Invisible

by Paul Auster

  —Given your position—the position you hold now, in any case—I would like to suggest an experiment. An experiment in the form of a business proposal. Do you remember the book I told you about in one of my letters?

  —You mentioned that you were taking notes for a memoir you wanted to write.

  —Exactly. I’m nearly ready to begin, and I want you to help me with it. I want us to write the book together.

  —You’re forgetting that I already have a job in Paris. A job that means quite a lot to me.

  —Whatever salary they give you at the CNRS, I’ll double it.

  —It isn’t a question of money.

  —I’m not asking you to quit your job. All you have to do is apply for a leave of absence. The book should take us about a year to write, and if you don’t want to stay with me here after we’re finished, go back to Paris. In the meantime, you’ll be earning twice what you earn now—with free room and board, by the way—and in the process you might discover that you want to marry me. An experiment in the form of a business proposal. Do you see what I’m talking about?

  —Yes, I see. But why would I be interested in working on someone else’s book? I have my own work to do.

  —Once you know what the book is about, you’ll be interested.

  —It’s a book about your life.

  —Yes, but do you know anything about my life, Cécile?

  —You’re a retired professor of government and international affairs.

  —Among other things, yes. But I didn’t only teach government, I worked for it as well.

  —The French government?

  —Of course. I’m French, aren’t I?

  —And what kind of work did you do?

  —Secret work.

  —Secret work . . . Are you talking about espionage?

  —Skullduggery in all its many forms, my dear.

  —Well, well. I had no idea.

  —It goes all the way back to Algeria for me. I started young, and I went on working for them straight through to the end of the Cold War.

  —In other words, you have some gripping stories to tell.

  —More than gripping. Stories to curdle your blood.

  —Are you allowed to publish these stories? I thought there were laws that prevented government workers from exposing state secrets.

  —If we run into any difficulties, we’ll redo the manuscript and publish it as a novel—under your name.

  —My name?

  —Yes, your name. I’ll keep myself out of it, and you can have all the glory.

  I no longer believed a word he was saying. By the time R.B. left the room, I was convinced he was mad, that he had lost his mind and gone stark raving mad. He’d spent too many years on Quillia, and the tropical sun had cooked the wires in his brain and pushed him over the edge of sanity. Espionage. Marriage. Memoirs that transformed themselves into novels. He was like a child, a desperate child who made up things as he went along, saying whatever popped into his head and then spinning it out into a fiction that would serve his purpose at any given moment—in this case, the bizarre, wholly preposterous idea that he wanted to marry me. He didn’t want to marry me. He couldn’t want to marry me. But if he did, and if he thought he could, then it only proved that he was no longer in his right mind.

  I pretended to play along with him, acting as if I took his experiment in the form of a business proposal seriously. Was I too afraid to challenge him, or was I simply trying to avoid an unpleasant scene? A little of both, I think. I didn’t want to say anything that would provoke his anger, but at the same time I found the conversation unbearably tedious, and I wanted to get rid of him as quickly as I could. So you’ll think it over? he asked. Yes, I said, I promise to think it over. But you’ll have to tell me more about the book before I make my decision. Of course, he answered, that goes without saying. I have some chores to do with Samuel now, but we can talk about it over lunch. Then he patted me on the cheek and said: I’m so glad you’ve come. The world has never looked more beautiful to me.

  I didn’t go to lunch. I said that I wasn’t feeling well, which was partly true and partly not true. I could have gone if I had pushed myself, if I had actively wanted to go, but I wasn’t in the mood to push myself, and I didn’t want to go. I needed a break from R.B., and the fact was that the trip had taken its toll on me. I felt exhausted, jet-lagged, spent. Without bothering to take off my clothes, I lay down on the bed and napped for three solid hours. I woke up in a sweat, perspiration gushing from every pore of my body, my mouth dry, my head pounding. Stripping off my clothes, I went into the bathroom, hung one of the water-filled plastic bags on the shower hook, opened the nozzle, and let the water rush down onto my head. A lukewarm shower in the midday heat. The bathroom was out in the open, a small, nichelike space carved into the stone and perched on top of the cliff, with nothing below me but the immense, glittering ocean. The world has never looked more beautiful. Yes, I said to myself, this is beyond doubt a beautiful place, but it is a harsh beauty, an inhospitable beauty, and I am already looking forward to leaving it.

  I thought about writing in my diary, but I was too agitated to sit still. Then it occurred to me that I should suspend all writing for the duration of my visit. What if R.B. sneaked into my room and found the diary, I wondered, what if he saw the things I was saying about him? All hell would break loose. I might even be in danger.

  I tried to read, but reading was beyond my powers of concentration just then. All the useless books I had packed for my holiday in the sun. Novels by Bernhard and Vila-Matas, poems by Dupin and du Bouchet, essays by Sacks and Diderot—all worthy books, but useless to me now that I had reached my destination.

  I sat in the chair by the window. I paced around the room. I sat down in the chair again.

  And what if R.B. hadn’t gone mad? I asked myself. What if he was playing with me, proposing marriage in order to tease me and make fun of me, having a good laugh at my expense? That too was possible. Anything was possible.

  He drank heavily at dinner that night. A couple of tall rum punches before we sat down at the table, then ample doses of wine throughout the meal. At first, it seemed to have no effect on him. He solicitously asked if I was feeling better, and I said yes, the nap had done me a world of good, and after that we talked about small, inconsequential things, with no mention of marriage, no mention of Adam Walker, no mention of books about undercover intelligence work that can be turned into novels. Although we were speaking French, I wondered if he preferred not to talk about these matters in front of the servants. I also wondered if he wasn’t going senile, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s or dementia, and had simply forgotten the things we had talked about earlier in the day. Perhaps thoughts flitted through his head like butterflies or mosquitoes—ephemeral notions that came and went so fast that he couldn’t keep track of them anymore.

  About ten or fifteen minutes into the meal, however, he began talking about politics. Not in any personal way, not with any stories about his own experiences, but abstractly, theoretically, sounding very much like the professor he had been for most of his adult life. He began with the Berlin Wall. Everyone in the West was so happy when the wall came down, he said, everyone thought a new era of peace and brotherly love had dawned on earth, but in fact it was the most alarming event of recent times. Distasteful as it might have been, the Cold War had held the world together for forty-four years, and now that the simple, black-and-white binary world of us versus them was gone, we had entered a period of instability and chaos similar to the years prior to World War I. Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD. It was a frightening concept, yes, but when one half of humanity is in a position to blow up the other half, and when the other half is in a position to blow up the first half, neither side will pull the trigger. Permanent stalemate. The most elegant answer to military aggression in the history of mankind.

  I didn’t interrupt. R.B. was talking rationally for once, even if his argument was rather crude. What about Algeria and Indo
china, I wanted to ask him, what about Korea and Vietnam, what about U.S. interference in Latin America, the assassinations of Lumumba and Allende, the Soviets rolling their tanks into Budapest and Prague, the long war in Afghanistan? There was little point in asking these questions. I had sat through enough lectures of this sort as a girl to know that tangling with R.B. wasn’t worth the trouble. Let him rant, I said to myself, let him spout forth his simplistic opinions, and before long he’ll talk himself out and the evening will be over. This was the R.B. of old, and for the first time since I’d set foot in his house, I felt I was on familiar ground.

  But he didn’t talk himself out, and the evening dragged on much longer than I thought it would. He was only warming up with those comments about the Cold War, clearing his throat, as it were, and for the next two hours he subjected me to the most blistering harangue I had ever heard from him. Arab terrorism, September 11th, the encroaching war in Iraq, the price of oil, global warming, food shortages, mass starvation, a world depression, dirty bombs, anthrax attacks, the annihilation of Israel—what didn’t he talk about, what dire, death-rattling prophecy did he not conjure up and spew in my face? Some of the things he said were so mean and ugly, so vicious in their hatred of anyone who was not a European with white skin, of anyone who was not, finally, Rudolf Born himself, that a moment came when I couldn’t bear to listen to him anymore. Stop it, I said. I don’t want to hear another word. I’m going to bed.

  As I stood up from my chair and left the room, he was still talking, still preaching to me in his drunken, rasping voice, not even aware that I was no longer sitting at the table. The polar ice caps are melting, he said. Fifteen years from now, twenty years from now, the floods will come. Drowned cities, obliterated continents, the end of everything. You’ll still be alive, Cécile. You’ll get to see it happen, and then you’ll drown. You’ll drown with all the others, all the billions of others, and that will be the end. How I envy you, Cécile. You’ll be there to see the end of everything.

  He didn’t show up for breakfast the next morning (yesterday). When I asked Nancy if he was all right, she made a small sound in the back of her throat, something akin to a muted, inward laugh, and said that Mr. Born was still in dreamland. I wondered how long he had gone on drinking after I left the dining room.

  Four hours later, he emerged for lunch, apparently in good cheer, his eyes bright and focused, ready for action. For the first time since I’d been there, he had taken the trouble to put on a shirt.

  —Excuse my intemperate remarks last night, he began. I didn’t mean half the things I said—less than half of them, actually, almost nothing.

  —Why would you say something you didn’t mean? I asked, somewhat thrown by this odd retraction. It wasn’t like him to examine his own behavior, to back down from anything he said or did—intemperate or not.

  —I was testing out certain ideas, trying to get myself into the proper frame of mind for the work ahead.

  —And what work is that?

  —The book. The book we’re going to make together. After our discussion yesterday morning, I’m convinced you’re right, Cécile. The true story can never be published. There are too many secrets, too many bits of dirty business to expose, too many deaths to account for. The French would arrest me if I tried to talk about them.

  —Are you saying you want to give up the project?

  —No, not at all. But in order to tell the truth, we’ll have to fictionalize it.

  —That’s what you said yesterday.

  —I know. It popped into my head while we were talking, but now that I’ve had time to think it over, I believe it’s the only solution.

  —A novel, then.

  —Yes, a novel. And now that I’m thinking novel, I understand that limitless possibilities have suddenly opened up to us. We can tell the truth, yes, but we’ll also have the freedom to make things up.

  —Why would you want to do that?

  —To make the story more interesting. We’ll be basing the action on my life, of course, but the character who plays me in the book will have to be given a different name. We can’t call him Rudolf Born, can we? He’ll have to be someone else—Mr. X, for example. Once I become Mr. X, I won’t be myself anymore, and once I’m not myself, we can add as many new details as we like.

  —Such as?

  —Such as . . . maybe Mr. X isn’t the person he appears to be. We present him as a man who leads a double life. The world knows him as a dull professor, a man who teaches government and international affairs at some dull institute or university, but in fact he’s also a special undercover agent, fighting the good fight against the Soviet Communists.

  —We already know that. That’s the premise of the book.

  —Yes, yes—but wait. What if his double life isn’t a double life but a triple life?

  —I don’t follow.

  —He seems to be working for the French, but he’s actually working for the Russians. Mr. X is a mole.

  —It’s beginning to sound like a thriller—

  —Thriller. Don’t you just love that word? Thriller.

  —But why would Mr. X betray his country?

  —Any number of reasons. After years of work in the field, he becomes disillusioned with the West and converts to the Communist cause. Or else he’s a cynic who doesn’t believe in anything, and the Russians are paying him good money, more money than the French are paying him, which means that he’s earning more than twice as much as he would if he worked for just one side.

  —He doesn’t seem to be a very sympathetic character.

  —He doesn’t have to be sympathetic. Just interesting and complex. Think back to May sixty-eight, Cécile. Do you remember all those terrible arguments we had?

  —I’ll never forget them.

  —What if Mr. X, the double agent in league with the enemy, is in perfect accord with the young Cécile Juin character? What if he’s delighted to see France erupt in anarchy, bursting with joy over the disintegration of France and the imminent fall of the government? But he has to protect his cover, and to do that he espouses views directly opposed to the ones he believes in. It adds a nice little twist, don’t you think?

  —Not bad.

  —I’ve thought of another scene. It might be difficult to pull off, but if we stick with the idea of turning Mr. X into a mole, it would be crucial—one of the darkest, most lacerating moments in the book. Mr. X has a French colleague, Mr. Y. They’ve been close friends for many years, they’ve lived through some harrowing adventures together, but now Mr. Y suspects that Mr. X is working for the Soviets. He confronts Mr. X and tells him that if he doesn’t quit the service immediately, he will have him arrested. These are the early sixties, remember. Capital punishment was still in force, and arrest means the guillotine for Mr. X. What can he do? He has no choice but to kill Mr. Y. Not with a bullet, of course. Not with a blow to the head or a knife in the belly, but by more subtle means that will allow him to escape detection. It’s summer. Mr. Y and his family are vacationing in the mountains somewhere in the south of France. Mr. X goes down there, sneaks onto the property in the middle of the night, and disconnects the brakes of Mr. Y’s car. The next morning, on his way into town to buy bread at the local bakery, Mr. Y loses control of the car and crashes down the side of a mountain. Mission accomplished.

  —What are you saying, Rudolf?

  —Nothing. I’m telling you a story, that’s all. I’m describing how Mr. X kills Mr. Y.

  —You’re talking about my father, aren’t you?

  —Of course not. Why would you think that?

  —You’re telling me how you tried to kill my father.

  —Nonsense. Your father was never in the service. You know that. He worked for the Ministry of Culture.

  —So you say. Who knows what he really did?

  —Stop it, Cécile. We’re just having a little fun.

  —It’s not funny. It’s not the least bit funny. You’re making me sick to my stomach.

  —M
y dear girl. Calm down. You’re acting like a simpleton.

  —I’m walking out of here, Rudolf. I can’t stand to be with you for another minute.

  —Right now, in the middle of lunch? Just like that?

  —Yes, just like that.

  —And I thought—

  —I don’t care what you thought.

  —All right, go if you want to. I won’t try to stop you. I’ve done nothing but shower you with kindness and affection since you came here, and now you turn on me like this. You’re a ridiculous, hysterical woman, Cécile. I’m sorry I invited you to my house.

  —I’m sorry I came.

  I was already standing by then, already making my way across the room, already in tears. Just before I reached the hall, I turned around for a last look at the man my mother almost married, the man who had asked me to be his wife, and there he was, sitting with his back to me, hunched over his plate, shoveling food into his mouth. Total indifference. I hadn’t even left the house, and already I had been expunged from his mind.

  I went into my bedroom to gather up my things. There would be no Samuel to accompany me this time, and since I wouldn’t be able to get down the mountain with the suitcase in my hand, the bag would have to stay. I transferred some clean underwear into my purse, kicked off my sandals and put on a pair of sneakers, then checked to make sure that my passport and money were where they should have been. The thought of leaving my clothes and books behind caused a small twinge of regret, but the feeling evaporated after a couple of seconds. My plan was to walk to the town of Saint Margaret and buy a ticket for the next available flight to Barbados. It was twelve miles from the house. I could do that. As long as I was on flat ground, I could walk forever.

  Climbing down the mountain was less of a challenge than climbing up had been. I broke into a sweat, of course, I was bedeviled by the same aerial attacks of gnats and mosquitoes, but I didn’t fall this time, not even once. I moved at a moderate pace, neither too plodding nor too rushed, pausing every now and then to examine wildflowers by the side of the road—bright, beautiful things whose names were unknown to me. Burning red. Burning yellow. Burning blue.