by Paul Auster
“That was the trouble. The land is too big out there, and after a while it starts to swallow you up. I reached a point when I couldn’t take it in anymore. All that bloody silence and emptiness. You try to find your bearings in it, but it’s too big, the dimensions are too monstrous, and eventually, I don’t know how else to put it, eventually it just stops being there. There’s no world, no land, no nothing. It comes down to that, Fogg, in the end it’s all a figment. The only place you exist is in your head.
“We worked our way across the center of the state, then angled down into the canyon country in the southeast, what they call the Four Corners, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico come together. That was the strangest place of all, a dream world, all red earth and contorted rocks, tremendous structures rising out of the ground, they stood there like the ruins of some lost city built by giants. Obelisks, minarets, palaces: everything was at once recognizable and alien, you couldn’t help seeing familiar shapes when you looked at them, even though you knew it was all chance, the petrified sputum of glaciers and erosion, a million years of wind and weather. Thumbs, eye sockets, penises, mushrooms, human beings, hats. It was like making pictures out of clouds. Everyone knows what those places look like now, you’ve seen them a hundred times yourself. Glen Canyon, Monument Valley, the Valley of the Gods. That’s where they shoot all those cowboy-and-Indian movies, the goddamned Marlboro man gallops through there on television every night. But pictures don’t tell you anything about it, Fogg. It’s all too massive to be painted or drawn; even photographs can’t get the feel of it. Everything is so distorted, it’s like trying to reproduce the distances in outer space: the more you see, the less your pencil can do. To see it is to make it vanish.
“We wandered around in those canyons for several weeks. Sometimes we spent the night in ancient Indian ruins, the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi. Those were the tribes who disappeared a thousand years ago, no one knows what happened to them. They left behind their stone cities, their pictographs, their shards of pottery, but the people themselves just melted away. It was late July or early August by then, and Scoresby’s hostility had grown, it was only a matter of time before something snapped, you could feel it in the air. The country was barren and dry, sagebrush everywhere, not a tree to be seen. The temperatures were atrociously hot, and we had to ration our water supply, which put everyone in a foul temper. One day we had to destroy a donkey, which put an extra burden on the two others. The horses were beginning to wilt. We were five or six days from the town of Bluff, and I thought we should try to get ourselves there as quickly as possible to regroup. Scoresby mentioned a shortcut that would knock off a day or two from the journey, and so we set out in that direction, traveling over rugged ground with the sun in our faces. It was difficult going, rougher than anything we had tried before, and after a while it dawned on me that Scoresby was leading us into a trap. Byrne and I weren’t the riders he was, and we could barely negotiate the terrain. Scoresby was in front, Byrne was second, and I was in the rear. We inched up several steep cliffs, then started riding along a ridge at the top. It was very narrow, all strewn with rocks and pebbles, and the light was bouncing off the rocks as if to blind us. We couldn’t turn back at that point, but I didn’t see how we could go on much further. All of a sudden, Byrne’s horse lost its footing. He wasn’t more than ten feet in front of me, and I remember the frantic clattering of stones, the whinnying of the horse as it scrambled to gain a purchase with its hooves. But the ground kept giving way, and before I had a chance to react, Byrne let out a scream, and then he was tumbling over the edge, horse and all, the two of them crashing down the side of the cliff. It was a long fucking way, it must have been two or three hundred feet, and nothing but jagged rocks from top to bottom. I jumped off the horse and fetched the medical box, then rushed down the escarpment to see what I could do. At first I thought Byrne was dead, but then I managed to find his pulse. Other than that, there was precious little to feel encouraged about. His face was covered with blood, and his left leg and left arm were both fractured, I could see that just by looking at them. Then I rolled him onto his back and saw a large gash just below his ribs—an ugly, pulsing wound at least six or seven inches across. It was awful, the boy was all torn to pieces. I was about to open the medicine box when I heard a shot ring out behind me. I turned around and saw Scoresby standing over Byrne’s fallen horse, a smoking pistol in his copy hand. Broken leg, he said curtly, nothing else to be done. I told him that Byrne was in a bad way and needed our immediate attention, but when Scoresby came over for a look, he sneered and said, We shouldn’t waste our time on this one. The only cure for him is a dose of the same medicine I just gave the horse. Scoresby raised his pistol and pointed it at Byrne’s head, but I knocked his arm to the side. I don’t know if he was planning to pull the trigger, but I couldn’t take the risk. Scoresby gave me an evil look when I hit his arm and warned me to keep my hands to myself. I’ll do that when you stop pointing guns at helpless people, I said. Then Scoresby turned and pointed the gun at me. I’ll point it at anyone I like, he said, and suddenly he broke out into a smile, a huge idiot’s grin, relishing the power he held over me. Helpless, he repeated. That’s just what you are, Mr. Painter, a helpless bag of bones. I thought he was going to shoot me then. As I stood there waiting for him to pull the trigger, I wondered how long it would take me to die after the bullet entered my heart. I thought: this is the last thought I will ever have. It seemed to go on forever, the two of us staring into each other’s eyes, waiting for him to go ahead with it. Then Scoresby started to laugh. He was utterly pleased with himself, as if he had just won an enormous victory. He put the gun back in his holster and spat on the ground. It was as though he had already killed me, as though I was already dead.
“He walked back over to the horse and started removing the saddle and saddlebags. I was still shaken by the gun business, but I crouched down beside Byrne and went to work, doing what I could to wash and bandage his wounds. A couple of minutes later, Scoresby returned and announced that he was ready to leave. Leave? I said, what are you talking about? We can’t take the boy with us, he’s in no condition to be moved. Leave him behind, then, Scoresby said. He’s finished anyway, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around this asshole of a canyon waiting for God knows how long just for him to stop breathing. It’s not worth it. Do what you like, I said, but I’m not going to leave Byrne while he’s still alive. Scoresby grunted. You talk like a hero in a goddamned book, he said. You could be stuck down here for a week before he finally croaks, and what’s the point of that? He’s my responsibility, I said. That’s all there is to it. He’s my responsibility, and I’m not going to leave him.
“Before Scoresby left, I tore out a page from my sketch pad and wrote a letter to my wife. I don’t remember what I said. Something melodramatic, I’m fairly sure of it. This will probably be the last time you ever hear from me, I think I actually wrote that. The idea was that Scoresby would post the letter when he got to town. That was our agreement, in any case, but I knew that he had no intention of keeping his promise. It would implicate him in my disappearance, and why should he want to run the risk of being questioned by anyone? Much better for him just to ride off and forget the whole thing. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened. At least I assume it was. Much later, when I read the articles and obituaries, there was never any mention of Scoresby—even though I made a point of putting his name in the letter.
“He also talked about organizing a search party if I didn’t show up within a week, but I knew he wasn’t going to do that either. I told him so to his face, but instead of denying it, he gave me another one of his insolent smirks. Last chance, Mr. Painter, he said, are you coming with me or not? I just shook my head, too angry to speak anymore. Scoresby tipped his hat to me in farewell, and then he started climbing back up the cliff to retrieve his horse and be on his way. Just like that, without another word. It took him a few minutes to get to the top, and I kept my
eyes on him the whole time. I didn’t want to take any chances. I figured he would try to kill me before he left, it seemed almost inevitable. Eliminate the evidence, make sure that I couldn’t tell anyone what he’d done—leaving a young boy to die like that in the middle of nowhere. But Scoresby never turned around. It wasn’t out of kindness, I assure you. The only possible explanation was that he felt it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t have to kill me, because he didn’t think I could make it back on my own.
“Scoresby rode off. Within an hour, I began to feel that he had never existed. I can’t tell you how odd that sensation was. It wasn’t as though I had decided not to think about him, I could barely remember him when I did. The way he looked, the sound of his voice, none of it came back to me anymore. That’s what the silence does to you, Fogg, it obliterates everything. Scoresby was erased from my mind, and whenever I tried to think of him after that, it was like trying to remember someone from a dream, like looking for someone who had never been there.
“It took three or four days for Byrne to die. For my sake, it was probably a good thing it took so long. It kept me busy, and because of that, I didn’t have time to be afraid. The fear didn’t come until later, until after I had buried him and was alone. On the first day, I must have climbed the mountain ten times, unpacking food and equipment from the donkey and hauling it down below. I broke up my easel and used the wood to make splints so I could set Byrne’s arm and leg. I built a small lean-to with a blanket and a tripod to protect his face from the sun. I took care of the horse and the donkey. I changed the bandages with strips of clothing. I built a fire, I cooked food, I did whatever had to be done. Guilt kept me going, it was impossible not to blame myself for what had happened, but even guilt was a comfort. It was a human feeling, a sign that I was still attached to the same world that other men lived in. Once Byrne was gone, there would be nothing to think about anymore, and I was afraid of that emptiness, it scared me half to death.
“I knew it was hopeless, I knew it from the first moment, but I kept deluding myself into thinking he would pull through. He never regained consciousness, but every now and then he would start to babble, the way people do when they talk in their sleep. It was a delirium of incomprehensible words, sounds that never quite became words, but each time it happened, I thought he might be on the verge of coming out of it. He seemed to be separated from me by a thin veil, an invisible membrane that kept him on the other side of this world. I tried to encourage him with the sound of my voice, I talked to him constantly, I sang songs to him, praying that something would finally get through to him and wake him up. It didn’t do the slightest bit of good. His condition kept getting worse. I couldn’t get any food into him, the best I could manage was to dab his lips with a water-soaked cloth, but that wasn’t enough, it gave him no nourishment. Bit by bit, I could see the strength ebb out of him. The stomach wound had stopped bleeding, but it wasn’t mending properly. It had turned yellow-green, it was oozing pus, ants kept crawling over the bandage. There was no way anyone could survive that.
“I buried him copy there at the foot of the mountain. I’ll spare you the details. Digging the grave, dragging his body to the edge, feeling it fall away from me when I pushed it in. I was already going crazy by then, I think. I almost couldn’t bring myself to fill in the hole. Covering him up, flinging dirt onto his dead face, it was all too much for me. I did it with my eyes closed, that’s how I finally solved the problem, I shoveled the dirt back in there without looking. Afterward, I didn’t make a cross or say any prayers. Fuck God, I said to myself, fuck God, I won’t give him the satisfaction. I planted a stick in the ground and attached a piece of paper to it. Edward Byrne, I wrote, 1898-dash-1916. Buried by his friend, Julian Barber. Then I started to scream. That’s how it happened, Fogg. You’re the first person I’ve ever told this to. I started to scream, and after that I just let myself be crazy.”
5
That was as far as we got that day. As soon as he had uttered the last sentence, Effing paused to catch his breath, and before he was able to go on with his story, Mrs. Hume walked in and announced that it was time for lunch. After the terrible things he had recounted, I thought it would be difficult for him to regain his composure, but the interruption hardly seemed to affect him. “Good,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Time for lunch. I’m famished.” It bewildered me how he could shift so rapidly from one mood to another. Just moments before, his voice had been shaking with emotion. I had thought he was on the brink of collapse, and now, all of a sudden, he was brimming with enthusiasm and good cheer. “We’re getting on with it now, boy,” he said to me as I wheeled him into the dining room. “That was just the beginning, what you might call the preface. Wait till I get warmed up. You haven’t heard anything yet.”
Once we sat down at the table, there was no more mention of the obituary. The lunch proceeded as normal, with the usual accompaniment of slurps and outrages, neither more nor less than on any other day. It was as though Effing had already forgotten that he had spent the past three hours spilling his guts to me in the other room. We made our usual small talk, and toward the end of the meal we went through the daily weather briefing in preparation for our afternoon excursion. That was how it went for the next three or four weeks. Mornings, we worked on the obituary; afternoons, we went out for walks. I filled more than a dozen notebooks with Effing’s stories, generally at a clip of twenty or thirty new pages a day. I had to write at great speed to keep up with him, and there were times when my transcriptions were barely legible. At one point I asked him if we could switch to a tape recorder, but Effing refused. No electricity, he said, no machines. “I hate the noise of those infernal things. All whirr and whoosh, it’s enough to make you sick. The only sound I want to hear is your pen moving across the paper.” I explained to him that I wasn’t a professional secretary. “I don’t know shorthand,” I said, “and it’s not always easy for me to read what I’ve written.” “Then type it up when I’m not around,” he said. “I’ll give you Pavel’s typewriter. It’s a beautiful old contraption, I bought it for him when we came to America in thirty-nine. An Underwood. They don’t make them like that anymore. It must weigh three and a half tons.” That same night, I dug it out from the back of the closet in my room and set it up on a small end table. From then on, I spent several hours every evening transcribing the pages from our morning session. It was tedious work, but Effing’s words were still fresh in my mind, and I did not lose very many of them.
After Byrne died, he said, he gave up hope. He made a halfhearted attempt to extricate himself from the canyon, but he soon got lost in a maze of obstacles: cliffs, gorges, unclimbable buttes. His horse collapsed on the second day, but with no firewood to be found, the butchered meat was almost useless. Sagebrush would not ignite. It smoked and sputtered, but it would not produce a fire. To quell his hunger, Effing shaved off slivers of meat from the carcass and singed them with matches. This was enough for one meal, but after the matches ran out, he left the animal behind, unwilling to eat the flesh without cooking it. At that point, Effing was convinced his life was over. He continued blundering among the rocks, leading along the last surviving donkey, but with each step he took, he was tormented by the thought that he was drifting farther and farther from the possibility of rescue. His art supplies were still intact, and he had enough food and water for another two days. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. Even if he managed to live through it, he realized that everything was finished for him. Byrne’s death had seen to that, and there was no way he could ever bring himself to go home. The shame of it would be too much for him: the questions, the recriminations, the loss of face. Much better that they should think he had died, too, for at least his honor would be preserved, and no one would have to know how weak and irresponsible he had been. That was the moment when Julian Barber was obliterated: out there in the desert, hemmed in by rocks and blistering light, he simply canceled himself out. At the time, it did not seem like such a drastic decision to
him. There was no question that he was going to die, and even if he didn’t, he would be as good as dead anyway. No one would know the first thing about what had happened to him.
Effing told me that he went crazy, but I wasn’t sure how literally I was supposed to take that word. After Byrne’s death, he said, he howled almost constantly for three days, smearing his face with the blood that came trickling out of his hands—which had been lacerated by the rocks—but given the circumstances, this behavior did not strike me as unusual. I had done my fair share of screaming during the storm in Central Park, and my situation had been far less desperate than his. When a man feels he has come to the end of his rope, it is perfectly natural that he should want to scream. The air bunches in his lungs, and he cannot breathe unless he pushes it out of him, unless he howls it forth with all his strength. Otherwise, he will choke on his own breath, the very sky will smother him.