Paul Auster - Invisible

Then she called me. Three days after the dinner, at ten o’clock in the morning, the telephone rang in my apartment, and there she was on the other end of the line, sounding a little hurt, disappointed that I hadn’t been in touch, in her own subdued way expressing more emotion than at any time since we’d met.

I’m sorry, I lied, but I was going to call you later today. You beat me to it by a couple of hours.

Funny boy, she said, seeing right through my fib. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.

But I do, I answered, meaning every word of it. Very much.

Tonight?

Tonight would be perfect.

You don’t have to worry about Rudolf, Adam. He’s gone, and I’m free to do whatever I like. We all are. Nobody can own another person. Do you understand that?

I think so.

How do you feel about fish?

Fish in the sea or fish on a plate?

Grilled sole. With little boiled potatoes and choux de Bruxelles on the side. Does that appeal to you, or would you rather have something else?

No. I’m already dreaming about the sole.

Come at seven. And don’t trouble yourself with flowers this time. I know you can’t afford them.

After we hung up, I spent the next nine hours in a torment of anticipation, daydreaming through my afternoon classes, pondering the mysteries of carnal attraction, and trying to understand what it was about Margot that had worked me up to such a pitch of excitement. My first impression of her had not been particularly favorable. She had struck me as an odd and vapid creature, sympathetic at heart, perhaps, intriguing to look at, but with no electricity in her, a woman lost in some murky inner world that shut her off from true engagement with others, as if she were some silent visitor from another planet. Two days later, I had run into Born at the West End, and when he told me about her reaction to our meeting at the party, my feelings for her began to shift. Apparently she liked me and was concerned about my welfare, and when you’re informed that a person likes you, your instinctive response is to like that person back. Then came the dinner. The languor and precision of her gestures as she cut the flowers and put them in the vase had stirred something in me, and the simple act of watching her move had suddenly become fascinating, hypnotic. There were depths of sensuality in her, I discovered, and the bland, uninteresting woman who seemed not to have a thought in her head turned out to be far more astute than I had imagined. She had defended me against Born at least twice during the dinner, intervening at the precise moments when things had threatened to fly out of control. Calm, always calm, barely speaking above a whisper, but each time her words had produced the desired effect. Thrown by Born’s prodding insinuations, convinced that he was trying to lure me into some voyeuristic mania of his-watching me make love to Margot?-I’d assumed that she was in on it as well, and therefore I had held back and refused to play along. But now Born was on the other side of the Atlantic, and Margot still wanted to see me. It could only be for one thing. I understood now that it had always been that one thing, right from the moment she’d spotted me standing alone at the party. That was why Born had behaved so testily at the dinner-not because he wanted to instigate an evening of depraved sexual antics, but because he was angry at Margot for telling him she was attracted to me.

She cooked us dinner for five straight nights, and for five straight nights we slept together in the spare bedroom at the end of the hall. We could have used the other bedroom, which was larger and more comfortable, but neither one of us wanted to go in there. That was Born’s room, the world of Born’s bed, and for those five nights we made it our business to create a world of our own, sleeping in that tiny room with the single barred window and the narrow bed, which came to be known as the love bed, although love finally had nothing to do with what happened to us during those five days. We didn’t fall for each other, as the saying goes, but rather we fell into each other, and in the deeply intimate space we inhabited for that short, short time, our sole preoccupation was pleasure. The pleasure of eating and drinking, the pleasure of sex, the pleasure of taking part in a wordless animal dialogue that was conducted in a language of looking and touching, of biting, tasting, and stroking. That doesn’t mean we didn’t talk, but talk was kept to a minimum, and what talk there was tended to focus on food- What should we eat tomorrow night ?-and the words we exchanged over dinner were wispy and banal, of no real importance. Margot never asked me questions about myself. She wasn’t curious about my past, she didn’t care about my opinions on literature or politics, and she had no interest in what I was studying. She simply took me for what I represented in her own mind-her choice of the moment, the physical being she desired-and every time I looked at her, I sensed that she was drinking me in, as if just having me there within arm’s reach was enough to satisfy her. What did I learn about Margot during those days? Very little, almost nothing at all. She had grown up in Paris, was the youngest of three children, and knew Born because they were second cousins. They had been together for two years now, but she didn’t think it would last much longer. He seemed to be growing bored with her, she said, and she was growing bored with herself. She shrugged when she said that, and when I saw the distant expression on her face, I had the terrible intuition that she already considered herself to be half dead. After that, I stopped pressing her to open up to me. It was enough that we were together, and I cringed at the thought of accidentally touching on something that might cause her pain.

Margot without makeup was softer and more earthbound than the striking female object she presented to the public. Margot without clothes proved to be slight, almost meager, with small, pubescent-like breasts, slender hips, and sinewy arms and legs. A full-lipped mouth, a flat belly with a slightly protruding navel, tender hands, a nest of coarse pubic hair, firm buttocks, and extremely white skin that felt smoother than any skin I had ever touched. The particulars of a body, the irrelevant, precious details. I was tentative with her at first, not knowing what to expect, a bit awed to find myself with a woman so much more experienced than I was, a beginner in the arms of a veteran, a fumbler who had always felt shy and awkward in his nakedness, who until then had always made love in the dark, preferably under the blankets, coupling with girls who had been just as shy and awkward as he was, but Margot was so comfortable with herself, so knowledgeable in the arts of nibbling, licking, and kissing, so unreluctant to explore me with her hands and tongue, to attack, to swoon, to give herself without coyness or hesitation that it wasn’t long before I let myself go. If it feels good, it’s good, Margot said at one point, and that was the gift she gave me over the course of those five nights. She taught me not to be afraid of myself anymore.

I didn’t want it to end. Living in that strange paradise with the strange, unfathomable Margot was one of the best, most unlikely things that had ever happened to me, but Born was due to return from Paris the next evening, and we had no choice but to cut it off. At the time, I imagined it was only a temporary cease-fire. When we said good-bye on the last morning, I told her not to worry, that sooner or later we’d figure out a way to continue, but for all my bluster and confidence Margot looked troubled, and just as I was about to leave the apartment, her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.

I have a bad feeling, she said. I don’t know why, but something tells me this is the end, that this is the last time I’ll ever see you.