Oracle Night

by Paul Auster

  ‘Poor Grace,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  John slowly turned back toward me, but he stopped midway, his head aligned with the sofa, and when he talked he kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling. ‘It’s just that she’s been through so much,’ he said. ‘She’s not as strong as you think she is. She needs a rest.’

  ‘She’ll do exactly what she wants to do. The decision is in her hands.’

  ‘I’ve known her much longer than you have. A baby is the last thing she needs right now.’

  ‘If she goes through with it, I was thinking of asking you to be the godfather. But I don’t suppose you’d be interested. Not from what you’re saying now.’

  ‘Just don’t lose her, Sidney. That’s all I’m asking you. If things fall apart, it would be a catastrophe for her.’

  ‘They’re not going to fall apart. And I’m not going to lose her. But even if I did, what business is it of yours?’

  ‘Grace is my business. She’s always been my business.’

  ‘You’re not her father. You might think you are sometimes, but you’re not. Grace can handle herself. If she decides to have the baby, I’m not going to stop her. The truth is, I’ll be glad. Having a child with her would be about the best thing that ever happened to me.’

  That was the closest John and I had ever come to an out-and-out argument. It was an upsetting moment for me, and as my last words hung defiantly in the air, I wondered if the conversation wasn’t about to take an even nastier turn. Fortunately, we both backed off before the flare-up developed any further, realizing that we were about to goad each other into saying things we would later regret – and which could never be expunged from memory, no matter how many apologies we made after our tempers had calmed down.

  Very wisely, John picked that moment to pay a visit to the bathroom. As I watched him go through the arduous manipulations of hauling himself off the sofa and then hobble across the room, all the hostility suddenly drained out of me. He was living under extreme duress. His leg was killing him, he was grappling with the awful news about his son, and how could I not forgive him for having spoken a few harsh words? In the context of Jacob’s betrayal and possible drug addiction, Grace was the adored good child, the one who had never let him down, and perhaps that was the reason why John had been so adamant in coming to her defense, butting into matters that finally didn’t concern him. He was angry at his son, yes, but that anger was also laden with a substantial dose of guilt. John knew he had more or less abdicated his responsibilities as a father. Divorced from Eleanor when Jacob was one and a half, he had allowed her to remove the child from New York when she settled in East Hampton with her second husband in 1966. After that, John had seen little of the boy: an occasional weekend together in the city, a few trips to New England and the Southwest during summer vacations. Hardly what one could call an actively involved parent, and then, after Tina’s death, he had disappeared from Jacob’s life for four years, seeing him only once or twice from age twelve to sixteen. Now, at twenty, his son had turned into a full-blown mess, and whether it was his fault or not, John blamed himself for the disaster.

  He was gone from the room for ten or fifteen minutes. When he returned, I helped him onto the sofa again, and the first thing he said to me had nothing to do with what we’d been talking about earlier. The conflict seemed to be over – swept away during his trip down the hall and apparently forgotten.

  ‘How’s Flitcraft?’ he asked. ‘Making any progress?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘I wrote up a storm for a couple of days, but then I got stuck.’

  ‘And now you’re having second thoughts about the blue notebook.’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sure I know what I think anymore.’

  ‘You were so revved up the other night, you sounded like a demented alchemist. The first man to turn lead into gold.’

  ‘Well, it was quite an experience. The first time I used the notebook, Grace tells me I wasn’t there anymore.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That I disappeared. I know it sounds ridiculous, but she knocked on my door while I was writing, and when I didn’t answer she poked her head into the room. She swears she didn’t see me.’

  ‘You must have been somewhere else in the apartment. In the bathroom, maybe.’

  ‘I know. That’s what Grace says too. But I don’t remember going to the bathroom. I don’t remember anything but sitting at my desk and writing.’

  ‘You might not remember it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. One tends to get a little absentminded when the words are flowing. Not true?’

  ‘True. Of course true. But then something similar happened on Monday. I was in my room writing, and I didn’t hear the phone ring. When I got up from my desk and went into the kitchen, there were two messages on the machine.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I didn’t hear the ring. I always hear the phone when it rings.’

  ‘You were distracted, lost in what you were doing.’

  ‘Maybe. But I don’t think so. Something strange happened, and I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Call your doctor, Sid, and set up an appointment to have your head examined.’

  ‘I know. It’s all in my head. I’m not saying it isn’t, but ever since I bought that notebook, everything’s gone out of whack. I can’t tell if I’m the one who’s using the notebook or if the notebook’s been using me. Does that make any sense?’

  ‘A little. But not much.’

  ‘All right, let me put it another way. Have you ever heard of a writer named Sylvia Maxwell? An American novelist from the twenties.’

  ‘I’ve read some books by Sylvia Monroe. She published a bunch of novels in the twenties and thirties. But not Maxwell.’

  ‘Did she ever write a book called Oracle Night?’

  ‘No, not that I know of. But I think she wrote something with the word night in the title. Havana Night, maybe. Or London Night, I can’t remember. It shouldn’t be hard to find out. Just go to the library and look her up.’

  Little by little, we veered away from the blue notebook and started discussing more practical matters. Money, for one thing, and how I was hoping to solve my financial problems by writing a film script for Bobby Hunter. I told John about the treatment, giving him a quick summary of the plot I’d cooked up for my version of The Time Machine, but he didn’t offer much of a response. Clever, I think he said, or some equally mild compliment, and I suddenly felt stupid, embarrassed, as though Trause looked on me as some tawdry hack trying to peddle my wares to the highest bidder. But I was wrong to interpret his muffled reaction as disapproval. He understood what a tight spot we were in, and it turned out that he was thinking, trying to come up with a plan to help me.

  ‘I know it’s idiotic,’ I said, ‘but if they go for the idea, we’ll be solvent again. If they don’t, we’re still in the red. I hate to count on such flimsy prospects, but it’s the only trick I have up my sleeve.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ John said. ‘If this Time Machine thing doesn’t work, maybe you could write another screenplay. You’re good at it. If you got Mary to push hard enough, I’m sure you’d find someone willing to fork over a nice chunk of cash.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way. They come to you; you don’t go to them. Unless you have an original idea, of course. But I don’t.’

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about. Maybe I have an idea for you.’

  ‘A movie idea? I thought you were against writing for the movies.’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago, I found a box with some of my old stuff in it. Early stories, a half-finished novel, two or three plays. Ancient material, written when I was still in my teens and twenties. None of it was ever published. Thankfully, I should add, but in reading over the stories, I found one that wasn’t half terrible. I still wouldn’t want to publish it, but if I gave it to you, you might be able to rethink it as a film. Maybe my name will help. If you tell a film producer you’re adapting a
n unpublished story by John Trause, it might have some appeal. I don’t know. But even if they don’t give a shit about me, there’s a strong visual component to the story. I think the images would lend themselves to film in a pretty natural way.’

  ‘Of course your name would help. It would make a huge difference.’

  ‘Well, read the story and let me know what you think. It’s just a first draft – very rough – so don’t judge the prose too harshly. And remember, I was hardly more than a kid when I wrote it. Much younger than you are now.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘It’s an odd piece, not at all like my other work, so you might be a little surprised at first. I guess I’d call it a political parable. It’s set in an imaginary country in the eighteen thirties, but it’s really about the early nineteen fifties. McCarthy, HUAC, the Red Scare – all the sinister things that were going on then. The idea is that governments always need enemies, even when they’re not at war. If you don’t have a real enemy, you make one up and spread the word. It scares the population, and when the people are scared, they tend not to step out of line.’

  ‘What about the country? Is it a stand-in for America or something else?’

  ‘It’s part North America, part South America, but with a completely different history from either one. Way back, all the European powers had set up colonies in the New World. The colonies evolved into independent states, and then, little by little, after hundreds of years of wars and skirmishes, they gradually merge into an enormous confederation. The question is: What happens after the empire is established? What enemy do you invent to make people scared enough to hold the confederation together?’

  ‘And what’s the answer?’

  ‘You pretend you’re about to be invaded by barbarians. The confederation has already pushed these people off their lands, but now you spread the rumor that an army of anti-confederationist soldiers has crossed into the primitive territories and is stirring up a rebellion among the people there. It isn’t true. The soldiers are working for the government. They’re part of the conspiracy.’

  ‘Who tells the story?’

  ‘A man sent to investigate the rumors. He works for a branch of the government that isn’t in on the plot, and he winds up being arrested and tried for treason. To make matters more complicated, the officer in charge of the false army has run off with the narrator’s wife.’

  ‘Deceit and corruption at every turn.’

  ‘Exactly. A man ruined by his own innocence.’

  ‘Does it have a title?’

  ‘“The Empire of Bones.” It’s not very long. Forty-five or fifty pages – but there’s enough to squeeze a film out of it, I think. You decide. If you want to use it, I give you my blessing. If you don’t like it, then chuck it in the garbage, and we’ll forget all about it.’

  I left Trause’s apartment feeling overwhelmed, tongue-tied with gratitude, and not even the small torment of having to say good-bye to Régine downstairs could diminish my happiness. The manuscript was in a side pocket of my sport coat, tucked away in a manila envelope, and I kept my hand on it as I walked to the subway, itching to open it up and start reading. John had always been behind me and my work, but I knew this gift had as much to do with Grace as it did with me. I was the half-destroyed cripple responsible for taking care of her, and if there was anything he could do to help us get back on our feet, he was willing to do it – even to the extent of donating an unpublished manuscript to the cause. There was only the slimmest chance that anything would come of his idea, but whether I could turn his story into a film or not, the important thing was his readiness to go beyond the normal bounds of friendship and involve himself in our affairs. Selflessly, without any thought of profiting from what he’d done.

  It was already past five o’clock when I made it to the West Fourth Street station. Rush hour was in full swing, and as I descended the two flights of stairs to the downtown F platform, gripping the banister tightly so as not to stumble, I despaired of finding a seat on the train. There would be a crush of passengers traveling back to Brooklyn. That meant I would have to read John’s story standing up, and since that would be immensely difficult, I prepared myself to fight for a little extra space if I had to. When the doors of the train opened, I ignored subway etiquette and slipped in past the jostle of disembarking passengers, entering the car before anyone else on the platform, but it didn’t do me any good. A mob came pouring in behind me. I was pushed to the center of the car, and by the time the doors closed and the train left the station, I was crammed in among so many people that my arms were pinned to my sides, with no room to reach into my pocket and take out the envelope. It was all I could do not to crash into my fellow riders as we rocked and lurched our way through the tunnel. At one point, I managed to get my hand up far enough to hook my fingers onto one of the overhead bars, but that was the extent of the movement possible for me under the circumstances. Few passengers got off at the succeeding stops, and for every one who did, two others shouldered themselves in to take that person’s place. Hundreds were left standing on the platforms to wait for the next train, and from the beginning of the ride to the end, I didn’t have a single chance to look at the story. When we pulled into the Bergen Street station, I tried to get my hand back onto the envelope, but I was bumped from behind, squeezed from both left and right, and as I pivoted around the center pole to get ready to exit the car, the train suddenly stopped, the doors opened, and I was pushed out onto the platform before I could check to see if the envelope was still there. It wasn’t. The surge of the departing crowd carried me along with it for six or seven feet, and by the time I spun around to elbow my way back into the car, the doors had already closed and the subway was moving again. I pounded my fist against a passing window, but the conductor paid no attention to me. The F glided out of the station, and a few seconds later it was gone.

  I had been guilty of similar lapses of concentration since coming home from the hospital, but none was worse or more wrenching than this one. Instead of keeping the envelope in my hand, I had foolishly shoved the thing into a pocket that was too small to hold it, and now John’s manuscript was lying on the floor of a subway car headed for Coney Island, no doubt trampled and smudged by half the shoes and sneakers in the borough of Brooklyn. It was an unforgivable mistake. John had entrusted me with the only copy of an unpublished story, and given the academic interest in his work, the manuscript alone was probably worth hundreds of dollars, perhaps thousands. What was I going to tell him when he asked me what I thought of it? He had said I should toss it in the garbage if I didn’t like it, but that was merely a hyperbolic way of denigrating his own work, a joke. Of course he would want the manuscript back – whether I liked it or not. I had no idea how to make amends. If someone had done to me what I’d just done to Trause, I think I would have been angry enough to want to strangle him.

  Demoralizing as that loss was, it was only the beginning of what turned out to be a long and difficult night. When I returned home and walked up the three flights of stairs to the apartment, I discovered that the door was open – not simply ajar, but flung back on its hinges and standing flush against the wall. My first thought was that Grace had come home early, perhaps carrying an armful of bundles and grocery bags, and had forgotten to shut the door behind her. One look at the living room, however, and I understood that Grace had nothing to do with it. Someone had broken into the apartment, most likely by climbing up the fire escape and jimmying the kitchen window. Books were strewn about the floor, our small black-and-white TV was gone, and a photograph of Grace, which had always stood on the mantel, had been torn up into little pieces and scattered onto the sofa. It was a remarkably vicious gesture, I felt, almost a personal attack. When I went over to the bookcase to inspect the damage, I saw that only the most valuable books were missing: signed copies of novels by Trause and a number of other writer friends, along with half a dozen first editions that had been given to me as presents over the years. Hawthorne, Dick
ens, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Wallace Stevens, Emerson. Whoever had robbed us was no ordinary thief. He knew something about literature, and he had zeroed in on the few treasures we owned.

  My study appeared to be untouched, but the bedroom had been systematically and thoroughly ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled out of the bureau, the mattress had been overturned, and the Bram van Velde lithograph that Grace had bought at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in the early seventies was missing from its place on the wall above our bed. When I sifted through the contents of the bureau drawers, I discovered that Grace’s jewelry box was also missing. She didn’t own much, but a pair of moonstone earrings she’d inherited from her grandmother had been in that box, along with a charm bracelet from her childhood and a silver necklace I’d given to her on her last birthday. Now some stranger had walked off with these things, and it felt as cruel and pointless to me as a rape, a savage plundering of our little world.

  We had no theft or home insurance, and I was disinclined to call the police to report the break-in. Burglars were never caught, and I saw no reason to pursue what struck me as a hopeless case, but before I made that decision I had to find out if anyone else in the building had been robbed. There were three other apartments in the brownstone – one above us and two below – and I began by going downstairs to the ground floor and talking to Mrs. Caramello, who shared the superintendent duties with her husband, a retired barber who spent most of his time watching television and betting on football games. Their place hadn’t been touched, but Mrs. Caramello was sufficiently distressed by my news to call out to Mr. Caramello, who came shuffling to the door in his slippers and merely sighed when he was told what had happened. ‘Probably one of them goddamn junkies,’ he said. ‘Gotta get bars on your windows, Sid. Ain’t no other way to keep the trash from crawling in.’