The Book of Illusions

by Paul Auster

  And so, Martin, she says, how’s your story going?

  Martin can barely stand it anymore. Refusing to answer Claire’s question, he looks her straight in the eye and says: Who are you, Claire? What are you doing here?

  Unruffled, Claire smiles back at him. No, she says, you answer my question first. How’s your story going?

  Martin looks as if he’s about to snap. Maddened by her evasions, he just stares at her and says nothing.

  Please, Martin, Claire says. It’s very important.

  Struggling to control his temper, Martin mumbles a sarcastic aside—not addressing Claire so much as thinking out loud, talking to himself: You really want to know?

  Yes, I really want to know.

  All right … All right, I’ll tell you how it’s going. It’s … (he reflects for a moment) … it’s (continuing to think) … Actually, it’s going quite well.

  Quite well … or vey well?

  Um … (thinking) … very well. I’d say it’s going very well.

  You see?

  See what?

  Oh, Martin. Of course you do.

  No, Claire, I don’t. I don’t see anything. If you want to know the truth, I’m completely lost.

  Poor Martin. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.

  Martin gives her a lame smile. They have reached a kind of standoff, and for the moment there is nothing more to be said. Claire digs into her food. She eats with obvious enjoyment, savoring the taste of her concoction with small tentative bites. Mmm, she says. Not bad. What do you think, Martin?

  Martin lifts his fork to take a bite, but just as he is about to put the food in his mouth, he glances over at Claire, distracted by the soft moans of pleasure emanating from her throat, and with his attention briefly diverted from the matter at hand, his wrist turns downward by a few degrees. As the fork continues its journey toward his mouth, a thin trail of salad dressing comes dripping off the utensil and slides down the front of his shirt. At first, Martin doesn’t notice, but as his mouth opens and his eyes return to the looming morsel of asparagus, he suddenly sees what is happening. He jumps back and lets go of the fork. Christ! he says. I’ve done it again!

  The camera cuts to Claire (who bursts out laughing for the third time) and then dollies in on her for a close-up. The shot is similar to the one that ended the scene in the bedroom at the beginning of the film, but whereas Claire’s face was motionless as she watched Martin make his exit, now it is animated, brimming with delight, expressing what seems to be an almost transcendent joy. She was so alive then, Alma had said, so vivid. No moment in the story captures that sense of fullness and life better than this one. For a few seconds, Claire is turned into something indestructible, an embodiment of pure human radiance. Then the picture begins to dissolve, breaking apart against a background of solid blackness, and although Claire’s laughter goes on for several more beats, it begins to break apart as well—fading into a series of echoes, of disjointed breaths, of ever more distant reverberations.

  A long stillness follows, and for the next twenty seconds the screen is dominated by a single nocturnal image: the moon in the sky. Clouds drift past, the wind rustles through the trees below, but essentially there is nothing before us but that moon. It is a stark and purposeful transition, and within moments we have forgotten the comic high jinks of the previous scene. That night, Martin says, I made one of the most important decisions of my life. I decided that I wasn’t going to ask any more questions. Claire was asking me to make a leap of faith, and rather than go on pressing her, I decided to close my eyes and jump. I had no idea what was waiting for me at the bottom, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth the risk. And so I kept on falling … anda week later, just when I was beginning to think that nothing could ever go wrong, Claire went out for a walk.

  Martin is sitting at the desk in his second-floor study. He turns from the typewriter to look out the window, and as the angle reverses to record his point of view, we see a long overhead shot of Claire walking alone in the garden. The cold front has apparently arrived. She is wearing a scarf and overcoat, her hands are in her pockets, and a light snowfall has dusted the ground. When the camera cuts back to Martin, he is still looking through the window, unable to tear his eyes away from her. Another reverse, and then another shot of Claire, alone in the garden. She takes a few more steps, and then, without warning, she collapses to the ground. It is a terrifyingly effective fall. No tottering or dizziness, no gradual buckling of the knees. Between one step and the next, Claire plunges into total unconsciousness, and from the sudden, merciless way her strength gives out on her, it looks as if she’s dead.

  The camera zooms in from the window, bringing Claire’s inert body into the foreground. Martin enters the frame: running, out of breath, frantic. He falls to his knees and cradles her head in his hands, looking for a sign of life. We no longer know what to expect. The story has shifted into another register, and one minute after laughing our heads off, we find ourselves in the middle of a tense, melodramatic scene. Claire eventually opens her eyes, but enough time passes for us to know that it isn’t a recovery so much as a stay of execution, an augur of things to come. She looks up at Martin and smiles. It is a spiritual smile, somehow, an inward smile, the smile of someone who no longer believes in the future. Martin kisses her, and then he bends down, gathers Claire into his arms, and begins carrying her toward the house. She seemed to be all right, he says. Just a little fainting spell, we thought. But the next morning, Claire woke up with a high fever.

  We cut to a shot of Claire in bed. Hovering around her like a nurse, Martin takes her temperature, plies her with aspirins, dabs her forehead with a wet towel, feeds her broth with a spoon. She didn’t complain, he continues. Her skin was hot to the touch, but she seemed to be in good spirits. After a while, she pushed me out of the room. Go back to your story, she said. I’d rather sit here with you, I told her, but then Claire laughed, and with a funny, pouting expression on her face, she said that if I didn’t go back to work this instant, she was going to jump out of bed, rip off her clothes, and run outside with nothing on. And that wasn’t going to make her well, was it?

  A moment later, Martin is sitting at his desk, typing another page of his story. The sound is particularly intense here—keys clattering at a furious rhythm, great staccato bursts of activity—but then the volume diminishes, falls off into near silence, and Martin’s voice returns. We go back to the bedroom. One by one, we see a succession of highly detailed close-ups, still-life renderings of the tiny world around Claire’s sickbed: a glass of water, the edge of a closed book, a thermometer, the knob on the night-table drawer. But the next morning, Martin says, the fever was worse. I told her that I was taking the day off, whether she liked it or not. I sat beside her for several hours, and by the middle of the afternoon, she seemed to take a turn for the better.

  The camera jumps back to a wide shot of the room, and there she is, sitting up in bed, looking like the old vivacious Claire. In a mock-serious voice, she is reading a passage from Kant out loud to Martin: … things which we see are not by themselves what we see … so that, if we drop our subject or the subjective form of our senses, all qualities, all relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish.

  Things seem to be returning to normal. With Claire on the mend, Martin goes back to his story the next day. He works steadily for two or three hours, and then he breaks off to check in on Claire. When he enters the bedroom, she is fast asleep, bundled up under a pile of quilts and blankets. It is cold in the room—cold enough for Martin to see his own breath in front of him when he exhales. Hector warned him about the furnace, but Martin has clearly forgotten to attend to it. Too many crazy things happened after that phone call, and Fortunato’s name must have slipped his mind.

  There is a fireplace in the room, however, and a small stack of wood on the hearth. Martin begins preparing a fire, working as quietly as he can so as not to disturb Claire. Once the flames catch hold,
he adjusts the logs with a poker, and one of them inadvertently slips out from under the others. The noise breaks in on Claire’s sleep. She stirs, groaning softly as she thrashes about under the covers, and then she opens her eyes. Martin swivels around from his spot in front of the fire. I didn’t mean to wake you, he says. I’m sorry.

  Claire smiles. She looks weak, drained of physical resources, barely conscious. Hello, Martin, she whispers. How’s my beautiful man?

  Martin walks over to the bed, sits down, and puts his hand on Claire’s forehead. You’re burning up, he says.

  I’m all right, she answers. I feel fine.

  This is the third day, Claire. I think we should call a doctor.

  No need for that. Just give me some more of those aspirins. In half an hour I’ll be good as new.

  Martin shakes out three aspirins from the bottle and hands them to her with a glass of water. As Claire swallows the pills, Martin says: This isn’t good. I really think a doctor should take a look at you.

  Claire gives Martin the empty glass, and he puts it back on the table. Tell me what’s happening in the story, she says. That will make me feel better.

  You should rest.

  Please, Martin. Just a little bit.

  Not wanting to disappoint her, and yet not wanting to tax her strength, Martin confines his summary to just a few sentences. It’s dark now, he says. Nordstrum has left the house. Anna is on her way, but he doesn’t know that. If she doesn’t get there soon, he’s going to walk into the trap.

  Will she make it?

  It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that she’s going to him.

  She’s fallen in love with him, hasn’t she?

  In her own way, yes. She’s putting her life in danger for him. That’s a form of love, isn’t it?

  Claire doesn’t answer. Martin’s question has overwhelmed her, and she is too moved to give a response. Her eyes fill up with tears; her mouth trembles; a look of rapturous intensity shines forth from her face. It’s as if she has reached some new understanding of herself, as if her whole body were suddenly giving off light. How much more to go? she asks.

  Two or three pages, Martin says. I’m almost at the end.

  Write them now.

  They can wait. I’ll do them tomorrow.

  No, Martin, do them now. You must do them now.

  The camera lingers on Claire’s face for a moment or two—and then, as if propelled by the force of her command, Martin is at his desk again, typing. This initiates a sequence of crosscuts between the two characters. We go from Martin back to Claire, from Claire back to Martin, and in the space of ten simple shots, we finally get it, we finally understand what’s been happening. Then Martin returns to the bedroom, and in ten more shots he finally understands as well.

  Claire is writhing around on the bed, in acute pain, struggling not to call out for help.

  Martin comes to the bottom of a page, pulls it out of the machine, and rolls in another. He begins typing again.

  We see the fireplace. The fire has nearly gone out.

  A close-up of Martin’s fingers, typing.

  A close-up of Claire’s face. She is weaker than before, no longer struggling.

  A close-up of Martin’s face. At his desk, typing.

  A close-up of the fireplace. Just a few glowing embers.

  A medium shot of Martin. He types the last word of his story. A brief pause. Then he pulls the page out of the machine.

  A medium shot of Claire. She shudders slightly—and then appears to die.

  Martin is standing beside his desk, gathering up the pages of the manuscript. He walks out of the study, holding the finished story in his hand.

  Martin enters the room, smiling. He glances at the bed, and an instant later the smile is gone.

  A medium shot of Claire. Martin sits down beside her, puts his hand on her forehead, and gets no response. He presses his ear against her chest—still no response. In a mounting panic, he tosses aside the manuscript and begins rubbing her body with both hands, desperately trying to warm her up. She is limp; her skin is cold; she has stopped breathing.

  A shot of the fireplace. We see the dying embers. There are no more logs on the hearth.

  Martin jumps off the bed. Snatching the manuscript as he goes, he wheels around and rushes toward the fireplace. He looks possessed, out of his mind with fear. There is only one thing left to be done—and it must be done now. Without hesitation, Martin crumples up the first page of his story and throws it into the fire.

  A close-up of the fire. The ball of paper lands in the ashes and bursts into flame. We hear Martin crumpling up another page. A moment later, the second ball lands in the ashes and ignites.

  Cut to a close-up of Claire’s face. Her eyelids begin to flutter.

  A medium shot of Martin, crouched in front of the fire. He grabs hold of the next sheet, crumples it up, and throws it in as well. Another sudden burst of flame.

  Claire opens her eyes.

  Working as fast as he can now, Martin goes on bunching up pages and throwing them into the fire. One by one, they all begin to burn, each one lighting the other as the flames intensify.

  Claire sits up. Blinking in confusion; yawning; stretching out her arms; showing no traces of illness. She has been brought back from the dead.

  Gradually coming to her senses, Claire begins to glance around the room, and when she sees Martin in front of the fireplace, madly crumpling up his manuscript and throwing it into the fire, she looks stricken. What are you doing? she says. My God, Martin, what are you doing?

  I’m buying you back, he says. Thirty-seven pages for your life, Claire. It’s the best bargain I’ve ever made.

  But you can’t do that. It’s not allowed.

  Maybe not. But I’m doing it, aren’t I? I’ve changed the rules.

  Claire is overwrought, about to break down in tears. Oh Martin, she says. You don’t know what you’ve done.

  Undaunted by Claire’s objections, Martin goes on feeding his story to the flames. When he comes to the last page, he turns to her with a triumphant look in his eyes. You see, Claire? he says. It’s only words. Thirty-seven pages—and nothing but words.

  He sits down on the bed, and Claire throws her arms around him. It is a surprisingly fierce and passionate gesture, and for the first time since the beginning of the film, Claire looks afraid. She wants him, and she doesn’t want him. She is ecstatic; she is horrified. She has always been the strong one, the one with all the courage and confidence, but now that Martin has solved the riddle of his enchantment, she seems lost. What are you going to do? she says. Tell me, Martin, what on earth are we going to do?

  Before Martin can answer her, the scene shifts to the outside. We see the house from a distance of about fifty feet, sitting in the middle of nowhere. The camera tilts upward, pans to the right, and comes to rest on the boughs of a large cottonwood. Everything is still. No wind is blowing; no air is rushing through the branches; not a single leaf moves. Ten seconds go by, fifteen seconds go by, and then, very abruptly, the screen goes black and the film is over.

  8

  LATER THAT SAME day, the print of Martin Frost was destroyed. I should probably consider myself lucky to have seen it, to have been there for the last showing of a film at the Blue Stone Ranch, but a part of me wishes that Alma had never turned on the projector that morning, that I had never been exposed to a frame of that elegant and haunting little movie. It wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t liked it, if I had been able to dismiss it as a bad or incompetent piece of storytelling, but this was manifestly not bad, manifestly not incompetent, and now that I knew what was about to be lost, I realized that I had traveled over two thousand miles to participate in a crime. When The Inner Life went up in flames with the rest of Hector’s work that July afternoon, it felt like a tragedy to me, like the end of the goddamn bloody world.

  That was the only movie I saw. There wasn’t enough time to watch another, and given that I sat through Martin Frost only
once, it was a good thing Alma thought to provide me with the notebook and the pen. There is no contradiction in that statement. I might wish that I had never seen the film, but the fact was that I did see it, and now that the words and images had insinuated themselves inside me, I was thankful that there was a way to hold on to them. The notes I took that morning have helped me to remember details that otherwise would have slipped away from me, to keep the film alive in my head after so many years. I scarcely looked down at the page as I wrote—scribbling in the mad telegraphic shorthand I developed as a student—and if much of my writing bordered on the illegible, I eventually managed to decipher about ninety or ninety-five percent of it. It took weeks of painstaking effort to make the transcription, but once I had a fair copy of the dialogue and had broken down the story into numbered scenes, it became possible to reestablish contact with the film. I have to go into a kind of trance in order to do that (which means that it doesn’t always work), but if I concentrate hard enough and get myself into the right mood, the words can actually conjure up the images for me, and it’s as if I’m watching The Inner Life of Martin Frost again—or little flashes of it, in any case, locked in the projection room of my skull. Last year, when I began toying with the idea of writing this book, I went in for several consultations with a hypnotist. Nothing much happened the first time, but the next three visits produced astonishing results. By listening to the tape recordings of those sessions, I have been able to fill in certain blanks, to bring back a number of things that were beginning to vanish. For better or worse, it seems that the philosophers were right. Nothing that happens to us is ever lost.

  The screening ended a few minutes past noon. Alma and I were both hungry by then, both in need of a short break, and so instead of plunging directly into another film, we went out into the hall with our basket lunch. It was a strange spot for a picnic—camped out on the dusty linoleum floor, digging into our cheese sandwiches under a row of blinking fluorescent lights—but we didn’t want to lose any time bsty looking for a better place outdoors. We talked about Alma’s mother, about Hector’s other work, about the oddly satisfying mixture of whimsy and seriousness in the film that had just ended. Movies could trick us into believing any kind of nonsense, I said, but this time I had fallen for it. When Claire came back to life in the final scene, I had shuddered, had felt that I was watching an authentic miracle. Martin burned his story in order to rescue Claire from the dead, but it was also Hector rescuing Brigid O’Fallon, also Hector burning his own movies, and the more things had doubled back on themselves like that, the more deeply I had entered the film. Too bad we couldn’t watch it again, I said. I wasn’t sure if I had watched the wind closely enough, if I had paid enough attention to the trees.