The Book of Illusions

by Paul Auster

  The only time he had any trouble was the first time, or just before the first time, when he still didn’t know if he would be up to the job. Fortunately, Sylvia booked their first performance for an audience of just one man. That made it bearable somehow—to go public in a private sort of way, with just one pair of eyes on him and not twenty or fifty or a hundred. In this case, the eyes belonged to Archibald Pierson, a seventy-year-old retired judge who lived alone in a three-story Tudor house in Highland Park. Sylvia had already been there once with Al, and as she and Hector climbed into a taxi on the appointed night and headed toward their destination in the suburbs, she warned him that they would probably have to go through the act twice, perhaps even three times. The coot was stuck on her, she said. He’d been calling for weeks now, desperate to know when she’d be coming back, and little by little she’d bargained the price up to two and a half C’s per shot, double what it had been the last time. I ain’t no slouch when it comes to talkin’ bread, she announced proudly. If we play this goon right, Hermie boy, he could become our meal ticket.

  Pierson turned out to be a shy and jittery old man—thin as a shoemaker’s awl, with a full head of neatly combed white hair and enormous blue eyes. He had put on a green velvet smoking jacket for the occasion, and as he led Hector and Sylvia into the living room, he kept clearing his throat and smoothing down the front of the jacket, as if he felt uncomfortable in that foppish attire. He offered them cigarettes, offered them drinks (which they both declined), and then announced that he was planning to accompany their performance by playing a phonograph record of the String Sextet Number One in B flat by Brahms. Sylvia giggled when she heard the word sextet, failing to realize that it referred to the number of instruments in the piece, but the judge made no comment. Pierson then complimented Hector on his mask—which Hector had slipped over his face before entering the house—and said that he found it tantalizing, a clever touch. I think I’m going to enjoy this, he said. I salute you on your choice of partner, Sylvia. This one is infinitely more dashing than Al.

  The judge liked to keep things simple. He wasn’t interested in provocative costumes, sultry dialogue, or artificially dramatic scenes. All he wanted was to look at their bodies, he said, and once the preliminary conversation was over, he instructed them to go into the kitchen and remove their clothes. While they were gone, he put on the music, turned off the lamps, and lit candles in half a dozen spots around the room. It was theater without theatrics, a raw enactment of life itself. Hector and Sylvia were supposed to walk into the room naked, then get down to business on the Persian rug. That was the extent of it. Hector would make love to Sylvia, and when the climactic moment was upon him, he would withdraw from her and ejaculate on her breasts. Everything came down to that, the judge said. The spurt was crucial, and the farther it traveled through the air, the happier it was going to make him.

  After they had taken off their clothes in the kitchen, Sylvia walked up to Hector and started running her hands over his body. She kissed him on the neck, pulled back the mask and kissed him on the face, and then cupped his flaccid penis in her hand and stroked it until it became hard. Hector was glad he had thought of the mask. It made him feel less vulnerable, less ashamed of exposing himself to the old man, but still he was nervous, and he welcomed the warmth of Sylvia’s touch, appreciated that she was trying to work the butterflies out of his system. She might have been the star, but she knew that the burden of proof rested with him. Hector couldn’t fake it as she could; he couldn’t just go through the motions of simulated pleasure and pretend that he was enjoying it. He had to deliver something real at the end of the performance, and unless he went about it with genuine conviction, he wouldn’t have a chance of getting there.

  They walked into the living room holding hands, two naked savages in a jungle of gilt-edged mirrors and Louis the Fifteenth escritoires. Pierson was already installed in his seat at the far end of the room: a vast leather wing chair that seemed to swallow him up, making him look even thinner and more desiccated than he was. To his right was the phonograph machine, with the Brahms sextet revolving on the turntable. To his left was a low mahogany stand, covered with lacquered boxes, jade statuettes, and other bits of costly chinoiserie. It was a room full of nouns and unmovable objects, an enclave of thoughts. Nothing could have been more incongruous in those surroundings than the erection Hector carried in with him—than the spectacle of verbs that suddenly began to unfold not ten feet from the judge’s chair.

  If the old man enjoyed what he saw, he displayed no outward signs of pleasure. He stood up twice during the performance to change the record, but other than those brief, mechanical interruptions, he remained in the same position throughout, sitting on his leather throne with one leg crossed over the other and his hands in his lap. He didn’t touch himself, he didn’t unbutton his trousers, he didn’t smile, he didn’t make a sound. It was only at the end, at the moment when Hector pulled out of Sylvia and the desired eruption occurred, that a small shuddering noise seemed to catch in the judge’s throat. Almost like a sob, Hector thought—and then again, almost like nothing at all.

  That was the first time, Alma said, but it was also the fifth time and the eleventh time and the eighteenth time and six other times as well. Pierson became their most devoted customer, and again and again they returned to the house in Highland Park to roll around on the rug and collect their money. Nothing made Sylvia happier than that money, Hector realized, and within a couple of months she had earned enough from the act to quit peddling her wares at the White House Hotel. Not all of it went into her own pocket, but even after she turned over fifty percent to the man she called her protector, her income was two or three times greater than it had been before. Sylvia was an uneducated hick, a semi-illiterate vulgarian who spoke in a blur of double negatives and mind-bending malapropisms, but she proved to have a decent head for business. She was the one who arranged the bookings, negotiated with the clients, and took care of all practical matters: transportation to and from jobs, costume rentals, the scaring up of new work. Hector never had to concern himself with any of these details. Sylvia would call to tell him when and where they would be appearing next, and all he had to do was wait for her to swing by in a taxi to pick him up at his apartment. Those were the unspoken rules, the boundaries of their relationship. They worked together, they fucked together, they made money together, but they never bothered to become friends, and except for the times when they had to rehearse a new skit, they saw each other only when they performed.

  All along, Hector assumed that he was safe with her. She didn’t ask questions or pry into his past, and in the six and a half months they worked together, he never saw her look at a paper, let alone talk about the news. Once, in an oblique sort of way, he made a passing reference to that silent comedian who had disappeared a few years back. What was his name? he asked, snapping his fingers and pretending to search for the answer, but when Sylvia responded with one of those blank, indifferent looks of hers, Hector took it to mean that she wasn’t familiar with the case. Somewhere along the line, however, someone must have talked to her. Hector never knew who it was, but he suspected that it was Sylvia’s boyfriend—her so-called protector, Biggie Lowe, a two-hundred-forty-pound hulk who had started out in Chicago as a dance-hall bouncer and now worked as the night manager of the White House Hotel. Maybe Biggie put her up to it, filling her head with talk of quick money and foolproof extortion schemes, or maybe Sylvia was acting on her own, trying to squeeze a few extra dollars out of Hector for herself. One way or the other, greed got the better of her, and once Hector caught on to what she was planning, the only thing he could do was run.

  It happened in Cleveland, less than a week before Christmas. They had gone there by train at the invitation of a wealthy tire manufacturer, had finished doing their French libertine act in front of three dozen men and women (who had gathered at the industrialist’s house to participate in a semi-annual private orgy), and were now sitting in the back seat
of their host’s limousine, on the way to the hotel where they would be stopping for a few hours’ sleep before returning to Chicago the next afternoon. They had just been paid a record amount for their work: one thousand dollars for a single, forty-minute performance. Hector’s share was supposed to be four hundred dollars, but when Sylvia counted out the tire magnate’s money, she gave her partner only two hundred fifty.

  That’s twenty-five percent, Hector said. You still owe me the other fifteen.

  I don’t think so, Meers replied. That’s what you’re gettin’, Herm, and if I was you, I’d thank my lucky cards.

  Oh? And to what do I owe this sudden change in fiscal policy, dear Sylvia?

  It ain’t physical, boyo. It’s dollars and cents. I got the goods on a certain party now, and unless you want me blabbin’ my trap all over town, you’ll go down to twenty-five. No more forty. Them days is dead and gone.

  You screw like a princess, darling. You understand sex better than any woman I have ever known, but you lack much in the thought department, don’t you? You want to work out a new arrangement, fine. Sit down and talk to me about it. But you don’t change the rules without consulting me first.

  Okay, Mr. Hollywood. Then stop using the mask. If you do that, maybe I’ll reconsider.

  I see. So this is what we’re driving at.

  When a guy don’t want to show his face, he’s got a secret, don’t he? And when a girl gets wind of what that secret is, it’s a whole new ballgame. I shook hands on a deal with Herm. But there ain’t no Herm, is there? His name is Hector, and now we got to start all over again.

  She could start all over again as many times as she liked, but it wasn’t going to be with him. When the limousine pulled up in front of the Hotel Cuyahoga a few seconds later, Hector told her that they would go on talking about it in the morning. He wanted to sleep on it, he said, to think it over for a while before coming to a decision, but he was sure they could come up with a solution that would satisfy them both. Then he kissed her on the hand, just as he always did when he said good-bye to her after a performance—the half-mocking, half-chivalrous gesture that had become their standard farewell. From the triumphant smirk that spread across Sylvia’s face as he lifted her hand to his mouth, Hector realized that she had no idea what she had done. She hadn’t blackmailed him into giving her a greater share of the profits, she had just broken up the act.

  He went to his room on the seventh floor, and for the next twenty minutes he stood in front of the mirror, pressing the barrel of the gun against his right temple. He came close to pulling the trigger, Alma said, closer than he had the other two times, but when his will failed him once again, he put the gun down on the table and left the hotel. It was four-thirty in the morning. He walked to the Greyhound depot twelve blocks to the north and bought himself a ticket on the next bus out—or the next but one. The six o’clock was headed for Youngstown and points east, and the six-oh-five was going in the opposite direction. The ninth stop on the westbound coach was Sandusky. That was the town where he had never spent his childhood, and remembering how beautiful that word had once sounded to him, Hector decided to go there now—just to see what his imaginary past looked like.

  It was the morning of December 21, 1931. Sandusky was sixty miles away, and he slept through most of the ride, not waking until the bus reached the terminal two and a half hours later. He had just over three hundred dollars in his pocket: the two hundred fifty from Meers, another fifty he had slipped into his wallet before leaving Chicago on the twentieth, and change from the ten he had broken for his bus ticket. He went into the depot luncheonette and ordered the breakfast special: ham and eggs, toast, home fries, orange juice, and all the coffee you could drink. Halfway through his third cup, he asked the counterman if there was anything to see in town. He was just passing through, he said, and he doubted he would ever be back this way again. Sandusky ain’t much, the counterman said. It’s just a little burg, you know, but if I was you, I’d go and check out Cedar Point. That’s where the amusement park is. You’ve got your roller coasters and fun rides, the Leapfrog Railway, the Hotel Breakers, all kinds of things. That’s where Knute Rockne invented the forward pass, by the way, in case you’re a football fan. It’s shut down for the winter now, but it might be worth a look.

  The counterman drew a little diagram for him on the paper napkin, but instead of turning right out of the depot, Hector went left. That took him to Camp Street instead of Columbus Avenue, and then, to compound the error, he turned west on West Monroe instead of east. He went all the way to King Street before it dawned on him that he was walking in the wrong direction. The peninsula was nowhere in sight, and instead of cyclones and Ferris wheels, he found himself looking at a dreary expanse of broken-down factories and empty warehouses. Cold, gray weather, a threat of snow in the air, and a mangy, three-legged dog the only living creature within a hundred yards.

  Hector turned around and began to retrace his steps, and the moment he turned, Alma said, he was gripped by a feeling of nullity, an exhaustion so great, so relentless, that he had to lean against the wall of a building to prevent himself from falling down. A frigid wind was blowing in off Lake Erie, and even as he felt it rush against his face, he couldn’t tell if the wind was real or something he had imagined. He didn’t know what month it was, what year. He couldn’t remember his name. Bricks and cobblestones, his breath gusting into the air in front of it, and the three-legged dog limping around the corner and vanishing from sight. It was a picture of his own death, he later realized, the portrait of a soul in ruins, and long after he had pulled himself together and moved on, a part of him was still there, standing on that empty street in Sandusky, Ohio, gasping for breath as his existence dribbled out of him.

  By ten-thirty, he was on Columbus Avenue, threading his way among a crowd of Christmas shoppers. He passed the Warner Bros. Theater, Ester Ging’s manicure salon, and Capozzi’s Shoe Repair, saw people going in and out of Kresge’s, Mont gomery Ward, and Woolworth’s, heard a lone Salvation Army Santa Claus ringing a brass bell. When he came to the Commercial Banking and Trust Company, he decided to go in and convert a couple of his fifties into a stack of fives and tens and ones. It was a meaningless transaction, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do just then, and rather than go on wandering in circles, he figured it might not be such a bad idea to get in out of the cold, even if only for a few minutes.

  Unexpectedly, the bank was full of customers. Men and women were lined up eight and ten deep in front of the four barred tellers’ windows arrayed along the west wall. Hector went to the end of the longest line, which happened to be the second one from the door. A moment after he took his spot, a young woman joined the line immediately to his left. She appeared to be in her early twenties, and she was wearing a thick woolen coat with a fur collar. Because he had nothing better to do at that moment, Hector began studying her out of the corner of his eye. She had an admirable, interesting face, he found, with high cheekbones and a gracefully defined chin, and he liked the pensive, self-sufficient look he detected in her eyes. In the old days, he would have started talking to her immediately, but now he was content simply to watch, to muse upon the flesh that was hidden beneath the coat and to imagine the thoughts churning inside that lovely, striking head of hers. At one point, she inadvertently glanced over at him, and when she saw how avidly he was staring at her, she returned his look with a brief, enigmatic smile. Hector nodded, acknowledging her smile with a brief smile of his own, and an instant later her expression changed. She narrowed her eyes into a puzzled, searching frown, and Hector knew that she had recognized him. There was no doubt about it: the woman had seen his movies. She was familiar with his face, and although she still couldn’t remember who he was, it wasn’t going to take her more than thirty seconds to come up with the answer.

  It had happened to him several times in the past three years, and each time he had managed to slip away before the person could start asking him questions. Just as he was ab
out to do it again, however, all hell broke loose in the bank. The young woman was standing in the line closest to the entrance, and because she had turned slightly in Hector’s direction, she failed to notice that the door had opened behind her and that a man had rushed in with a red-and-white bandana tied around his face. He was carrying an empty duffel bag in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other. It was easy to tell that the pistol was loaded, Alma said, because the first thing the bank robber did was fire a shot into the ceiling. Down on the floor, he shouted, everybody down on the floor, and as the terrified customers did what the man instructed them to do, he reached out and grabbed hold of the person directly in front of him. It was all a matter of layout, architecture, topography. The young woman to Hector’s left was the person closest to the entrance, and therefore she was the one who was grabbed, who wound up having the gun pointed at her head. Nobody move, the man warned, nobody move or this bird gets her brains blowed out. With a brusque and violent gesture, he yanked her off her feet and began half-pushing, half-dragging her toward the tellers’ windows. His left arm was wrapped around her shoulders from behind, the duffel bag was dangling from his clenched fist, and the eyes above the bandana were crazed, out of focus, incandescent with fear. It wasn’t that Hector made any conscious decision to do what he did next, but the moment his knee touched the floor, he found himself standing up again. He wasn’t intending to be heroic, and he certainly wasn’t intending to get himself killed, but whatever else he might have been feeling at that moment, he wasn’t afraid. Angry, perhaps, and more than a little worried that he was about to put the girl at risk, but not afraid for himself. The important thing was the angle of approach. Once he made his move, there wouldn’t be time to stop or change direction, but if he rushed the man at full speed, and if he came at him from the right side—the duffel-bag side—there was no way that the man wouldn’t turn from the girl and point the gun at him. It was the only natural response. If a wild beast comes charging at you out of nowhere, you forget about everything but the beast.