by Paul Auster
The strange thing is, I’m not surprised . . .
Did Born ever hit you?
Just once. A slap across the face. A hard, angry slap across the face.
Just once?
Just once. But there’s violence in him. Under all the charm and witty jokes, there’s real anger, real violence. I hate to admit it now, but I think it excited me. Never knowing if I could trust him or not, never knowing what he was going to do next. He only hit me that one time, but he got into a couple of fights while we were together, fights with other men. You’ve seen his temper. You know what he’s like when he’s drunk. I think it goes back to his days in the army, the war, the awful things he did during the war. Torturing prisoners. He once confessed to me that he tortured prisoners in Algeria. He denied it the next day, but I didn’t believe him, even though I pretended to. The first story was the truth, I know it.
What about the knife he carries in his pocket? Didn’t that ever scare you?
I take people as they are, Adam. I don’t ask a lot of questions. If he wanted to carry a knife, I figured that was his business. He said it was a dangerous world and a man had to protect himself. After what happened to you that night in New York, you can’t really argue with him, can you?
My sister has a theory. I don’t know if it’s a good theory, but she thinks Born started talking to me at the party because he felt a sexual attraction. A homoerotic attraction, as she put it. What do you think? Is she on to something or not?
It’s possible. Anything is possible.
Did he ever talk to you about being attracted to men?
No. But that’s neither here nor there. I can’t tell you what he did before I started living with him. I can’t even account for all the things he did while we were together. Who knows what a person’s secret desires are? Unless the person acts on them or talks about them, you don’t have a clue. The only thing I can talk about is what I saw with my own eyes—and what I saw was this. Very early in our relationship, Rudolf and I had a threesome with another man. It was my idea. Rudolf went along with it to please me, to prove that he was willing to do anything I asked him to do. The other man was an old friend of mine, someone I’d slept with before, an extremely good-looking guy. If Rudolf was attracted to this person, he would have kissed him, wouldn’t he? He would have gone for his cock and sucked him off. But he didn’t do those things. He liked watching me with François, I could see he was very hot when he saw François’s cock go into me, but he didn’t touch him in a sexual way. Does that prove anything? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that when we saw you at the party in New York, I told Rudolf you were one of the most beautiful boys I had ever seen. He agreed with me. He said you looked like a tormented Adonis, Lord Byron on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Does that mean he was attracted to you? Maybe yes, maybe no. You’re a special case, Adam, and what makes you special is that you have no idea of the effect you have on other people. It seems perfectly plausible to me that a straight man could get a crush on you. Maybe that’s what happened to Rudolf. But I can’t know for certain, because even if he did fall for you, he never said a word about it.
He’s getting married. Did you know that? At least he said he was the last time I saw him.
Yes, I know. I know all about it. That was my exit visa out of the affair. Good-bye to the double-crossing slut Margot, hello to the angelic Hélène Juin.
You sound bitter . . .
No, not bitter. Confused. I know her, you see, I’ve known her for a long time, and it just doesn’t make any sense to me. Hélène must be five or six years older than Rudolf, she has an eighteen-year-old daughter, and all I can say about her is that she’s very dull, very ordinary, very proper. A nice person, of course, a nice, hardworking bourgeois person with a tragic story, but I don’t understand what he sees in her. Crazy Rudolf will be bored out of his mind.
He said he loved her.
He probably does. But that doesn’t mean he should marry her.
Tragic story. Something to do with her first husband, right? I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about.
Juin is a close friend of Rudolf’s. Six or seven years ago, he was in a bad car accident. Crushed to pieces, fractured skull, all sorts of internal injuries, but somehow he managed to survive. Or nearly survive. He’s been in a coma ever since, more or less brain-dead, on life support in a hospital. For years, Hélène refused to give up hope, but his condition never improved, it never will improve, and finally her friends and family persuaded her to file for a divorce. When it goes through next spring, she’ll be free to marry again. Good for her, but the last person I thought she’d go for was Rudolf. I’ve sat through at least a dozen dinners with the two of them, and I never sensed any strong feeling on either side. Friendship, yes, but no . . . no . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?
Sparks.
That’s it. No sparks.
You still miss him, don’t you?
Not anymore. Not after what you’ve told me today.
But you did.
I did. I didn’t want to, but I did.
The man is a maniac, you know.
True. But what law says you can’t love a maniac?
They both fall silent after that, at a loss for more words, more thoughts. Margot looks at her watch, and Walker imagines she is about to tell him she’s late for another appointment, that she has to run. Instead, she asks him if he has plans for dinner tonight, and if he doesn’t, would he care to go to a restaurant with her? She knows a good place on the rue des Grands Augustins and will gladly treat him if he is low on money. Walker wants to tell her that it won’t be possible, that he doesn’t think he can see her anymore, that he believes they should put a stop to their friendship, but he can’t bring himself to say the words. He is too lonely to refuse her offer, too weak-minded to turn his back on the only person he knows in Paris. Yes, he says, he would love to have dinner with her, but it’s still early, not even six o’clock, and what will they do in the meantime? Anything you want, Margot says, meaning, quite literally, anything he wants, and because the thing he wants most is to crawl into bed with her, he suggests they walk over to his hotel on the rue Mazarine so he can show her his ridiculously ugly hellhole of a room. Since thoughts of sex are never far from Margot’s mind, she quickly understands Walker’s intentions, then goes on to demonstrate that understanding by giving him a little smile.
I wasn’t very nice to you in New York, was I? she says.
You were extremely nice to me. At least for a while. But then, no, not very nice.
I’m sorry I hurt you. It was a bad time for me. I didn’t know what I was doing, and then, all of a sudden, the only thing I wanted was to get out of New York. Try not to hold it against me.
I don’t. I admit that I felt angry for a few weeks, but it didn’t last longer than that. I stopped blaming you a long time ago.
We can be friends now, can’t we?
I hope so.
Nothing too intense, mind you. Not every minute, not every day. I’m not ready for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for that again. But we can take care of each other a little bit. It might be good for both of us.
As they make their way to the hotel, Walker senses that the woman beside him is no longer the same Margot he met in New York last spring. He was right to think she would be somewhat different in her own language, in her own city, in the wake of her split-up with Born, and after the conversation in the café, he can only conclude that she is more forthright, more articulate, more vulnerable than he previously imagined. Still, even as he anticipates their imminent arrival at the hotel—the mounting of the circular stairs, the key entering the lock of his door, the shedding of their clothes, the sight of Margot’s small, naked body, the feel of her body against his—he wonders if he hasn’t committed a colossal mistake.
At first, things do not go well. Margot says nothing about his room, because she is either too polite or too indifferent to bother mentioning it, but Walker can’t
help seeing it through her eyes, and he is overcome with embarrassment, appalled at himself for having dragged her up to such a tawdry, dismal place. It puts him in a foul mood, and when the two of them sit down on the bed and begin to kiss, he feels absent, alarmingly disengaged. Margot pulls back and asks if anything is wrong. Don’t get weird on me, Adam, she says. This is supposed to be fun, remember?
He can’t tell her that he is thinking about Gwyn, that the moment their mouths touched he was seized by a memory of the last time his mouth touched the mouth of his sister, and as he struggles to kiss Margot now, the only thought in his mind is that he will never be able to hold his sister in this way again.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, he says. I feel so sad . . . so bloody fucking sad.
Maybe I should go, Margot says, gently patting his back. Sex isn’t compulsory, after all. We can try again another day.
No, don’t leave. I don’t want you to leave. Just give me a little time. I’ll be all right, I promise.
Margot gives him the time, and eventually he begins to emerge from his melancholic funk, not fully perhaps, but enough to feel aroused when she slides out of her dress and he puts his arms around her bare skin, enough to make love to her, enough to make love to her twice, and in the pause between couplings, as they drink from the bottle of red wine he carried up to his room earlier that day, Margot further arouses him with graphic stories about her sexual encounters with other women, her passion for touching and kissing large breasts (because hers are so small), for licking and fondling women’s crotches, for thrusting her tongue deep into women’s assholes, and while Walker can’t tell if these are true stories or simply a ploy to get him hard again for their second go at it, he enjoys listening to this dirty talk, just as he enjoyed listening to Gwyn’s dirty talk in the apartment on West 107th Street. He wonders if words aren’t an essential element of sex, if talking isn’t finally a more subtle form of touching, and if the images dancing in our heads aren’t just as important as the bodies we hold in our arms. Margot tells him that sex is the one thing in life that counts for her, that if she couldn’t have sex she would probably kill herself to escape the boredom and monotony of being trapped inside her own skin. Walker doesn’t say anything, but as he comes into her for the second time, he realizes that he shares her opinion. He is mad for sex. Even in the grip of the most crushing despair, he is mad for sex. Sex is the lord and the redeemer, the only salvation on earth.
They never make it to the restaurant. After finishing off the bottle of wine, they both fall asleep and forget about dinner. Early the next morning, just before dawn, Walker opens his eyes and discovers that he is alone in bed. A piece of paper is lying on the pillow next to him, a note from Margot: Sorry. The bed was too uncomfortable. Call me next week.
He asks himself if he will have the courage to call. Then, more to the point, he asks himself if he will have the courage not to call, if he can resist seeing her again.
Two days later, he is sitting at an outdoor café on the place Saint-André des Arts, nursing a glass of beer and writing in a small notebook. It is six o’clock in the evening, the end of another workday, and now that Walker has begun to settle into the rhythms of Paris, he understands that this is probably the city’s most inspiriting hour, the transition from work to home, the streets thronged with men and women rushing back to their families, to their friends, to their solitary lives, and he enjoys being outside among them, encircled by the vast collective exhale filling the air. He has just written a brief letter to his parents and a longer letter to Gwyn, and now he is trying to write something cogent about the work of George Oppen, a contemporary American poet whom he greatly admires. He copies out these lines from Oppen’s most recent book, This In Which:
Impossible to doubt the world: it can be seen
And because it is irrevocable
It cannot be understood, and I believe that fact is lethal.
He is about to jot down some comments on this passage, but before he can proceed a shadow falls across the page of the notebook. He glances up, and there, standing directly in front of him, is Rudolf Born. Before Walker can say or do anything, the future husband of Hélène Juin sits down in the empty chair beside him. Walker’s pulse begins to race. He is breathless, speechless. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, he tells himself. If and when they crossed paths, he was the one who was going to spot Born, not the other way around. He was going to be walking down a crowded street, in a position to avert his eyes and escape unnoticed. That was how he always saw it in his head, and now here he is out in the open, defenseless, sitting on his dumb, sorry ass, unable to pretend Born isn’t there, trapped.
The white suit is gone, replaced by a cream-colored jacket, and a silk foulard is hanging around his neck, a blue-and-green patterned affair no doubt worn to bounce off the light blue of his shirt—still and ever the rumpled dandy, Walker thinks, wearing the same sardonic smile as of old.
Well, well, Born says, with false good humor, pronouncing the words in such a way as to emphasize their falseness. We meet again, Walker. What a pleasant surprise.
Walker knows that he is going to have to talk to him, but for the time being he can’t get any words out of his mouth.
I was hoping I’d run into you, Born continues. Paris is such a small city, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Who told you I was here? Walker finally asks. Margot?
Margot? I haven’t talked to Margot in months. I didn’t even know she was in town.
Who was it, then?
You forget that I taught at Columbia. I have Columbia connections, and the head of your program just happens to be a friend of mine. I had dinner with him the other night, and he was the one who told me. He said you were living in some fleabag on the rue Mazarine. Why didn’t you go to Reid Hall? The rooms might not be as big there, but at least they aren’t crawling with bugs.
Walker has no desire to discuss his living arrangements with Born, no interest in wasting his breath on small talk. Ignoring the question, he says: I haven’t forgotten, you know. I still think about it all the time.
Think about what?
What you did to that boy.
I didn’t do anything to him.
Please . . .
One thrust, that was all. You were there. You saw what happened. He was going to shoot us. If I hadn’t attacked first, we both would have been killed.
But the gun wasn’t loaded.
We didn’t know that, did we? He said he was going to shoot, and when someone points a gun at me and says he’s going to shoot, I take him at his word.
What about the park? Over twelve more stab wounds after the first one. Why on earth did you do that?
I didn’t. I know you don’t believe me, but I had nothing to do with that. Yes, I carried him into the park after you left, but by the time I got there he was already dead. Why would I go on stabbing someone after he was dead? All I wanted was to get out of there as quickly as I could.
Then who did it?
I have no idea. A sick person. A goblin of the night. New York is a sinister place, after all. It could have been anyone.
I talked to the police, you know. In spite of your not so subtle warning.
I figured you would. That’s why I left in such a hurry.
If you were innocent, why not stay and fight it out in court?
For what? They would have acquitted me in the end, and I couldn’t afford to lose all the time it would have taken to defend myself. The kid deserved to die. The kid died. That’s all there is to it.
No remorse, then.
No remorse. None whatsoever. I don’t even blame you for turning against me and going to the police. You did what you thought was right. Mistakenly, of course, but that’s your problem, not mine. I saved your life, Adam. Remember that. If the gun had been loaded, you’d still be thanking me for what I did. The fact that it wasn’t loaded doesn’t really change anything, does it? As long as we thought it was loaded, it was loaded.<
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Walker is willing to concede the point, but there is still the question of the park, the question of how and when the boy died, and he has no doubt that Born’s version of events is untrue—for the simple reason that it could not have happened so quickly. A single stab wound to the stomach can lead to death, but inevitably it is a slow and protracted death, which means that Williams must have been alive when Born reached the park, and therefore the additional wounds that ended up killing the boy were inflicted by Born himself. Nothing else makes sense. Why would another person go to the trouble of stabbing a dead teenager more than a dozen times? If Williams was still breathing when Born left the park, it might be possible to build an argument for a second attacker—far-fetched but possible—but only if the object was to steal the boy’s money, and the police told Walker back in the spring that no robbery had taken place. The kid’s wallet was found in his pocket, and sixteen untouched dollars were inside the wallet, which eliminates theft as a motive for the crime. Why would I go on stabbing someone after he was dead? Because he wasn’t dead, and you kept on plunging your knife into him until you made sure he was, and then, even after you finished the job, you continued stabbing him because you were engulfed by rage, because you were out of your mind and enjoyed what you were doing.
I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Walker says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out some coins to pay for his beer. I have to go.
Suit yourself, Born replies. I was hoping we could bury the hatchet and become friends again. It even occurred to me that you might enjoy meeting the daughter of my future wife. Cécile is a delightful, intelligent girl of eighteen—a literature student, an excellent pianist, just the kind of person who would interest you.
No thanks, Walker says, standing up from the table. I don’t need you to play matchmaker for me. You already did that once, remember?
Well, if you ever change your mind, give me a call. I’d be happy to introduce her to you.
At that point, just as Walker is turning to go, Born reaches into the breast pocket of his cream-colored blazer and withdraws a business card with his address and telephone number on it. Here, he says, handing the card to Walker. All my coordinates. Just in case.