Paul Auster - Invisible

Just once?

Just once. But there’s violence in him. Under all the charm and witty jokes, there’s real anger, real violence. I hate to admit it now, but I think it excited me. Never knowing if I could trust him or not, never knowing what he was going to do next. He only hit me that one time, but he got into a couple of fights while we were together, fights with other men. You’ve seen his temper. You know what he’s like when he’s drunk. I think it goes back to his days in the army, the war, the awful things he did during the war. Torturing prisoners. He once confessed to me that he tortured prisoners in Algeria. He denied it the next day, but I didn’t believe him, even though I pretended to. The first story was the truth, I know it.

What about the knife he carries in his pocket? Didn’t that ever scare you?

I take people as they are, Adam. I don’t ask a lot of questions. If he wanted to carry a knife, I figured that was his business. He said it was a dangerous world and a man had to protect himself. After what happened to you that night in New York, you can’t really argue with him, can you?

My sister has a theory. I don’t know if it’s a good theory, but she thinks Born started talking to me at the party because he felt a sexual attraction. A homoerotic attraction, as she put it. What do you think? Is she on to something or not?

It’s possible. Anything is possible.

Did he ever talk to you about being attracted to men?

No. But that’s neither here nor there. I can’t tell you what he did before I started living with him. I can’t even account for all the things he did while we were together. Who knows what a person’s secret desires are? Unless the person acts on them or talks about them, you don’t have a clue. The only thing I can talk about is what I saw with my own eyes-and what I saw was this. Very early in our relationship, Rudolf and I had a threesome with another man. It was my idea. Rudolf went along with it to please me, to prove that he was willing to do anything I asked him to do. The other man was an old friend of mine, someone I’d slept with before, an extremely good-looking guy. If Rudolf was attracted to this person, he would have kissed him, wouldn’t he? He would have gone for his cock and sucked him off. But he didn’t do those things. He liked watching me with François, I could see he was very hot when he saw François’s cock go into me, but he didn’t touch him in a sexual way. Does that prove anything? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that when we saw you at the party in New York, I told Rudolf you were one of the most beautiful boys I had ever seen. He agreed with me. He said you looked like a tormented Adonis, Lord Byron on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Does that mean he was attracted to you? Maybe yes, maybe no. You’re a special case, Adam, and what makes you special is that you have no idea of the effect you have on other people. It seems perfectly plausible to me that a straight man could get a crush on you. Maybe that’s what happened to Rudolf. But I can’t know for certain, because even if he did fall for you, he never said a word about it.

He’s getting married. Did you know that? At least he said he was the last time I saw him.

Yes, I know. I know all about it. That was my exit visa out of the affair. Good-bye to the double-crossing slut Margot, hello to the angelic Hélène Juin.

You sound bitter…

No, not bitter. Confused. I know her, you see, I’ve known her for a long time, and it just doesn’t make any sense to me. Hélène must be five or six years older than Rudolf, she has an eighteen-year-old daughter, and all I can say about her is that she’s very dull, very ordinary, very proper. A nice person, of course, a nice, hardworking bourgeois person with a tragic story, but I don’t understand what he sees in her. Crazy Rudolf will be bored out of his mind.

He said he loved her.

He probably does. But that doesn’t mean he should marry her.

Tragic story. Something to do with her first husband, right? I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about.

Juin is a close friend of Rudolf’s. Six or seven years ago, he was in a bad car accident. Crushed to pieces, fractured skull, all sorts of internal injuries, but somehow he managed to survive. Or nearly survive. He’s been in a coma ever since, more or less brain-dead, on life support in a hospital. For years, Hélène refused to give up hope, but his condition never improved, it never will improve, and finally her friends and family persuaded her to file for a divorce. When it goes through next spring, she’ll be free to marry again. Good for her, but the last person I thought she’d go for was Rudolf. I’ve sat through at least a dozen dinners with the two of them, and I never sensed any strong feeling on either side. Friendship, yes, but no… no… what’s the word I’m looking for?

Sparks.

That’s it. No sparks.

You still miss him, don’t you?

Not anymore. Not after what you’ve told me today.

But you did.

I did. I didn’t want to, but I did.

The man is a maniac, you know.

True. But what law says you can’t love a maniac?

They both fall silent after that, at a loss for more words, more thoughts. Margot looks at her watch, and Walker imagines she is about to tell him she’s late for another appointment, that she has to run. Instead, she asks him if he has plans for dinner tonight, and if he doesn’t, would he care to go to a restaurant with her? She knows a good place on the rue des Grands Augustins and will gladly treat him if he is low on money. Walker wants to tell her that it won’t be possible, that he doesn’t think he can see her anymore, that he believes they should put a stop to their friendship, but he can’t bring himself to say the words. He is too lonely to refuse her offer, too weak-minded to turn his back on the only person he knows in Paris. Yes, he says, he would love to have dinner with her, but it’s still early, not even six o’clock, and what will they do in the meantime? Anything you want, Margot says, meaning, quite literally, anything he wants, and because the thing he wants most is to crawl into bed with her, he suggests they walk over to his hotel on the rue Mazarine so he can show her his ridiculously ugly hellhole of a room. Since thoughts of sex are never far from Margot’s mind, she quickly understands Walker’s intentions, then goes on to demonstrate that understanding by giving him a little smile.

I wasn’t very nice to you in New York, was I? she says.

You were extremely nice to me. At least for a while. But then, no, not very nice.

I’m sorry I hurt you. It was a bad time for me. I didn’t know what I was doing, and then, all of a sudden, the only thing I wanted was to get out of New York. Try not to hold it against me.

I don’t. I admit that I felt angry for a few weeks, but it didn’t last longer than that. I stopped blaming you a long time ago.

We can be friends now, can’t we?

I hope so.

Nothing too intense, mind you. Not every minute, not every day. I’m not ready for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for that again. But we can take care of each other a little bit. It might be good for both of us.

As they make their way to the hotel, Walker senses that the woman beside him is no longer the same Margot he met in New York last spring. He was right to think she would be somewhat different in her own language, in her own city, in the wake of her split-up with Born, and after the conversation in the café, he can only conclude that she is more forthright, more articulate, more vulnerable than he previously imagined. Still, even as he anticipates their imminent arrival at the hotel-the mounting of the circular stairs, the key entering the lock of his door, the shedding of their clothes, the sight of Margot’s small, naked body, the feel of her body against his-he wonders if he hasn’t committed a colossal mistake.