by Paul Auster
How so?
Well, figure it out for yourself. My job is to watch someone, no one in particular as far as I can tell, and send in a report about him every week. Just that. Watch this guy and write about it. Not one damned thing more.
What’s so terrible about that?
He doesn’t do anything, that’s what. He just sits in his room all day and writes. It’s enough to drive you crazy.
It could be that he’s leading you along. You know, lulling you to sleep before springing into action.
That’s what I thought at first. But now I’m sure that nothing’s going to happen—not ever. I can feel it in my bones.
That’s too bad, says Blue sympathetically. Maybe you should resign from the case.
I’m thinking about it. I’m also thinking that maybe I should just chuck the whole business and go into something else. Some other line of work. Sell insurance, maybe, or run off to join the circus.
I never realized it could get as bad as that, says Blue, shaking his head. But tell me, why aren’t you watching your man now? Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on him?
That’s just the point, answers Black. I don’t even have to bother anymore. I’ve been watching him for so long now that I know him better than I know myself. All I have to do is think about him, and I know what he’s doing, I know where he is, I know everything. It’s come to the point that I can watch him with my eyes closed.
Do you know where he is now?
At home. The same as usual. Sitting in his room and writing.
What’s he writing about?
I’m not sure, but I have a pretty good idea. I think he’s writing about himself. The story of his life. That’s the only possible answer. Nothing else would fit.
So why all the mystery?
I don’t know, says Black, and for the first time his voice betrays some emotion, catching ever so slightly on the words.
It all boils down to one question, then, doesn’t it? says Blue, forgetting all about Snow now and looking Black straight in the eyes. Does he know you’re watching him or not?
Black turns away, unable to look at Blue anymore, and says with a suddenly trembling voice: Of course he knows. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? He’s got to know, or else nothing makes sense.
Why?
Because he needs me, says Black, still looking away. He needs my eyes looking at him. He needs me to prove he’s alive.
Blue sees a tear fall down Black’s cheek, but before he can say anything, before he can begin to press home his advantage, Black stands up hastily and excuses himself, saying that he has to make a telephone call. Blue waits in his chair for ten or fifteen minutes, but he knows that he’s wasting his time. Black won’t be back. The conversation is over, and no matter how long he sits there, nothing more will happen tonight.
Blue pays for the drinks and then heads back to Brooklyn. As he turns down Orange Street, he looks up at Black’s window and sees that everything is dark. No matter, says Blue, he’ll return before long. We haven’t come to the end yet. The party is only beginning. Wait until the champagne is opened, and then we’ll see what’s what.
Once inside, Blue paces back and forth, trying to plot his next move. It seems to him that Black has finally made a mistake, but he is not quite certain. For in spite of the evidence, Blue cannot shrug the feeling that it was all done on purpose, and that Black has now begun to call out to him, leading him along, so to speak, urging him on towards whatever end he is planning.
Still, he has broken through to something, and for the first time since the case began he is no longer standing where he was. Ordinarily, Blue would be celebrating this little triumph of his, but it turns out that he is in no mood for patting himself on the back tonight. More than anything else, he feels sad, he feels drained of enthusiasm, he feels disappointed in the world. Somehow, the facts have finally let him down, and he finds it hard not to take it personally, knowing full well that however he might present the case to himself, he is a part of it, too. Then he walks to the window, looks out across the street, and sees that the lights are now on in Black’s room.
He lies down on his bed and thinks: good-bye, Mr. White. You were never really there, were you? There never was such a man as White. And then: poor Black. Poor soul. Poor blighted no one. And then, as his eyes grow heavy and sleep begins to wash over him, he thinks how strange it is that everything has its own color. Everything we see, everything we touch— everything in the world has its own color. Struggling to stay awake a little longer, he begins to make a list. Take blue for example, he says. There are bluebirds and blue jays and blue herons. There are cornflowers and periwinkles. There is noon over New York. There are blueberries, huckleberries, and the Pacific Ocean. There are blue devils and blue ribbons and blue bloods. There is a voice singing the blues. There is my father’s police uniform. There are blue laws and blue movies. There are my eyes and my name. He pauses, suddenly at a loss for more blue things, and then moves on to white. There are seagulls, he says, and terns and storks and cockatoos. There are the walls of this room and the sheets on my bed. There are lilies-of-thevalley, carnations, and the petals of daisies. There is the flag of peace and Chinese death. There is mother’s milk and semen. There are my teeth. There are the whites of my eyes. There are white bass and white pines and white ants. There is the President’s house and white rot. There are white lies and white heat. Then, without hesitating, he moves on to black, beginning with black books, the black market, and the Black Hand. There is night over New York, he says. There are the Chicago Black Sox. There are blackberries and crows, blackouts and black marks, Black Tuesday and the Black Death. There is blackmail. There is my hair. There is the ink that comes out of a pen. There is the world a blind man sees. Then, finally growing tired of the game, he begins to drift, saying to himself that there is no end to it. He falls asleep, dreams of things that happened long ago, and then, in the middle of the night, wakes up suddenly and begins pacing the room again, thinking about what he will do next.
Morning comes, and Blue starts busying himself with another disguise. This time it’s the Fuller brush man, a trick he has used before, and for the next two hours he patiently goes about giving himself a bald head, a moustache, and age lines around his eyes and mouth, sitting in front of his little mirror like an old-time vaudevillian on tour. Shortly after eleven o’clock, he gathers up his case of brushes and walks across the street to Black’s building. Picking the lock on the front door is child’s play for Blue, no more than a matter of seconds, and as he slips into the hallway he can’t help feeling something of the old thrill. No tough stuff, he reminds himself, as he starts climbing the stairs to Black’s floor. This visit is only to get a look inside, to stake out the room for future reference. Still, there’s an excitement to the moment that Blue can’t quite suppress. For it’s more than just seeing the room, he knows—it’s the thought of being there himself, of standing inside those four walls, of breathing the same air as Black. From now on, he thinks, everything that happens will affect everything else. The door will open, and after that Black will be inside of him forever.
He knocks, the door opens, and suddenly there is no more distance, the thing and the thought of the thing are one and the same. Then it’s Black who is there, standing in the doorway with an uncapped fountain pen in his right hand, as though interrupted in his work, and yet with a look in his eyes that tells Blue he’s been expecting him, resigned to the hard truth, but no longer seeming to care.
Blue launches into his patter about the brushes, pointing to the case, offering apologies, asking admittance, all in the same breath, with that rapid saleman’s pitch he’s done a thousand times before. Black calmly lets him in, saying he might be interested in a toothbrush, and as Blue steps across the sill, he goes rattling on about hair brushes and clothes brushes, anything to keep the words flowing, for in that way he can leave the rest of himself free to take in the room, observe the observable, think, all the while diverting Black from his tr
ue purpose.
The room is much as he imagined it would be, though perhaps even more austere. Nothing on the walls, for example, which surprises him a little, since he always thought there would be a picture or two, an image of some kind just to break the monotony, a nature scene perhaps, or else a portrait of someone Black might once have loved. Blue was always curious to know what the picture would be, thinking it might be a valuable clue, but now that he sees there is nothing, he understands that this is what he should have expected all along. Other than that, there’s precious little to contradict his former notions. It’s the same monk’s cell he saw in his mind: the small, neatly made bed in one corner, the kitchenette in another corner, everything spotless, not a crumb to be seen. Then, in the center of the room facing the window, the wooden table with a single stiff-backed wooden chair. Pencils, pens, a typewriter. A bureau, a night table, a lamp. A bookcase on the north wall, but no more than several books in it: Walden, Leaves of Grass, Twice-Told Tales, a few others. No telephone, no radio, no magazines. On the table, neatly stacked around the edges, piles of paper: some blank, some written on, some typed, some in longhand. Hundreds of pages, perhaps thousands. But you can’t call this a life, thinks Blue. You can’t really call it anything. It’s a no man’s land, the place you come to at the end of the world.
They look through the toothbrushes, and Black finally chooses a red one. From there they start examining the various clothes brushes, with Blue giving demonstrations on his own suit. For a man as neat as yourself, says Blue, I should think you’d find it indispensable. But Black says he’s managed so far without one. On the other hand, maybe he’d like to consider a hair brush, and so they go through the possibilities in the sample case, discussing the different sizes and shapes, the different kinds of bristles, and so on. Blue is already done with his real business, of course, but he goes through the motions nevertheless, wanting to do the thing right, even if it doesn’t matter. Still, after Black has paid for the brushes and Blue is packing up his case to go, he can’t resist making one little remark. You seem to be a writer, he says, gesturing to the table, and Black says yes, that’s right, he’s a writer.
It looks like a big book, Blue continues.
Yes, says Black. I’ve been working on it for many years.
Are you almost finished?
I’m getting there, Black says thoughtfully. But sometimes it’s hard to know where you are. I think I’m almost done, and then I realize I’ve left out something important, and so I have to go back to the beginning again. But yes, I do dream of finishing it one day. One day soon, perhaps.
I hope I get a chance to read it, says Blue.
Anything is possible, says Black. But first of all, I’ve got to finish it. There are days when I don’t even know if I’ll live that long.
Well, we never know, do we? says Blue, nodding philosophically. One day we’re alive, and the next day we’re dead. It happens to all of us.
Very true, says Black. It happens to all of us.
They’re standing by the door now, and something in Blue wants to go on making inane remarks of this sort. Playing the buffoon is enjoyable, he realizes, but at the same time there’s an urge to toy with Black, to prove that nothing has escaped him—for deep down Blue wants Black to know that he’s just as smart as he is, that he can match wits with him every step of the way. But Blue manages to fight back the impulse and hold his tongue, nodding politely in thanks for the sales, and then makes his exit. That’s the end of the Fuller brush man, and less than an hour later he is discarded into the same bag that holds the remains of Jimmy Rose. Blue knows that no more disguises will be needed. The next step is inevitable, and the only thing that matters now is to choose the right moment.
But three nights later, when he finally gets his chance, Blue realizes that he’s scared. Black goes out at nine o’clock, walks down the street, and vanishes around the corner. Although Blue knows that this is a direct signal, that Black is practically begging him to make his move, he also feels that it could be a setup, and now, at the last possible moment, when only just before he was filled with confidence, almost swaggering with a sense of his own power, he sinks into a fresh torment of self-doubt. Why should he suddenly begin to trust Black? What earthly cause could there be for him to think they are both working on the same side now? How has this happened, and why does he find himself so obsequiously at Black’s bidding once again? Then, from out of the blue, he begins to consider another possibility. What if he just simply left? What if he stood up, went out the door, and walked away from the whole business? He ponders this thought for a while, testing it out in his mind, and little by little he begins to tremble, overcome by terror and happiness, like a slave stumbling onto a vision of his own freedom. He imagines himself somewhere else, far away from here, walking through the woods and swinging an axe over his shoulder. Alone and free, his own man at last. He would build his life from the bottom up, an exile, a pioneer, a pilgrim in the new world. But that is as far as he gets. For no sooner does he begin to walk through these woods in the middle of nowhere than he feels that Black is there, too, hiding behind some tree, stalking invisibly through some thicket, waiting for Blue to lie down and close his eyes before sneaking up on him and slitting his throat. It goes on and on, Blue thinks. If he doesn’t take care of Black now, there will never be any end to it. This is what the ancients called fate, and every hero must submit to it. There is no choice, and if there is anything to be done, it is only the one thing that leaves no choice. But Blue is loathe to acknowledge it. He struggles against it, he rejects it, he grows sick at heart. But that is only because he already knows, and to fight it is already to have accepted it, to want to say no is already to have said yes. And so Blue gradually comes round, at last giving in to the necessity of the thing to be done. But that is not to say he does not feel afraid. From this moment on, there is only one word that speaks for Blue, and that word is fear.
He has wasted valuable time, and now he must rush forth onto the street, hoping feverishly it is not too late. Black will not be gone forever, and who knows if he is not lurking around the corner, just waiting for the moment to pounce? Blue races up the steps of Black’s building, fumbles awkwardly as he picks the front door lock, continually glancing over his shoulder, and then goes up the stairs to Black’s floor. The second lock gives him more trouble than the first, though theoretically it should be simpler, an easy job even for the rawest beginner. This clumsiness tells Blue that he’s losing control, letting it all get the better of him; but even though he knows it, there’s little he can do but ride it out and hope that his hands will stop shaking. But it goes from bad to worse, and the moment he sets foot in Black’s room, he feels everything go dark inside him, as though the night were pressing through his pores, sitting on top of him with a tremendous weight, and at the same time his head seems to be growing, filling with air as though about to detach itself from his body and float away. He takes one more step into the room and then blacks out, collapsing to the floor like a dead man.
His watch stops with the fall, and when he comes to he doesn’t know how long he’s been out. Dimly at first, he regains consciousness with a sense of having been here before, perhaps long ago, and as he sees the curtains fluttering by the open window and the shadows moving strangely on the ceiling, he thinks that he is lying in bed at home, back when he was a little boy, unable to sleep during the hot summer nights, and he imagines that if he listens hard enough he will be able to hear the voices of his mother and father talking quietly in the next room. But this lasts only a moment. He begins to feel the ache in his head, to register the disturbing queasiness in his stomach, and then, finally seeing where he is, to relive the panic that gripped him the moment he entered the room. He scrambles shakily to his feet, stumbling once or twice in the process, and tells himself he can’t stay here, he’s got to be going, yes, and right away. He grabs hold of the doorknob, but then, remembering suddenly why he came here in the first place, snatches the flashlig
ht from his pocket and turns it on, waving it fitfully around the room until the light falls by chance on a pile of papers stacked neatly at the edge of Black’s desk. Without thinking twice, Blue gathers up the papers with his free hand, saying to himself it doesn’t matter, this will be a start, and then makes his way to the door.
Back in his room across the street, Blue pours himself a glass of brandy, sits down on his bed, and tells himself to be calm. He drinks off the brandy sip by sip and then pours himself another glass. As his panic begins to subside, he is left with a feeling of shame. He’s botched it, he tells himself, and that’s the long and the short of it. For the first time in his life he has not been equal to the moment, and it comes as a shock to him—to see himself as a failure, to realize that at bottom he’s a coward.
He picks up the papers he has stolen, hoping to distract himself from these thoughts. But this only compounds the problem, for once he begins to read them, he sees they are nothing more than his own reports. There they are, one after the other, the weekly accounts, all spelled out in black and white, meaning nothing, saying nothing, as far from the truth of the case as silence would have been. Blue groans when he sees them, sinking down deep within himself, and then, in the face of what he finds there, begins to laugh, at first faintly, but with growing force, louder and louder, until he is gasping for breath, almost choking on it, as though trying to obliterate himself once and for all. Taking the papers firmly in his hand, he flings them up to the ceiling and watches the pile break apart, scatter, and come fluttering to the ground, page by miserable page.