by Paul Auster
He walked back to his apartment in a downpour, getting drenched in spite of his umbrella. So much for functions, he said to himself. So much for the meaning of words. He threw the umbrella onto the floor of his living room in disgust. Then he took off his jacket and flung it against the wall. Water splattered everywhere.
He called Virginia Stillman, too embarrassed to think of doing anything else. At the moment she answered, he nearly hung up the phone.
“I lost him,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“He checked out of his room last night. I don’t know where he is.”
“I’m scared, Paul.”
“Have you heard from him?”
“I don’t know. I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“What does that mean?”
“Peter answered the phone this morning while I was taking my bath. He won’t tell me who it was. He went into his room, closed the shades, and refuses to speak.”
“But he’s done that before.”
“Yes. That’s why I’m not sure. But it hasn’t happened in a long time.”
“It sounds bad.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Don’t worry. I have a few ideas. I’ll get to work on them right away.”
“How will I reach you?”
“I’ll call you every two hours, no matter where I am.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“I’m so scared, I can’t stand it.”
“It’s all my fault. I made a stupid mistake and I’m sorry.”
“No, I don’t blame you. No one can watch a person twentyfour hours a day. It’s impossible. You’d have to be inside his skin.”
“That’s just the trouble. I thought I was.”
“It’s not too late now, is it?”
“No. There’s still plenty of time. I don’t want you to worry.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Good. I’ll be in touch.”
“Every two hours?”
“Every two hours.”
He had finessed the conversation rather nicely. In spite of everything, he had managed to keep Virginia Stillman calm. He found it hard to believe, but she still seemed to trust him. Not that it would be of any help. For the fact was, he had lied to her. He did not have several ideas. He did not have even one.
10
Stillman was gone now. The old man had become part of the city. He was a speck, a punctuation mark, a brick in an endless wall of bricks. Quinn could walk through the streets every day for the rest of his life, and still he would not find him. Everything had been reduced to chance, a nightmare of numbers and probabilities. There were no clues, no leads, no moves to be made.
Quinn backtracked in his mind to the beginning of the case. His job had been to protect Peter, not to follow Stillman. That had simply been a method, a way of trying to predict what would happen. By watching Stillman, the theory was that he would learn what his intentions were toward Peter. He had followed the old man for two weeks. What, then, could he conclude? Not much. Stillman’s behavior had been too obscure to give any hints.
There were, of course, certain extreme measures that they could take. He could suggest to Virginia Stillman that she get an unlisted telephone number. That would eliminate the disturbing calls, at least temporarily. If that failed, she and Peter could move. They could leave the neighborhood, perhaps leave the city altogether. At the very worst, they could take on new identities, live under different names.
This last thought reminded him of something important. Until now, he realized, he had never seriously questioned the circumstances of his hiring. Things had happened too quickly, and he had taken it for granted that he could fill in for Paul Auster. Once he had taken the leap into that name, he had stopped thinking about Auster himself. If this man was as good a detective as the Stillmans thought he was, perhaps he would be able to help with the case. Quinn would make a clean breast of it, Auster would forgive him, and together they would work to save Peter Stillman.
He looked through the yellow pages for the Auster Detective Agency. There was no listing. In the white pages, however, he found the name. There was one Paul Auster in Manhattan, living on Riverside Drive—not far from Quinn’s own house. There was no mention of a detective agency, but that did not necessarily mean anything. It could be that Auster had so much work he didn’t need to advertise. Quinn picked up the phone and was about to dial when he thought better of it. This was too important a conversation to leave to the phone. He did not want to run the risk of being brushed off. Since Auster did not have an office, that meant he worked at home. Quinn would go there and talk to him face to face.
The rain had stopped now, and although the sky was still gray, far to the west Quinn could see a tiny shaft of light seeping through the clouds. As he walked up Riverside Drive, he became aware of the fact that he was no longer following Stillman. It felt as though he had lost half of himself. For two weeks he had been tied by an invisible thread to the old man. Whatever Stillman had done, he had done; wherever Stillman had gone, he had gone. His body was not accustomed to this new freedom, and for the first few blocks he walked at the old shuffling pace. The spell was over, and yet his body did not know it.
Auster’s building was in the middle of the long block that ran between 116th and 119th Streets, just south of Riverside Church and Grant’s Tomb. It was a well-kept place, with polished doorknobs and clean glass, and it had an air of bourgeois sobriety that appealed to Quinn at that moment. Auster’s apartment was on the eleventh floor, and Quinn rang the buzzer, expecting to hear a voice speak to him through the intercom. But the door buzzer answered him without any conversation. Quinn pushed the door open, walked through the lobby, and rode the elevator to the eleventh floor.
It was a man who opened the apartment door. He was a tall dark fellow in his mid-thirties, with rumpled clothes and a two-day beard. In his right hand, fixed between his thumb and first two fingers, he held an uncapped fountain pen, still poised in a writing position. The man seemed surprised to find a stranger standing before him.
“Yes?” he asked tentatively.
Quinn spoke in the politest tone he could muster. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“My wife, as a matter of fact. That’s why I rang the buzzer without asking who it was.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Quinn apologized. “But I’m looking for Paul Auster.”
“I’m Paul Auster,” said the man.
“I wonder if I could talk to you. It’s quite important.”
“You’ll have to tell me what it’s about first.”
“I hardly know myself.” Quinn gave Auster an earnest look. “It’s complicated, I’m afraid. Very complicated.”
“Do you have a name?”
“I’m sorry. Of course I do. Quinn.”
“Quinn what?”
“Daniel Quinn.”
The name seemed to suggest something to Auster, and he paused for a moment abstractedly, as if searching through his memory. “Quinn,” he muttered to himself. “I know that name from somewhere.” He went silent again, straining harder to dredge up the answer. “You aren’t a poet, are you?”
“I used to be,” said Quinn. “But I haven’t written poems for a long time now.”
“You did a book several years ago, didn’t you? I think the title was Unfinished Business. A little book with a blue cover.”
“Yes. That was me.”
“I liked it very much. I kept hoping to see more of your work. In fact, I even wondered what had happened to you.”
“I’m still here. Sort of.”
Auster opened the door wider and gestured for Quinn to enter the apartment. It was a pleasant enough place inside: oddly shaped, with several long corridors, books cluttered everywhere, pictures on the walls by artists Quinn did not know, and a few children’s toys scattered on the floor—a red truck, a brown bear, a green space monster. Auster led him to the living room, gave hi
m a frayed upholstered chair to sit in, and then went off to the kitchen to fetch some beer. He returned with two bottles, placed them on a wooden crate that served as the coffee table, and sat down on the sofa across from Quinn.
“Was it some kind of literary thing you wanted to talk about?” Auster began.
“No,” said Quinn. “I wish it was. But this has nothing to do with literature.”
“With what, then?”
Quinn paused, looked around the room without seeing anything, and tried to start. “I have a feeling there’s been a terrible mistake. I came here looking for Paul Auster, the private detective.”
“The what?” Auster laughed, and in that laugh everything was suddenly blown to bits. Quinn realized that he was talking nonsense. He might just as well have asked for Chief Sitting Bull— the effect would have been no different.
“The private detective,” he repeated softly.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong Paul Auster.”
“You’re the only one in the book.”
“That might be,” said Auster. “But I’m not a detective.”
“Who are you then? What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“A writer?” Quinn spoke the word as though it were a lament.
“I’m sorry,” Auster said. “But that’s what I happen to be.”
“If that’s true, then there’s no hope. The whole thing is a bad dream.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Quinn told him. He began at the beginning and went through the entire story, step by step. The pressure had been building up in him since Stillman’s disappearance that morning, and it came out of him now as a torrent of words. He told of the phone calls for Paul Auster, of his inexplicable acceptance of the case, of his meeting with Peter Stillman, of his conversation with Virginia Stillman, of his reading Stillman’s book, of his following Stillman from Grand Central Station, of Stillman’s daily wanderings, of the carpetbag and the broken objects, of the disquieting maps that formed letters of the alphabet, of his talks with Stillman, of Stillman’s disappearance from the hotel. When he had come to the end, he said, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No,” said Auster, who had listened attentively to Quinn’s monologue. “If I had been in your place, I probably would have done the same thing.”
These words came as a great relief to Quinn, as if, at long last, the burden was no longer his alone. He felt like taking Auster in his arms and declaring his friendship for life.
“You see,” said Quinn, “I’m not making it up. I even have proof.” He took out his wallet and removed the five-hundreddollar check that Virginia Stillman had written two weeks earlier. He handed it to Auster. “You see,” he said. “It’s even made out to you.”
Auster looked the check over carefully and nodded. “It seems to be a perfectly normal check.”
“Well, it’s yours,” said Quinn. “I want you to have it.”
“I couldn’t possibly accept it.”
“It’s of no use to me.” Quinn looked around the apartment and gestured vaguely. “Buy yourself some more books. Or a few toys for your kid.”
“This is money you’ve earned. You deserve to have it yourself. Auster paused for a moment. “There’s one thing I’ll do for you, though. Since the check is in my name, I’ll cash it for you. I’ll take it to my bank tomorrow morning, deposit it in my account, and give you the money when it clears.”
Quinn did not say anything.
“All right?” Auster asked. “Is it agreed?”
“All right,” said Quinn at last. “We’ll see what happens.”
Auster put the check on the coffee table, as if to say the matter had been settled. Then he leaned back on the sofa and looked Quinn in the eyes. “There’s a much more important question than the check,” he said. “The fact that my name has been mixed up in this. I don’t understand it at all.”
“I wonder if you’ve had any trouble with your phone lately. Wires sometimes get crossed. A person tries to call a number, and even though he dials correctly, he gets someone else.”
“Yes, that’s happened to me before. But even if my phone was broken, that doesn’t explain the real problem. It would tell us why the call went to you, but not why they wanted to speak to me in the first place.”
“Is it possible that you know the people involved?”
“I’ve never heard of the Stillmans.”
“Maybe someone wanted to play a practical joke on you.”
“I don’t hang around with people like that.”
“You never know.”
“But the fact is, it’s not a joke. It’s a real case with real people.”
“Yes,” said Quinn after a long silence. “I’m aware of that.”
They had come to the end of what they could talk about. Beyond that point there was nothing: the random thoughts of men who knew nothing. Quinn realized that he should be going. He had been there almost an hour, and the time was approaching for his call to Virginia Stillman. Nevertheless, he was reluctant to move. The chair was comfortable, and the beer had gone slightly to his head. This Auster was the first intelligent person he had spoken to in a long time. He had read Quinn’s old work, he had admired it, he had been looking forward to more. In spite of everything, it was impossible for Quinn not to feel glad of this.
They sat there for a short time without saying anything. At last, Auster gave a little shrug, which seemed to acknowledge that they had come to an impasse. He stood up and said, “I was about to make some lunch for myself. It’s no trouble making it for two.”
Quinn hesitated. It was as though Auster had read his thoughts, divining the thing he wanted most—to eat, to have an excuse to stay a while. “I really should be going,” he said. “But yes, thank you. A little food can’t do any harm.”
“How does a ham omelette sound?”
“Sounds good.”
Auster retreated to the kitchen to prepare the food. Quinn would have liked to offer to help, but he could not budge. His body felt like a stone. For want of any other idea, he closed his eyes. In the past, it had sometimes comforted him to make the world disappear. This time, however, Quinn found nothing interesting inside his head. It seemed as though things had ground to a halt in there. Then, from the darkness, he began to hear a voice, a chanting, idiotic voice that sang the same sentence over and over again: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” He opened his eyes to make the words stop.
There was bread and butter, more beer, knives and forks, salt and pepper, napkins, and omelettes, two of them, oozing on white plates. Quinn ate with crude intensity, polishing off the meal in what seemed a matter of seconds. After that, he made a great effort to be calm. Tears lurked mysteriously behind his eyes, and his voice seemed to tremble as he spoke, but somehow he managed to hold his own. To prove that he was not a selfobsessed ingrate, he began to question Auster about his writing. Auster was somewhat reticent about it, but at last he conceded that he was working on a book of essays. The current piece was about Don Quixote.
“One of my favorite books,” said Quinn.
“Yes, mine too. There’s nothing like it.”
Quinn asked him about the essay.
“I suppose you could call it speculative, since I’m not really out to prove anything. In fact, it’s all done tongue-in-cheek. An imaginative reading, I guess you could say.”
“What’s the gist?”
“It mostly has to do with the authorship of the book. Who wrote it, and how it was written.”
“Is there any question?”
“Of course not. But I mean the book inside the book Cervantes wrote, the one he imagined he was writing.”
“Ah.”
“It’s quite simple. Cervantes, if you remember, goes to great lengths to convince the reader that he is not the author. The book, he says, was written in Arabic by Cid Hamete Benengeli. Cervantes describes how he discovered the manuscript by chance one d
ay in the market at Toledo. He hires someone to translate it for him into Spanish, and thereafter he presents himself as no more than the editor of the translation. In fact, he cannot even vouch for the accuracy of the translation itself.”
“And yet he goes on to say,” Quinn added, “that Cid Hamete Benengeli’s is the only true version of Don Quixote’s story. All the other versions are frauds, written by imposters. He makes a great point of insisting that everything in the book really happened in the world.”
“Exactly. Because the book after all is an attack on the dangers of the make-believe. He couldn’t very well offer a work of the imagination to do that, could he? He had to claim that it was real.”
