everything he did had a certain flair to it, even the way he smoked cigarettes—holding them tightly between his thumb and index finger, inhaling the smoke with an elegant, upside-down nonchalance, and then releasing it through his bulky nostrils like steam from a boiling kettle. It was often difficult to follow him in conversation, however, and as I got to know him better, I learned to expect a good deal of confusion whenever Boris Stepanovich opened his mouth. He was fond of obscure pronouncements and elliptical allusions, and he embellished simple remarks with such ornate imagery that you soon got lost trying to understand him. Boris had an aversion to being pinned down, and he used language as an instrument of locomotion—constantly on the move, darting and feinting, circling, disappearing, suddenly appearing again in a different spot. At one time or another, he told me so many stories about himself, presented so many conflicting accounts of his life, that I gave up trying to believe anything. One day, he would assure me that he had been born in the city and had lived there all his life. The next day, as if having forgotten his previous story, he would tell me that he had been born in Paris and was the oldest son of Russian émigrés. Then, shifting course yet again, he would confess to me that Boris Stepanovich was not his real name. Owing to some unpleasant difficulties with the Turkish police in his youth, he had taken on another identity. Since then, he had changed his name so many times that he could no longer remember what his real name was. No matter, he said. A man must live from moment to moment, and who cares what you were last month if you know who you are today? Originally, he said, he had been an Algonquin Indian, but after his father died, his mother had married a Russian count. He himself had never married, or else he had been married three times—depending on which version served his purpose at the moment. Whenever Boris Stepanovich launched into one of his personal histories, it was always to prove some point or other—as if by resorting to his own experience he could claim final authority on any given subject. For that reason he had also held every imaginable job, from the humblest manual work to the most exalted executive position. He had been a dishwasher, a juggler, a car salesman, a literature professor, a pickpocket, a real estate broker, a newspaper editor, and the manager of a large department store that specialized in women’s fashions. I am no doubt forgetting others, but you begin to get the idea. Boris Stepanovich never really expected you to believe what he said, but at the same time he did not treat his inventions as lies. They were part of an almost conscious plan to concoct a more pleasant world for himself—a world that could shift according to his whims, that was not subject to the same laws and bleak necessities that dragged down all the rest of us. If this did not make him a realist in the strict sense of the word, he was not one to delude himself either. Boris Stepanovich was not quite the conniving blowhard he appeared to be, and underneath his bluff and heartiness there was always a hint of something else—an acumen, perhaps, a sense of some deeper understanding. I would not go so far as to say that he was a good person (not in the sense that Isabel and Victoria were good), but Boris had his own set of rules and he stuck to them. Unlike everyone else I had met here, he managed to float above his circumstances. Starvation, murder, the worst forms of cruelty—he walked right by them, even through them, and yet always appeared unscathed. It was as though he had imagined every possibility in advance, and therefore he was never surprised by what happened. Inherent in this attitude was a pessimism so deep, so devastating, so fully in tune with the facts, that it actually made him cheerful.

  Once or twice a week, Victoria would ask me to accompany Boris Stepanovich on his rounds through the city—his “buy-sell expeditions,” as he called them. It’s not that I was able to help him very
much, but I was always happy for the chance to leave my work, even if only for a few hours. Victoria understood that, I think, and she was careful not to push me too hard. My mood remained low, and for the most part I continued to be in a fragile state of mind—easily upset, grumpy and uncommunicative for no apparent reason. Boris Stepanovich was probably good medicine for me, and I began looking forward to our little excursions as a break from the monotony of my thoughts.

  I was never a party to Boris’s buying trips (where he found the food for Woburn House and how he managed to locate the things we ordered from him), but I often observed him as he went about the business of selling the objects that Victoria had chosen to liquidate. He took a ten percent cut from these deals, but to watch him in action you would have thought he was working entirely for himself. Boris made it a rule never to go to the same Resurrection Agent more than once a month. As a consequence, we ranged widely over the city, setting off in a new direction each time, often wandering into territories I had never seen before. Boris had once owned a car—a Stutz Bearcat, he claimed—but the condition of the streets had become too undependable for him, and he now did all his traveling on foot. Tucking the object that Victoria had given him under his arm, he would improvise routes as we walked along, always making certain to avoid the crowds. He would take me through back alleys and deserted paths, stepping neatly over the gutted pavement, navigating the numerous hazards and pitfalls, swerving now to his left, now to his right, not once breaking the rhythm of his step. He moved with surprising agility for a man of his girth, and I often had trouble keeping pace with him. Humming songs to himself, rattling on about one thing or another, Boris would dance along with nervous good humor as I trotted on behind. He seemed to know all the Resurrection Agents, and each one called forth a different routine from him: bursting through the door with open arms on some, slinking in quietly on others. Each personality had its vulnerable spot, and Boris always worked his pitch to the heart of it. If an agent had a weakness for flattery, Boris would flatter him; if an agent was fond of the color blue, Boris would give him something blue. Some had a preference for decorous behavior, others liked to play at being chums, still others were all business. Boris indulged them all, lying through his teeth without the slightest twinge of conscience. But that was part of the game, and not for a moment did Boris ever think it was not a game. His stories were preposterous, but he invented them so quickly, came up with such elaborate details, kept talking with an air of such conviction, that it was hard not to find yourself getting sucked in. “My dear good man,” he would say, for example. “Take a careful look at this teacup. Hold it in your hand, if you wish. Close your eyes, put it to your lips, and imagine yourself drinking tea from it—just as I did thirty-one years ago, in the drawing rooms of Countess Oblomov. I was young back in those days, a student of literature at the university, and thin, if you can believe it, thin and handsome, with a beautiful head of curly hair. The Countess was the most ravishing woman in Minsk, a young widow of supernatural charms. The Count, scion of the great Oblomov fortune, had been killed in a duel—an affair of honor, which I need not discuss here—and you can imagine the effect this had on the men of her circle. Her suitors became legion; her salons were the envy of all Minsk. Such a woman, my friend, the image of her beauty has never left me: the brilliant red hair; the white, heaving bosom; the eyes flashing with wit—and yes, an ever-so-elusive hint of wickedness. It was enough to drive one mad. We vied with one another for her attention, we worshiped her, we wrote poetry to her, we were all deliriously in love. And yet it was I, the young Boris Stepanovich, it was I who succeeded in winning the favors of this singular temptress. I tell you this in all modesty. If you had been able to see me then, you would understand how this was possible. There were trysts in remote corners of the city, late-night meetings, secret visits to my garret (she would travel through the streets in disguise), and that long, rapturous summer I spent as a guest on her country estate. The Countess overwhelmed me with her generosity—not only of her person, which would have been enough, I assure you, more than enough!—but of the gifts she brought with her, the endless kindnesses she bestowed on me. A leather-bound set of Pushkin. A silver samovar. A gold watch. So many things, I could never list them all. Among them was an exquisite tea set that had once belonged to a member of the French court (the duc de Fântomas, I believe), which I used only when she came to visit me, hoarding it for those times when passion flung her across the snow-driven streets of Minsk and into my arms. Alas, time has been cruel. The set has suffered the fate of the years: saucers have cracked, cups have broken, a world has been lost. And yet, for all that, a single remnant has survived, a final link to the past. Treat it gently, my friend. You are holding my memories in your hand.”

  The trick, I think, was his ability to make inert things come to life. Boris Stepanovich steered the Resurrection men away from the objects themselves, coaxing them into a realm where the thing for sale was no longer the teacup but the Countess Oblomov herself. It didn’t matter whether these stories were true or not. Once Boris’s voice began working, it was enough to muddle the issue entirely. That voice was probably his greatest weapon. He possessed a superb range of modulations and timbres, and in his speeches he was always looping back and forth between hard sounds and soft, allowing the words to rise and fall as they poured out in a dense, intricately fashioned barrage of syllables. Boris had a weakness for hackneyed phrases and literary sentiments, but for all the deadness of the language, the stories were remarkably vivid. Delivery meant everything, and Boris did not hesitate to use even the lowest tricks. If necessary, he would cry real tears. If the situation called for it, he would smash an object on the floor. Once, to prove his faith in a set of fragile-looking glasses, he juggled them in the air for better than five minutes. I was always slightly embarrassed by these performances, but there was no question that they worked. Value is determined by supply and demand, after all, and the demand for precious antiques was hardly very great. Only the rich could afford them—the black market profiteers, the garbage brokers, the Resurrection Agents themselves—and it would have been wrong of Boris to insist on their utility. The whole point was that they were extravagances, things to possess because they functioned as symbols of wealth and power. Hence the stories about the Countess Oblomov and eighteenth-century French dukes. When you bought an antique vase from Boris Stepanovich, you were not just getting a vase, you were getting an entire world to go along with it.

  Boris’s apartment was in a small building on Turquoise Avenue, not more than ten minutes from Woburn House. After completing our business with the Resurrection Agents, we often went back there for a glass of tea. Boris was very fond of tea, and he usually served some kind of pastry to go along with it—scandalous treats from the House of Cakes on Windsor Boulevard: cream puffs, cinnamon buns, chocolate eclairs, all bought at horrific expense. Boris could not resist these minor indulgences, however, and he savored them slowly, his chewing accompanied by a faint musical rumbling in his throat, a steady undercurrent of sound that fell somewhere between laughter and a prolonged sigh. I took pleasure in these teas as well, but less for the food than for Boris’s insistence on sharing it with me. My young widow friend is too wan, he would say. We must put more flesh on her bones, bring the bloom back to her cheeks, the bloom in the eyes of Miss Anna Blume herself. It was hard for me not to enjoy such treatment, and there were times when I sensed that all of Boris’s ebullience was no more than a charade he performed for my benefit. One by one, he took on the roles of clown and scoundrel and philosopher, but the better I got to know him, the more I saw them as aspects of a single personality—marshaling its various weapons in an effort to bring me back to life. We became dear friends, and I owe Boris a debt for his compassion, for the devious and persistent attack he launched on the strongholds of my sadness.

  The apartment was a shabby, three-room affair, cluttered with years of accumulation throughout—crockery, clothes, suitcases, blankets, rugs, every
manner of bric-a-brac. Immediately upon returning home, Boris would withdraw to his bedroom and change out of his suit, carefully hanging it in the closet and then putting on a pair of old pants, slippers, and his bathrobe. This last item was a rather fantastical souvenir from the bygone days—a full-length concoction made of red velvet, with an ermine collar and cuffs, completely ragged by now, with moth holes in the sleeves and frayed material all along the back—but Boris wore it with his customary panache. After slicking back the strands of his thinning hair and dousing his neck with cologne, he would come striding out into the cramped and dusty living room to prepare the tea.

  For the most part, he regaled me with stories of his life, but there were other times when we would look at various things in the room and talk about them—the boxes of curios, the bizarre little treasures, the detritus of a thousand buy-sell expeditions. Boris was particularly proud of his hat collection, which he stored in a large wooden trunk by the window. I don’t know how many he had in there, but two or three dozen I would think, perhaps more. Sometimes, he would pick out a couple of them for us to wear while we were having our tea. This game amused him very much, and I admit that I enjoyed it myself, although I would be hard-pressed to explain why. There were cowboy hats and derbies, fezes and pith helmets, mortarboards and berets—every kind of headgear you could imagine. Whenever I asked Boris why he collected them, he would give me a different answer. Once, he said that wearing hats was part of his religion. Another time, he explained that each of his hats had once belonged to a relative and that he wore them in order to commune with the souls of his dead ancestors. By putting on a hat, he acquired the spiritual qualities of its former owner, he said. True enough, he had given each of his hats a name, but I took those more as projections of his private feelings about the hats than as representing people who had actually lived. The fez, for example, was Uncle Abduhl. The derby was Sir Charles. The mortarboard was Professor Solomon. On still another occasion, however, when I brought up the subject again, Boris explained that he liked to wear hats because they kept his thoughts from flying out of his head. If we both wore them while we drank our tea, then we were bound to have more intelligent and stimulating conversations. “Le chapeau influence le cerveau,” he said, lapsing into French. “Si on protège la tête, la pensée n’est plus bête.”