Paul Auster - Invisible

We all have our moments.

Indeed. And now you want to break bread with Hélène and Cécile. As per my invitation of yesterday. Consider it done. I’ll leave word at your hotel as soon as I’ve made the arrangements.

The dinner is set for the following night at Vagenende, a turn-of-the-century brasserie on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Walker arrives promptly at eight, the first member of the party to show up, and as he is led to Monsieur Born’s table, he is too nervous and distracted to pay much attention to his surroundings: the dark, oak-paneled walls, the brass fixtures, the stiff white tablecloths and napkins, the hushed conversations in other parts of the room, the sound of silver utensils clanking against china. Thirty-four hours after his demented, groveling conversation with Born, this is what his lies have earned him: unending fear, unmitigated self-contempt, and the priceless opportunity to meet Born’s future wife and stepdaughter. Everything hinges on what happens with Hélène and Cécile Juin. If he can manage to form a connection with them, with either one of them, a relation independent of any connection with Born, then sooner or later it will become possible for him to reveal the truth about Riverside Drive, and if Walker can persuade them to accept his story about the killing of Cedric Williams, then there is a chance, a better than even chance, that the wedding will be called off and Born will be forsaken by his bride-to-be. That is all Walker has set out to accomplish: to break up the marriage before it becomes a legal fact. Not such an onerous punishment for the crime of murder, perhaps, but, given the available options, harsh enough. Born rejected. Born humiliated. Born crumpled up in misery. Hateful as Walker finds it to be pandering to him with false apologies and insincere avowals of friendship, he understands that he has no other choice. If Hélène and Cécile prove to be intractable, then he will abandon the effort and quietly declare defeat. But only if, and only when, and until that moment comes, he is determined to go on playing cards with the devil.

His initial findings are inconclusive. By temperament or circumstance, both mother and daughter come across as modest and reserved, not easily approachable or given to lighthearted talk, and since Born dominates the early going with introductions, explanations, and various other comments, little is said by either one of them. When Walker gives a brief account of his first days in Paris, Hélène compliments him on his French; at another point, Cécile blandly inquires if he enjoys living in a hotel. The mother is tall, blond, and well dressed, by no means a beauty (her face is too long, Walker thinks, a bit on the horsey side), but like many middle-class Frenchwomen of a certain age, she carries herself with considerable poise and assurance-a question of style, perhaps, or else the product of some arcane Gallic wisdom concerning the nature of femininity. The daughter, who has just turned eighteen, is a student at the Lycée Fénelon on the rue de l’Éperon, which is less than a five-minute walk from the Hôtel du Sud. She is a smaller, less-imposing creature than her mother, with short brown hair, thin wrists and narrow shoulders, and alert, darting eyes. Walker notices that those eyes have a tendency to squint, and it occurs to him (correctly, as it turns out) that Cécile normally wears glasses and has decided to live without them for the duration of the dinner. No, not a pretty girl, almost mousy in fact, but nevertheless an interesting face to look at: tiny chin, long nose, round cheeks, an expressive mouth. Every now and then, that mouth tugs downward with a clandestine sort of amusement, not quite blossoming into a smile, but for all that showing a sharply developed sense of humor, someone awake to the comic possibilities of any given moment. There is no question that she is extremely intelligent (for the past four minutes Born has been bragging to Walker about her outstanding grades in literature and philosophy, her passion for the piano, her mastery of ancient Greek), but much as Cécile has working in her favor, Walker sadly acknowledges that he is not attracted to her, at least not in the way he would have hoped. She is not his type, he says to himself, falling back on that vague, overused term, which stands in for the infinite complexities of physical desire. But what is his type? he wonders. His own sister? The sex-hungry Margot, who is ten years older than he is? Whatever it is he wants, it is not Cécile Juin. He looks at her and sees a child, a work in progress, a not yet fully formed person, and at this point in her life she is too withdrawn and self-conscious to give off any of the erotic signals that would inspire a man to run after her. That isn’t to say he won’t do his best to cultivate a friendship with her, but there will be no kissing or touching, no romantic entanglements, no attempt to lure her into bed.

He despises himself for thinking such thoughts, for looking upon the innocent Cécile as if she were nothing more than a sex object, a potential victim of his seductive powers (assuming he has any), but at the same time he knows that he is fighting a war, an underground guerrilla war, and this dinner is the first battle of that war, and if he could win the battle by seducing his adversary’s future stepdaughter, he would not hesitate to do it. But the young Cécile is not a candidate for seduction, and therefore he will have to devise more subtle tactics to advance his purpose, shifting from an all-out assault on the daughter to a two-pronged offensive against mother and daughter both-in an attempt to ingratiate himself with them and eventually lure them over to his side. All this must be accomplished under Born’s watchful gaze, the intolerable, suffocating presence of a man he can barely bring himself to look at. The wily, skeptical Born is no doubt deeply suspicious of the two-faced Walker, and who knows if he hasn’t merely pretended to accept the latter’s pretend apology in order to find out what mischief the boy is up to? There is an edge to Born’s voice buried under the pleasant chatter and false bonhomie, an anxious, straining tone that seems to suggest he is on his guard. It will not be wise to see him again, Walker tells himself, which makes it all the more imperative to establish his separate peace with the Juins tonight, before the dinner comes to an end.

The women are on the other side of the table. He is opposite Cécile, and Born is sitting to his left, face to face with Hélène. Walker studies Hélène’s eyes as she looks at her betrothed, and he becomes just as baffled as Margot was when he detects no spark emanating from them. Other feelings lurk in those eyes, perhaps-wistfulness, kindness, sadness-but love is not among them, much less happiness or a single trace of joy. But how can there be happiness for a woman in Hélène’s position, for someone who has spent the past six or seven years living in a state of grief and suspended animation as her half-dead husband languishes in a hospital? He imagines the comatose Juin stretched out in bed, his body hooked up to countless machines and a tangle of respiration tubes, the only patient in a large, deserted ward, living but not living, dying but not dying, and suddenly he remembers the film he saw with Gwyn two months ago, Ordet , the film by Carl Dreyer, sitting next to his sister in the balcony of the New Yorker theater, and the dead farmer’s wife laid out in her coffin, and his tears when she sat up and came to life again, but no, he says to himself, that was just a story, a make-believe story in a make-believe world, and this is not that world, and there will be no miraculous resurrections for Juin, Hélène’s husband will never sit up and come back to life. From Juin’s bed in the hospital Walker’s mind jumps to another bed, and before he can put a stop to it, he is revisiting the repugnant scene Margot described to him a few days ago: Margot in bed with the two men, Born and the other one, what was his name, François, Margot in bed with Born and François, the three of them naked, fucking, and now he sees Born watching François push his hardened cock into Margot, and there is Born, naked in his chunky, odious flesh, swept up in the throes of arousal, jerking off as he watches his girlfriend do it with another man…