Paul Auster - Invisible

My letter has overwhelmed him with nostalgia, he says, and he regrets now that he allowed himself to disappear from my life. We were once so close, such good friends, but after he and my mother parted ways, he didn’t feel he had the right to remain in touch. Now that the ice has been broken again, he has every intention of keeping up a correspondence with me-assuming that is something I would want as well.

He is saddened to learn of my husband’s death, saddened to learn of the difficulties I have been having of late. But you’re still young, he adds, still in your early fifties, with much to look forward to, and you mustn’t give up hope.

These are trite and conventional remarks, perhaps, but I sense that he means well, and who am I to scorn well-meant gestures of earnest sympathy? The truth is that I am touched.

Then, a sudden inspiration. Why not pay him a visit? The holidays are approaching, he says, and perhaps a little jaunt to the West Indies would do me some good. There are several spare bedrooms in his house, and putting me up would pose no problem. How happy it would make him to see me again, to spend some time together after so many years. He writes down his telephone number in case I’m interested.

Am I interested? It is difficult to say.

5/12 . Information about Quillia is scant. I have already combed the Internet, which has yielded a couple of short, superficial histories and various bits of tourist data. With the latter entries, the writing is atrocious, banal to the point of absurdity: the resplendent sun… the glorious beaches… the bluest blue water this side of heaven .

I am sitting in the library now, but it turns out that there are no books devoted exclusively to Quillia-only a smattering of references buried in the larger volumes about the region. During pre-Columbian times, the inhabitants were the Ciboney Indians, who subsequently left and were supplanted by the Arawaks, who in their turn were followed by the Caribs. When colonization began in the 16th century, the Dutch, the French, and the English all took an interest in the place. There were skirmishes with the Indians, skirmishes among the Europeans, and when black slaves started arriving from Africa, much slaughter ensued. By the 18th century, the island was declared a neutral zone, exploited equally by the French and the English, but after the Seven Years’ War and the Treaty of Paris, the French decamped and Quillia fell under the control of the British Empire. In 1979, the island became independent.

It is five miles across. Subsistence farming, fishing, boat-building, and an annual hunt for a single whale. The population is three and a half thousand-mostly of African descent, but also Carib, English, Irish, Scottish, Asian, and Portuguese. One book reports that a large contingent of Scottish sailors was stranded on Quillia in the 18th century. With no possibility of returning home, they settled there and mingled with the blacks. Two centuries later, the result of this interbreeding is a curious mixed race of redheaded Africans, blue-eyed Africans, and albino Africans. As the author notes: The island is a laboratory of human possibilities. It explodes our rigid, preconceived ideas about race-and perhaps even destroys the concept of race itself .

A nice phrase, that. A laboratory of human possibilities .

5/14 . A hard day. This afternoon, I realized that it has been exactly four months since my last period. Does this mean it’s finally happened? I keep hoping for the old, familiar cramps, the bloat and irritation, the blood flowing out of me. It isn’t a question of no longer being able to bear children. I never particularly wanted them. Alexandre more or less talked me into it, but we split up before anything ever happened. With Stéphane, children were out of the question.

No, it isn’t about children anymore. I’m too old for that now, even if I wanted to become pregnant. It’s more about losing my place as a woman, of being expelled from the ranks of femininity. For forty years, I was proud to bleed. I bore up under the curse with the happy knowledge that I was sharing an experience with every other woman on the planet. Now I have been cut adrift, neutered. It feels like the beginning of the end. A post-menopausal woman today, an old crone tomorrow, and then the grave. I’m too worn out even to cry.

Perhaps I should go to Quillia, after all, in spite of my reservations. I need to shake things up for myself, to breathe new air.

5/17 . I have just spoken to R.B. Odd to hear that voice again after all this time, but he sounded vigorous, in top form. When I told him I’d decided to accept his invitation, he began shouting into the phone. Splendid! Splendid! What excellent news!

One month from now (in R.B.’s words), we will be drinking Samuel’s rum punches, taking turns filming the sunset, and having the time of our lives.

I will book the tickets tomorrow. Five days in late June. Subtract the two days of travel, and that leaves three full days on Quillia. If I’m having the time of my life, I can always extend the visit. If I find it unbearable, I don’t suppose three days will be too much to bear.

6/23 . After a long flight across the Atlantic, I am sitting in a transit lounge at the Barbados airport, waiting for the small, one-propeller plane that will take me to Quillia two and a half hours from now (if it leaves on time).

Insufferable heat, everywhere a dense circle of heat closing around my body, the heat of the tropics, a heat that melts the thoughts in your head.

In the main terminal, a dozen soldiers patrolling the floor with machine guns. An air of menace and mistrust, hostility in every glance. What is going on? A dozen black soldiers with machine guns in their hands, and the crowds of grim, sweating travelers with their overstuffed bags and cranky children.

In the transit lounge, nearly everyone is white. Long-haired American surfers, Australians drinking beer and talking in loud voices, Europeans of various unknown nationalities, a couple of Asian faces. Boredom. Fans circling overhead. Piped-in music that is not music. A place that is not a place.

Nine hours later . The one-propeller plane was the smallest flying machine I have ever been in. I sat up front with the pilot, the other two passengers sat directly behind us, and the instant we took off, I understood that we were at the mercy of every puff of wind that might blow our way, that even the smallest disturbance in the surrounding air could throw us off course. We lurched and wobbled and dipped, my stomach was in my mouth, and yet I enjoyed myself, enjoyed the feathery weightlessness of the ride, the sense of being in such close contact with that unstable air.

Seen from above, the island is no more than a small dot, a gray-green speck of cooled lava jutting out of the ocean. But the water around it is blue-yes, the bluest blue water this side of heaven.

It would be an exaggeration to call the Quillia airport an airport. It is a landing strip, a ribbon of tarmac unspooled at the base of a tall, hulking mountain, and it can accommodate nothing bigger than planes the size of toys. We retrieved our bags in the terminal-a tiny cinder-block hut-and then went through the ordeal of customs and passport control. Not even in post-9/11 Europe have I been subjected to such a thorough examination of my belongings. My suitcase was opened, and every article of clothing was lifted out and inspected, every book was shaken by the spine, every shoe was turned upside down, peered into, searched-slowly and methodically, as if this were a procedure that could not, under any circumstances, be conducted in haste. The man in charge of passport control was dressed in a snappy, neatly pressed uniform, a symbol of authority and officialdom, and he too took his sweet time before letting me go. He asked the purpose of my visit, and in my mediocre, heavily accented English, I told him that I’d come to spend a few days with a friend. Which friend? Rudolf Born, I said. The name seemed to ring a bell with him, and then he asked (inappropriately, I believe) how long I had known Mr. Born. All my life, I said. All your life? My answer seemed to have thrown him. Yes, all my life, I repeated. He was a close friend of my parents’. Ah, your parents, he said, nodding in contemplation, apparently satisfied by my answer. I thought we had come to the end of our business, but then he opened my passport, and for the next three minutes he scrutinized it with the zealous, patient eye of a forensics expert, carefully studying each page, pausing over each marking, as if my past travels were the key to solving the mystery of my life. At last, he took out a form printed on a narrow slip of paper, positioned it at right angles with the edge of his desk, and filled in the blanks with a small, meticulous hand. After stapling the form into my passport, he inked his rubber stamp, pressed the rubber onto a spot beside the form, and delicately added the name of Quillia to the roster of countries I have been allowed to enter. French bureaucrats are notorious for their maniacal exactitude and cold efficiency. Next to this man, they are all amateurs.