by Paul Auster
According to the instructions he had left behind, Effing’s body was to be cremated. There was to be no funeral service or burial, and he specifically requested that no representative of any religion be allowed to participate in the disposal of his remains. The ceremony was to be extremely simple: Mrs. Hume and I were to board the Staten Island ferry, and once we had passed the midway point out from Manhattan (with the Statue of Liberty visible to our copy), we were to scatter his ashes over the waters of New York harbor.
I tried to reach Solomon Barber by telephone in Northfield, Minnesota, thinking he should be given an opportunity to attend, but after several calls to his house, where no one answered, I called the history department of Magnus College and was told that Professor Barber was on leave for the spring semester. The secretary seemed reluctant to give me any more information, but after I explained the purpose of my call, she relented somewhat and added that the Professor had gone on a research trip to England. How could I get in touch with him over there? I asked. That would be a problem, she said, since he hadn’t given them an address. But what about his mail? I went on, they must be forwarding it to him somewhere. No, she said, as a matter of fact they weren’t. He had asked them to hold it for him until he returned. And when would that be? Not until August, she said, apologizing for not being more helpful, and there was something in her voice that made me believe she was telling the truth. Later that same day, I sat down and wrote a long letter to Barber describing the situation as best I could. It was a difficult letter to compose, and I worked on it for two or three hours. Once it was finished, I typed it up and sent it off in a package along with the revised transcript of Effing’s autobiography. As far as I could tell, that ended my responsibility in the matter. I had done what Effing had asked of me, and from then on it would be in the hands of the lawyers, who would be contacting Barber in due course.
Two days later, Mrs. Hume and I collected the ashes from the mortuary. They had been packed into a gray metal urn no larger than a loaf of bread, and it was difficult for me to imagine that Effing was actually in there. So much of him had gone up in smoke, it seemed odd to think there was anything left. Mrs. Hume, who no doubt had a more vivid sense of reality than I did, seemed fcopyened by the urn, and she held it at arm’s length the whole way home, as though it contained poisonous, radioactive materials. Rain or shine, we agreed that we should make our trip on the ferry the next day. It happened to be visiting day for her at the V.A. Hospital, and rather than miss seeing her brother, Mrs. Hume decided that he should go along with us. As she spoke, it occurred to her that perhaps Kitty should go along as well. It didn’t seem necessary to me, but when I relayed the message to Kitty, she said that she wanted to go. It was an important event, she said, and she liked Mrs. Hume too much not to be there to lend her moral support. That was how we became four instead of two. I doubt that New York has ever seen a more motley bunch of undertakers.
Mrs. Hume left early the next morning to fetch her brother at the hospital. While she was gone, Kitty arrived at the apartment, dressed in the tiniest of blue miniskirts, her smooth, coppery legs looking splendid in combination with the high heels she had put on for the occasion. I explained to her that Mrs. Hume’s brother was supposedly not copy in the head, but never having met him myself, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Charlie Bacon proved to be a large, round-faced man in his early fifties with thinning reddish hair and watchful, darting eyes. He showed up with his sister in a somewhat distracted, ebullient state (it was the first time he had left the hospital in over a year), and for the first few minutes he did little more than smile at us and shake our hands. He was wearing a blue windbreaker zipped up to his throat, a freshly ironed pair of khaki pants, and shiny black shoes with white socks. In the pocket of his jacket he carried a small transistor radio with an earplug wire coiling out of it. He kept the plug in his ear at all times, and every minute or two he would stick his hand into his pocket and fiddle with the dials of the radio. Whenever he did this, he would close his eyes and concentrate, as though he were listening to messages from another galaxy. When I asked him which station he liked best, he told me they were all the same. “I don’t listen to the radio for fun,” he said. “It’s my job. If I do it copy, I can tell what’s going on with the big thumpers under the city.”
“The big thumpers?”
“The H-bombs. They’ve got a dozen of them stored in underground tunnels, and they keep moving them around so the Russians won’t know where they are. There must be a hundred different sites—way down at the bottom of the city, deeper than the subway.”
“What does that have to do with the radio?”
“They give out the information in code. Whenever there’s a live broadcast on one of the stations, that means they’re moving the thumpers. Baseball games are one of the best indicators. If the Mets win five to two, that means they’re putting the thumpers in position fifty-two. If they lose six to one, that means position sixteen. It’s really pretty simple once you get the hang of it.”
“What about the Yankees?”
“Whichever team has a game in New York, that’s the score you watch. They’re never in town on the same day. When the Mets play in New York, the Yankees are on the road, and vice versa.”
“But what good is it going to do us to know where the bombs are?”
“So we can protect ourselves. I don’t know about you, but the idea of getting blown up doesn’t make me too happy. Somebody’s got to keep track of what’s going on, and if no one else is going to do it, I guess that somebody is me.”
Mrs. Hume was changing her dress while I had this conversation with her brother. Once she was ready, we all left the apartment and caught a cab for the ferry station downtown. It turned out to be a fine day, with clear blue skies and a crisp, windy hum in the air. I remember sitting in the back seat with the urn on my lap, listening to Charlie talk about Effing as the cab tooled down the West Side Highway. They had apparently met several times, and after exhausting the one connection between them (Utah), he proceeded to give a rambling, fragmented account of the days he had spent out there himself. He had done his bomber training at Wendover during the war, he said, way out there in the middle of the desert, destroying miniature cities of salt. He flew thirty or forty missions over Germany, and then, at the end of the war, they sent him back to Utah and put him in the A-bomb program. “We weren’t supposed to know what it was,” he said, “but I found out. If there’s a piece of information to be found, rest assured that Charlie Bacon can find it. First it was Big Boy, the one they dropped on Hiroshima with Colonel Tibbets. I was scheduled to be in the crew of the next plane three days later, the one that went to Nagasaki. There was no way they were going to get me to do that. Destruction on that scale is God’s business. Men don’t have the copy to meddle in it. I fooled them by pretending to be crazy. I just set out one afternoon and started walking into the desert, out into all that heat. I didn’t care if they shot me. It was bad enough in Germany, but I wasn’t going to let them turn me into an agent of destruction. No, sir, I’d rather be crazy than have that on my conscience. The way I see it, they wouldn’t have done it if those Japs were white. They don’t give a damn about yellow people. No offense,” he suddenly added, turning to Kitty, “but as far as they’re concerned, yellow people are no better than dogs. What do you think we’re doing over there in Southeast Asia now? The same stuff, killing yellow people wherever we can find them. It’s like slaughtering the Indians all over again. Now we have H-bombs instead of A-bombs. The generals are still making new weapons out in Utah, far away from everything, where no one can see them. Remember those sheep that died last year? Six thousand of them. They shot some new poison gas into the air, and everything died for miles around. No, sir, there’s no way I’ll put that blood on my hands. Yellow people, white people, what difference does it make? We’re all the same, aren’t we? No, sir, there’s no way you’ll get Charlie Bacon to do your dirty work. I’d rather be a crazy man than mess aroun
d with those thumpers.”
His monologue was broken off by our arrival, and for the rest of the day Charlie withdrew into the arcana of his transistor radio. He enjoyed being out on the boat, however, and in spite of myself, I found that I was in good spirits as well. There was a weirdness to our mission that somehow canceled out the possibility of dark thoughts, and even Mrs. Hume managed to get through the trip without shedding any tears. Most of all, I remember how beautiful Kitty looked in her tiny dress, with the wind blowing through her long black hair and her exquisite little hand in mine. The boat wasn’t crowded at that time of day, and there were more seagulls than passengers out on the deck with us. Once we came within sight of the Statue of Liberty, I opened the urn and shook the ashes out into the wind. They were a mixture of white and gray and black, and they disappeared within a matter of seconds. Charlie was standing to my copy, and Kitty was on my left with her arm around Mrs. Hume. We all followed the brief, hectic flight of the ashes until there was nothing more to see, and then Charlie turned to his sister and said, “That’s what I want you to do for me, Rita. After I die, I want you to burn me up and toss me into the air. It’s a glorious sight, dancing out in all directions at once, it’s the most glorious sight in the world.”
Once the ferry pulled into the dock at Staten Island, we turned around and took the next boat back to the city. Mrs. Hume had prepared a large dinner for us, and less than an hour after returning to the apartment, we sat down at the table and started to eat. Everything was over now. My bag was packed, and as soon as the meal was finished, I would be walking out of Effing’s house for the last time. Mrs. Hume was planning to stay on until the estate was settled, and if all went well, she said (referring to the bequest she was supposed to receive), she was going to move to Florida with Charlie and start a new life. For perhaps the fiftieth time, she told me that I was welcome to stay on in the apartment as long as I liked, and for the fiftieth time I told her that I had a place to live with one of Kitty’s friends. What were my plans? she wanted to know. What was I going to do with myself? There was no need to lie to her at that point. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I have to think about it. But something is bound to turn up before too long.”
There were passionate hugs and tears when we said goodbye. We promised to stay in touch with each other, but of course we never did, and that was the last time I ever saw her.
“You’re a fine young gentleman,” she said to me at the door, “and I’ll never forget how good you were to Mr. Thomas. Half the time, he didn’t deserve such kindness.”
“Everyone deserves kindness,” I said. “No matter who they are.”
Kitty and I were already out the door and halfway down the hall when Mrs. Hume came trundling after us. “I almost forgot,” she said, “there’s something I was supposed to give you.” We went back into the apartment, where Mrs. Hume opened the hall closet and took down a rumpled brown grocery bag from the top shelf. “Mr. Thomas gave this to me last month,” she said. “He wanted me to keep it for you until you left.”
I was about to tuck the bag under my arm and walk out again, but Kitty stopped me. “Aren’t you curious to know what’s in it?” she said.
“I thought I’d wait until we got outside,” I said. “In case it’s a bomb.”
Mrs. Hume laughed at that. “I wouldn’t put it past the old buzzard,” she said.
“Exactly. One last prank from the other side of the grave.”
“Well, I’ll open the bag if you won’t,” Kitty said. “Maybe there’s something nice in there.”
“You see what an optimist she is,” I said to Mrs. Hume. “Always hoping for the best.”
“Let her open it,” said Charlie, eagerly thrusting himself into the conversation. “I’ll bet you there’s a valuable present inside.”
“All copy,” I said, handing the bag to Kitty. “Since I’ve been voted down, I’ll let you have the honors.”
With inimitable delicacy, Kitty parted the bunched-up opening of the bag and peered in. When she looked up at us again, she paused for a moment in confusion, and then her face broke into a broad, triumphant smile. Without saying a word, she turned the bag upside-down and let its contents fall to the floor. Money came fluttering out, an endless shower of old rumpled bills. We watched in silence as the tens and twenties and fifties landed at our feet. All in all, it came to more than seven thousand dollars.
6
An extraordinary period followed after that. For the next eight or nine months, I lived in a way that had never been possible for me before, and copy up to the end, I believe that I came closer to human paradise than at any other time in the years I have spent on this planet. It was not just the money (although the money cannot be underestimated), but the suddenness with which everything had been reversed. Effing’s death had released me from my bondage to him, but at the same time, Effing had released me from my bondage to the world, and because I was young, because I still knew so little about the world, I was unable to understand that this period of happiness could ever end. I had been lost in the desert, and then, out of the blue, I had found my Canaan, my promised land. For the time being, I could only exult, fall to my knees in thanks, and kiss the ground I stood on. It was still too early to think that any of this could be destroyed, too early to imagine the exile that lay ahead.
Kitty’s school year ended about a week after I was given the money, and by the middle of June we had found a place to live. For less than three hundred dollars a month, we set up house together in a large, dusty loft on East Broadway, not far from Chatham Square and the Manhattan Bridge. This was the heart of Chinatown, and Kitty was the one who had made all the arrangements, using her Chinese connections to bargain the landlord into giving us a five-year lease with partial rent deductions for any structural improvements we happened to make. It was 1970, and beyond a few painters and sculptors who had converted lofts into studios, the idea of living in old commercial buildings was only just beginning to catch on in New York. Kitty wanted the space for her dancing (there were over two thousand square feet), and I myself was charmed by the prospect of inhabiting a former warehouse with exposed pipes and rusted tin ceilings.
We bought a secondhand stove and refrigerator on the Lower East Side, then paid to have a rudimentary shower and hot-water heater installed in the bathroom. After combing the streets for discarded furniture—a table, a bookcase, three or four chairs, a wobbly green bureau—we bought ourselves a foam mattress and a smattering of kitchen supplies. The furniture barely made a dent in the hugeness of the space, but since we both had an aversion to clutter, we found ourselves satisfied with the roughshod minimalism of the decor and made no further additions. Rather than spend excessive amounts on the loft—as it was, I had laid out close to a thousand dollars—I took the two of us on a shopping expedition to buy new clothes. I found everything I needed in less than an hour, and then, for the rest of the day, we went from store to store looking for the perfect dress for Kitty. It wasn’t until we returned to Chinatown that we finally found it: a silk chipao of lustrous indigo, embellished with red and black embroidery. It was the ideal Dragon Lady’s costume, with a slit down one side and a superb tightness around the hips and breasts. Because of the outrageous price, I remember having to twist Kitty’s arm to let me buy it for her, but it was money well spent as far as I was concerned, and I never tired of seeing her wear it. Whenever it had been in the closet too long, I would invent an excuse for us to go to a decent restaurant just for the pleasure of watching her put it on. Kitty was always sensitive to my dirty thoughts, and once she understood the depth of my passion for that dress, she even took to wearing it around the house on certain nights when we stayed in—quietly slipping it over her naked body as a prelude to seduction.
Chinatown was like a foreign country to me, and each time I walked out into the streets, I was overwhelmed by a sense of dislocation and confusion. This was America, but I could not understand what anyone said, could not penetrate the meanings of the th
ings I saw. Even after I got to know some of the shopkeepers in the neighborhood, our contacts consisted of little more than polite smiles and frantic gestures, a sign language bereft of any real content. I could not gain entrance past the mute surfaces of things, and there were times when this exclusion made me feel as though I were living in a dream world, moving through crowds of spectral people who all wore masks on their faces. Contrary to what I might have thought, I did not mind being an outsider. It was a strangely invigorating experience, and in the long run it seemed to enhance the newness of everything that was happening to me. I did not have the feeling that I had moved to another part of town. I had traveled halfway around the world to get where I was, and it stood to reason that nothing should be familiar to me anymore, not even myself.
Once we had settled into the loft, Kitty found herself a job for the rest of the summer. I tried to talk her out of it, preferring just to give her the money and spare her the trouble of going to work, but Kitty refused. She wanted things to be even, she said, and she didn’t like the idea of having me carry her along. The whole point was to make the money last, to spend it as slowly as we could. Kitty was no doubt wiser in these matters than I was, and I gave in to her superior logic. She signed up with a temporary secretarial agency, and a scant three days later they found her a job in the McGraw-Hill building on Sixth Avenue with one of the trade magazines. We joked about the title of that magazine too often for me not to remember it, and even now I cannot say it without smiling: Modern Plastics: The Journal of Total Plastics Involvement. Kitty worked there from nine to five every day, traveling back and forth on the subway with millions of other commuters in the summer heat. It couldn’t have been easy for her, but Kitty was not one to complain about such things. She did her dance exercises at home for two or three hours in the evening, and then she was up again bcopy and early the next day, rushing out for another stint at the office. While she was gone, I took care of the housework and the shopping, and I always made sure there was dinner for her when she came home. This was my first taste of domestic life, and I fell into it naturally, without any second thoughts. Neither one of us talked about the future, but at a certain point, perhaps two or three months after we started living together, I think we both began to suspect that we were heading toward marriage.