Paul Auster - Timbuktu

HE KEPT ON RUNNING FOR THREE DAYS, and in all that time he barely paused to sleep or look for food. When Mr. Bones finally stopped, he was somewhere in northern Virginia, sprawled out in a meadow ninety miles west of the Chows’ backyard. Two hundred yards in front of him, the sun was going down behind a stand of oaks. Half a dozen swallows darted back and forth in the middle distance, skimming the field as they combed the air for mosquitoes, and in the darkness of the branches behind him, songbirds chirped out a few last refrains before turning in for the night. As he lay there in the tall grass, his chest heaving and his tongue dangling from his mouth, Mr. Bones wondered what would happen if he closed his eyes—and, if he did, whether he would be able to open them again in the morning. He was that tired and hungry, that muddled by the rigors of his marathon trek. If he fell asleep, it seemed perfectly possible to him that he would never wake up again.

He watched the sun as it continued to sink behind the trees, his eyes struggling to stay open as the darkness gathered around him. He didn’t hold out for more than a minute or two, but even before weariness got the better of him, Mr. Bones’s head had already begun to fill up with thoughts of Willy, fleeting pictures from the bygone days of smoke rings and Lucky Strikes, the goofball antics of their life together in the world of long ago. It was the first time since his master’s death that he had been able to think about such things without feeling crushed by sorrow, the first time he had understood that memory was a place, a real place that one could visit, and that to spend a few moments among the dead was not necessarily bad for you, that it could in fact be a source of great comfort and happiness. Then he fell asleep, and Willy was still there with him, alive again in all his fractured glory, pretending to be a blind man as Mr. Bones led him down the steps of the subway. It was that windy day in March four and a half years ago, he realized, that funny afternoon of high hopes and dashed expectations when they rode out to Coney Island together to unveil the Symphony of Smells to Uncle Al. Willy had donned a Santa Claus hat to mark the occasion, and with the materials for the Symphony crammed inside a huge plastic garbage bag, which he had slung over his shoulder and which made him walk with a stoop, he looked for all the world like some drunk-tank version of Father Christmas himself. It’s true that things didn’t work out so well once they got there, but that was only because Uncle Al was in a bad mood. He wasn’t a real uncle, of course, just a family friend who had lent a helping hand to Willy’s parents after they arrived from Poland, and it was only out of some ancient loyalty to Mom-san and her husband that he allowed Willy and Mr. Bones to hang around his store. In point of fact, Al had little use for the novelty business, and with fewer and fewer customers showing up to buy his goods, there were certain items that had been languishing on the shelves for ten, twelve, and even twenty years. By now it was no more than a front for his other activities, most of them illegal, some of them not, and if the shady, fast-talking Al hadn’t been turning a profit on fireworks, bookmaking, and the sale of stolen cigarettes, he wouldn’t have thought twice about closing the door of that dusty emporium forever. Who knows what scam had backfired on him that windy day in March, but when Willy traipsed in with his Symphony of Smells and started yammering to Uncle Al about how his invention was going to turn them both into millionaires, the proprietor of Whoopee-Land USA turned a deaf ear on his faux nephew’s sales pitch. “You’re out of your skull, Willy,” Uncle Al said, “you’re fucking bonkers, you know that?” and promptly shooed him outside with his garbage bag of stinks and smells and collapsible cardboard labyrinths. Not to be dissuaded by a little skepticism, Willy enthusiastically set about to construct the Symphony on the sidewalk, determined to prove to Uncle Al that he had indeed come up with one of the genuine marvels of all time. But the air was exceedingly gusty that day, and no sooner did Willy reach into the garbage bag and start pulling out the various elements of Symphony No. 7 (towels, sponges, sweaters, galoshes, Tupperware boxes, gloves) than the wind caught hold of them and blew them down the street, scattering them in several different directions. Willy ran off to retrieve them, but once he let go of the bag, that too was blown away, and for all his supposed kindness to the Gurevitch family, Uncle Al just stood in the doorway and laughed.

That’s what had happened four and a half years ago, but in the dream Mr. Bones had that night in the meadow, he and Willy never got off the subway. There was no question that they were on their way to Coney Island (witness the red-and-white Santa hat, the bulging garbage bag, the seeing-eye-dog harness strapped around Mr. Bones’s shoulders), but whereas the car of the F train had been quite crowded on the afternoon of the real journey, this time he and Willy were alone, the only two passengers riding out to the end of the line. The moment he became aware of this difference, Willy turned to him and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Bones. It’s not then, it’s now.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” the dog replied, and so naturally did these words come to him, so clearly were they the product of a long-standing, thoroughly proven ability to speak whenever he had something to say, that Mr. Bones was not the least bit astonished by the miracle that had just occurred.

“It means you’re going about it all wrong,” Willy said.

“Running away from Baltimore, moping around in dumb-ass meadows, starving yourself for no good reason. It just won’t do, my friend. You find yourself another master, or your fur is toast.”

“I found Henry, didn’t I?” Mr. Bones said.

“A plum of a boy, that one, true blue through and through. But not good enough. That’s the trouble with young ones. They might mean well, but they don’t have any power. You have to go straight to the top, Mr. Bones. Find out who’s boss. Find out who makes the decisions, and then attach yourself to that person. There’s no other way. You need a new setup, but it’s never going to happen unless you start using your head.”

“I was desperate. How could I know his father would turn out to be such a louse?”

“Because I warned you about those places, didn’t I? The moment you saw what you were getting yourself into, you should have cashed in your chips and run.”

“I did run. And when I wake up tomorrow morning, I’m going to start running again. That’s my life now, Willy. I run, and I’m going to keep on running until I drop.”

“Don’t give up on men, Bonesy. You’ve had some hard knocks, but you’ve got to tough it out and give it another try.”

“Men can’t be trusted. I know that now.”

“You trust me, don’t you?”

“You’re the only one, Willy. But you’re not like other men, and now that you’re gone, there isn’t a place on earth where I’m not in danger. Just yesterday, I nearly got myself shot. I was taking a shortcut through a field somewhere, and a guy came after me in a red pickup truck. Laughing, too, I might add, and then he pulled out a rifle and fired. Lucky for me he missed. But who knows what’s going to happen next time?”

“He’s just one man. For every person like him, there’s another one like Henry.”

“Your numbers are off, master. There might be a few stray fools with a soft spot for dogs, but most of them wouldn’t think twice about loading up their shotguns the moment a four-leg sets foot on their land. I’m scared, Willy. Scared to go east, scared to go west. The way things stand now, I think I’d rather starve out here in the wilderness than run into one of those bullets. They’ll kill you just for breathing, and when you’re up against that kind of hatred, what’s the use of trying?”