Paul Auster - Invisible

At first, things do not go well. Margot says nothing about his room, because she is either too polite or too indifferent to bother mentioning it, but Walker can’t help seeing it through her eyes, and he is overcome with embarrassment, appalled at himself for having dragged her up to such a tawdry, dismal place. It puts him in a foul mood, and when the two of them sit down on the bed and begin to kiss, he feels absent, alarmingly disengaged. Margot pulls back and asks if anything is wrong. Don’t get weird on me, Adam, she says. This is supposed to be fun, remember?

He can’t tell her that he is thinking about Gwyn, that the moment their mouths touched he was seized by a memory of the last time his mouth touched the mouth of his sister, and as he struggles to kiss Margot now, the only thought in his mind is that he will never be able to hold his sister in this way again.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, he says. I feel so sad… so bloody fucking sad.

Maybe I should go, Margot says, gently patting his back. Sex isn’t compulsory, after all. We can try again another day.

No, don’t leave. I don’t want you to leave. Just give me a little time. I’ll be all right, I promise.

Margot gives him the time, and eventually he begins to emerge from his melancholic funk, not fully perhaps, but enough to feel aroused when she slides out of her dress and he puts his arms around her bare skin, enough to make love to her, enough to make love to her twice, and in the pause between couplings, as they drink from the bottle of red wine he carried up to his room earlier that day, Margot further arouses him with graphic stories about her sexual encounters with other women, her passion for touching and kissing large breasts (because hers are so small), for licking and fondling women’s crotches, for thrusting her tongue deep into women’s assholes, and while Walker can’t tell if these are true stories or simply a ploy to get him hard again for their second go at it, he enjoys listening to this dirty talk, just as he enjoyed listening to Gwyn’s dirty talk in the apartment on West 107th Street. He wonders if words aren’t an essential element of sex, if talking isn’t finally a more subtle form of touching, and if the images dancing in our heads aren’t just as important as the bodies we hold in our arms. Margot tells him that sex is the one thing in life that counts for her, that if she couldn’t have sex she would probably kill herself to escape the boredom and monotony of being trapped inside her own skin. Walker doesn’t say anything, but as he comes into her for the second time, he realizes that he shares her opinion. He is mad for sex. Even in the grip of the most crushing despair, he is mad for sex. Sex is the lord and the redeemer, the only salvation on earth.

They never make it to the restaurant. After finishing off the bottle of wine, they both fall asleep and forget about dinner. Early the next morning, just before dawn, Walker opens his eyes and discovers that he is alone in bed. A piece of paper is lying on the pillow next to him, a note from Margot: Sorry. The bed was too uncomfortable. Call me next week .

He asks himself if he will have the courage to call. Then, more to the point, he asks himself if he will have the courage not to call, if he can resist seeing her again.

Two days later, he is sitting at an outdoor café on the place Saint-André des Arts, nursing a glass of beer and writing in a small notebook. It is six o’clock in the evening, the end of another workday, and now that Walker has begun to settle into the rhythms of Paris, he understands that this is probably the city’s most inspiriting hour, the transition from work to home, the streets thronged with men and women rushing back to their families, to their friends, to their solitary lives, and he enjoys being outside among them, encircled by the vast collective exhale filling the air. He has just written a brief letter to his parents and a longer letter to Gwyn, and now he is trying to write something cogent about the work of George Oppen, a contemporary American poet whom he greatly admires. He copies out these lines from Oppen’s most recent book, This In Which :

Impossible to doubt the world: it can be seen

And because it is irrevocable

It cannot be understood, and I believe that fact is lethal.

He is about to jot down some comments on this passage, but before he can proceed a shadow falls across the page of the notebook. He glances up, and there, standing directly in front of him, is Rudolf Born. Before Walker can say or do anything, the future husband of Hélène Juin sits down in the empty chair beside him. Walker’s pulse begins to race. He is breathless, speechless. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, he tells himself. If and when they crossed paths, he was the one who was going to spot Born, not the other way around. He was going to be walking down a crowded street, in a position to avert his eyes and escape unnoticed. That was how he always saw it in his head, and now here he is out in the open, defenseless, sitting on his dumb, sorry ass, unable to pretend Born isn’t there, trapped.

The white suit is gone, replaced by a cream-colored jacket, and a silk foulard is hanging around his neck, a blue-and-green patterned affair no doubt worn to bounce off the light blue of his shirt-still and ever the rumpled dandy, Walker thinks, wearing the same sardonic smile as of old.

Well, well, Born says, with false good humor, pronouncing the words in such a way as to emphasize their falseness. We meet again, Walker. What a pleasant surprise.

Walker knows that he is going to have to talk to him, but for the time being he can’t get any words out of his mouth.

I was hoping I’d run into you, Born continues. Paris is such a small city, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Who told you I was here? Walker finally asks. Margot?

Margot? I haven’t talked to Margot in months. I didn’t even know she was in town.

Who was it, then?

You forget that I taught at Columbia. I have Columbia connections, and the head of your program just happens to be a friend of mine. I had dinner with him the other night, and he was the one who told me. He said you were living in some fleabag on the rue Mazarine. Why didn’t you go to Reid Hall? The rooms might not be as big there, but at least they aren’t crawling with bugs.

Walker has no desire to discuss his living arrangements with Born, no interest in wasting his breath on small talk. Ignoring the question, he says: I haven’t forgotten, you know. I still think about it all the time.

Think about what?

What you did to that boy.

I didn’t do anything to him.

Please…

One thrust, that was all. You were there. You saw what happened. He was going to shoot us. If I hadn’t attacked first, we both would have been killed.

But the gun wasn’t loaded.

We didn’t know that, did we? He said he was going to shoot, and when someone points a gun at me and says he’s going to shoot, I take him at his word.

What about the park? Over twelve more stab wounds after the first one. Why on earth did you do that?

I didn’t. I know you don’t believe me, but I had nothing to do with that. Yes, I carried him into the park after you left, but by the time I got there he was already dead. Why would I go on stabbing someone after he was dead? All I wanted was to get out of there as quickly as I could.

Then who did it?

I have no idea. A sick person. A goblin of the night. New York is a sinister place, after all. It could have been anyone.

I talked to the police, you know. In spite of your not so subtle warning.

I figured you would. That’s why I left in such a hurry.

If you were innocent, why not stay and fight it out in court?