by Paul Auster
Mr. Walker, he said, looking up from his magazine and gesturing for me to join him at his table. Just the man I’ve been looking for.
I could have invented an excuse and told him I was late for another appointment, but I didn’t. That was the other half of the complex equation that represented my dealings with Born. Wary as I might have been, I was also fascinated by this peculiar, unreadable person, and the fact that he seemed genuinely glad to have stumbled into me stoked the fires of my vanity—that invisible cauldron of self-regard and ambition that simmers and burns in each one of us. Whatever reservations I had about him, whatever doubts I harbored about his dubious character, I couldn’t stop myself from wanting him to like me, to think that I was something more than a plodding, run-of-the-mill American undergraduate, to see the promise I hoped I had in me but which I doubted nine out of every ten minutes of my waking life.
Once I had slid into the booth, Born looked at me across the table, disgorged a large puff of smoke from his cigar, and smiled. You made a favorable impression on Margot the other night, he said.
I was impressed by her too, I answered.
You might have noticed that she doesn’t say much.
Her English isn’t terribly good. It’s hard to express yourself in a language that gives you trouble.
Her French is perfectly fluent, but she doesn’t say much in French either.
Well, words aren’t everything.
A strange comment from a man who fancies himself a writer.
I’m talking about Margot—
Yes, Margot. Exactly. Which brings me to my point. A woman prone to long silences, but she talked a blue streak on our way home from the party Saturday night.
Interesting, I said, not certain where the conversation was going. And what loosened her tongue?
You, my boy. She’s taken a real liking to you, but you should also know that she’s extremely worried.
Worried? Why on earth should she be worried? She doesn’t even know me.
Perhaps not, but she’s gotten it into her head that your future is at risk.
Everyone’s future is at risk. Especially American males in their late teens and early twenties, as you well know. But as long as I don’t flunk out of school, the draft can’t touch me until after I graduate. I wouldn’t want to bet on it, but it’s possible the war will be over by then.
Don’t bet on it, Mr. Walker. This little skirmish is going to drag on for years.
I lit up a Chesterfield and nodded. For once I agree with you, I said.
Anyway, Margot wasn’t talking about Vietnam. Yes, you might land in jail—or come home in a box two or three years from now—but she wasn’t thinking about the war. She believes you’re too good for this world, and because of that, the world will eventually crush you.
I don’t follow her reasoning.
She thinks you need help. Margot might not possess the quickest brain in the Western world, but she meets a boy who says he’s a poet, and the first word that comes to her is starvation.
That’s absurd. She has no idea what she’s talking about.
Forgive me for contradicting you, but when I asked you at the party what your plans were, you said you didn’t have any. Other than your nebulous ambition to write poetry, of course. How much do poets earn, Mr. Walker?
Most of the time nothing. If you get lucky, every now and then someone might throw you a few pennies.
Sounds like starvation to me.
I never said I planned to make my living as a writer. I’ll have to find a job.
Such as?
It’s difficult to say. I could work for a publishing house or a magazine. I could translate books. I could write articles and reviews. One of those things, or else several of them in combination. It’s too early to know, and until I’m out in the world, there’s no point in losing any sleep over it, is there?
Like it or not, you’re in the world now, and the sooner you learn how to fend for yourself, the better off you’ll be.
Why this sudden concern? We’ve only just met, and why should you care about what happens to me?
Because Margot asked me to help you, and since she rarely asks me for anything, I feel honor-bound to obey her wishes.
Tell her thank you, but there’s no need for you to put yourself out. I can get by on my own.
Stubborn, aren’t you? Born said, resting his nearly spent cigar on the rim of the ashtray and then leaning forward until his face was just a few inches from mine. If I offered you a job, are you telling me you’d turn it down?
It depends on what the job is.
That remains to be seen. I have several ideas, but I haven’t made a decision yet. Maybe you can help me.
I’m not sure I understand.
My father died ten months ago, and it appears I’ve inherited a considerable amount of money. Not enough to buy a château or an airline company, but enough to make a small difference in the world. I could engage you to write my biography, of course, but I think it’s a little too soon for that. I’m still only thirty-six, and I find it unseemly to talk about a man’s life before he gets to fifty. What, then? I’ve considered starting a publishing house, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for all the long-range planning that would entail. A magazine, on the other hand, strikes me as much more fun. A monthly, or perhaps a quarterly, but something fresh and daring, a publication that would stir people up and cause controversy with every issue. What do you think of that, Mr. Walker? Would working on a magazine be of any interest to you?
Of course it would. The only question is: why me? You’re going back to France in a couple of months, so I assume you’re talking about a French magazine. My French isn’t bad, but it isn’t good enough for what you’d need. And besides, I go to college here in New York. I can’t just pick up and move.
Who said anything about moving? Who said anything about a French magazine? If I had a good American staff to run things here, I could pop over every once in a while to check up on them, but essentially I’d stay out of it. I have no interest in directing a magazine myself. I have my own work, my own career, and I wouldn’t have the time for it. My sole responsibility would be to put up the money—and then hope to turn a profit.
You’re a political scientist, and I’m a literature student. If you’re thinking of starting a political magazine, then count me out. We’re on opposite sides of the fence, and if I tried to work for you, it would turn into a fiasco. But if you’re talking about a literary magazine, then yes, I’d be very interested.
Just because I teach international relations and write about government and public policy doesn’t mean I’m a philistine. I care about art as much as you do, Mr. Walker, and I wouldn’t ask you to work on a magazine if it wasn’t a literary magazine.
How do you know I can handle it?
I don’t. But I have a hunch.
It doesn’t make any sense. Here you are offering me a job and you haven’t read a word I’ve written.
Not so. Just this morning I read four of your poems in the most recent number of the Columbia Review and six of your articles in the student paper. The piece on Melville was particularly good, I thought, and I was moved by your little poem about the graveyard. How many more skies above me / Until this one vanishes as well? Impressive.
I’m glad you think so. Even more impressive is that you acted so quickly.
That’s the way I am. Life is too short for dawdling.
My third-grade teacher used to tell us the same thing—with exactly those words.
A wonderful place, this America of yours. You’ve had an excellent education, Mr. Walker.
Born laughed at the inanity of his remark, took a sip of beer, and then leaned back to ponder the idea he had set in motion.
What I want you to do, he finally said, is draw up a plan, a prospectus. Tell me about the work that would appear in the magazine, the length of each issue, the cover art, the design, the frequency of publication, what name you’d want to give it, and so on. Leave
it at my office when you’re finished. I’ll look it over, and if I like your ideas, we’ll be in business.
Young as I might have been, I had enough understanding of the world to realize that Born could have been playing me for a dupe. How often did you wander into a bar, bump into a man you had met only once, and walk out with the chance to start a magazine—especially when the you in question was a twenty-year-old nothing who had yet to prove himself on any front? It was too outlandish to be believed. In all likelihood, Born had raised my hopes only in order to crush them, and I was fully expecting him to toss my prospectus into the garbage and tell me he wasn’t interested. Still, on the off chance that he meant what he’d said, that he was honestly intending to keep his word, I felt I should give it a try. What did I have to lose? A day of thinking and writing at the most, and if Born wound up rejecting my proposal, then so be it.
Bracing myself against disappointment, I set to work that very night. Beyond listing half a dozen potential names for the magazine, however, I didn’t make much headway. Not because I was confused, and not because I wasn’t full of ideas, but for the simple reason that I had neglected to ask Born how much money he was willing to put into the project. Everything hinged on the size of his investment, and until I knew what his intentions were, how could I discuss any of the myriad points he had raised that afternoon: the quality of the paper, the length and frequency of the issues, the binding, the possible inclusion of art, and how much (if anything) he was prepared to pay the contributors? Literary magazines came in numerous shapes and guises, after all, from the mimeographed, stapled underground publications edited by young poets in the East Village to the stolid academic quarterlies to more commercial enterprises like the Evergreen Review to the sumptuous objets backed by well-heeled angels who lost thousands with every issue. I would have to talk to Born again, I realized, and so instead of drawing up a prospectus, I wrote him a letter explaining my problem. It was such a sad, pathetic document—We have to talk about money—that I decided to include something else in the envelope, just to convince him that I wasn’t the out-and-out dullard I appeared to be. After our brief exchange about Bertran de Born on Saturday night, I thought it might amuse him to read one of the more savage works by the twelfth-century poet. I happened to own a paperback anthology of the troubadours—in English only—and my initial idea was simply to type up one of the poems from the book. When I began reading through the translation, however, it struck me as clumsy and inept, a rendering that failed to do justice to the strange and ugly power of the poem, and even though I didn’t know a word of Provençal, I figured I could turn out something better working from a French translation. The next morning, I found what I was looking for in Butler Library: an edition of the complete de Born, with the original Provençal on the left and literal prose versions in French on the right. It took me several hours to complete the job (if I’m not mistaken, I missed a class because of it), and this is what I came up with:
I love the jubilance of springtime
When leaves and flowers burgeon forth,
And I exult in the mirth of bird songs
Resounding through the woods;
And I relish seeing the meadows
Adorned with tents and pavilions;
And great is my happiness
When the fields are packed
With armored knights and horses.
And I thrill at the sight of scouts
Forcing men and women to flee with their belongings;
And gladness fills me when they are chased
By a dense throng of armed men;
And my heart soars
When I behold mighty castles under siege
As their ramparts crumble and collapse
With troops massed at the edge of the moat
And strong, solid barriers
Hemming in the target on all sides.
And I am likewise overjoyed
When a baron leads the assault,
Mounted on his horse, armed and unafraid,
Thus giving strength to his men
Through his courage and valor.
And once the battle has begun
Each of them should be prepared
To follow him readily,
For no man can be a man
Until he has delivered and received
Blow upon blow.
In the thick of combat we will see
Maces, swords, shields, and many-colored helmets
Split and shattered,
And hordes of vassals striking in all directions
As the horses of the dead and wounded
Wander aimlessly around the field.
And once the fighting starts
Let every well-born man think only of breaking
Heads and arms, for better to be dead
Than alive and defeated.
I tell you that eating, drinking, and sleeping
Give me less pleasure than hearing the shout
Of “Charge!” from both sides, and hearing
Cries of “Help! Help!,” and seeing
The great and the ungreat fall together
On the grass and in the ditches, and seeing
Corpses with the tips of broken, streamered lances
Jutting from their sides.
Barons, better to pawn
Your castles, towns, and cities
Than to give up making war.
Late that afternoon, I slipped the envelope with the letter and the poem under the door of Born’s office at the School of International Affairs. I was expecting an immediate response, but several days went by before he contacted me, and his failure to call left me wondering if the magazine project was indeed just a spur-of-the-moment whim that had already played itself out—or, worse, if he had been offended by the poem, thinking that I was equating him with Bertran de Born and thereby indirectly accusing him of being a warmonger. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. When the telephone rang on Friday, he apologized for his silence, explaining that he had gone to Cambridge to deliver a lecture on Wednesday and hadn’t set foot in his office until twenty minutes ago.
You’re perfectly right, he continued, and I’m perfectly stupid for ignoring the question of money when we spoke the other day. How can you give me a prospectus if you don’t know what the budget is? You must think I’m a moron.
Hardly, I said. I’m the one who feels stupid—for not asking you. But I couldn’t tell how serious you were, and I didn’t want to press.
I’m serious, Mr. Walker. I admit that I have a penchant for telling jokes, but only about small, inconsequential things. I would never lead you along on a matter like this.
I’m happy to know that.
So, in answer to your question about money . . . I’m hoping we’ll do well, of course, but as with every venture of this sort, there’s a large element of risk, and so realistically I have to be prepared to lose every penny of my investment. What it comes down to is the following: How much can I afford to lose? How much of my inheritance can I squander away without causing problems for myself in the future? I’ve given it a good deal of thought since we talked on Monday, and the answer is twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s my limit. The magazine will come out four times a year, and I’ll put up five thousand per issue, plus another five thousand for your annual salary. If we break even at the end of the first year, I’ll fund another year. If we come out in the black, I’ll put the profits into the magazine, and that would keep us going for all or part of a third year. If we lose money, however, then the second year becomes problematical. Say we’re ten thousand dollars in the red. I’ll put up fifteen thousand, and that’s it. Do you understand the principle? I have twenty-five thousand dollars to burn, but I won’t spend a dollar more than that. What do you think? Is it a fair proposition or not?
Extremely fair, and extremely generous. At five thousand dollars an issue, we could put out a first-rate magazine, something to be proud of.
I could dump all the money in you
r lap tomorrow, of course, but that wouldn’t really help you, would it? Margot is worried about your future, and if you can make this magazine work, then your future is settled. You’ll have a decent job with a decent salary, and during your off-hours you can write all the poems you want, vast epic poems about the mysteries of the human heart, short lyric poems about daisies and buttercups, fiery tracts against cruelty and injustice. Unless you land in jail or get your head blown off, of course, but we won’t dwell on those grim possibilities now.
I don’t know how to thank you . . .
Don’t thank me. Thank Margot, your guardian angel.
I hope I see her again soon.
I’m certain you will. As long as your prospectus satisfies me, you’ll be seeing as much of her as you like.
I’ll do my best. But if you’re looking for a magazine that will cause controversy and stir people up, I doubt a literary journal is the answer. I hope you understand that.