Paul Auster - Invisible

On an impulse, he decides to call Margot’s parents. He remembers that the Jouffroys live on the rue de l’Université in the seventh arrondissement, not terribly far from his hotel, and he hopes they will be able to tell him where he can find her. Why he should want to see Margot again is a difficult question to answer, but for now Walker doesn’t even bother to ask it. He has been in Paris for six days, and the truth is that he is beginning to feel somewhat lonely. Rather than renege on his plan not to fraternize with his fellow students, he has steadfastly stuck to himself, spending every morning in his room, parked at his wobbly desk writing and rewriting his newest poems, and then, after hunger drives him down into the street to search for food (most often at the student cafeteria around the corner on the rue Mazet, where he can buy a tasteless but filling lunch for one or two francs), he has consumed the rest of the daylight hours by walking aimlessly around the city, browsing in bookstores, reading on park benches, alive to the world around him but not yet immersed in it, still feeling his way, not unhappy, no, but wilting a little from the constant solitude. Except for Born, Margot is the one person in all of Paris with whom he has shared anything in the past. If she and Born are together again, then he must and will avoid her, but if it turns out that they are well and truly separated, that the breakup has indeed continued for these past three-plus months, then what possible harm can come from seeing her for an innocent cup of coffee? He doubts she will have any interest in renewing physical relations with him, but if she does, he would welcome the chance to sleep with her again. After all, it was the reckless, unbridled Margot who unleashed the erotic maelstrom in him that led to the furies of late summer. He is certain of the connection. Without Margot’s influence, without Margot’s body to instruct him in the intricate workings of his own heart, the story with Gwyn never would have been possible. Margot the fearless, Margot the silent, Margot the cipher. Yes, he very much wants to see her again, even if it is only for an innocent cup of coffee.

He walks to the café on the corner, buys a telephone jeton from the barman, and then goes downstairs to look up the Jouffroys’ number in the directory. He is heartened when the phone is answered on the first ring-then shocked when the person on the other end proves to be Margot herself.

Walker insists on conducting the conversation in French. Back in the spring, they spoke to each other in French a number of times, but mostly they communicated in English, and even if Margot is a person of few words, Walker knows she can express herself more comfortably in her own language. Now that he is in Paris, he aims to give Margot’s Frenchness back to her, wondering if she might not show herself to be a somewhat different person in her own country and her own tongue. The real Margot, as it were, at home in the city where she was born, and not some disaffected, hostile visitor stuck in an America she could barely tolerate.

They run through the common litany of questions and answers. What in the world is he doing in Paris? How are things? Was it pure luck that she picked up the phone or has she moved in with her parents? What is she doing now? Does she have time to join him for a cup of coffee? She hesitates for a moment and then surprises him by answering: Why not? They arrange to meet at La Palette in an hour.

It is four o’clock in the afternoon, and Walker arrives first, ten minutes in advance. He orders a cup of coffee and then sits there for half an hour, growing more and more convinced that she has stood him up, but just when he is about to leave, Margot wanders in. Moving in that slow, distracted way of hers, the flicker of a smile parting her lips, kissing him warmly on both cheeks, she settles into the chair across from him. She doesn’t apologize for her lateness. Margot is not a person who would do that kind of thing, and he doesn’t expect it from her, he would never dream of asking her to play by anyone’s rules but her own.

En français, alors? she says.

Yes, he answers, speaking to her in French. That’s why I’m here. To practice my French. Since you’re the only French person I know, I was hoping I could practice with you.

Ah, so that’s it. You want to use me to further your education.

In a manner of speaking, yes. But speaking is only part of it. That is, we don’t have to talk every minute if you don’t want to.

Margot smiles, then changes the subject by asking him for a cigarette. As he lights the Gauloise for her, Walker looks at Margot and suddenly understands that he will never be able to separate her in his mind from Born. It is a grotesque realization, and it utterly smashes the playful, seductive tone he was trying to initiate. He was foolish to call her, he tells himself, foolish to think he could talk her into bed again by acting as if the horrors of the spring had never happened. Even if Margot is no longer a part of Born’s life, she is tied to Born in Walker’s memory, and to look at her is no different from looking at Born himself. Unable to stop himself, he begins telling her about the stroll down Riverside Drive on that May evening after she left New York. He describes the stabbing to her. He tells her point-blank that Born is without question the murderer of Cedric Williams.

He watches Margot’s face carefully as he recounts the gruesome particulars of that night and the days that followed, and for once she looks like a normal human being to him, an undead fellow creature with a conscience and a capacity to feel pain, and in spite of his fondness for Margot, he discovers that he enjoys punching her like this, hurting her like this, destroying her faith in a man she lived with for two years, a man she supposedly loved. Margot is crying now. He wonders if he is doing this to her because of the way she treated him in New York. Is this his revenge for having been dumped without warning at the beginning of their affair? No, he doesn’t think so. He is talking to her because he understands that he can no longer look at her without seeing Born, and therefore this is the last time he will ever see her, and he wants her to know the truth before they go their separate ways. When he finishes telling the story, she stands up from the table and rushes off in the direction of the toilets.

He can’t be certain if she will be coming back. She has taken her purse with her to the women’s room, and since the weather outdoors is warm and mild, she was not wearing a coat or jacket when she entered the café, which means that no coat or jacket is slung over the back of her chair. Walker decides to give her a quarter of an hour, and if she hasn’t returned to the table by then, he will get up and leave. Meanwhile, he asks the waiter for another drink. No, not coffee this time, he says. Make it a beer.

Margot is gone for just under ten minutes. When she sits down in her chair again, Walker notices the puffiness around her lids, the glassy sheen in her eyes, but her makeup is intact, and her cheeks are no longer smudged with mascara. He thinks: Gwyn’s mascara on the night of Andy’s birthday; Margot’s mascara on a September afternoon in Paris; the weeping mascara of death.

Forgive me, she says to him in a subdued voice. These things you’ve told me… I don’t… I don’t know what to think anymore.

But you believe me, don’t you?

Yes, I believe you. No one would ever make up something like that.

I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you, but I thought you should know what happened-just in case you ever felt tempted to go back to him.

The strange thing is, I’m not surprised…

Did Born ever hit you?

Just once. A slap across the face. A hard, angry slap across the face.