by Paul Auster
“It’s time now, Peter,” she said. “Mrs. Saavedra is waiting for you.”
Peter looked up at her and smiled. “I am filled with hope,” he said.
Virginia Stillman kissed her husband tenderly on the cheek. “Say good-bye to Mr. Auster,” she said.
Peter stood up. Or rather, he began the sad, slow adventure of maneuvering his body out of the chair and working his way to his feet. At each stage there were relapses, crumplings, catapults back, accompanied by sudden fits of immobility, grunts, words whose meaning Quinn could not decipher.
At last Peter was upright. He stood in front of his chair with an expression of triumph and looked Quinn in the eyes. Then he smiled, broadly and without self-consciousness.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“Good-bye, Peter,” said Quinn.
Peter gave a little spastic wave of the hand and then slowly turned and walked across the room. He tottered as he went, listing first to the right, then to the left, his legs by turns buckling and locking. At the far end of the room, standing in a lighted doorway, was a middle-aged woman dressed in a white nurse’s uniform. Quinn assumed it was Mrs. Saavedra. He followed Peter Stillman with his eyes until the young man disappeared through the door.
Virginia Stillman sat down across from Quinn, in the same chair her husband had just occupied.
“I could have spared you all that,” she said, “but I thought it would be best for you to see it with your own eyes.”
“I understand,” said Quinn.
“No, I don’t think you do,” the woman said bitterly. “I don’t think anyone can understand.”
Quinn smiled judiciously and then told himself to plunge in. “Whatever I do or do not understand,” he said, “is probably beside the point. You’ve hired me to do a job, and the sooner I get on with it the better. From what I can gather, the case is urgent. I make no claims about understanding Peter or what you might have suffered. The important thing is that I’m willing to help. I think you should take it for what it’s worth.”
He was warming up now. Something told him that he had captured the right tone, and a sudden sense of pleasure surged through him, as though he had just managed to cross some internal border within himself.
“You’re right,” said Virginia Stillman. “Of course you’re right.”
The woman paused, took a deep breath, and then paused again, as if rehearsing in her mind the things she was about to say. Quinn noticed that her hands were clenched tightly around the arms of the chair.
“I realize,” she went on, “that most of what Peter says is very confusing—especially the first time you hear him. I was standing in the next room listening to what he said to you. You mustn’t assume that Peter always tells the truth. On the other hand, it would be wrong to think he lies.”
“You mean that I should believe some of the things he said and not believe others.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Your sexual habits, or lack of them, don’t concern me, Mrs. Stillman,” said Quinn. “Even if what Peter said is true, it makes no difference. In my line of work you tend to meet a little of everything, and if you don’t learn to suspend judgment, you’ll never get anywhere. I’m used to hearing people’s secrets, and I’m also used to keeping my mouth shut. If a fact has no direct bearing on a case, I have no use for it.”
Mrs. Stillman blushed. “I just wanted you to know that what Peter said isn’t true.”
Quinn shrugged, took out a cigarette, and lit it. “One way or the other,” he said, “it’s not important. What I’m interested in are the other things Peter said. I assume they’re true, and if they are, I’d like to hear what you have to say about them.”
“Yes, they’re true.” Virginia Stillman released her grip on the chair and put her right hand under her chin. Pensive. As if searching for an attitude of unshakable honesty. “Peter has a child’s way of telling it. But what he said is true.”
“Tell me something about the father. Anything you think is relevant.”
“Peter’s father is a Boston Stillman. I’m sure you’ve heard of the family. There were several governors back in the nineteenth century, a number of Episcopal bishops, ambassadors, a Harvard president. At the same time, the family made a great deal of money in textiles, shipping, and God knows what else. The details are unimportant. Just so long as you have some idea of the background.
“Peter’s father went to Harvard, like everyone else in the family. He studied philosophy and religion and by all accounts was quite brilliant. He wrote his thesis on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theological interpretations of the New World, and then he took a job in the religion department at Columbia. Not long after that, he married Peter’s mother. I don’t know much about her. From the photographs I’ve seen, she was very pretty. But delicate—a little like Peter, with those pale blue eyes and white skin. When Peter was born a few years later, the family was living in a large apartment on Riverside Drive. Stillman’s academic career was prospering. He rewrote his dissertation and turned it into a book—it did very well—and was made a full professor when he was thirty-four or thirty-five. Then Peter’s mother died. Everything about that death is unclear. Stillman claimed that she had died in her sleep, but the evidence seemed to point to suicide. Something to do with an overdose of pills, but of course nothing could be proved. There was even some talk that he had killed her. But those were just rumors, and nothing ever came of it. The whole affair was kept very quiet.
“Peter was just two at the time, a perfectly normal child. After his wife’s death, Stillman apparently had little to do with him. A nurse was hired, and for the next six months or so she took complete care of Peter. Then, out of the blue, Stillman fired her. I forget her name—a Miss Barber, I think—but she testified at the trial. It seems that Stillman just came home one day and told her that he was taking charge of Peter’s upbringing. He sent in his resignation to Columbia and told them he was leaving the university to devote himself full-time to his son. Money, of course, was no object, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“After that, he more or less dropped out of sight. He stayed on in the same apartment, but he hardly ever went out. No one really knows what happened. I think, probably, that he began to believe in some of the far-fetched religious ideas he had written about. It made him crazy, absolutely insane. There’s no other way to describe it. He locked Peter in a room in the apartment, covered up the windows, and kept him there for nine years. Try to imagine it, Mr. Auster. Nine years. An entire childhood spent in darkness, isolated from the world, with no human contact except an occasional beating. I live with the results of that experiment, and I can tell you the damage was monstrous. What you saw today was Peter at his best. It’s taken thirteen years to get him this far, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone hurt him again.”
Mrs. Stillman stopped to catch her breath. Quinn sensed that she was on the verge of a scene and that one more word might put her over the edge. He had to speak now, or the conversation would run away from him.
“How was Peter finally discovered?” he asked.
Some of the tension went out of the woman. She exhaled audibly and looked Quinn in the eyes.
“There was a fire,” she said.
“An accidental fire or one set on purpose?”
“No one knows.”
“What do you think?”
“I think Stillman was in his study. He kept the records of his experiment there, and I think he finally realized that his work had been a failure. I’m not saying that he regretted anything he had done. But even taking it on his own terms, he knew he had failed. I think he reached some point of final disgust with himself that night and decided to burn his papers. But the fire got out of control, and much of the apartment burned. Luckily, Peter’s room was at the other end of a long hall, and the firemen got to him in time.”
“And then?”
“It took several months to sort everything out. Stillman’s papers had
been destroyed, which meant there was no concrete evidence. On the other hand, there was Peter’s condition, the room he had been locked up in, those horrible boards across the windows, and eventually the police put the case together. Stillman was finally brought to trial.”
“What happened in court?”
“Stillman was judged insane and he was sent away.”
“And Peter?”
“He also went to a hospital. He stayed there until just two years ago.”
“Is that where you met him?”
“Yes. In the hospital.”
“How?”
“I was his speech therapist. I worked with Peter every day for five years.”
“I don’t mean to pry. But how exactly did that lead to marriage?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Do you mind telling me about it?”
“Not really. But I don’t think you’d understand.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“Well, to put it simply. It was the best way to get Peter out of the hospital and give him a chance to lead a more normal life.”
“Couldn’t you have been made his legal guardian?”
“The procedures were very complicated. And besides, Peter was no longer a minor.”
“Wasn’t that an enormous self-sacrifice on your part?”
“Not really. I was married once before—disastrously. It’s not something I want for myself anymore. At least with Peter there’s a purpose to my life.”
“Is it true that Stillman is being released?”
“Tomorrow. He’ll be arriving at Grand Central in the evening.”
“And you feel he might come after Peter. Is this just a hunch, or do you have some proof?”
“A little of both. Two years ago, they were going to let Stillman out. But he wrote Peter a letter, and I showed it to the authorities. They decided he wasn’t ready to be released, after all.”
“What kind of letter was it?”
“An insane letter. He called Peter a devil boy and said there would be a day of reckoning.”
“Do you still have the letter?”
“No. I gave it to the police two years ago.”
“A copy?”
“I’m sorry. Do you think it’s important?”
“It might be.”
“I can try to get one for you if you like.”
“I take it there were no more letters after that one.”
“No more letters. And now they feel Stillman is ready to be discharged. That’s the official view, in any case, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. What I think, though, is that Stillman simply learned his lesson. He realized that letters and threats would keep him locked up.”
“And so you’re still worried.”
“That’s right.”
“But you have no precise idea of what Stillman’s plans might be.”
“Exactly.”
“What is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to watch him carefully. I want you to find out what he’s up to. I want you to keep him away from Peter.”
“In other words, a kind of glorified tail job.”
“I suppose so.”
“I think you should understand that I can’t prevent Stillman from coming to this building. What I can do is warn you about it. And I can make it my business to come here with him.”
“I understand. As long as there’s some protection.”
“Good. How often do you want me to check in with you?”
“I’d like you to give me a report every day. Say a telephone call in the evening, around ten or eleven o’clock.”
“No problem.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Just a few more questions. I’m curious, for example, to know how you found out that Stillman will be coming into Grand Central tomorrow evening.”
“I’ve made it my business to know, Mr. Auster. There’s too much at stake here for me to leave it to chance. And if Stillman isn’t followed from the moment he arrives, he could easily disappear without a trace. I don’t want that to happen.”
“Which train will he be on?”
“The six-forty-one, arriving from Poughkeepsie.”
“I assume you have a photograph of Stillman?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There’s also the question of Peter. I’d like to know why you told him about all this in the first place. Wouldn’t it have been better to have kept it quiet?”
“I wanted to. But Peter happened to be listening in on the other phone when I got the news of his father’s release. There was nothing I could do about it. Peter can be very stubborn, and I’ve learned it’s best not to lie to him.”
“One last question. Who was it who referred you to me?”
“Mrs. Saavedra’s husband, Michael. He used to be a policeman, and he did some research. He found out that you were the best man in the city for this kind of thing.”
“I’m flattered.”
“From what I’ve seen of you so far, Mr. Auster, I’m sure we’ve found the right man.”
Quinn took this as his cue to rise. It came as a relief to stretch his legs at last. Things had gone well, far better than he had expected, but his head hurt now, and his body ached with an exhaustion he had not felt in years. If he carried on any longer, he was sure to give himself away.
“My fee is one hundred dollars a day plus expenses,” he said. “If you could give me something in advance, it would be proof that I’m working for you—which would ensure us a privileged investigator-client relationship. That means everything that passes between us would be in strictest confidence.”
Virginia Stillman smiled, as if at some secret joke of her own. Or perhaps she was merely responding to the possible double meaning of his last sentence. Like so many of the things that happened to him over the days and weeks that followed, Quinn could not be sure of any of it.
“How much would you like?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Five hundred?”
“That would be more than enough.”
“Good. I’ll go get my checkbook.” Virginia Stillman stood up and smiled at Quinn again. “I’ll get you a picture of Peter’s father, too. I think I know just where it is.”
Quinn thanked her and said he would wait. He watched her leave the room and once again found himself imagining what she would look like without any clothes on. Was she somehow coming on to him, he wondered, or was it just his own mind trying to sabotage him again? He decided to postpone his meditations and take up the subject again later.
Virginia Stillman walked back into the room and said, “Here’s the check. I hope I made it out correctly.”
Yes, yes, thought Quinn as he examined the check, everything is tip-top. He was pleased with his own cleverness. The check, of course, was made out to Paul Auster, which meant that Quinn could not be held accountable for impersonating a private detective without a license. It reassured him to know that he had somehow put himself in the clear. The fact that he would never be able to cash the check did not trouble him. He understood, even then, that he was not doing any of this for money. He slipped the check into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
“I’m sorry there’s not a more recent photograph,” Virginia Stillman was saying. “This one dates from more than twenty years ago. But I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.”
Quinn looked at the picture of Stillman’s face, hoping for a sudden epiphany, some sudden rush of subterranean knowledge that would help him to understand the man. But the picture told him nothing. It was no more than a picture of a man. He studied it for a moment longer and concluded that it could just as easily have been anyone.
“I’ll look at it more carefully when I get home,” he said, putting it into the same pocket where the check had gone. “Taking the passage of time into account, I’m sure I’ll be able to recognize him at the station tomorrow.”
�
�I hope so,” said Virginia Stillman. “It’s terribly important, and I’m counting on you.”
“Don’t worry,” said Quinn. “I haven’t let anyone down yet.”
She walked him to the door. For several seconds they stood there in silence, not knowing whether there was something to add or if the time had come to say good-bye. In that tiny interval, Virginia Stillman suddenly threw her arms around Quinn, sought out his lips with her own, and kissed him passionately, driving her tongue deep inside his mouth. Quinn was so taken off guard that he almost failed to enjoy it.
