by Paul Auster
Can you spare some change, mister?
Black stops, looks over the disheveled creature who has just spoken, and gradually relaxes into a smile as he realizes he is not in danger. Then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a coin, and puts it in Blue’s hand.
Here you are, he says.
God bless you, says Blue.
Thank you, answers Black, touched by the sentiment.
Never fear, says Blue. God blesses all.
And with that word of reassurance, Black tips his hat to Blue and continues on his way.
The next afternoon, once again in bum’s regalia, Blue waits for Black in the same spot. Determined to keep the conversation going a little longer this time, now that he has won Black’s confidence, Blue finds that the problem is taken out of his hands when Black himself shows an eagerness to linger. It is late in the day by now, not yet dusk but no longer afternoon, the twilight hour of slow changes, of glowing bricks and shadows. After greeting the bum cordially and giving him another coin, Black hesitates a moment, as though debating whether to take the plunge, and then says:
Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Walt Whitman?
Walt who? answers Blue, remembering to play his part.
Walt Whitman. A famous poet.
No, says Blue. I can’t say I know him.
You wouldn’t know him, says Black. He’s not alive anymore. But the resemblance is remarkable.
Well, you know what they say, says Blue. Every man has his double somewhere. I don’t see why mine can’t be a dead man.
The funny thing, continues Black, is that Walt Whitman used to work on this street. He printed his first book right here, not far from where we’re standing.
You don’t say, says Blue, shaking his head pensively. It makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?
There are some odd stories about Whitman, Black says, gesturing to Blue to sit down on the stoop of the building behind them, which he does, and then Black does the same, and suddenly it’s just the two of them out there in the summer light together, chatting away like two old friends about this and that.
Yes, says Black, settling in comfortably to the languor of the moment, a number of very curious stories. The one about Whitman’s brain, for example. All his life Whitman believed in the science of phrenology—you know, reading the bumps on the skull. It was very popular at the time.
Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it, replies Blue.
Well, that doesn’t much matter, says Black. The main thing is that Whitman was interested in brains and skulls—thought they could tell you everything about a man’s character. Anyway, when Whitman lay dying over there in New Jersey about fifty or sixty years ago, he agreed to let them perform an autopsy on him after he was dead.
How could he agree to it after he was dead?
Ah, good point. I didn’t say it right. He was still alive when he agreed. He just wanted them to know that he didn’t mind if they opened him up later. What you might call his dying wish.
Famous last words.
That’s right. A lot of people thought he was a genius, you see, and they wanted to take a look at his brain to find out if there was anything special about it. So, the day after he died, a doctor removed Whitman’s brain—cut it right out of his head—and had it sent to the American Anthropometric Society to be measured and weighed.
Like a giant cauliflower, interjects Blue.
Exactly. Like a big gray vegetable. But this is where the story gets interesting. The brain arrives at the laboratory, and just as they’re about to get to work on it, one of the assistants drops it on the floor.
Did it break?
Of course it broke. A brain isn’t very tough, you know. It splattered all over the place, and that was that. The brain of America’s greatest poet got swept up and thrown out with the garbage.
Blue, remembering to respond in character, emits several wheezing laughs—a good imitation of an old codger’s mirth. Black laughs, too, and by now the atmosphere has thawed to such an extent that no one could ever know they were not lifelong chums.
It’s sad to think of poor Walt lying in his grave, though, says Black. All alone and without any brains.
Just like that scarecrow, says Blue.
Sure enough, says Black. Just like the scarecrow in the land of Oz.
After another good laugh, Black says: And then there’s the story of the time Thoreau came to visit Whitman. That’s a good one, too.
Was he another poet?
Not exactly. But a great writer just the same. He’s the one who lived alone in the woods.
Oh yes, says Blue, not wanting to carry his ignorance too far. Someone once told me about him. Very fond of nature he was. Is that the man you mean?
Precisely, answers Black. Henry David Thoreau. He came down from Massachusetts for a little while and paid a call on Whitman in Brooklyn. But the day before that he came right here to Orange Street.
Any particular reason?
Plymouth Church. He wanted to hear Henry Ward Beecher’s sermon.
A lovely spot, says Blue, thinking of the pleasant hours he has spent in the grassy yard. I like to go there myself.
Many great men have gone there, says Black. Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens—they all walked down this street and went into the church.
Ghosts.
Yes, there are ghosts all around us.
And the story?
It’s really very simple. Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, a friend of his, arrived at Whitman’s house on Myrtle Avenue, and Walt’s mother sent them up to the attic bedroom he shared with his mentally retarded brother, Eddy. Everything was just fine. They shook hands, exchanged greetings, and so on. But then, when they sat down to discuss their views of life, Thoreau and Alcott noticed a full chamber pot right in the middle of the floor. Walt was of course an expansive fellow and paid no attention, but the two New Englanders found it hard to keep talking with a bucket of excrement in front of them. So eventually they went downstairs to the parlor and continued the conversation there. It’s a minor detail, I realize. But still, when two great writers meet, history is made, and it’s important to get all the facts straight. That chamber pot, you see, somehow reminds me of the brains on the floor. And when you stop to think about it, there’s a certain similarity of form. The bumps and convolutions, I mean. There’s a definite connection. Brains and guts, the insides of a man. We always talk about trying to get inside a writer to understand his work better. But when you get right down to it, there’s not much to find in there—at least not much that’s different from what you’d find in anyone else.
You seem to know a lot about these things, says Blue, who’s beginning to lose the thread of Black’s argument.
It’s my hobby, says Black. I like to know how writers live, especially American writers. It helps me to understand things.
I see, says Blue, who sees nothing at all, for with each word Black speaks, he finds himself understanding less and less.
Take Hawthorne, says Black. A good friend of Thoreau’s, and probably the first real writer America ever had. After he graduated from college, he went back to his mother’s house in Salem, shut himself up in his room, and didn’t come out for twelve years.
What did he do in there?
He wrote stories.
Is that all? He just wrote?
Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.
Another ghost.
Exactly.
Sounds mysterious.
It is. But Hawthorne wrote great stories, you see, and we still read them now, more than a hundred years later. In one of them, a man named Wakefield decides to play a joke on his wife. He tells her that he has to go away on a business trip for a few days, but instead of leaving the city, he goes around the corner, rents a room, and just waits to see what will happen. He can’t say for sure why he’s doing it, but he does it just the same. Three or
four days go by, but he doesn’t feel ready to return home yet, and so he stays on in the rented room. The days turn into weeks, the weeks turn into months. One day Wakefield walks down his old street and sees his house decked out in mourning. It’s his own funeral, and his wife has become a lonely widow. Years go by. Every now and then he crosses paths with his wife in town, and once, in the middle of a large crowd, he actually brushes up against her. But she doesn’t recognize him. More years pass, more than twenty years, and little by little Wakefield has become an old man. One rainy night in autumn, as he’s taking a walk through the empty streets, he happens to pass by his old house and peeks through the window. There’s a nice warm fire burning in the fireplace, and he thinks to himself: how pleasant it would be if I were in there right now, sitting in one of those cozy chairs by the hearth, instead of standing out here in the rain. And so, without giving it any more thought than that, he walks up the steps of the house and knocks on the door.
And then?
That’s it. That’s the end of the story. The last thing we see is the door opening and Wakefield going inside with a crafty smile on his face.
And we never know what he says to his wife?
No. That’s the end. Not another word. But he moved in again, we know that much, and remained a loving spouse until death.
By now the sky has begun to darken overhead, and night is fast approaching. A last glimmer of pink remains in the west, but the day is as good as done. Black, taking his cue from the darkness, stands up from his spot and extends his hand to Blue.
It’s been a pleasure talking to you, he says. I had no idea we’d been sitting here so long.
The pleasure’s been mine, says Blue, relieved that the conversation is over, for he knows that it won’t be long now before his beard begins to slip, what with the summer heat and his nerves making him perspire into the glue.
My name is Black, says Black, shaking Blue’s hand.
Mine’s Jimmy, says Blue. Jimmy Rose.
I’ll remember this little talk of ours for a long time, Jimmy, says Black.
I will, too, says Blue. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
God bless you, Jimmy Rose, says Black.
And God bless you, sir, says Blue.
And then, with one last handshake, they walk off in opposite directions, each one accompanied by his own thoughts.
Later that night, when Blue returns to his room, he decides that he had best bury Jimmy Rose now, get rid of him for good. The old tramp has served his purpose, but beyond this point it would not be wise to go.
Blue is glad to have made this initial contact with Black, but the encounter did not quite have its desired effect, and all in all he feels rather shaken by it. For even though the talk had nothing to do with the case, Blue cannot help feeling that Black was actually referring to it all along—talking in riddles, so to speak, as though trying to tell Blue something, but not daring to say it out loud. Yes, Black was more than friendly, his manner was altogether pleasant, but still Blue cannot get rid of the thought that the man was on to him from the start. If so, then Black is surely one of the conspirators—for why else would he have gone on talking to Blue as he did? Not from loneliness, certainly. Assuming that Black is for real, then loneliness cannot be an issue. Everything about his life to this point has been part of a determined plan to remain alone, and it would be absurd to read his willingness to talk as an effort to escape the throes of solitude. Not at this late date, not after more than a year of avoiding all human contact. If Black is finally resolved to break out of his hermetic routine, then why would he begin by talking to a broken-down old man on a street corner? No, Black knew that he was talking to Blue. And if he knew that, then he knows who Blue is. No two ways about it, Blue says to himself: he knows everything.
When the time comes for him to write his next report, Blue is forced to confront this dilemma. White never said anything about making contact with Black. Blue was to watch him, no more, no less, and he wonders now if he has not in fact broken the rules of his assignment. If he includes the conversation in his report, then White might object. On the other hand, if he does not put it in, and if Black is indeed working with White, then White will know immediately that Blue is lying. Blue mulls this over for a long time, but for all that he gets no closer to finding a solution. He’s stuck, one way or the other, and he knows it. In the end, he decides to leave it out, but only because he still puts some meager hope in the fact that he has guessed wrong and that White and Black are not in it together. But this last little stab at optimism soon comes to naught. Three days after sending in the sanitized report, his weekly check comes in the mail, and inside the envelope there is also a note that says, Why do you lie?, and then Blue has proof beyond any shadow of a doubt. And from that moment on, Blue lives with the knowledge that he is drowning.
The next night he follows Black into Manhattan on the subway, dressed in his normal clothes, no longer feeling he has to hide anything. Black gets off at Times Square and wanders around for a while in the bright lights, the noise, the crowds of people surging this way and that. Blue, watching him as though his life depended on it, is never more than three or four steps behind him. At nine o’clock, Black enters the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel, and Blue follows him in. There’s quite a crowd milling about, and tables are scarce, so when Black sits down in a corner nook that just that moment has become free, it seems perfectly natural for Blue to approach and politely ask if he can join him. Black has no objection and gestures with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders for Blue to take the chair opposite. For several minutes they say nothing to each other, waiting for someone to take their orders, in the meantime watching the women walk by in their summer dresses, inhaling the different perfumes that flit behind them in the air, and Blue feels no rush to jump into things, content to bide his time and let the business take its course. When the waiter at last comes to ask their pleasure, Black orders a Black and White on the rocks, and Blue cannot help but take this as a secret message that the fun is about to begin, all the while marveling at Black’s effrontery, his crassness, his vulgar obsession. For the sake of symmetry, Blue orders the same drink. As he does so, he looks Black in the eyes, but Black gives nothing away, looking back at Blue with utter blankness, dead eyes that seem to say there is nothing behind them and that no matter how hard Blue looks, he will never find a thing.
This gambit nevertheless breaks the ice, and they begin by discussing the merits of various brands of scotch. Plausibly enough, one thing leads to another, and as they sit there chatting about the inconveniences of the New York summer season, the decor of the hotel, the Algonquin Indians who lived in the city long ago when it was all woods and fields, Blue slowly evolves into the character he wants to play for the night, settling on a jovial blowhard by the name of Snow, a life insurance salesman from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Play dumb, Blue tells himself, for he knows that it would make no sense to reveal who he is, even though he knows that Black knows. It’s got to be hide and seek, he says, hide and seek to the end.
They finish their first drink and order another round, followed by yet another, and as the talk ambles from actuarial tables to the life expectancies of men in different professions, Black lets fall a remark that turns the conversation in another direction.
I suppose I wouldn’t be very high up on your list, he says.
Oh? says Blue, having no idea what to expect. What kind of work do you do?
I’m a private detective, says Black, point blank, all cool and collected, and for a brief moment Blue is tempted to throw his drink in Black’s face, he’s that peeved, that burned at the man’s gall.
You don’t say! Blue exclaims, quickly recovering and managing to feign a bumpkin’s surprise. A private detective. Imagine that. In the flesh. Just think of what the wife will say when I tell her. Me in New York having drinks with a private eye. She’ll never believe it.
What I’m trying to say, says Black rather abruptly, is that I don’t imagine my li
fe expectancy is very great. At least not according to your statistics.
Probably not, Blue blusters on. But think of the excitement!
There’s more to life than living a long time, you know. Half the men in America would give ten years off their retirement to live the way you do. Cracking cases, living by your wits, seducing women, pumping bad guys full of lead—God, there’s a lot to be said for it.
That’s all make-believe, says Black. Real detective work can be pretty dull.
Well, every job has its routines, Blue continues. But in your case at least you know that all the hard work will eventually lead to something out of the ordinary.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But most of the time it’s no. Take the case I’m working on now. I’ve been at it for more than a year already, and nothing could be more boring. I’m so bored that sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.