The Book of Illusions

by Paul Auster

  The scene shifts to the living room of Hector’s house. His wife is pacing back and forth, alternately wringing her hands and weeping into a handkerchief. There is no question that she has already heard the news about Hector’s disappearance. Chase enters, the ignominious C. Lester Chase, author of the diabolical plot to rob Hector of his soft-drink empire. He pretends to console the poor woman, patting her on the shoulder and shaking his head in false despair. He extracts the mysterious letter from his inside breast pocket and hands it to her, explaining that he found it on Hector’s desk that morning. Cut to an insert shot of the letter in extreme close-up. Dearest Beloved, it says. Please forgive me. The doc says I’m suffering from a fatal disease and have only two months to live. To spare you the agony, I’ve decided to end it now. Don’t worry about the business. The company is in good hands with Chase. I will always love you, Hector. It doesn’t take long for these lies and deceptions to do their work. In the next shot, we see the letter slip from the wife’s fingers and flutter to the floor. It is all too much for her. The world has been turned upside down, and everything in it has been broken. Less than a second after that, she faints.

  The camera follows her down to the floor, and then the image of her inert, recumbent body dissolves into a wide shot of Hector. He has left the office and is wandering the streets, trying to come to terms with the strange and terrible thing that has happened to him. To prove that all hope is really gone, he stops at a crowded intersection and strips down to his underwear. He does a little dance, he walks on his hands, he sticks out his fanny at the passing traffic, and when no one pays any attention to him, he glumly climbs back into his clothes and shuffles off. After that, Hector seems resigned to his fate. He doesn’t fight against his condition so much as try to understand it, and rather than look for a way to make himself visible again (by confronting Chase, for example, or by searching for an antidote that would undo the effects of the drink), he embarks on a series of weird and impulsive experiments, an investigation of who he is and what he has become. Unexpectedly—with a sudden, lightning flick of his hand—he knocks off the hat of a passerby. So that’s how things are, Hector seems to be saying to himself. A man can be invisible to everyone around him, but his body can still interact with the world. Another pedestrian approaches. Hector sticks out his foot and trips him. Yes, his hypothesis is surely correct, but that doesn’t mean that more research isn’t required. Warming to his task now, he picks up the hem of a woman’s dress and studies her legs. He kisses another woman on the cheek, then a third woman on the mouth. He crosses out the letters on a stop sign, and an instant later a motorcycle slams into a trolley. He sneaks up behind two men, and by tapping each one on the shoulder and kicking them in the shins, he instigates a brawl. There is something cruel and childish about these pranks, but they are also satisfying to watch, and each one adds another fact to the growing body of evidence. Then, as Hector picks up an errant baseball that rolls toward him on the sidewalk, he makes his second important discovery. Once an invisible man takes hold of an object, it disappears from sight. It does not hover in the air; it is sucked into the void, into the same nothingness that encloses the man himself, and the moment it enters that haunted sphere, it is gone. The boy who lost the ball runs to the spot where he thinks it must have landed. The laws of physics dictate that the ball should be there, but it isn’t. The boy is mystified. Seeing this, Hector puts the ball on the ground and walks away. The boy looks down, and lo and behold, the ball is there again, lying at his feet. What in the world has happened? The little episode ends with a close-up of the boy’s startled face.

  Hector rounds the corner and begins walking down the next boulevard. Almost immediately, he is confronted by a repulsive sight, a thing to make one’s blood boil. A fat, well-dressed gentleman is stealing a copy of the Morning Chronicle from a blind newspaper boy. The man is out of coins, and because he’s in a hurry, too rushed to bother breaking a bill, he just takes one of the papers and walks off. Outraged, Hector runs after him, and when the man stops at the corner to wait for a red light, Hector picks his pocket. This is both funny and disturbing. We don’t feel the least bit sorry for the victim, but we’re dumbfounded by how blithely Hector has taken the law into his own hands. Even when he walks back to the kiosk and turns the money over to the blind boy, we are not fully assuaged. In the first moments after the theft, we are led to believe that Hector will keep the money for himself, and in that small, dark interval we understand that he has not stolen the fat man’s wallet in order to correct an injustice but simply because he knew that he could get away with it. His generosity is little more than an afterthought. Everything has become possible for him now, and he no longer has to obey the rules. He can do good if he wants to, but he can also do evil, and at this point we have no idea what decision he will make.

  Back at the house, Hector’s wife has taken to her bed.

  In the office, Chase opens a strongbox and removes a thick pile of stock certificates. He sits down at his desk and begins to count them.

  Meanwhile, Hector is about to commit his first major crime. He enters a jewelry store, and in front of half a dozen unseeing witnesses, our expunged and benighted hero empties a glass display case of its contents, calmly loading his pockets with fistfuls of watches, necklaces, and rings. He seems both amused and purposeful, and he goes about his business with a small but noticeable smile creasing the corners of his mouth. It appears to be a cold-blooded and capricious act, and from the evidence before our eyes, we have no choice but to conclude that Hector has been damned.

  He leaves the store. Inexplicably, the first thing he does is head straight for a trash bin sitting on the curb. He sticks his arm deep into the rubbish and pulls out a paper bag. He has obviously put it there himself, but although the bag is filled with something, we don’t know what it is. When Hector walks back to the front of the store, opens the bag, and begins sprinkling a powdery substance on the sidewalk, we are thoroughly confused. It could be dirt; it could be ashes; it could be gunpowder; but whatever the stuff is, it makes no sense that Hector should be putting it on the ground. In a matter of moments, there is a thin dark line extending from the front of the jewelry store to the edge of the street. Having covered the width of the sidewalk, Hector now advances into the street itself. Dodging cars, sidestepping trolleys, hopping in and out of trouble, he continues to empty the bag as he makes his way across, looking more and more like some mad farmer trying to plant a row of seeds. The line now stretches across the avenue. As Hector steps up onto the opposite curb and extends the line still further, we suddenly catch on. He is making a trail. We still don’t know where it leads, but as he opens the door of the building in front of him and disappears through the entrance, we suspect that another trick is about to be played on us. The door closes behind him, and the angle abruptly changes. We are looking at a wide shot of the building Hector has just entered: the headquarters of the Fizzy Pop Beverage Corporation.

  The action accelerates after that. In a flurry of quick expository scenes, the jewelry store manager discovers that he has been robbed, rushes out onto the sidewalk and flags down a cop, and then, with urgent, panic-stricken gestures, explains what has happened. The cop glances down, notices the dark line on the pavement, and then follows it with his eyes all the way to the Fizzy Pop building across the street. Looks like a clue, he says. Let’s see where it goes, the manager says, and the two of them take off in the direction of the building.

  Cut back to Hector. He is walking through a corridor now, carefully putting the finishing touches on his trail. He reaches the door of an office, and as he empties the last of the dirt onto the outer half of the sill, the camera tilts up to show us what is written on the door: C. LASTER CHASE, VICE PRESIDENT. Just then, with Hector still in a crouching position, the door swings open and out steps Chase himself. Hector manages to jump back at the last second—before Chase trips over him—and then, as the door begins to close, he slips in through the opening and waddles duckli
ke into the office. Even as the melodrama is building toward its climax, Hector continues to pile on the gags. Alone in the office, he sees the stock certificates spread out on Chase’s desk. He scoops them up, evens out the edges with a meticulous flourish, and sticks them into his jacket. Then, in a series of rapid, stabbing gestures, he reaches into his side pockets and starts pulling out the jewels, heaping a great mountain of stolen goods onto Chase’s blotter. As the last ring is added to the collection, Chase returns, rubbing his hands together and looking inordinately pleased with himself. Hector steps back. His work is finished now, and all that remains is to watch his enemy get what’s coming to him.

  It happens in a whirl of astonishment and misapprehension, of justice done and justice betrayed. At first, the jewels distract Chase from noticing that the stocks are gone. Time is lost, and when he finally digs under the glittering pile and sees that the certificates aren’t there anymore, it is too late. The door bursts open, and in rush the cop and the store manager. The jewels are identified, the crime is solved, and the thief is put under arrest. It doesn’t matter that Chase is innocent. The trail has led to his door, and they’ve caught him red-handed with the merchandise. He protests, of course, tries to escape through the window, begins hurling Fizzy Pop bottles at his attackers, but after some wild business involving a billy club and a bayonet, he is at last overwhelmed. Hector looks on with grim insouciance. Even as Chase is put into handcuffs and led out of the office, Hector does not rejoice in his victory. His plan has worked to perfection, but what good has it done him? The day is drawing to a close now, and he is still invisible.

  He goes outside again and starts walking through the streets. The downtown boulevards are deserted, and Hector appears to be the only person left in the city. What has happened to the crowds and commotion that surrounded him before? Where are the cars and trolleys, the masses of people thronging the sidewalk? For a moment we wonder if the spell has not been reversed. Perhaps Hector is visible again, we think, and everyone else has vanished. Then, out of nowhere, a truck drives by, speeding through a puddle. Plumes of water rise up from the pavement, splashing everything in sight. Hector is drenched, but when the camera turns around to show us the damage, the front of his suit is spotless. It should be a funny moment, but it isn’t, and in that Hector deliberately makes it not funny (a long, doleful look at his suit; the disappointment in his eyes when he sees that he is not splattered with mud), this simple trick alters the mood of the film. As night falls, we see him returning to his house. He goes in, climbs the stairs to the second floor, and enters his children’s bedroom. The little girl and the little boy are asleep, each one in a separate bed. He sits down beside the girl, studies her face for a few moments, and then lifts his hand to begin stroking her hair. Just as he is about to touch her, however, he stops himself, suddenly realizing that his hand could wake her, and if she woke up in the darkness and found no one there, she would be frightened. It’s an affecting sequence, and Hector plays it with restraint and simplicity. He has lost the right to touch his own daughter, and as we watch him hesitate and then finally withdraw his hand, we experience the full impact of the curse that has been put on him. In that one small gesture—the hand hovering in the air, the open palm no more than an inch from the girl’s head—we understand that Hector has been reduced to nothing.

  Like a ghost, he stands up and leaves the room. He walks down the hall, opens a door, and goes in. It is his bedroom, and there is his wife, his Dearest Beloved, asleep in their bed. Hector pauses. She is thrashing about, tossing back and forth and kicking off the covers, in the grip of some terrifying dream. Hector approaches the bed and cautiously rearranges the blankets, props up the pillows, and turns off the lamp on the bedside table. Her fitful movements begin to subside, and before long she has fallen into a sound and tranquil sleep. Hector backs away, blows her a little kiss, and then sits down in a chair near the foot of the bed. It looks as if he intends to stay there for the night, watching over her like some benevolent spirit. Even if he can’t touch her or talk to her, he can protect her and feed on the power of her presence. But invisible men are not immune to exhaustion. They have bodies just like everyone else, and like everyone else they have to sleep. Hector’s eyelids begin to grow heavy. They flutter and sag, they close and then open again, and even though he jerks himself awake a couple of times, it is clearly a losing battle. A moment later, he succumbs.

  The screen fades to black. When the picture returns, it is morning, and daylight is flooding through the curtains. Cut to a shot of Hector’s wife, still asleep in bed. Then cut to Hector, asleep in the chair. His body is contorted into an impossible position, a comic tangle of splayed limbs and twisted joints, and because we aren’t prepared for the sight of this slumbering pretzel-man, we laugh, and with that laugh the mood of the film changes again. Dearest Beloved wakes first, and as she opens her eyes and sits up in bed, her face tells us everything—moving rapidly from joy to disbelief to guarded optimism. She springs out of bed and rushes over to Hector. She touches his face (which is dangling backward over the arm of the chair), and Hector’s body goes into a spasm of high-voltage shocks, jumping around in a flurry of arms and legs that ultimately lands him in an upright position. Then he opens his eyes. Involuntarily, without seeming to remember that he is supposed to be invisible, he smiles at her. They kiss, but just as their lips come into contact, he recoils in confusion. Is he really there? Has the spell been broken, or is he only dreaming it? He touches his face, he runs his hands over his chest, and then he looks his wife in the eyes. Can you see me? he asks. Of course I can see you, she says, and as her eyes fill with tears, she leans forward and kisses him again. But Hector is not convinced. He stands up from his chair and walks over to a mirror hanging on the wall. The proof is in the mirror, and if he is able to see his reflection, he will know that the nightmare is over. That he does see it is a foregone conclusion, but the beautiful thing about that moment is the slowness of his response. For a second or two, the expression on his face remains the same, and as he peers into the eyes of the man staring back at him from the wall, it’s as if he’s looking at a stranger, encountering the face of a man he has never seen before. Then, as the camera moves in for a closer shot, Hector begins to smile. Coming on the heels of that chilling blankness, the smile suggests something more than a simple rediscovery of himself. He is no longer looking at the old Hector. He is someone else now, and however much he might resemble the person he used to be, he has been reinvented, turned inside-out, and spat forth as a new man. The smile grows larger, more radiant, more satisfied with the face that has been found in the mirror. A circle begins to close around it, and soon we can see nothing but that smiling mouth, the mouth and the mustache above it. The mustache twitches for a few seconds, and then the circle grows smaller, then smaller still. When it finally shuts, the film is over.

  In effect, Hector’s career ends with that smile. He fulfilled the terms of his contract by producing one more film, but Double or Nothing cannot be counted as a new work. Kaleidoscope was all but bankrupt then, and there wasn’t enough money left to mount another full-scale production. Instead, Hector pulled out bits of rejected material from previous films and cobbled them together into an anthology of gags, pratfalls, and slapstick improvisations. It was an ingenious salvage operation, but we learn nothing from it except for what it reveals to us about Hector’s talents as an editor. To assess his work fairly, we have to look at Mr. Nobody as his last film. It is a meditation on his own disappearance, and for all its ambiguity and furtive suggestiveness, for all the moral questions it asks and then refuses to answer, it is essentially a film about the anguish of selfhood. Hector is looking for a way to say good-bye to us, to bid farewell to the world, and in order to do that he must eradicate himself in his own eyes. He becomes invisible, and when the magic finally wears off and he can be seen again, he does not recognize his own face. We are looking at him as he looks at himself, and in this eerie doubling of perspectives, we watch
him confront the fact of his own annihilation. Double or nothing. That was the phrase he chose as the title for his next film. Those words are not even remotely connected to anything presented in that eighteen-minute hodgepodge of stunts and gambols. They refer back to the mirror scene in Mr. Nobody, and once Hector breaks into that extraordinary smile, we are given a brief glimpse of what the future has in store for him. He allows himself to be born again with that smile, but he is no longer the same person, no longer the Hector Mann who has amused us and entertained us for the past year. We see him transformed into someone we no longer recognize, and before we can absorb who this new Hector might be, he is gone. A circle closes around his face, and he is swallowed up by the blackness. An instant later, for the first and only time in any of his films, the words THE END are written out across the screen, and that is the last anyone ever sees of him.

  3

  I WROTE THE book in less than nine months. The manuscript came to more than three hundred typed pages, and every one of those pages was a struggle for me. If I managed to finish, it was only because I did nothing else. I worked seven days a week, sitting at the desk from ten to twelve hours a day, and except for my little excursions to Montague Street to stock up on food and paper, ink and typewriter ribbons, I rarely left the apartment. I had no telephone, no radio or TV, no social life of any kind. Once in April and again in August I traveled by subway to Manhattan to consult some books at the public library, but other than that I didn’t budge from Brooklyn. But I wasn’t really in Brooklyn either. I was in the book, and the book was in my head, and as long as I stayed inside my head, I could go on writing the book. It was like living in a padded cell, but of all the lives I could have lived at that moment, it was the only one that made sense to me. I wasn’t capable of being in the world, and I knew that if I tried to go back into it before I was ready, I would be crushed. So I holed up in that small apartment and spent my days writing about Hector Mann. It was slow work, perhaps even meaningless work, but it demanded all my attention for nine straight months, and in that I was too busy to think about anything else, it probably kept me from going insane.