Paul Auster - Invisible

Maybe. But it’s still just a guess.

Then why wouldn’t he tell me what the problem was? He didn’t even bother to make up an excuse. It doesn’t concern you, he said, don’t ask so many questions. So off he flies to Paris, and when he comes back, he’s engaged to Hélène Juin and I’m thrown out the door.

They go on talking for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and the more vehement Margot becomes about her suspicions concerning undercover operations, government conspiracies, and the psychological pressures of leading a double life, the less Walker seems to care. Margot is puzzled by his indifference. She calls it curious, unhealthy, irrational, but Walker explains that Born’s activities are of no interest to him. The only thing that counts is the murder of Cedric Williams, and even if Born turned out to be the head of the entire French intelligence system, it wouldn’t matter to him. There is just one moment when his attention seems fully engaged, and that follows a tossed-off comment from Margot about Born’s past-something to do with spending his childhood in a large house outside Paris, which was where she first met him when she was three years old. What about Guatemala? Walker asks, remembering that Born said to him that he had grown up in Guatemala.

He was pulling your leg, Margot replies. Rudolf has never been anywhere near the place.

I thought as much. But why Guatemala?

Why not Guatemala? He enjoys making up stories about himself. Fooling people, telling little lies-they’re grand entertainment for Rudolf.

Although little of concrete value emerges from this conversation (too many assumptions, not enough facts), it nevertheless seems to mark a turning point in his relations with Margot. She is worried about him, worried for him, and the anxiety and concern he sees in her eyes is both comforting (the issue of trust is no longer in doubt) and somewhat troubling. She is drawing closer to him, her affection has become more manifest, more sincere, and yet there is something maternal about that anxiety, a sense of wisdom frowning down on the errors of youth, and for the first time in the months he has known her, he can feel the difference in their ages, the gap of ten years that stands between them. He hopes this will not become a problem. He needs Margot now. She is his only ally in Paris, and being with her is the only medicine that can prevent him from brooding about Gwyn, from longing for Gwyn. No, he is not unhappy that she spotted him in the restaurant last night with Born and the Juins. Nor is he unhappy that he has just bared his soul to her. Her reaction has proved that he means something to her, that he represents more than just another body to climb into bed with, but he knows that he mustn’t abuse her friendship, for Margot is not entirely there, and she has only just so much of herself to give. Ask for too much, and she is liable to resent it, perhaps even abscond.

Leaving the untouched croissants on the desk, they go out into the dank, sunless weather to look for a place to eat. Margot holds his hand as they walk along in silence, and ten minutes later they are sitting across from each other at a corner table in the Restaurant des Beaux-Arts. Margot buys him a copious three-course lunch (refusing to let him pay, insisting that he order dessert and a second cup of coffee), and then they move on to the rue de l’Université. The Jouffroy apartment is on the fifth floor of a six-story building, and as they squeeze into the cramped birdcage of an elevator to begin their ascent, Walker puts his arms around Margot and covers her face with a barrage of short, intense kisses. Margot bursts out laughing, and she is still laughing as she extracts a key from her purse and unlocks the door of the apartment. It turns out to be a sumptuous place, far more lavish than anything Walker could have imagined, an immense palace of comfort expressing wealth on a scale he has not encountered before. Margot once told him that her father worked in banking, but she neglected to add that he was the president of the bank, and now that she is giving Walker a brief tour of the rooms, with their thick Persian rugs and gilt-edged mirrors, with their crystal chandeliers and antique furnishings, he feels he is gaining new insight into the disaffected, elusive Margot. She is a person at odds with the environment she was born into, at odds with it but not in outright rebellion (for here she is, temporarily back with her parents as she searches for a place of her own), yet what a disappointment it must be to them that she is still unmarried at thirty, nor can her halfhearted attempts to become a painter sit terribly well in this dominion of bourgeois respectability. Ambiguous Margot, with her love of cooking and her love of sex, still struggling to find a place for herself, still not entirely free.

Or so Walker muses as he follows her into the kitchen, but a minute later he learns that the portrait is somewhat more complex than the one he has been fashioning in his mind. Margot does not live in the apartment with her parents. She has a room upstairs, a tiny maid’s room that her grandmother bought for her as a twenty-first-birthday present, and the only reason she entered the apartment this afternoon was to look for a pack of cigarettes (which she now finds in a drawer next to the sink). The tour was a little bonus, she adds, so Walker would have an idea of how and where she grew up. When he asks her why she prefers camping out in a minute chambre de bonne to sleeping in comfort down here, Margot smiles and says: Figure it out for yourself.

It is a spartan room, less than a third the size of his room at the hotel. Space for a small desk and chair, a small sink, and a small bed with storage drawers under the mattress. Pristine in its cleanliness, no adornments anywhere-as if they have stepped into the cell of a novitiate nun. Just one book in sight, lying on the floor beside the bed: a collection of poems by Paul Éluard, Capitale de la douleur . A few sketchbooks piled up on the desk along with a drinking glass filled with pencils and pens; some canvases on the floor, leaning against the wall with their backs facing out. Walker would love to turn them around, would love to open the sketchbooks, but Margot doesn’t offer to show them to him, and he doesn’t dare touch anything without her permission. He is awed by the simplicity of the room, awed by this unearthly glimpse into Margot’s inner world. How many people has she allowed to come in here? he wonders.

He would like to think he is the first.

They spend two hours together in Margot’s narrow bed, and when Walker finally leaves, he is running late for his appointment with Cécile Juin. It is entirely his fault, but the truth is that he forgot all about the meeting. From the moment he started kissing Margot, the four o’clock rendezvous vanished from his mind, and if not for Margot herself, who glanced over at the alarm clock and said to him: Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere in fifteen minutes? , he would still be lying next to her-rather than bounding from the bed, jumping into his clothes, and scrambling to get out of there.

He is mystified by this gesture of help. Just hours earlier, she was adamantly opposed to his plan, and now she seems to be acting as his accomplice. Has she rethought her position, he asks himself, or is she subtly mocking him in some way, testing him to find out if he is actually stupid enough to walk into the trap she feels he has set for himself? He suspects the latter interpretation is the correct one, but even so, he thanks her for reminding him of the date, and then, just as he is about to open the door and leave the tiny room, he rashly tells Margot that he loves her.

No you don’t, she says, shaking her head and smiling. But I’m glad you think you do. You’re a crazy boy, Adam, and every time I see you, you’re crazier than you were the last time. Before long, you’ll be just as crazy as I am.