Paul Auster - Invisible

Harsh words for someone who shared your life for two years.

Perhaps. As you’ve already noticed, my mouth tends to run away from me at times. But facts are facts, and the fact is I’m not getting any younger. It’s time for me to think about marriage, and no sane man would consider marrying a girl like Margot.

Do you have someone in mind, or is that just a statement of future intentions?

I’m engaged. As of two weeks ago. Yet one more thing I accomplished on my trip to Paris. That’s why I’m in such a good mood tonight.

Congratulations. And when is the happy day?

It’s still not clear. There are complicated issues involved, and the wedding can’t take place until next spring at the earliest.

A pity to wait so long.

It can’t be helped. Technically, she’s still married to someone else, and we have to wait for the law to do its work. Not that it isn’t worth it. I’ve known this woman since I was your age, and she’s an exemplary person, the partner I’ve longed for all my life.

If you care about her so much, why have you been with Margot for the past two years?

Because I didn’t know I was in love with her until I saw her again in Paris.

Exit Margot, enter wife. Your bed won’t be empty for long, will it?

You underestimate me, young man. Much as I’d like to move in with her now, I’m going to hold off until we’re married. It’s a question of principle.

Chivalry in action.

That’s it. Chivalry in action.

Like our old friend from Périgord, the ever-gentle, peace-loving Bertran.

The mention of the poet’s name seemed to stop Born dead in his tracks. Merde! he said, thwacking his knee with the palm of his left hand, I almost forgot. I owe you money, don’t I? Sit tight while I look for my checks. I won’t be a minute.

With those words Born bounced out of his chair and began rushing toward the other end of the apartment. I stood up to stretch my legs, and by the time I reached the dining room table, which was no more than ten or twelve feet from the sofa, he had already returned. Brusquely pulling out a chair, he sat down, opened his checkbook, and started to write-using a speckled green fountain pen, I remember, with a thick nib and blue-black ink.

I’m giving you six thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars, he said. Five thousand to pay for the first issue, plus twelve fifty to cover a fourth of your annual salary. Take your time, Adam. If you can put the contents together by… let’s see… by the end of August or the beginning of September, that will be soon enough. I’ll be long gone by then, of course, but we can stay in contact through the post, and if something urgent comes up, you can call me and reverse the charges.

It was the largest check I had ever seen, and when he tore it out of the book and handed it to me, I looked down at the sum and felt dizzy with apprehension. Are you sure you want to go ahead with it? I asked. This is an awful lot of money, you know.

Of course I want to go ahead with it. We made a deal, and now it’s up to you to assemble the best first issue you possibly can.

But Margot’s out of the picture now. You’re under no obligation to her anymore.

What are you talking about?

It was Margot’s idea, remember? You gave me this job because of her.

Nonsense. It was my idea from the start. The only thing Margot ever wanted was to crawl into bed with you. She couldn’t have cared less about jobs or magazines or the precarious state of your future. If I told you she was the one who put me up to it, that was only because I didn’t want to embarrass you.

Why in the world would you do this for me?

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. But I see something in you, Walker, something I like, and for some inexplicable reason I find myself willing to take a gamble on you. I’m betting that you’ll make a success of it. Prove me right.

It was a warm spring evening, a soft and beautiful evening with a cloudless sky overhead, the smell of flowers in the air, and no wind at all, not even the faintest hint of a breeze. Born was planning to take me to a Cuban restaurant on Broadway and 109th Street (the Ideal, a favorite spot of his), but as we walked westward across the Columbia campus, he proposed that we continue on past Broadway and head for Riverside Drive, where we could stop to look at the Hudson for a few moments, and then make our way downtown along the edge of the park. It was that kind of a night, he said, and since we weren’t in any rush, why not prolong the journey a bit and take advantage of the good weather? So we took our little stroll in the pleasant spring air, talking about the magazine, about the woman Born was planning to marry, about the trees and shrubs in Riverside Park, about the geological composition of the New Jersey Palisades across the river, and I remember that I felt happy, awash in a sense of well-being, and whatever misgivings I might have had about Born were beginning to melt away, or at least had been put in abeyance for now. He hadn’t blamed me for allowing myself to be seduced by Margot. He had just given me a check for an enormous amount of money. He wasn’t haranguing me with his warped political ideas. For once, he seemed to be relaxed and undefensive, and perhaps he really had fallen in love, perhaps his life was turning in a new and better direction, and for that one night, in any case, I was willing to give him every benefit of the doubt.

We crossed over to the eastern sidewalk of Riverside Drive and began walking downtown. Several streetlamps had burned out, and as we approached the corner of West 112th, we found ourselves entering a block-long stretch of murk and darkness. Night had fallen in earnest by then, and it was difficult to see anything more than a yard or two in front of us. I lit up a cigarette, and through the glow of the match burning near my mouth, I glimpsed the shadowy outline of a figure emerging from a blackened doorway. A second later, Born grabbed my arm and told me to stop. Just that one word: Stop . I let the match fall from my hand and tossed the cigarette into the gutter. The figure was coming toward us, unmistakably walking in our direction, and after a few more steps I saw that it was a black kid dressed in dark clothes. He was rather short, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen, but after another three or four steps, I finally understood why Born had grabbed my arm, finally saw what he had already seen. The kid was holding a gun in his left hand. The gun was pointed at us, and just like that, with a single tick of the clock, the entire universe had changed. The kid wasn’t a person anymore. He was that gun and nothing else, the nightmare gun that lived in every New Yorker’s imagination, the heartless, inhuman gun that was destined to find you alone one night on a darkened street and send you to an early grave. Fork it over. Empty your pockets. Shut up. A moment earlier, I had been on top of the world, and now, suddenly, I was more afraid than I had ever been in my life.

The kid stopped about two feet in front of us, pointed the gun at my chest, and said: Don’t move.

He was close enough now for me to see his face, and as far as I could tell he looked scared, not at all confident about what he was doing. How could I have known this? Perhaps it was something in his eyes, or perhaps I had detected a slight tremor in his lower lip-I can’t be sure. Fear made me blind, and whatever sense I had of him must have come to me through my pores, a subliminal osmosis, so to speak, knowledge without consciousness, but I was almost certain that he was a beginner, a novice thug out on his first or second job.

Born was standing to my left, and after a moment I heard him say: What do you want from us? There was a small quiver in his voice, but at least he had managed to speak, which was more than I was capable of doing just then.