Paul Auster - Invisible

I’m fairly certain they believed my story. I gave them Born’s note, for one thing, and although it lacked a signature, the knife was mentioned, the threat was explicit, and if there was any doubt concerning the author’s identity, a handwriting expert could easily confirm that it had been composed by Born. There was also the bloodstain on the sidewalk near the corner of Riverside Drive and West 112th Street. And then there was my emergency call for the ambulance, which tallied with their records, and the additional fact that I was able to tell them that no one had been present at the scene when the ambulance arrived. At first, they were reluctant to believe that a professor at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs could commit such a nasty street crime, let alone that such a person would walk around with a switchblade in his pocket, but in the end they assured me they would look into it. I left the police station convinced that the matter would soon be closed. It was the end of May, which meant there were still two or three weeks to go before the semester ended, and because I had put off reporting to the police for six long days following the discovery of Williams’s corpse, I figured that Born must have thought his threatening note had done its job. But I was wrong, miserably and tragically wrong. As promised, the police did go to question him, but they quickly learned from an administrator at the School of International Affairs that Professor Born had returned to Paris earlier in the week. His mother had died quite suddenly, they were told, and with so little time remaining in the semester, his final classes were going to be taught by a substitute. In other words, Professor Born would not be coming back.

He had been frightened of me, after all. In spite of the note, he had assumed I would ignore his threat and go to the police anyway. Yes, I did go-but not soon enough, not soon enough by half, and because I gave him that extra time, he had pounced at the opportunity and run, fleeing the country and escaping the jurisdiction of New York’s laws. I knew for a fact that the story about his mother’s death was a sham. During our first conversation at the party in April, he had told me that both his parents were dead, and unless his mother had been resurrected in the interim, I was hard-pressed to see how she could have died twice. When the detective called to tell me what had happened, I felt crushed, humiliated, numb. Born had defeated me. He had shown me something about myself that filled me with revulsion, and for the first time in my life I understood what it was to hate someone. I could never forgive him-and I could never forgive myself.

Back in the dark ages of our youth, Walker and I had been friends. We entered Columbia together in 1965, two eighteen-year-old freshmen from New Jersey, and over the next four years we moved in the same circles, read the same books, shared the same ambitions. Then our class graduated, and I lost contact with him. In the early seventies, I ran into someone who told me Adam was living in London (or maybe it was Rome, he wasn’t sure), and that was the last time I heard anyone mention his name. For the next thirty-something years, he rarely entered my thoughts, but whenever he did, I would find myself wondering how he had managed to disappear so thoroughly. Of all the young misfits from our little gang at college, Walker was the one who had struck me as the most promising, and I figured it was inevitable that sooner or later I would begin reading about the books he had written or come across something he had published in a magazine-poems or novels, short stories or reviews, perhaps a translation of one of his beloved French poets-but that moment never came, and I could only conclude that the boy who had been destined for a life in the literary world had gone on to concern himself with other matters.

A little less than a year ago (spring 2007), a UPS package was delivered to my house in Brooklyn. It contained the manuscript of Walker’s story about Rudolf Born (Part I of this book), along with a cover letter from Adam that read as follows:

Dear Jim,

Forgive the intrusion after such a long silence. If memory serves, it’s been thirty-eight years since we last talked, but I recently came across an announcement that you’ll be doing an event in San Francisco next month (I live in Oakland), and I was wondering if you might have some free time to spend with me-perhaps dinner at my house, for example-since I’m in urgent need of help, and I believe you’re the only person I know (or knew) who can give it to me. I say this not to alarm you but because of the enormous admiration I have for the books you have written-which have made me so proud of you, so proud to have once counted myself among your friends.

By way of anticipation, I enclose a still-not-finished draft of the first chapter of a book I am trying to write. I want to go on with it but seem to have hit a wall of struggle and uncertainty- fear might be the word I’m looking for-and I’m hoping that a talk with you might give me the courage to climb over it or tear it down. I should add (in case you’re in doubt) that it is not a work of fiction.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I should also add that I am not well, am in fact slowly dying of leukemia, and will be lucky to hang on for another year. Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into, in case you choose to get into it. I look a fright these days (no hair! thin as a twig!), but vanity has no place in my world anymore, and I have done my best to come to terms with the thing that has happened to me, even as I fight on with the treatments. A couple of centuries ago, sixty used to be considered old, and since none of us thought we would live past thirty, reaching the double of that isn’t half bad, is it?

I could go on, but I don’t want to take up any more of your time. Sending you this manuscript was not an easy decision (you must be inundated by countless letters from cranks and would-be novelists), but I’ll be glad to fill you in on my comings and goings of the past four decades if you decide to accept my invitation-which I fervently hope you will. As for the ms., save it for the plane trip to California if you’re too busy between now and then. It’s short enough to be consumed in less than an hour.

Hoping for a response.

Yours in solidarity,

Adam Walker

It hadn’t been a close friendship-no shared confidences, no long one-on-one talks, no letters exchanged-but there was no question that I admired Walker, and I had no doubt that he looked on me as an equal, since he never failed to show me anything but respect and goodwill. He was a bit timid, I remember, a trait that seemed odd in a person of such keen intelligence who also happened to be one of the best-looking boys on campus- handsome as a movie star , as a girlfriend of mine once put it. But better to be shy than arrogant, I suppose, better to blend in delicately than to intimidate everyone with your insufferable human perfection. He was something of a loner, then, but amiable and droll whenever he emerged from his cocoon, with a sharp, offbeat sense of humor, and what I especially liked about him was the broad range of his interests, his ability to talk about Cavalcanti, say, or John Donne, and then, with the same acumen and knowledge, turn around and tell you something about baseball that had never occurred to you before. Concerning his inner life, however, I knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he had an older sister (a remarkable beauty, by the way, leading one to suspect that the entire Walker clan had been blessed with the genes of angels), I knew nothing about his family or background, and certainly nothing about the death of his little brother. Now Walker himself was dying, a month past his sixtieth birthday he was beginning to say his farewells, and after reading his hesitant, touching letter, I couldn’t help thinking that this was the start, that the bright young men of yore were at last turning old, and before long our whole generation would be gone. Rather than follow Adam’s advice and ignore his manuscript until I was on the plane to California, I sat down and read it immediately.