by Paul Auster
Still, even as he sits down in the chair across from her, Walker goes on apologizing, inventing some far-fetched excuse about standing in line at the post office for more than an hour to make a long-distance call to New York, but Cécile shrugs it off, telling him not to worry, there’s no problem, he doesn’t have to explain anything. Then, holding up her left wrist, she taps her watch with her right index finger and says: We have a rule in Paris. Whenever people arrange to get together, the first one to arrive gives the other person an extra half hour to show up—no questions asked. It’s four twenty-five now. By my reckoning, that makes you five minutes early.
Well, Walker says, impressed by the daffiness of this logic, then I’m rattling on for nothing, aren’t I?
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.
Walker orders a coffee, his sixth or seventh of the day, and then, with a characteristic downward tug of her mouth, Cécile points to the book she was reading when he came in—a small green hardcover volume with no dust jacket, apparently quite old, a frayed and battered object that looks like something rescued from a trash bin.
I found it, she says, unable to control her mouth anymore as it breaks into a full-fledged smile. Lycophron in English. The Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press. Nineteen twenty-one. With a translation by—(she opens the book to the title page)—A. W. Mair, professor of Greek, Edinburgh University.
That was fast, Walker says. How in the world did you manage to find it?
Sorry. I can’t tell you.
Oh? And why not?
It’s a secret. Maybe I’ll tell you when you give it back to me, but not before then.
You mean I can borrow it?
Of course. You can keep it for as long as you like.
And what about the translation? Have you looked at it?
My English isn’t very good, but it strikes me as stuffy and pedantic, rather old-school, I’m afraid. Worse yet, it’s a literal prose translation, so all the poetry is missing. But at least it gives you a sense of the thing—and why it’s given me so much trouble.
Cécile opens the book to the second page of the poem and points to line thirty-one, where Cassandra’s monologue begins. She says to Walker: Why not read some of it out loud to me? Then you can judge for yourself.
Walker takes the book from her and immediately plunges in: Alas! hapless nurse of mine burnt even aforetime by the warlike pineships of the lion that was begotten in three evenings, whom of old Triton’s hound of jagged teeth devoured with his jaws. But he, a living carver of the monster’s liver, seething in steam of cauldron on a flameless hearth, shed to ground the bristles of his head; he the slayer of his children, the destroyer of my fatherland; who smote his second mother invulnerable with grievous shaft upon the breast; who, too, in the midst of the racecourse seized in his arms the body of his wrestler sire beside the steep hill of Cronus, where is the horse-affrighting tomb of earth-born Ischenus; who also slew the fierce hound that watched the narrow straits of the Ausonian sea, fishing over her cave, the bull-slaying lioness whom her father restored again to life, burning her flesh with brands; she who feared not Leptynis, the goddess of the underworld . . .
Walker puts down the book and smiles. This is insane, he says. I’m absolutely lost.
Yes, it’s a terrible translation, Cécile says. Even I can hear that.
It’s not just the translation. I have no idea what’s going on.
That’s because Lycophron is so indirect. Lycophron the obscure. There’s a reason why they called him that.
Still . . .
You have to know the references. The nurse is a woman named Ilios, for example, and the lion is Heracles. Laomedon promised to pay Poseidon and Apollo for building the walls of Troy, but after he reneged, a sea monster appeared—Triton’s hound—to devour his daughter, Hesione. Heracles climbed into the monster’s belly and cut it to bits. Laomedon said he would reward Heracles for killing the monster by giving him the horses of Tros, but again he broke his word, and the angry Heracles punished him by burning down the city of Troy. That’s the background of the first few lines. If you don’t know the references, you’re bound to be lost.
It’s like trying to translate Finnegans Wake into Mandarin.
I know. That’s why I’m so sick of it. Summer vacation ends next week, but my summer project is already kaput.
You’re giving up?
When I came home from dinner last night, I read over my translation again and dumped it in the garbage. It was dreadful, positively dreadful.
You shouldn’t have done that. I was looking forward to reading it.
Too embarrassing.
But you promised. That’s why we’re sitting here now—because you were going to show me your translation.
That was the original idea, but then I changed the plan.
Changed it to what?
To giving you this book. At least I’ve accomplished something today.
I don’t think I want it anymore. The book belongs to you. You should hold on to it, as a keepsake from your summer of struggle.
But I don’t want it either. Just looking at it makes me ill.
What should we do with it, then?
I don’t know. Give it to someone else.
We’re in France, remember? What French person in his right mind would be interested in a bad English translation of an impenetrable Greek poem?
Good point. Why don’t we just throw it away?
Too harsh. Books should be treated with respect, even the ones that make us ill.
Then we’ll leave it behind. Right here on this bench. An anonymous gift to an unknown stranger.
Perfect. And once we pay the bill and walk out of this café, we’ll never talk about Lycophron again.
So begins Walker’s friendship with Cécile Juin. In many ways, he finds her a thoroughly impossible creature. She fidgets and trembles, she bites her nails, she doesn’t smoke or drink, she is a militant vegetarian, she puts too many demands on herself (e.g., the destroyed translation), and at times she is shockingly immature (e.g., the silly business about not telling him where she found the book, her girlish fixation on secrets). On the other hand, she is without question one of the most brilliant people he has ever met. Her mind is a wondrous instrument, and she can think circles around him on any topic imaginable, dazzling him with her knowledge of literature and art, music and history, politics and science. Nor is she simply a memory machine, one of those prototypical top students with a capacity for ingesting vast amounts of unfiltered information. She is sensitive and acute, her opinions are unfailingly original, and, shy and nervous as she is, she stubbornly holds her ground in any argument. For six straight days, Walker meets her for lunch at the student cafeteria on the rue Mazet. They spend the afternoons together wandering in and out of bookstores, going to movies, visiting art galleries, sitting on benches along the Seine. He is relieved that he is not physically attracted to her, that he can confine his thoughts about sex to Margot (who spends one night with him in his hotel during this period) and to the absent Gwyn, who is never far from him. In a word, despite Cécile’s maddening idiosyncrasies, he enjoys the company of her mind more than enough to forgo any thoughts about her body, and he gladly keeps his hands to himself.
Proceeding cautiously, he does not ask her any direct questions about Born. He wants to know what she thinks of him, wants to know how she feels about her mother’s impending marriage to this old family friend, but there is ample time in front of him, the divorce will not go through until the spring, and he prefers to wait until their friendship has firmly taken root before delving into such private matters. Nevertheless, her silence is instructive, he believes, for if she were especially fond of Born, or if she were enthusiastic about the marriage, she would inevitably talk about those things every now and then, but Cécile says nothing, and therefore he concludes that she has misgivings about her mother’s decision. Perhaps she looks on it as a betrayal of her father, he thinks, but
that is far too delicate a subject for him to bring up with her, and until Cécile mentions it herself, he will continue to pretend he knows nothing about the man in the hospital, the all but dead father who will never wake again.
On the fifth day of their daily rambles, Cécile tells him that her mother would like to know if he is free to come to their apartment for dinner the following night, the last night before the new term at the lycée begins. Walker’s first impulse is to decline the invitation, since he fears Born will be included in the company, but it turns out that Born is in London on family business (family business?) and that it will just be the three of them, Hélène, Cécile, and himself. Of course, he says, he will be happy to go to such a small dinner. Large gatherings make him uncomfortable, but a quiet evening with mother and daughter Juin sounds terrific. When he says the word terrific (formidable), Cécile’s face lights up with an expression of blazing, untempered joy. In that instant, Walker suddenly understands that the invitation has not come from Hélène but from Cécile, that she has put her mother up to asking him to their apartment and in all likelihood has been badgering her about it for days. Until now, Cécile has been rather guarded in his presence, holding back from any spontaneous outbursts of emotion, and this look of joy spreading across her face is a deeply worrying sign. The last thing he wants is for her to start developing a crush on him.
They live on the rue de Verneuil in the seventh arrondissement, a street that runs parallel to the rue de l’Université, but unlike the palatial residence of Margot’s family, the Juins’ apartment is small and simply furnished, no doubt a reflection of Hélène’s reduced financial circumstances following her husband’s accident. But the place is extremely well cared for, Walker notices, everything is where it should be, immaculate, tidy, trim, from the spotless glass coffee table to the waxed and gleaming parquet floors, as if this will for order is an attempt to keep the chaos and unpredictability of the world at arm’s length. Who can blame Hélène for such fanatical diligence? Walker thinks. She is trying to hold herself together. She is trying to hold both herself and Cécile together, and with the heavy burden she has to bear, who knows if this isn’t why she is planning to divorce her husband and marry Born: to get out from under, to be able to breathe again?
With Born missing from the equation, Walker finds Hélène to be somewhat softer and more congenial than the woman he met at the restaurant several days ago. She is still reserved, still enveloped in an air of rectitude and propriety, but when she greets him at the door and shakes his hand, he is startled by how warmly she looks into his eyes, as if she is genuinely glad that he has turned up. Maybe he was wrong about Cécile having to twist her arm to get him invited to the house. When all is said and done, maybe it was Hélène who proposed the idea herself: What about this odd American boy you’ve been palling around with, Cécile? Why don’t you ask him to dinner so I can learn something more about him?
Again, Cécile has chosen to dispense with her glasses for the evening, but contrary to what happened at the dinner in the restaurant, she is not squinting. Walker assumes that she has started wearing contact lenses, but he refrains from asking her about it on the off chance that such a question will embarrass her. She seems more quiet than usual, he thinks, more poised and in control of herself, but he can’t tell if it’s because she is making a conscious effort to act in a certain way or because she feels more inhibited with him in front of her mother. Course by course, the food is brought to the table: pâté with cornichons to start with, a pot-au-feu, an endive salad, three different cheeses, and crème caramel for dessert. Walker compliments Hélène on each dish, and while he honestly enjoys every morsel that enters his mouth, he knows that her cooking is not in the same league as Margot’s. Innumerable matters of no importance are discussed. School and work, the weather, the differences between the subway systems in Paris and New York. The conversation brightens considerably when he and Cécile begin to talk about music, and when the meal is over he finally persuades her (after how many truculent refusals?) to play something for him, something for him and her mother. There is a small upright piano in the room—which serves as a combination living room–dining room—and as Cécile stands up from the table and begins walking toward the instrument, she asks: Anything in particular? Bach, he says, without hesitation. A two-part invention by Bach.
She plays well, she hits all the notes of the piece with dogged precision, her dynamics are steady, and if her phrasing is a bit mechanical, if she doesn’t quite attain the fluency of a seasoned professional, who can fault her for being anything other than what she is? She is not a professional. She is an eighteen-year-old high school student who plays the piano for her own pleasure, and she renders the Bach efficiently, dexterously, and with much feeling. Walker remembers his own fumbling attempts to learn the piano when he was a boy and how disappointed he was to discover that he had no aptitude for it whatsoever. He therefore applauds Cécile’s performance with great enthusiasm, praising her efforts and telling her how good he thinks she is. Not really good, she says, with that annoying modesty of hers. So-so. But even as she denigrates herself, Walker can see her mouth tugging downward, see her struggling to suppress a smile, and he understands how much his compliments have meant to her.
A moment later, she excuses herself and marches off down the hall (no doubt to visit the bathroom), and for the first time all evening, Walker is alone with her mother. Since Hélène knows it will not be long before Cécile returns, she gets right to the point, not wanting to waste a second.
Be careful with her, Mr. Walker, she says. She’s a complex, fragile person, and she has no experience with men.
I like Cécile very much, he says, but not in the way you seem to be suggesting. I enjoy being with her, that’s all. As a friend.
Yes, I’m sure you like her. But you don’t love her, and the problem is that she’s fallen in love with you.
Has she told you that?
She doesn’t have to tell me. All I have to do is look.
She can’t be in love with me. I’ve only known her for a week.
A year, a week, what difference does it make? These things happen, and I don’t want her to get hurt. Please be careful. I beg of you.
Dread has become fact. Innocence has turned into guilt, and hope is a word that rhymes with despair. In every part of Paris, people are jumping out of windows. The metro is flooded with human excrement. The dead are crawling from their graves. End of Act II. Curtain.
Act III. As Walker leaves the Juin apartment and staggers out into the chilly September night, there is no doubt in his mind that Hélène has told him the truth. He already suspected it himself, and now that these suspicions have been confirmed, he understands that he will have to come up with a new strategy. To begin with, there will be no more daily jaunts with Cécile. Fond as he has become of her, he must be careful (yes, Hélène was right), he must be very careful not to do anything that will hurt her. But what does careful mean? Cutting off relations with her strikes him as unnecessarily cruel, and yet if he goes on seeing her, would she not then interpret his continued interest in her as a sign of encouragement? There is no simple solution to this dilemma. For the fact is that he must see her, perhaps not as often as before, perhaps not for so many hours at a stretch, but he must see her because she is the person he has decided to unburden himself to, the one who is going to be told about the killing of Cedric Williams. Cécile will believe the story. If he goes to her mother instead, there is a good chance that Hélène will not. But if Cécile believes the story, then his chances with Hélène will improve, since it is more than likely that she will believe what her daughter tells her.
He calls Margot the next morning, hoping to distract himself from this muddle of uncertainties by spending some time with her—depending on her mood, of course, and depending on whether she is free.
That’s funny, Margot says. I was just about to pick up the phone and call your hotel.
I’m glad, Walker replies. That
means we were thinking about each other at the same moment. Mental telepathy is the best indication of a strong bond between people.
You say the strangest things . . .
Do you want to tell me why you were going to call, or should I tell you why I called?
You first.
Very simple. I’m dying to see you.
I would love to get together, but I can’t. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.
Is something wrong?
No, not at all. I’m going away for a week and I wanted to let you know.
Away?
Yes, to London.
London?
Why do you keep repeating what I say?
I’m sorry. But someone else is in London, too.
Along with about ten million other people. Are you thinking of anyone in particular?
I thought maybe you knew.
What are you talking about?
Born. He went to London three days ago.
And why should I care about that?
You’re not going to see him, are you?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Because if you are going to see him, I don’t think I could take it.
What’s gotten into you? Of course I’m not going to see him.
Then why are you going?
Don’t do this, Adam. You have no right to ask that question.
I thought I did.
I don’t have to account for myself to anyone—least of all to you.
Sorry. I’m acting like an idiot, aren’t I? The question is withdrawn.
If you must know, I’m going to see my sister. She’s married to an Englishman and lives in Hampstead. Her little boy is turning three, and I’m invited to the birthday party. Also—just to complete the picture—my mother is traveling with me.
Can I see you before you go?
We’re leaving for the airport in an hour.
Too bad. I’m going to miss you. Really, really miss you.
It’s only eight days. Get a grip on yourself, little man. I’ll be back before you know it.