Paul Auster - Invisible

No, no, not all bad. Good and bad together. But the strange thing is, whenever I’m there, it’s the bad ones I think about. When I’m not there, I mostly think about the good.

Why don’t I feel that way?

I don’t know. Maybe because you’re not a boy.

What difference does that make?

Andy was a boy. There were two of us once, and now there’s only me-sole survivor of the shipwreck.

So? Better one than none, for God’s sake.

It’s their eyes, Gwyn, the expression on their faces when they look at me. One minute, I feel as if I’m being reproached. Why you? they seem to be asking me. Why did you get to live when your brother didn’t? And the next minute, their eyes are drowning me with tenderness, a worried, nauseating, overprotective love. It makes me want to jump out of my shoes.

You’re exaggerating. There’s no reproach, Adam. They’re so proud of you, you should hear them carry on when you’re not there. Endless hymns to the wonder boy they created, the crown prince of the Walker dynasty.

Now you’re the one who’s exaggerating.

Not really. If I didn’t like you so much, I’d feel jealous.

I don’t know how you can stand it. Watching them together, I mean. Every time I look at them, I ask myself why they’re still married.

Because they want to be married, that’s why.

It makes no sense. They can’t even talk to each other anymore.

They’ve been through fire together, and they don’t have to talk now if they don’t feel like it. As long as they want to stay together, it’s none of our business how they manage their lives.

She used to be so beautiful.

She’s still beautiful.

She’s too sad to be beautiful. No one that sad can still be beautiful.

You stop for a moment to absorb what you have just said. Then, turning your eyes away from your sister, unable to look at her as you formulate the next sentence, you add:

I feel so sorry for her, Gwyn. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to call the house and tell her that everything is okay, that she can stop hating herself now, that she’s punished herself long enough.

You should do it.

I don’t want to insult her. Pity is such an awful, useless emotion-you have to bottle it up and keep it to yourself. The moment you try to express it, it only makes things worse.

Your sister smiles at you, somewhat inappropriately, you feel, but when you study her face and see the grave and pensive look in her eyes, you understand that she has been hoping you would say something like this, that she is relieved to hear that you are not quite as walled off and coldhearted as you make yourself out to be, that there is some compassion in you, after all. She says: Okay, little brother. You’ll sweat it out in New York if you like. But, just for your information, a trip back home every now and then can lead to some rather interesting discoveries.

Such as?

Such as the box I found under my bed the last time I was there.

What was in it?

Quite a few things, actually. One of them happened to be the play we wrote together in high school.

I shudder to think…

King Ubu the Second .

Did you take a look at it?

I couldn’t resist.

And?

Not too hot, I’m afraid. But there were some funny lines, and two of the scenes almost made me laugh. When Ubu arrests his wife for burping at the table, and the bit when Ubu declares war on America so he can give it back to the Indians.

Adolescent drivel. But we had a good time, didn’t we? I can remember rolling around on the floor and laughing so hard that my stomach hurt.

We took turns writing sentences, I think. Or was it whole speeches?

Speeches. But don’t make me swear to it in court. I could be wrong.

We were crazy back then, weren’t we? Both of us-each one as crazy as the other. And no one ever guessed. They all thought we were successful, well-adjusted kids. People looked up to us, we were envied, and deep down we were both nuts.

Again you look into your sister’s eyes, and you can sense that she wants to talk about the grand experiment, a subject neither one of you has mentioned in years. Is it worth going into now, you wonder, or should you deflect the conversation onto something else? Before you can decide what to do, she says:

I mean, what we did that night was absolutely insane.

Do you think so?

Don’t you?

Not really. My dick was sore for a week afterward, but I still look back on it as the best night of my life.

Gwyn smiles, disarmed by your insouciant attitude toward what most people would consider to be a crime against nature, a mortal sin. She says: You don’t feel guilty?

No. I felt blameless then, and I feel blameless now. I always assumed you felt the same way.

I want to feel guilty. I tell myself I should feel guilty, but the truth is that I don’t. That’s why I think we were insane. Because we walked away from it without any scars.

You can’t feel guilty unless you think you’ve done something wrong. What we did that night wasn’t wrong. We didn’t hurt anyone, did we? We didn’t force each other to do anything we didn’t want to do. We didn’t even go all the way. What we did was a little youthful experimenting, that’s all. And I’m glad we did it. To be honest, my only regret is that we didn’t do it again.

Ah. So you were thinking the same thing I was.

Why didn’t you tell me?

I was too scared, I guess. Too scared that if we kept on doing it, we might find ourselves in real trouble.

So you found yourself a boyfriend instead. Dave Cryer, the king of the animals.

And you fell for Patty French.

Water under the bridge, comrade.

Yes, it’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?

You and your sister talk about the past, then, and your parents’ silent marriage, and your dead brother, and the childish farce you wrote in tandem one spring vacation years ago, but these matters take up no more than a small fraction of the time you spend together. Another fraction is consumed in brief conversations concerning household maintenance (shopping, cleaning, cooking, paying the rent and utility bills), but the bulk of the words you exchange that summer are about the present and the future, the war in Vietnam, books and writers, poets, musicians, and filmmakers, as well as the stories you bring home from your respective jobs. You and your sister have always talked, the two of you have been engaged in a complex, ongoing dialogue since your earliest childhood, and this willingness to share your thoughts and ideas is probably what best defines your friendship. It turns out that you agree about most things, but by no means all things, and you enjoy duking it out over your differences. Your spats about the relative merits of various writers and artists have a somewhat comical aspect to them, however, since it rarely happens that either of you manages to persuade the other to change his or her opinion. Case in point: you both consider Emily Dickinson to be the supreme American poet of the nineteenth century, but whereas you have a soft spot for Whitman, Gwyn dismisses him as bombastic and crude, a false prophet. You read one of the shorter lyrics out loud to her ( The Dalliance of the Eagles ), but she remains unconvinced, telling you she’s sorry, but a poem about eagles fucking in midair leaves her cold. Case in point: she admires Middlemarch above all other novels, and when you confess to her that you never made it past page 50, she urges you to give it another try, which you do, and once again you give up before reaching page 50. Case in point: your positions on the war and American politics are nearly identical, but with the draft staring you in the face the instant you leave college, you are far more vociferous and hotheaded than she is, and whenever you launch into one of your apoplectic rants against the Johnson administration, Gwyn smiles at you, sticks her fingers in her ears, and waits for you to stop.