Report From the Interior

by Paul Auster

  My writing, I think, will start moving now, after so much floundering—have gotten some good ideas—it will be slow, painful …

  JUNE 18: Fragments. I feel uncivilized. My voice is bursting inside my skull. I want you here. All I have is my work—an apotheosis of solitude. Yes, of course, it’s best to be alone—work is better, yes better, the old south wind4 cracks and rages—the air sows ideas that sprout from my fingertips daily—yes, the work is better, a strange novel that I’m writing … yes, it goes well—but when you write letters that make me so sad I want to go back to New York and take off my clothes and dance a foolish dance to make you laugh—Don’t read so many books—you’ll become an old scholar—and speak a garbled tongue. MAKE MUSIC—sing songs to the sun—praise the dead—write requiems for the living—but sing—let your voice metamorphose the air you breathe—make something—a poem, a piece of music … man’s salvation is to make with love—

  On August first you would be going to Paris, and at that point in mid-June it was all but certain that Lydia would be going as well. You had both signed up for Columbia’s junior year abroad program, and now that the moment of departure was drawing near, your spirits had begun to lift, for you were eagerly looking forward to spending the next ten or twelve months in new surroundings, and you wonder now if those lifting spirits might not have been responsible for the nutty exuberance of your last letter from Maine. As it happened, nothing worked out as you thought it would. You left for Paris at the appointed time, wanting to settle in early, to acclimate yourself to the city before the academic year began, but at the last minute Lydia’s plans changed, for she too had been struggling in the past months, and her parents had decided she should take a leave of absence from Barnard and go to London to stay with her married half sister, who was fourteen years older than she was and lived in a large, comfortable house near Turnham Green. So began the long separation—which dragged on painfully until the last weeks of the following summer.

  You have already written about some of the things that happened to you over the course of the next few months (in Hand to Mouth), describing your quarrel with the Columbia administrator in Paris, your impulsive decision to quit the program and drop out of school, the frantic telephone calls in the middle of the night from your mother and stepfather and maternal uncle, urging you to reconsider, to reverse your suicidal decision because of the draft and the loss of your student deferment, and when you told them no, you were not going to reconsider, more calls in the middle of the night begging you to come back to New York and “discuss the situation,” and how you eventually gave in to their pleas and went to New York for what you thought would be just a few days, since you fully intended to return to Paris and go on with your muddled, independent life, but you didn’t return, it would be over three years before you set foot in Paris again, because one man, the dean of undergraduate students, was willing to let you back into Columbia, even though you had missed a considerable portion of the semester, and the kindness and understanding of that one man, Dean Platt, was enough to make you realize how stupidly you had been acting, and so you stayed on in New York and became a student again. You have touched on all these events before, but the letters weren’t available to you then, and there was much that you had forgotten or misremembered when you sat down to write those pages in 1996, even significant things like the date of your return to New York (which you thought was mid-November but was in fact sometime in the second half of October), and now that you have the evidence before you, you can see that you were in much worse shape than your older self had remembered—deeply confused about everything, perhaps even half out of your mind. Not so much in the beginning, but after you decided to drop out of school, you sound lost, lunging first in one direction and then in another, bouncing from one folly to the next, fitfully trying to hold yourself together as you slowly come apart.

  AUGUST 3: I met an Egyptian Jew who owns a candy stand in front of St. Germain des Prés, who tried to get me an apartment … but apartments are terribly expensive here—a waste of money. So I’m staying in a hotel room—sunny, well situated, quiet. I’m very happy with it.—Until now I’ve been running around doing thousands of practical things—finally it’s over & I’ll be able to start writing & have some peace.

  AUGUST 10: I was very happy to receive your letter—this morning, at about 8:30, in the little café downstairs, as I was taking “my morning coffee” the woman, la patronne, appeared before my still unopened eyes, stuck the letter under my chin (it bristles) and said, in a voice not known for its musicality: “Voilà, monsieur. Pour vous.” Such delight …

  PARIS

  Madame, in her velvet dress, pauses before the untidy man asleep on the bench, and heaves a sigh. “Charmant.” But there is no one around to appreciate her sympathetic remark.

  My room is at the top of a vertiginous staircase, so steep that the street sounds are murmurs …

  The girls are wearing their dresses short, la mini-jupe, which, surprisingly, meets with the displeasure of the old men. “Elles ont passé toutes les bornes,”5 said the old Pole. But why cover the nakedness of youth?

  Often, when it rains, the sunlight waltzes on the string of a Heraclitian yoyo.6

  “Mais monsieur, dans le sac comme ça j’ai pensé qu’ils étaient les ordures.”7 And so the pills to fight my infection were thrown away.

  Words become indistinguishable from gestures. The mime and the orator merge. And the writer, darkening his page with ink, becomes a painter …

  Each hour the bells of St. Germain des Prés crackle to the streets: “J’ai mille ans, et je serai ici après que vous êtes partis.”8

  AUGUST 11: The floor I live on in this hotel—beneath the grayened skylight—is populated with old men who live here permanently. About 5 minutes ago, as I was writing this letter, the old man next door, who comes in every night reeking of wine (I’ve met him coming in several times) knocked on the door—a burnt-out cigarette between his lips, wearing a raggedy bathrobe—and in his rasping voice, overflowing with apologies, asked the time. “Onze heures moins dix.”

  AUGUST 12: I smoke “Parisiennes.” You buy them for 18 centimes in tiny blue wrappers of four—that’s 90 centimes for 20. “Gauloises,” the next cheapest, cost 1 F, 35.

  If you get up early enough, as I did today (7:45)—the air is gray & cold & rainy: an all-day rain—and go downstairs to the café, you can have your coffee with the men from the market, the ice man, the garbage man, etc. The only curious thing is that these men, rather than taking coffee in the morning (it’s only eight o’clock, remember) imbibe all sorts of exotic liqueurs, mostly wines. It seems to be a custom among old men. The thought of it (drinking at 8 o’clock) is a bit more than I can take.

  The rain, in the early morning cold, splatting on the narrow streets … seems to bring everything closer—to each other, to me … Even sounds take on a different quality. The old man’s radio, playing accordion music next door, seems clearer, sadder. Ah—now it’s stopped. For a moment a small vacuum in the air—actually my ears … my mind.

  AUGUST 18: Forgive my delay. I know that I promised to write yesterday. However, that became quite impossible … By the middle of the afternoon I had completed half the letter. I then went out, and, contrary to my intentions, returned well after midnight. Not that my late return would have prevented me from completing the letter—far from it! I am thoroughly accustomed to keeping late hours, and under ordinary conditions would have completed it as soon as I had come back to my room. But this particular night, that is to say, last night—the night of the day in question—I found myself in the unliterary position, the non-epistolary condition, of being very drunk. Nevertheless, I was mightily determined to complete the letter, to keep my word. I had even bought an Italian newspaper, in the hope that if I read it for a little while the mental strain of reading that language would sober me up. But alas, the paper was easy to understand, I knew more Italian than I thought I did, and soon, upon the delightfully soft, horiz
ontal plane of my bed (if one speaks generally, poetically, that is, not mentioning the bumps, curves, and sags) my innocent little eyes closed themselves against my will and I was (Let these walls be my judge) asleep. Although I had dreamed of sleeping on a huge round bed, with pale green sheets and heavy, icy quilts and being awakened by the soft scented words of … a maid, young and pretty, with whom I had been carrying on a clandestine affair, although I had dreamed of being awakened by the warm smells of coffee & croissants, the sweet smells of perfume and femininity, I found, in my room, upon awakening, nothing but the smells of dirty feet, and since it is only I who live here, I knew that those feet (and the socks that had enrobed them for many a day) were mine. On top of this strong disappointment, this rude negation of my dreams, I had one of those headaches that so often follow the “night before.” You know those headaches, they feel as if a great gorilla has hold of your head, and every time you move, even the slightest bit, he clubs you with a great wooden mallet. And alas, the headache is still with me, following me wherever I go, as faithful as my shadow.

  But I shall not linger on the details of my physical condition. The sun is shining, the day is lovely. Paris, after the long August 15th weekend, is slowly beginning to revive. Within two weeks, I’m sure everything will be back to normal.

  I had hoped to write to you about politics—something that has occupied my thoughts a great deal this summer—but find that I don’t have the energy right now—the next letter.

  Good news. In my mailbox this morning was a note from Peter. He’s in Paris and coming here at noon—in an hour and a half.9

  AUGUST 21: Peter and Sue are here. Also Bob N.… Tonight they’re going to play fiddle music in cafés. That should be, to say the least, quite amusing.

  I’ve slowly begun to write again … Also I’ve been reading books on politics and Marxism …

  When I think about my future, I get quite confused. I haven’t the vaguest idea about what’s going to happen to me after this year. Stay in France? Elsewhere in Europe? Return to America? Which college in America—Columbia? Afterwards, graduate school? A job? (I’m convinced I’ll never earn much money writing.) Reviews? Translations? Simply starve and write? What about politics? To every one of these questions my answer is: “I don’t know.” The best thing, I suppose, is simply to play it by ear, as they say, although as you know, I can’t hold a tune for very long.

  Last night I dreamt that my grandmother had died. I was on the rue de l’Escroquerie (i.e., a dirty business, racket), a dark and wet place—like a resort—but made out of wood—like a log cabin fortress in movies about the U.S. Army in the 1870s. Lots of crooks and thieves around—watches kept appearing on my wrist—at one time I had 6—3 on each wrist. I was with Sue H. looking for Peter … and my mother, who was angry with me. I remember talking to 2 doctors—one was very drunk—about my grandmother. Very strange.

  AUGUST 23: The pigeons perch themselves on the roof above my window, through which I can see the slated red roofs of the market below, and to the right, the spires of L’Église St. Sulpice. When the sun shines in the early afternoon the pigeons who take off from the roof cast their shadows on the floor of my room. It seems as if they are in here with me. I feel like St. Francis.

  I have been writing. It makes me feel human.

  Next door to the hotel is a Free Soup Center. There are twenty in the city, one in each arrondissement. It has been closed during the summer, but I’m sure it will open up again soon. Inside are unpainted tables and chairs. That’s all.

  Two nights ago Peter, Bob N., and I went around from café to café playing music. Peter the violin, Bob the guitar, and I a glass (to collect money) and my voice. In one hour we collected 30 Francs. The only people … who mocked and laughed and of course didn’t give anything, were a bunch of Germans. I almost had a fight with one of them. We were ready to quit after earning 20 Francs, but Bob wanted to make it 24, so he could get his rent money, which is 8 Francs. We found ourselves in the Carrefour de l’Odéon—a big empty square. We started walking up the hill towards the theater (it’s the one run by Jean-Louis Barrault) when from a very small café a girl called out to us in an Italian accent (speaking French)—“Don’t go away. We want to hear the violin.” I came back and made a proposition … that we would do 4 songs if we were guaranteed at least 4 Francs. Peter & Bob came back. We talked with them—very pleasantly—it was nice to be off the big streets—and began to play. After the first song we collected about 4 Francs. Just as the second song had begun, a police paddy wagon—filled with cops—drove slowly into the square. “Les flics,” I said. Peter’s face dropped, he stopped playing. We excused ourselves in a frenzy and began to run away. As we were running everybody took money from their pockets, the waiter even gave one Franc, encouraged us to leave for our own health, thanked us, wished us luck … We ran like desperate thieves into the nearest subway. A very dramatic exit and finale. It was an exciting moment.—But I don’t want to do it anymore. First of all, begging is not much fun. It was I who collected the money, took crap from people, talked back, etc.—which left me with a bad feeling. Secondly, because I’m not starving, it’s hypocritical to beg, and takes away, I imagine, from the real beggars who make their living that way. But I must admit that I don’t regret having had the experience.

  AUGUST 23 (SECOND LETTER): I often spend my days like this: get up early—between 8 & 9:30. Go downstairs for breakfast, and if you have written, read the letter while I’m eating. Then I go upstairs, write to you, go & mail the letter, take a walk, and come back and write. (I’ve been writing short things—prose—individual pieces of about 5 or 10 pages that can stand alone. I don’t think, at this point, with so little time left before school, that I could work on anything long.) At about one o’clock Peter and Sue get up (they’re living in this hotel until they find an apartment, if they ever do) and I go down with them to eat something. Then I might go out with them or just with Peter—Sue sees Nancy sometimes—or alone—or go back upstairs and write. For instance, yesterday I went with Peter & bought a pair of pants … It’s 6 o’clock now, evenings are usually—a meal in a restaurant & then either sitting around or going to a movie. Then back to my room, where I usually read, or sometimes, if I feel up to it, write again. Then sleep & we begin again.

  It was, in almost every way, a perfect life. Absolute freedom in those weeks before the beginning of the fall semester, the luck of having landed in Paris, luck on all fronts, a boy blessed with every advantage, dining out with your friends, watching movies at the Cinémathèque, taking long walks through the city, and yet all during those weeks of blissful indolence you were pining for your absent love across the Channel, tormented by the knowledge that you loved more than you were loved, that you were perhaps not loved at all, deluding yourself with impractical schemes to escape to London to find out where you stood with her, but travel was out of the question, you were living on the tightest of budgets and had no access to any kind of work to augment your income, scratching by on the one-hundred-forty-dollar monthly allowance your father had agreed to send you, a kind gesture on his part, how could you not feel grateful to him for helping you out, and yet even in that time of forty-cent movie tickets and one-dollar meals, a hundred and forty a month was no more than a pittance, for once you deducted your sixty-dollar-a-month rent, you were left with eighty dollars for food and all other necessities, under three dollars a day for everything, and there you are on August twenty-eighth writing that you have the equivalent of seven dollars in your pocket, and one day after (writing in French, for reasons that escape you now) that you are down to your last two dollars. “C’est moche, c’est drôle, mais à ce moment j’ai seulement dix francs. C’est à dire, j’ai deux dollars. Pas beaucoup. Après aujourd’hui je ne sais pas ce que je ferai. J’espère que mon père envoyera l’argent bientôt.”10

  AUGUST 28: My writing goes painfully, slowly. Exhaustingly so … I have been very moody—real depression, then optimistic. Things are still swimming
. Last night, in a bad mood, I went all the way across the city in the hopes of getting a free meal at a certain cafeteria for which M. had given me a meal ticket. But no luck. The ticket was no longer good. So I went back. In the metro a woman was singing—beautifully, sadly, to herself. It made me terribly sad, that is, sadder …

  For 50 cents you can buy a litre of vin ordinaire. I’ve been drinking a bit too much. Often it makes me quite sleepy and I just KONK out.

  I want to write a film. Have some really good ideas …

  The following week (September 5) another letter that begins in French: Je ne sais plus quoi dire. La pluie tombe toujours, comme une chute de sable sur la mer. La ville est laide. Il fait froid—l’automne a commencé. Jamais deux personnes ne seront ensemble—la chair est invisible, trop loin de toucher. Tout le monde parle sans rien dire, sans paroles, sans sens. Les mouvements des jambes deviennent ivres. Les anges dansent et la merde est partout.

  Je ne fais rien. Je n’écris pas, je ne pense pas. Tout est devenu lourd, difficile, pénible. Il n’y a ni commencement de commençant ni fin de finissant. Chaque fois qu’il est détruit, il paraît encore parmi ses propres ruines. Je ne le questionne plus. Une fois fini je retourne et je commence encore. Je me dis, un petit peu plus, n’arrêtes pas maintenant, un petit peu plus et tout changera, et je continue, même si je ne comprends pas pourquoi, je continue, et je pense que chaque fois sera la dernière. Oui, je parle, je force les paroles à sonner (à quoi bon?), ces paroles anciennes, qui ne sont plus les miennes, ces paroles qui tombent sans cesse de ma bouche …11