Paul Auster - Travels in the Scriptorium

Far off in the distance, beyond the room, beyond the building in which the room is located, Mr. Blank again hears the faint cry of a bird. Distracted by the sound, he looks up from the page in front of him, temporarily abandoning the dolorous confessions of Sigmund Graf. A sudden feeling of pressure invades his stomach, and before Mr. Blank can decide whether to call that feeling one of pain or simple discomfort, his intestinal tract bugles forth an ample, resonant fart. Ho ho, he says out loud, grunting with pleasure. Hopalong Cassidy rides again! Then he tips back in the chair, closes his eyes, and begins to rock, soon lapsing into one of those dull, trancelike states in which the mind is emptied of all thoughts, all emotions, all connection to the self. Thus trapped in his reptilian stupor, Mr. Blank is, as it were, absent, or at least momentarily cut off from his surroundings, which means that he does not hear the hand that has begun knocking on the door. Worse than that, he does not hear the door open, and therefore, even though someone has entered the room, he is still in the dark as to whether the door is locked from the outside or not. Or soon will be still in the dark, once he emerges from his trance.

Someone taps him on the shoulder, but before Mr. Blank can open his eyes and swivel around in the chair to see who it is, that person has already begun to speak. From the timbre and intonation of the voice, Mr. Blank instantly recognizes that it belongs to a man, but he is perplexed by the fact that it is talking to him in what sounds like a Cockney accent.

I'm sorry, Mr. Blank, the man says to him. I knocked and knocked, and when you didn't open the door, I thought I should come in and see if anything was wrong.

Mr. Blank now swivels around in the chair and takes a close look at his visitor. The man appears to be in his early fifties, with neatly combed hair and a small brown mustache with flecks of gray in it. Neither short nor tall, Mr. Blank says to himself, but more on the short side than the tall, and from his erect, almost ramrod posture as he stands there in his tweed suit, he looks like a military man of some kind, or perhaps a lower-level civil servant.

And you are? Mr. Blank asks.

Flood, sir. First name James. Middle name Patrick. James P. Flood. Don't you remember me?

Dimly, only dimly.

The ex-policeman.

Ah. Flood, the ex-policeman. You were going to pay me a visit, weren't you?

Yes, sir. Exactly, sir. That's why I'm here. I'm paying you the visit now.

Mr. Blank casts his eyes about the room, looking for a chair so he can offer Flood a place to sit, but apparently the only chair in the room is the one he now occupies himself.

Something wrong? Flood asks.

No, no, Mr. Blank replies. I'm just looking for another chair, that's all.

I can always sit on the bed, Flood answers, gesturing to the bed. Or, if you're feeling up to it, we could go to the park across the way. No shortage of benches there.

Mr. Blank points down at his right foot and says: I'm missing a shoe. I can't go outside with only one shoe.

Flood turns around and immediately spots the white tennis shoe on the floor below the window. There's the other one, sir. We could get it back on you in two shakes of a cat.

A cat? What are you talking about?

Just an expression, Mr. Blank. No harm intended. Flood pauses for a moment, looks back at the shoe on the floor, and then says: Well, what about it? Should we put it on or not?

Mr. Blank lets out a long, weary sigh. No, he says, with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, I don't want to put it on. I'm sick of these goddamned shoes. If anything, I'd rather take the other one off, too.

The moment these words escape his mouth, Mr. Blank is heartened to realize that such an act falls within the realm of possibility, that in this one trifling instance he can take matters into his own hands. Without a moment's hesitation, he therefore bends down and removes the sneaker from his left foot.

Ah, that's better, he says, lifting his legs and wiggling his toes in the air. Much better. And I'm still dressed all in white, aren't I?

Of course you are, Flood says. What's so important about that?

Never mind, says Mr. Blank, waving off Flood's question as of no account. Just sit down on the bed and tell me what you want, Mr. Flood.

The former inspector from Scotland Yard lowers himself onto the foot of the mattress, positioning his body in the left-hand quadrant in order to align his face with the face of the old man, who is sitting in the chair with his back to the desk, roughly six feet away. Flood clears his throat, as if searching for the appropriate words to start with, and then, in a low voice trembling with anxiety, he says: It's about the dream, sir.

The dream? Mr. Blank asks, confounded by Flood's statement. What dream?

My dream, Mr. Blank. The one you mentioned in your report on Fanshawe.

Who's Fanshawe?

You don't remember?

No, Mr. Blank declares in a loud, irritable voice. No, I don't remember Fanshawe. I can hardly remember anything.

They're pumping me full of pills, and nearly everything is gone now. Most of the time, I don't even know who I am. And if I can't remember myself, how do you expect me to remember this… this…

Fanshawe.

Fanshawe… And who, pray tell, is he?

One of your operatives, sir.

You mean someone I sent out on a mission?

An extremely perilous mission.

Did he survive?

No one is sure. But the prevailing opinion is that he's no longer with us.

Groaning softly to himself, Mr. Blank covers his face with his hands and whispers: Another one of the damned.

Excuse me, Flood interjects, I didn't catch what you said.

Nothing, Mr. Blank replies in a louder voice. I said nothing.

At that point, the conversation stops for several moments. Silence reigns, and in that silence Mr. Blank imagines that he hears the sound of wind, a powerful wind blowing through a stand of trees somewhere near, quite near, but whether that wind is real or not he cannot say. All the while, Flood's eyes remain fixed on the old man's face. When the silence has become unbearable, he at last makes a timid venture to resume the dialogue. Well? he says.

Well what? Mr. Blank replies.

The dream. Can we talk about the dream now?

How can I talk about another man's dream if I don't know what it is?

That's just the problem, Mr. Blank. I have no memory of it myself.

Then I can't do anything for you, can I? If neither one of us knows what happened in your dream, there's nothing to talk about.

It's more complicated than that.

Hardly, Mr. Flood. It's very simple.

That's only because you don't remember writing the report. If you concentrate now, I mean really focus your mind on it, maybe it will come back to you.

I doubt it.

Listen. In the report you wrote on Fanshawe, you mention that he was the author of several unpublished books. One of them was entitled Neverland. Unfortunately, except for concluding that certain events in the book were inspired by similar events in Fanshawe's life, you say nothing about the subject, nothing about the plot, nothing about the book at all. Only one brief aside—written in parentheses, I might add—which reads as follows. I quote from memory: (Montag's house in chapter seven; Flood's dream in chapter thirty). The point being, Mr. Blank, that you must have read Neverland yourself, and in that you're one of the only people in the world to have done so, I would deeply appreciate it, appreciate it from the very bottom of my miserable heart, if you would make an effort to recall the content of that dream.

From the way you talk about it, Neverland must be a novel.

Yes, sir. A work of fiction.

And Fanshawe used you as a character?