by Paul Auster
I went straight home, realized that bed was out of the question, and then spent two hours in front of the television, watching a movie about Marco Polo. I finally conked out at around four, in the middle of a Twilight Zone rerun.
* * * *
My first move was to contact Stuart Green, an editor at one of the larger publishing houses. I didn’t know him very well, but we had grown up in the same town, and his younger brother, Roger, had gone through school with me and Fanshawe. I guessed that Stuart would remember who Fanshawe was, and that seemed like a good way to get started. I had run into Stuart at various gatherings over the years, perhaps three or four times, and he had always been friendly, talking about the good old days (as he called them) and always promising to send my greetings to Roger the next time he saw him. I had no idea what to expect from Stuart, but he sounded happy enough to hear from me when I called. We arranged to meet at his office one afternoon that week.
It took him a few moments to place Fanshawe’s name. It was familiar to him, he said, but he didn’t know from where. I prodded his memory a bit, mentioned Roger and his friends, and then it suddenly came back to him. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “Fanshawe. That extraordinary little boy. Roger used to insist that he would grow up to be President.” That’s the one, I said, and then I told him the story.
Stuart was a rather prissy fellow, a Harvard type who wore bow ties and tweed jackets, and though at bottom he was little more than a company man, in the publishing world he was what passed for an intellectual. He had done well for himself so far—a senior editor in his early thirties, a solid and responsible young worker—and there was no question that he was on the rise. I say all this only to prove that he was not someone who would be automatically susceptible to the kind of story I was telling. There was very little romance in him, very little that was not cautious and business-like—but I could feel that he was interested, and as I went on talking, he even seemed to become excited.
He had nothing to lose, of course. If Fanshawe’s work didn’t appeal to him, it would be simple enough for him to turn it down. Rejections were the heart of his job, and he wouldn’t have to think twice about it. On the other hand, if Fanshawe was the writer I said he was, then publishing him could only help Stuart’s reputation. He would share in the glory of having discovered an unknown American genius, and he would be able to live off this coup for years.
I handed him the manuscript of Fanshawe’s big novel. In the end, I said, it would have to be all or nothing—the poems, the plays, the other two novels—but this was Fanshawe’s major work, and it was logical that it should come first. I was referring to Neverland, of course. Stuart said that he liked the title, but when he asked me to describe the book, I said that I’d rather not, that I thought it would be better if he found out for himself. He raised an eyebrow in response (a trick he had probably learned during his year at Oxford), as if to imply that I shouldn’t play games with him. I wasn’t, as far as I could tell. It was just that I didn’t want to coerce him. The book could do the work itself, and I saw no reason to deny him the pleasure of entering it cold: with no map, no compass, no one to lead him by the hand.
It took three weeks for him to get back to me. The news was neither good nor bad, but it seemed hopeful. There was probably enough support among the editors to get the book through, Stuart said, but before they made the final decision they wanted to have a look at the other material. I had been expecting that— a certain prudence, playing it close to the vest—and told Stuart that I would come around to drop off the manuscripts the following afternoon.
“It’s a strange book,” he said, pointing to the copy of Neverland on his desk. “Not at all your typical novel, you know. Not your typical anything. It’s still not clear that we’re going ahead with it, but if we do, publishing it will be something of a risk.”
“I know that,” I said. “But that’s what makes it interesting.”
“The real pity is that Fanshawe isn’t around. I’d love to be able to work with him. There are things in the book that should be changed, I think, certain passages that should be cut. It would make the book even stronger.”
“That’s just editor’s pride,” I said. “It’s hard for you to see a manuscript and not want to attack it with a red pencil. The fact is, I think the parts you object to now will eventually make sense to you, and you’ll be glad you weren’t able to touch them.”
“Time will tell,” said Stuart, not ready to concede the point. “But there’s no question,” he went on, “no question that the man could write. I read the book more than two weeks ago, and it’s been with me ever since. I can’t get it out of my head. It keeps coming back to me, and always at the strangest moments. Stepping out of the shower, walking down the street, crawling into bed at night—whenever I’m not consciously thinking about anything. That doesn’t happen very often, you know. You read so many books in this job that they all tend to blur together. But Fanshawe’s book stands out. There’s something powerful about it, and the oddest thing is that I don’t even know what it is.”
“That’s probably the real test,” I said. “The same thing happened to me. The book gets stuck somewhere in the brain, and you can’t get rid of it.”
“And what about the other stuff?”
“Same thing,” I said. “You can’t stop thinking about it.”
Stuart shook his head, and for the first time I saw that he was honestly impressed. It lasted no more than a moment, but in that moment his arrogance and posturing suddenly disappeared, and I almost found myself wanting to like him.
“I think we might be on to something,” he said. “If what you say is true, then I really think we might be on to something.”
We were, and as things turned out, perhaps even more than Stuart had imagined. Neverland was accepted later that month, with an option on the other books as well. My quarter of the advance was enough to buy me some time, and I used it to work on an edition of the poems. I also went to a number of directors to see if there was any interest in doing the plays. Eventually, this came off, too, and a production of three oneacts was planned for a small downtown theater—to open about six weeks after Neverland was published. In the meantime, I persuaded the editor of one of the bigger magazines I occasionally wrote for to let me do an article on Fanshawe. It turned out to be a long, rather exotic piece, and at the time I felt it was one of the best things I had ever written. The article was scheduled to appear two months before the publication of Neverland— and suddenly it seemed as though everything was happening at once.
I admit that I got caught up in it all. One thing kept leading to another, and before I knew it a small industry had been set in motion. It was a kind of delirium, I think. I felt like an engineer, pushing buttons and pulling levers, scrambling from valve chambers to circuit boxes, adjusting a part here, devising an improvement there, listening to the contraption hum and chug and purr, oblivious to everything but the din of my brainchild. I was the mad scientist who had invented the great hocus-pocus machine, and the more smoke that poured from it, the more noise it produced, the happier I was.
Perhaps that was inevitable; perhaps I needed to be a little mad in order to get started. Given the strain of reconciling myself to the project, it was probably necessary for me to equate Fanshawe’s success with my own. I had stumbled onto a cause, a thing that justified me and made me feel important, and the more fully I disappeared into my ambitions for Fanshawe, the more sharply I came into focus for myself. This is not an excuse; it is merely a description of what happened. Hindsight tells me that I was looking for trouble, but at the time I knew nothing about it. More important, even if I had known, I doubt that it would have made a difference.
Underneath it all was the desire to stay in touch with Sophie. As time went on, it became perfectly natural for me to call her three or four times a week, to see her for lunch, to stop by for an afternoon stroll through the neighborhood with Ben. I introduced her to Stuart Green, invited her along to
meet the theater director, found her a lawyer to handle contracts and other legal matters. Sophie took all this in her stride, treating these encounters more as social occasions than as business talks, making it clear to the people we saw that I was the one in charge. I sensed that she was determined not to feel indebted to Fanshawe, that whatever happened or did not happen, she would continue to keep her distance from it. The money made her happy, of course, but she never really connected it to Fanshawe’s work. It was an unlikely gift, a winning lottery ticket that had dropped from the sky, and that was all. Sophie saw through the whirlwind from the very start. She understood the fundamental absurdity of the situation, and because there was no greed in her, no impulse to press her own advantage, she did not lose her head.
I worked hard at courting her. No doubt my motives were transparent, but perhaps that was to the good. Sophie knew that I had fallen in love with her, and the fact that I did not pounce on her, that I did not force her to declare her feelings for me, probably did more to convince her of my seriousness than anything else. Still, I could not wait forever. Discretion has its role, but too much of it can be fatal. A moment came when I could feel that we were no longer jousting with each other, that things between us had already been settled. In thinking about this moment now, I am tempted to use the traditional language of love. I want to talk in metaphors of heat, of burning, of barriers melting down in the face of irresistible passions. I am aware of how overblown these terms might sound, but in the end I believe they are accurate. Everything had changed for me, and words that I had never understood before suddenly began to make sense. This came as a revelation, and when I finally had time to absorb it, I wondered how I had managed to live so long without learning this simple thing. I am not talking about desire so much as knowledge, the discovery that two people, through desire, can create a thing more powerful than either of them can create alone. This knowledge changed me, I think, and actually made me feel more human. By belonging to Sophie, I began to feel as though I belonged to everyone else as well. My true place in the world, it turned out, was somewhere beyond myself, and if that place was inside me, it was also unlocatable. This was the tiny hole between self and not-self, and for the first time in my life I saw this nowhere as the exact center of the world.
It happened to be my thirtieth birthday. I had known Sophie for about three months by then, and she insisted on making an evening of it. I was reluctant at first, never having paid much attention to birthdays, but Sophie’s sense of occasion finally won me over. She bought me an expensive, illustrated edition of Moby Dick, took me to dinner in a good restaurant, and then ushered me along to a performance of Boris Godunov at the Met. For once, I let myself go with it, not trying to second-guess my happiness, not trying to stay ahead of myself or outmaneuver my feelings. Perhaps I was beginning to sense a new boldness in Sophie; perhaps she was making it known to me that she had decided things for herself, that it was too late now for either one of us to back off. Whatever it was, that was the night when everything changed, when there was no longer any question of what we were going to do. We returned to her apartment at eleven-thirty, Sophie paid the drowsy babysitter, and then we tiptoed into Ben’s room and stood there for a while watching him as he slept in his crib. I remember distinctly that neither one of us said anything, that the only sound I could hear was the faint gurgling of Ben’s breath. We leaned over the bars and studied the shape of his little body—lying on his stomach, legs tucked under him, ass in the air, two or three fingers stuck in his mouth. It seemed to go on for a long time, but I doubt it was more than a minute or two. Then, without any warning, we both straightened up, turned towards each other, and began to kiss. After that, it is difficult for me to speak of what happened. Such things have little to do with words, so little, in fact, that it seems almost pointless to try to express them. If anything, I would say that we were falling into each other, that we were falling so fast and so far that nothing could catch us. Again, I lapse into metaphor. But that is probably beside the point. For whether or not I can talk about it does not change the truth of what happened. The fact is, there never was such a kiss, and in all my life I doubt there can ever be such a kiss again.
4
I spent that night in Sophie’s bed, and from then on it became impossible to leave it. I would go back to my own apartment during the day to work, but every evening I would return to Sophie. I became a part of the household—shopping for dinner, changing Ben’s diapers, taking out the garbage—living more intimately with another person than I had ever lived before. Months went by, and to my constant bewilderment, I discovered that I had a talent for this kind of life. I had been born to be with Sophie, and little by little I could feel myself becoming stronger, could feel her making me better than I had been. It was strange how Fanshawe had brought us together. If not for his disappearance, none of this would have happened. I owed him a debt, but other than doing what I could for his work, I had no chance to pay it back.
My article was published, and it seemed to have the desired effect. Stuart Green called to say that it was a “great boost”— which I gathered to mean that he felt more secure now in having accepted the book. With all the interest the article had generated, Fanshawe no longer seemed like such a long shot. Then Neverland came out, and the reviews were uniformly good, some of them extraordinary. It was all that one could have hoped for. This was the fairy tale that every writer dreams about, and I admit that even I was a little shocked. Such things are not supposed to happen in the real world. Only a few weeks after publication, sales were greater than had been expected for the whole edition. A second printing eventually went to press, there were ads placed in newspapers and magazines, and then the book was sold to a paperback company for republication the following year. I don’t mean to imply that the book was a bestseller by commercial standards or that Sophie was on her way to becoming a millionaire, but given the seriousness and difficulty of Fanshawe’s work, and given the public’s tendency to stay away from such work, it was a success beyond anything we had imagined possible.
In some sense, this is where the story should end. The young genius is dead, but his work will live on, his name will be remembered for years to come. His childhood friend has rescued the beautiful young widow, and the two of them will live happily ever after. That would seem to wrap it up, with nothing left but a final curtain call. But it turns out that this is only the beginning. What I have written so far is no more than a prelude, a quick synopsis of everything that comes before the story I have to tell. If there were no more to it than this, there would be nothing at all—for nothing would have compelled me to begin. Only darkness has the power to make a man open his heart to the world, and darkness is what surrounds me whenever I think of what happened. If courage is needed to write about it, I also know that writing about it is the one chance I have to escape. But I doubt this will happen, not even if I manage to tell the truth. Stories without endings can do nothing but go on forever, and to be caught in one means that you must die before your part in it is played out. My only hope is that there is an end to what I am about to say, that somewhere I will find a break in the darkness. This hope is what I define as courage, but whether there is reason to hope is another question entirely.
It was about three weeks after the plays had opened. I spent the night at Sophie’s apartment as usual, and in the morning I went uptown to my place to do some work. I remember that I was supposed to be finishing a piece on four or five books of poetry—one of those frustrating, hodge-podge reviews—and I was having trouble concentrating. My mind kept wandering away from the books on my desk, and every five minutes or so I would pop up from my chair and pace about the room. A strange story had been reported to me by Stuart Green the day before, and it was hard for me to stop thinking about it. According to Stuart, people were beginning to say that there was no such person as Fanshawe. The rumor was that I had invented him to perpetrate a hoax and had actually written the books myself. My first response was to lau
gh, and I made some crack about how Shakespeare hadn’t written any plays either. But now that I had given some thought to it, I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or flattered by this talk. Did people not trust me to tell the truth? Why would I go to the trouble of creating an entire body of work and then not want to take credit for it? And yet—did people really think I was capable of writing a book as good as Neverland? I realized that once all of Fanshawe’s manuscripts had been published, it would be perfectly possible for me to write another book or two under his name— to do the work myself and yet pass it off as his. I was not planning to do this, of course, but the mere thought of it opened up certain bizarre and intriguing notions to me: what it means when a writer puts his name on a book, why some writers choose to hide behind a pseudonym, whether or not a writer has a real life anyway. It struck me that writing under another name might be something I would enjoy—to invent a secret identity for myself—and I wondered why I found this idea so attractive. One thought kept leading me to another, and by the time the subject was exhausted, I discovered that I had squandered most of the morning.
Eleven-thirty rolled around—the hour of the mail—and I made my ritual excursion down the elevator to see if there was anything in my box. This was always a crucial moment of the day for me, and I found it impossible to approach it calmly. There was always the hope that good news would be sitting there—an unexpected check, an offer of work, a letter that would somehow change my life—and by now the habit of anticipation was so much a part of me that I could scarcely look at my mailbox without getting a rush. This was my hiding place, the one spot in the world that was purely my own. And yet it linked me to the rest of the world, and in its magic darkness there was the power to make things happen.