Paul Auster - Invisible

How did Born react?

With tremendous kindness. He said that he understood why she couldn’t go through with it, that he admired her for her steadfastness and courage, that he thought she was an extraordinary and noble woman. Not what you would expect, but there you have it. He behaved beautifully.

How much longer did your father go on living?

A year and a half. He died in January nineteen seventy.

Did Born come back and propose again?

No. He left Paris after sixty-eight and started teaching in London. We saw him at my father’s funeral, and a couple of weeks after that he wrote my mother a long, heartfelt letter about the past, but that was the end of it. The subject of marriage never came up again.

And what about your mother? Did she find someone else?

She had some male friends over the years, but she never remarried.

And Born moved to London. Did you ever see him again?

Once, about eight months after my mother died.

And?

I’m sorry. I don’t think I can talk about it.

Why not?

Because if I tried to tell you what happened, I couldn’t begin to convey what a strange and disturbing experience it was for me.

You’re pulling my leg, right?

Just a little bit. To use your terms, I can’t tell you anything, but you can read about it if you want to.

Ah, I see. And where is this mysterious text of yours?

In my apartment. I’ve been keeping a diary since I was twelve years old, and I wrote a number of pages about what happened during my visit to Rudolf’s house. An on-the-spot, eyewitness account, if you will. I think it might interest you. If you like, I can photocopy the pages and bring them here tomorrow. If you’re not in, I’ll drop them off at the desk.

Thank you. That’s very generous of you. I can’t wait to read them.

And now, Cécile said, grinning broadly as she reached into her leather bag and pulled out a large red notebook, shall we get on with the survey for the CNRS?

The next afternoon, when my wife and I returned to the hotel after a long lunch with her sister, the package was waiting for me. In addition to the photocopied pages from her diary, Cécile included a short cover letter. She thanked me for the whiskeys, for tolerating her grotesque and unpardonable tears, and for giving up so much of my time to talk to her about Adam. Then she apologized for her illegible handwriting and offered to help me if I had any trouble deciphering it. I found it perfectly legible. Every word was clear, not one letter or punctuation mark confused me. The diary was written in French, of course, and what follows is my translation of that French into English, which I am including with the author’s full permission.

I have nothing more to say. Cécile Juin is the last person from Walker’s story who is still alive, and because she is the last, it seems fitting that she should have the last word.

CÉCILE JUIN’S DIARY

4/27 . A letter today from Rudolf Born. Six months after the fact, he has only just now learned of Mother’s death. How long has it been since I last saw him, last heard from him? Twenty years, I think, perhaps twenty-five.

He sounds distraught, shattered by the news. Why would it mean so much to him now, after all these years of silence? He writes eloquently about the strength of her character, her dignified bearing and inner warmth, her attunement to the minds of others. He never stopped loving her, he says, and now that she has left this world, he feels that a part of him has left it with her.

He is retired. 71, unmarried, in good health. For the past six years, he has been living in a place called Quillia, a small island between Trinidad and the Grenadines at the juncture of the Atlantic and the Caribbean, just north of the equator. I have never heard of it. I must remember to look it up.

In the last sentence of the letter, he asks for news of me.

4/29 . I have written back to R.B. Much more openly than I intended to, but once I started to talk about myself, I found it difficult to stop. When the letter reaches him, he will know about my work, about my marriage to Stéphane, about Stéphane’s death three years ago, and how lonely and burnt out I feel most of the time. I wonder if I haven’t gone a bit too far.

What are my feelings toward this man? Complicated ones, ambiguous ones, combining compassion and indifference, friendship and wariness, admiration and bemusement. R.B. has many excellent qualities. High intelligence, good manners, a ready laugh, generosity. After Father’s accident, he stepped in and became our moral support, the rock on which we stood for many years. He was saintly with Mother, a chivalrous companion, helpful and doting, always there in time of trouble. As for me, who was not even twelve when our world caved in, how many times did he lift me out of the doldrums with his encouragement and praise, his pride in my meager accomplishments, his indulgent attitude toward my adolescent sufferings? So many positive attributes, so much to feel grateful for, and yet I continue to resist him. Does it have something to do with our bitter clashes in May ’68, those frantic weeks in May when we were at perpetual war with each other, causing a rift between us that was never fully repaired? Perhaps. But I like to think of myself as a person who doesn’t bear grudges, who is capable of forgiving others-and deep down I believe he was forgiven long ago. Forgiven because I laugh when I think about that time now and feel no anger. Instead, what I feel is doubt, and that was something which began to take hold in me several months earlier-back in the fall, when I fell in love with Adam Walker. Dear Adam, who came to Mother with those horrible accusations about R.B. Impossible to believe him, but now that so many years have passed, now that one has pondered and dissected and endlessly reexamined Adam’s motive for saying such things, it becomes difficult to know what to think. Surely there was bad blood between Adam and R.B., surely Adam felt it would be in Mother’s best interest to call off the marriage, and so he made up a story to frighten her into changing her mind. A terrifying story, too terrifying to be true, and therefore a miscalculation on his part, but Adam was essentially a good person, and if he thought there was something tainted about R.B.’s past, then perhaps there was. Hence my doubt, which has been festering in me for years. But I can’t condemn a man on the strength of doubt alone. There must be proof, and since there is no proof, I must take R.B. at his word.

5/11 . A response from R.B. He writes that he is living in seclusion in a large stone house overlooking the ocean. The house is called Moon Hill, and conditions there are quite primitive. The windows are broad apertures cut out of the rock with no glass covering them. The air blows in, the rain blows in, the insects and birds blow in, and there is little distinction between indoors and outdoors. He has a private generator for producing electricity, but the machine breaks down often, and half the time they light the rooms with kerosene lamps. There are four people in the household: a handyman-caretaker named Samuel, an old cook, Nancy, and a young cleaning woman, Melinda. There is a telephone and a radio, but no television, no mail delivery, and no running water. Samuel goes to the post office in town to pick up his letters (twelve miles away), and water is stored in wooden tanks above the sinks and toilets. Shower water comes out of a disposable plastic bag that hangs from a hook above your head. The landscape is both lush and barren. Profuse vegetation everywhere (palm trees, rubber plants, a hundred varieties of wildflowers), but the volcanic earth is strewn with rocks and boulders. Land crabs plod through his garden (he describes them as small armored tanks, prehistoric creatures who look as if they belong on the moon), and because of the frequent infestations of mosquitoes, not to mention the constant threat of tarantulas, everyone sleeps in beds covered with protective white netting. He spends his days reading (for the past two months he has been diligently plowing through Montaigne again) and taking notes for a memoir he hopes to begin in the near future. Every evening, he settles into his hammock by the window in the living room and videotapes the sunset. He calls it the most astonishing spectacle on earth.