by Paul Auster
The next day, Allen finally gets his hamburger. It is morning or early afternoon, and he has just bought a ticket for the train that will carry him across the border of the state, beyond the reach of the law and into a new life, but the train is running behind schedule, and with nothing to do but kill time until it is ready, Allen treats himself to a hamburger at an outdoor food stand, polishing it off quickly, so quickly that he orders a second. Needless to say, he never gets to eat that second hamburger, for by now it is clear that hamburgers serve as bad omens in this story, a prelude to the worst kind of luck, and before Allen can take a bite out of hamburger number two, the chief of police shows up. He and his men are searching for someone, a criminal is on the loose, and because Allen has no doubt that he is the criminal they are after, he puts down his hamburger and backs away from the food stand. The train is nearly ready to depart. Taking no chances, Allen walks around to the other side, intending to board from there to avoid being seen by the cops, but just as he is mounting the steps of one of the cars, a voice calls out: There he is!—and suddenly the lawmen are running in Allen’s direction. It appears that he has been caught, that his escape has come to nothing, but it is only a false alarm, for the criminal in question turns out to be a bedraggled hobo, a forgotten man cowering under the train just a few feet from where Allen is standing, and as the detectives haul this unknown miscreant off to the squad car, Allen hops onto the train. Another close call—followed by yet another one just a minute later. As the conductor punches Allen’s ticket, he tells him that the police are still looking for the escaped convict. The conductor then sits down next to another conductor, and before long the two of them are eyeing Allen and whispering into each other’s ears, almost certainly asking themselves if he fits the description of the missing man. A quick cut: a close-up of Allen’s dusty shoes. He has left the train and is walking. Another cut, this time to a speeding car. A map is superimposed on the car, the car turns into a train, and the train is heading north on the map, zeroing in on a final destination of Chicago. The map and the train then melt into nothingness, and there is the city. Tall buildings, flashing lights, tumult, and freedom.
As Allen’s life begins again, he is first seen standing outdoors in front of the employment office of the Tri-State Engineering Company. In the near distance, a bridge is under construction, and a sign posted on the wall to Allen’s left reads: MEN WANTED. This is the kind of work he wanted to do when he came home from the war, the work he looked for and couldn’t find, and you are fully expecting him to be turned down in Chicago as well, for the simple reason that you have come to look upon Allen as cursed, as a man for whom things will always go wrong. To your immense surprise, the man behind the counter at the employment office says: I guess we can use you, all right—and hope suddenly flares up in you, you begin to think that perhaps Allen’s luck has finally turned. What’s the name? the man asks, and without thinking Allen says Allen, but when the man asks if that’s his first name or last name, Allen hesitates for a moment, realizing that he has just been given a chance to reinvent himself, to take on a new identity, and he says the first name, his full name is Allen James. Not terribly clever, you think at first, anyone could see through that obvious reversal, but then, as you go on thinking about it, summoning up various people whose full names consist of two first names, you wonder if it might not do the job, after all. If you turned Henry James into James Henry, would anyone think about Mr. James if he were introduced as Mr. Henry? Probably not. Still, you would have preferred a more radical transformation, something akin to the rebirth of Edmond Dantès as the Count of Monte Cristo, for example, another story about an unjustly imprisoned man who escaped (you have read the novel and are familiar with the count), but Dantès had the implausible good fortune to discover a treasure, and when he returned to the world of the living he was the richest man in France. Allen is dirt poor, a man with nothing. Dantès wanted revenge, but all Allen wants is to build bridges.
The man behind the counter tells Allen to report at eight o’clock the next morning. The scene ends with a full-frame close-up of Allen’s employment card. DATE: 1924. CLASS OF WORK: LABORER. SALARY PER DAY: $4.00.
Time has passed, how much time is unclear, but Allen is next seen outdoors, toiling with a crew of men in the heat of the afternoon sun, digging ditches, the tool in his hands now a pick, not smashing rocks anymore, not working with a sledgehammer, but except for the absence of chains, the scene is depressingly familiar to you, it is prison labor in a new form, no whips or rifles, no malevolent guards, but miserably paid, backbreaking work, and you begin to despair that Allen will ever be able to lift himself out of the mud. That is what the film seems to be telling you: the world is a prison for those who have nothing, the have-nots at the bottom of the pile are no better than dogs, and whether a man works on a chain gang or is gainfully employed by the Tri-State Engineering Company, he has no control over his existence. So it would appear from the first moments of the scene, but you quickly discover that you are wrong, that the setup is a ruse, for a moment after you come to this grim reading of events, the foreman walks over to Allen and says: Hey, James. That’s a swell idea you had about that bend over there. I told the boss it was your suggestion. Allen: Yes? That’s very nice. Foreman: I don’t think you’ll be swinging a pick much longer. Cut to a close-up of Allen’s next employment card. DATE: 1926. CLASS OF WORK: FOREMAN. SALARY PER DAY: $9.00.
He is moving up in the world. By the next year, 1927, he has been promoted to surveyor and is earning twelve dollars a day, by 1929 he is assistant superintendent at fourteen a day, and at some point after that (date and salary unspecified) he is one of the top officials of the company, the general field superintendent, a man with his name and title written in gold-embossed letters on the door of his private office. From rags and degradation to fashionable clothes and universal respect, a builder of bridges at last, a pure example of the American success story, living proof that hard work, ambition, and intelligence can propel you into a world of meaningful accomplishment and wealth. This is where the story should end—virtue rewarded, the quivering scales of justice now becalmed in perfect equipoise—but Allen’s past will always be his past, and consequently there is a problem, an impediment to happiness caused by Allen’s too-trusting nature (why shouldn’t he have gone out for that hamburger with Pete the stick-up man?), and therefore trouble is gathering around him, there is always more trouble, this time in the form of a woman named Marie, a sex-hungry, grasping blonde who rented him a room in 1926 and quickly became his bedmate, for Marie knows a good thing when she sees one, and the handsome, industrious Allen is nothing if not a good bet. The affair lasts for three years as Allen works his way up the ladder at Tri-State, but he feels nothing for her anymore, neither love nor affection, the flames of physical desire have long since burned out, and the day finally comes when he decides to move to another address. She walks in on him as he is packing his bags, and although Allen is too soft-hearted to tell her that he wants a definitive break, he nevertheless has the courage to remind her (again) that he doesn’t love her: I can’t change my feelings toward you any more than I can change the color of my eyes. Marie (hands on hips, looking at him with hostility): And that’s your only reason for leaving? Allen: It’s a pretty good one, isn’t it? Marie: Not very. Of course, when a guy wants to ditch a girl, he’ll do most anything. Providing it doesn’t land him back in the chain gang—where he probably belongs.
The secret is out. Impossible to comprehend—but the secret is out, even if Allen is in Illinois now, hundreds of miles from the state where he was imprisoned, in the North, where for five years he has never breathed a word about his past to anyone, but the secret is no longer a secret, and the spurned Marie is the one who has found him out. How? Because she owns the boardinghouse where he lives, because she has access to his mail before he does, and because his brother, Clint, the melon-headed Reverend Pious, has written him a letter—I thought you should know that the police are still tr
ying to find you. When I think that your capture would mean eight more terrible years on that chain gang, my blood runs cold. I’ll keep in touch with you. Devotedly, Clint—and now that Marie has intercepted the letter, Allen’s fate is in her hands. Has she turned against him so thoroughly that she would be willing to expose the truth? Not if she had a reason to protect him, she says. What does she mean by that? he asks. That she wouldn’t tell—if he were her husband. Before he can respond to this threat of blackmail, Marie walks out of the room. Without lifting a finger, she has punched him into submission, and Allen staggers for a moment, back-pedaling as if he has truly been punched, and as he gropes his way into a chair, the look in his eyes makes you think of a man who has just watched a city burn to the ground. His expression is both strange and horrible, he is almost smiling, but strangely and horribly, the smile of someone who has been crushed, smiling because he knows it was inevitable that he should be crushed, and then the smile vanishes and he is on the verge of tears, his resolve has utterly collapsed, he is about to break down and cry, for he knows that he is trapped, trapped for the rest of his life, and no matter how desperate he becomes, there will never be any escape.
The marriage is of course a miserable sham. His wife cheats on him, lies to him, overspends his money, and Allen is powerless to stop her. He is thriving at his job, his reputation has grown, he is now considered one of the best engineers in the city, but his private life is no life, and when he returns home to his new apartment, his first task is to empty the overflowing ashtrays and toss out the empty gin bottles from Marie’s latest party. Then, at a chic gathering organized by the head of Tri-State (which Marie does not attend, since she is out of town visiting her “cousin”), Allen meets a woman named Helen, another lost and lonely soul, a bit too insipid for your taste, alas, but well-bred, soft (as opposed to Marie’s hard), and companionable. Months go by (more pages fluttering off the calendar, superimposed on an image of a construction site, accompanied by the sounds of drilling), and now that Allen has fallen in love with his new woman and his life has taken an unexpected turn for the better, he feels emboldened to confront Marie and ask for a divorce. He promises to give her anything and everything she wants, but she calmly tells him (sprawled out on the couch smoking a cigarette, perhaps a little drunk) that she’s satisfied with the way things are, she’s happy, and there’s no chance of letting him go. Marie: You’re going to be a big shot someday with plenty of sugar, and I’m going to ride right along. Allen: But I’m in love with another woman. Marie: That’s ju-u-u-u-st too bad. Allen: Why don’t you play the game square? Marie: Square! So you and your sweetheart can give me the grand go-by, huh? Allen: If you don’t listen to reason, I’ll find some way. Marie: You do, and you’ll serve out your time. Allen: It’s no worse than serving out my time with you. Marie (furious): You’ll be sorry you said that! Allen (grabbing her): Now, listen. You’ve held that sword above my head long enough. It’s about time we called it quits. You’ve been pulling a bluff on me, and I’ve been fool enough and coward enough to go along with it. Marie: Oh, you good-for-nothing filthy convict. Bluffing? You’ll see.
So begins the final chapter of the Fugitive’s Tale. The detectives arrive at Allen’s office just as he is meeting with a delegation from the chamber of commerce, which wants to invite him to be the principal speaker at its next banquet because of his marvelous work on the new bridge. All the way to the top—and now the long fall to the bottom again as Marie makes good on her heartless promise. It is not a simple matter of sending Allen back into the clutches of the Dixieland penal system, however, there are established protocols for arranging such a transfer, laws of extradition that must be adhered to, and the Illinois governor and Chicago district attorney refuse to let him go. Newspaper headlines fill the screen. CHICAGO FIGHTS TO KEEP ALLEN FROM CHAIN GANG, followed by the Southern response—LOCAL CHAIN GANG OFFICIALS IRATE AS CHICAGO REFUSES TO AID THEM—which elicits an editorial in Allen’s defense, “Is This Civilization?”—“Shall we stand by while a man who has become a respected citizen of the community has the shadow of medieval torture creeping over him? Must James Allen be sent back to a living hell?”—which, in turn, provokes yet another response, WHAT HAS BECOME OF STATE RIGHTS?: “It is, indeed, a sad state of affairs when the governor of one state refuses to recognize the rights of another.” If only Allen would stand firm, the controversy would eventually die down and be forgotten, he could remain in Illinois as a free man, marry Helen, build more bridges, but the Fugitive is too honorable, too good for his own good, and when the Southern officials offer him a compromise deal, he accepts it in order to clear his name once and for all. They pretend to want him back for just ninety days, supposedly the minimum amount of time he must serve in order to be granted a pardon, and no, of course he won’t have to return to the chain gang, they assure him, he will be given a clerical job in some prison instead. You are just a fourteen-year-old boy, but even you can see through these lies, you can sense the doom that is settling upon him, but Allen is determined to go ahead with it, and so you glumly watch as the Fugitive says good-bye to Helen and boards a train heading south. Once there, he meets with the local lawyer handling his case, a certain Mr. Ramsay, who is first of all concerned that Allen pay an immediate advance on his large fee, and it is only after Allen has written a check that Ramsay informs him that this is a funny state, and the governor is a little peculiar, meaning that the clerical job isn’t so definite and they might want him to work for about sixty days. The hapless Allen smiles one of his small, ironic smiles, the smile of a man who has been backed into a corner, who has no choice but to accept another defeat. Sixty days. He can do that if he has to. As long as it puts an end to this gruesome business, sixty days will be worth it.
Bit by bit, by slowly mounting increments over the next days and weeks and months, every one of the promises made to Allen in the North is broken in the South. Step one: he is put in the Tuttle County Prison Camp, the harshest camp in the state—violently pushed into the bunkhouse by one of the guards as the warden tells him he’ll be shot if he tries to escape again. The only solace is that his old friend Bomber Wells is one of his fellow prisoners, but when he tries to explain the pardon deal he has worked out with the prison commission, Bomber tells him flatly: These boys here ain’t ever heard that word. Allen: They just want to make it tough on me, I guess. I’ll get the pardon, all right. Bomber: Listen, kid. They ain’t thinking about handing out pardons when you land in here. This is the last word. You might say—it’s it.
A wide shot of the hills. Scores of men are working in an immense landscape of stone and sky, swinging their hammers as a spiritual is sung by a chorus of black male voices, and for the first time since the film began, the story is no longer just about Allen and his sufferings, it is about an entire system of barbaric punishment and brutality, and with the words of the black spiritual rising up from the hills, it is impossible not to recall the fact that the Civil War ended just sixty-seven years earlier, that for more than two and a half centuries men and women worked as slaves in the New World, and now that twenty-nine more years have passed and it is 1961, you think about the fact that Hitler came to power just months after the film was released, and therefore it is impossible for you to look at this prison camp from 1932 America and not think of it as a precursor of the death camps of World War II—for this is what the world looks like when it is run by monsters.