Paul Auster - Travels in the Scriptorium

There have been other pains as well. A year and a half ago, the Bureau sent me on an expedition to the Independent Communities of Tierra Blanca Province. Less than a month after my departure, the cholera epidemic swept through the capital. Many now refer to this plague as the Blight of History, and considering that it struck just as the long and elaborately planned Unification ceremonies were about to begin, one can understand how it could be interpreted as an evil sign, a judgment on the very nature and purpose of the Confederation itself. I am not personally of that opinion, but my own life was nevertheless permanently altered by the epidemic. Cut off from all news of the city, I went about my work for the next four and a half months, traveling back and forth among the remote, mountainous communities to the south, pursuing my investigations into the various religious sects that had taken root in the area. When I returned in August, the crisis was already over— but not before my wife and fifteen-year-old daughter had disappeared. The majority of our neighbors in the Closterham District had either fled the city or succumbed to the illness themselves, but among those who had remained, not a single person could remember having seen them. The house was untouched, and nowhere in it could I find any evidence to suggest that the disease had infiltrated its walls. I made a thorough search of every room, but no secret was unveiled to me as to how or when they might have abandoned the premises. No missing clothes or jewels, no hastily discarded objects lying about the floor. The house was just as I had left it five months earlier, except that my wife and daughter were no longer in it.

I spent several weeks combing the city for clues of their whereabouts, growing increasingly desperate with each failed attempt to uncover information that would put me on their trail. I began by talking to friends and colleagues, and once I had exhausted the circle of familiars (in which I include my wife's female acquaintances, the parents of my daughter's classmates, as well as the shopkeepers and merchants of our district), I started reaching out to strangers. Armed with portraits of my wife and daughter, I questioned countless doctors, nurses, and volunteers who had worked in the makeshift hospitals and schoolrooms where the sick and dying had been cared for, but among all the hundreds of people who looked at those miniatures, not one could recognize the faces I held in my hand. In the end, there was only one conclusion to be drawn. My darlings had been carried off by the scourge. Along with thousands of other victims, they were lying in one of the mass graves on Viaticum Bluff, the burial ground of the anonymous dead.

I do not mention these things in order to put myself in a sympathetic light. No one has to feel sorry for me, and no one has to make excuses for the errors I committed in the aftermath of these events. I am a man, not an angel, and if the grief that overtook me occasionally blurred my vision and led to certain lapses of conduct, that in no way should cast doubt on the truth of my story. Before anyone tries to discredit me by pointing to those stains on my record, I come forward of my own free will and openly pronounce my guilt to the world. These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives. In my own case, the flaws in question stemmed from pain, not malice; confusion, not cunning. I lost my way, and for several months I sought comfort in the obliterating powers of alcohol. Most nights I drank alone, sitting in the darkness of my empty house, but some nights were worse than others.

Whenever I encountered one of those bad turns, my thoughts would begin to sabotage me, and before long I would be choking on my own breath. My head would fill with images of my wife and daughter, and again and again I would see their mud-splattered bodies being lowered into the ground, again and again I would see their naked limbs entwined among the limbs of other corpses in the hole, and suddenly the darkness of the house would become too much to bear. I would venture out into public places, hoping to break the spell of those images in the noise and tumult of crowds. I frequented taverns and alehouses, and it was in one of those establishments that I did the most damage to myself and my reputation. The incident occurred on a Friday night in November when a man named Giles McNaughton picked a quarrel with me in the Auberge des Vents. McNaughton claimed that I attacked him first, but eleven witnesses testified otherwise in court, and I was acquitted of all charges. It was no more than a small victory, however, for the fact remained that I had broken the man's arm and shattered his nose, and I never would have responded with such vehemence if I hadn't been going to hell by way of drink. The jury found me innocent, judging that I had acted in legitimate self-defense, but that did not remove the stigma of the trial itself—nor the scandal that broke out when it was discovered that a ranking member of the Bureau of Internal Affairs had been engaged in a bloody barroom brawl. Within hours of the verdict, rumors began circulating that officials from the Bureau had bribed certain members of the jury to vote in my favor. I have no knowledge of any corrupt dealings on my behalf, but I would tend to dismiss those accusations as mere gossip. What I do know for certain is that I had never seen McNaughton before that night. He, on the other hand, knew enough about me to address me by name, and when he approached my table and began to talk about my wife, suggesting that he was privy to information that would help solve the mystery of her disappearance, I told him to go away. The man was after money, and one look at his mottled, unhealthy face convinced me that he was a fraud, an opportunist who had got wind of my tragedy and meant to turn a profit from it. McNaughton apparently didn't like being dismissed in such a perfunctory manner. Instead of excusing himself, he sat down in the chair next to mine and angrily grabbed hold of my vest. Then, pulling me forward until our faces were almost touching, he leaned into me and said, What's the matter, citizen? Are you afraid of the truth? His eyes were full of rage and contempt, and because we were so close to each other, those eyes were the only objects in my field of vision. I could feel the hostility flowing through his body, and an instant later I felt it pass directly into mine. That was when I went after him. Yes, he had touched me first, but the moment I started to fight back, I wanted to hurt him, to hurt him as badly as I could.

That was my crime. Take it for what it was, but don't let it interfere with the reading of this report. Trouble comes to all men, and each man makes his peace with the world in his own way. If the force I used against McNaughton that night was unwarranted, the greater wrong was the pleasure I took in using that force. I do not pardon my actions, but considering my state of mind during that period, it is remarkable that the incident in the Auberge des Vents was the only one in which I did harm to another person. All the other harm was inflicted upon myself, and until I learned to curb my desire for drink (which was in fact a desire for death), I ran the risk of utter annihilation. In the course of time, I managed to take hold of myself again, but I confess that I am no longer the man I used to be. If I have gone on living, it is largely because my work at the Bureau has given me a reason to live. Such is the irony of my predicament. I am accused of being an enemy of the Confederation, and yet for the past nineteen years there has been no servant more loyal to the Confederation than myself. My record shows that, and I am proud to have lived in an age that allowed me to participate in such a vast human endeavor. My work in the field has taught me to love the truth above all else, and therefore I have cleared the air pertaining to my sins and transgressions, but that does not mean I can accept guilt for a crime I did not commit. I believe in what the Confederation stands for, and I have passionately defended it with my words, my deeds, and my blood. If the Confederation has turned against me, it can only mean that the Confederation has turned against itself. I cannot hope for life anymore, but if these pages should fall into the hands of someone with sufficient strength of heart to read them in the spirit with which they were written, then perhaps my murder will not have been an entirely useless act.