by Paul Auster
He spent many hours looking up at the sky. From his position at the back of the alley, wedged in between the bin and the wall, there were few other things to see, and as the days passed he began to take pleasure in the world overhead. He saw that, above all, the sky was never still. Even on cloudless days, when the blue seemed to be everywhere, there were constant little shifts, gradual disturbances as the sky thinned out and grew thick, the sudden whitenesses of planes, birds, and flying papers. Clouds complicated the picture, and Quinn spent many afternoons studying them, trying to learn their ways, seeing if he could not predict what would happen to them. He became familiar with the cirrus, the cumulus, the stratus, the nimbus, and all their various combinations, watching for each one in its turn, and seeing how the sky would change under its influence. Clouds, too, introduced the matter of color, and there was a wide range to contend with, spanning from black to white, with an infinity of grays between. These all had to be investigated, measured, and deciphered. On top of this, there were the pastels that formed whenever the sun and the clouds interacted at certain times of day. The spectrum of variables was immense, the result depending on the temperatures of the different atmosphere levels, the types of clouds present in the sky, and where the sun happened to be at that particular moment. From all this came the reds and pinks that Quinn liked so much, the purples and vermilions, the oranges and lavenders, the golds and feathery persimmons. Nothing lasted for long. The colors would soon disperse, merging with others and moving on or fading as the night appeared. Almost always there was a wind to hasten these events. From where he sat in the alley, Quinn could rarely feel it, but by watching its effect on the clouds, he could gauge its intensity and the nature of the air it carried. One by one, all weathers passed over his head, from sunshine to storms, from gloom to radiance. There were the dawns and dusks to observe, the midday transformations, the early evenings, the nights. Even in its blackness, the sky did not rest. Clouds drifted through the dark, the moon was forever in a different form, the wind continued to blow. Sometimes a star even settled into Quinn’s patch of sky, and as he looked up he would wonder if it was still there, or if it had not burned out long ago.
The days therefore came and went. Stillman did not appear. Quinn’s money ran out at last. For some time he had been steeling himself for this moment, and towards the end he hoarded his funds with maniacal precision. No penny was spent without first judging the necessity of what he thought he needed, without first weighing all the consequences, pro and con. But not even the most stringent economies could halt the march of the inevitable.
It was some time in mid-August when Quinn discovered that he no longer could hold out. The author has confirmed this date through diligent research. It is possible, however, that this moment occurred as early as late July, or as late as early September, since all investigations of this sort must make allowances for a certain margin of error. But, to the best of his knowledge, having considered the evidence carefully and sifted through all apparent contradictions, the author places the following events in August, somewhere between the twelfth and twenty-fifth of the month.
Quinn had almost nothing now—a few coins that amounted to less than a dollar. He was certain that money had arrived for him during his absence. It was simply a matter of retrieving the checks from his mailbox at the post office, taking them to the bank, and cashing them. If all went well, he could be back to East 69th Street within a few hours. We will never know the agonies he suffered at having to leave his spot.
He did not have enough money to take the bus. For the first time in many weeks, then, he began to walk. It was odd to be on his feet again, moving steadily from one place to the next, swinging his arms back and forth, feeling the pavement under the soles of his shoes. And yet there he was, walking west on 69th Street, turning right on Madison Avenue, and beginning to make his way north. His legs were weak, and he felt as though his head were made of air. He had to stop every now and then to catch his breath, and once, on the brink of falling, he had to grab hold of a lamppost. He found that things went better if he lifted his feet as little as possible, shuffling forward with slow, sliding steps. In this way he could conserve his strength for the corners, where he had to balance himself carefully before and after each step up and down from the curb.
At 84th Street he paused momentarily in front of a shop. There was a mirror on the facade, and for the first time since he had begun his vigil, Quinn saw himself. It was not that he had been afraid to confront his own image. Quite simply, it had not occurred to him. He had been too busy with his job to think about himself, and it was as though the question of his appearance had ceased to exist. Now, as he looked at himself in the shop mirror, he was neither shocked nor disappointed. He had no feeling about it at all, for the fact was that he did not recognize the person he saw there as himself. He thought that he had spotted a stranger in the mirror, and in that first moment he turned around sharply to see who it was. But there was no one near him. Then he turned back to examine the mirror more carefully. Feature by feature, he studied the face in front of him and slowly began to notice that this person bore a certain resemblance to the man he had always thought of as himself. Yes, it seemed more than likely that this was Quinn. Even now, however, he was not upset. The transformation in his appearance had been so drastic that he could not help but be fascinated by it. He had turned into a bum. His clothes were discolored, disheveled, debauched by filth. His face was covered by a thick black beard with tiny flecks of gray in it. His hair was long and tangled, matted into tufts behind his ears, and crawling down in curls almost to his shoulders. More than anything else, he reminded himself of Robinson Crusoe, and he marveled at how quickly these changes had taken place in him. It had been no more than a matter of months, and in that time he had become someone else. He tried to remember himself as he had been before, but he found it difficult. He looked at this new Quinn and shrugged. It did not really matter. He had been one thing before, and now he was another. It was neither better nor worse. It was different, and that was all.
He continued uptown for several more blocks, then turned left, crossed Fifth Avenue, and walked along the wall of Central Park. At 96th Street he entered the park and found himself glad to be among the grass and trees. Late summer had exhausted much of the greenness, and here and there the ground showed through in brown, dusty patches. But the trees overhead were still filled with leaves, and everywhere there was a sparkling of light and shade that struck Quinn as miraculous and beautiful. It was late morning, and the heavy heat of the afternoon lay several hours off.
Halfway through the park Quinn was overtaken by an urge to rest. There were no streets here, no city blocks to mark the stages of his progress, and it seemed to him suddenly that he had been walking for hours. Making it to the other side of the park felt as though it would take another day or two of dogged hiking. He went on for a few more minutes, but at last his legs gave out. There was an oak tree not far from where he stood, and Quinn went for it now, staggering in the way a drunk gropes for his bed after an all-night binge. Using the red notebook as a pillow, he lay down on a grassy mound just north of the tree and fell asleep. It was the first unbroken sleep he had had in months, and he did not wake until it was morning again.
His watch said that it was nine-thirty, and he cringed to think of the time he had lost. Quinn stood up and began loping towards the west, amazed that his strength was back, but cursing himself for the hours he had wasted in getting it. He was beyond consolation. No matter what he did now, he felt that he would always be too late. He could run for a hundred years, and still he would arrive just as the doors were closing.
He emerged from the park at 96th Street and continued west. At the corner of Columbus Avenue he saw a telephone booth, which suddenly reminded him of Auster and the five-hundreddollar check. Perhaps he could save time by collecting the money now. He could go directly to Auster, put the cash in his pocket, and avoid the trip to the post office and the bank. But would Auster
have the cash on hand? If not, perhaps they could arrange to meet at Auster’s bank.
Quinn entered the booth, dug into his pocket, and removed what money was left: two dimes, a quarter, and eight pennies. He dialed information for the number, got his dime back in the coin return box, deposited the dime again, and dialed. Auster picked up on the third ring.
“Quinn here,” said Quinn.
He heard a groan on the other end. “Where the hell have you been hiding?” There was irritation in Auster’s voice. “I’ve called you a thousand times.”
“I’ve been busy. Working on the case.”
“The case?”
“The case. The Stillman case. Remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I want to come for the money now. The five hundred dollars.”
“What money?”
“The check, remember? The check I gave you. The one made out to Paul Auster.”
“Of course I remember. But there is no money. That’s why I’ve been trying to call you.”
“You had no right to spend it,” Quinn shouted, suddenly beside himself. “That money belonged to me.”
“I didn’t spend it. The check bounced.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You can come here and see the letter from the bank, if you want. It’s sitting here on my desk. The check was no good.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Yes, it is. But it hardly matters now, does it?”
“Of course it matters. I need the money to go on with the case.”
“But there is no case. It’s all over.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The same thing you are. The Stillman case.”
“But what do you mean ‘it’s over’? I’m still working on it.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Stop being so goddamn mysterious. I don’t have the slight est idea what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t believe you don’t know. Where the hell have you been? Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“Newspapers? Goddamit, say what you mean. I don’t have time to read newspapers.”
There was a silence on the other end, and for a moment Quinn felt that the conversation was over, that he had somehow fallen asleep and had just now woken up to find the telephone in his hand.
“Stillman jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge,” Auster said. “He committed suicide two and a half months ago.”
“You’re lying.”
“It was all over the papers. You can check for yourself.”
Quinn said nothing.
“It was your Stillman,” Auster went on. “The one who used to be a professor at Columbia. They say he died in mid-air, before he even hit the water.”
“And Peter? What about Peter?”
“I have no idea.”
“Does anybody know?”
“Impossible to say. You’d have to find that out yourself.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Quinn.
Then, without saying good-bye to Auster, he hung up. He took the other dime and used it to call Virginia Stillman. He still knew the number by heart.
A mechanical voice spoke the number back to him and announced that it had been disconnected. The voice then repeated the message, and afterwards the line went dead.
Quinn could not be sure what he felt. In those first moments, it was as though he felt nothing, as though the whole thing added up to nothing at all. He decided to postpone thinking about it. There would be time for that later, he thought. For now, the only thing that seemed to matter was going home. He would return to his apartment, take off his clothes, and sit in a hot bath. Then he would look through the new magazines, play a few records, do a little housecleaning. Then, perhaps, he would begin to think about it.
He walked back to 107th Street. The keys to his house were still in his pocket, and as he unlocked his front door and walked up the three flights to his apartment, he felt almost happy. But then he stepped into the apartment, and that was the end of that.
Everything had changed. It seemed like another place altogether, and Quinn thought he must have entered the wrong apartment by mistake. He backed into the hall and checked the number on the door. No, he had not been wrong. It was his apartment; it was his key that had opened the door. He walked back inside and took stock of the situation. The furniture had been rearranged. Where there had once been a table there was now a chair. Where there had once been a sofa there was now a table. There were new pictures on the walls, a new rug was on the floor. And his desk? He looked for it but could not find it. He studied the furniture more carefully and saw that it was not his. What had been there the last time he was in the apartment had been removed. His desk was gone, his books were gone, the child drawings of his dead son were gone. He went from the living room to the bedroom. His bed was gone, his bureau was gone. He opened the top drawer of the bureau that was there. Women’s underthings lay tangled in random clumps: panties, bras, slips. The next drawer held women’s sweaters. Quinn went no further than that. On a table near the bed there was a framed photograph of a blond, beefy-faced young man. Another photograph showed the same young man smiling, standing in the snow with his arm around an insipid-looking girl. She, too, was smiling. Behind them there was a ski slope, a man with two skis on his shoulder, and the blue winter sky.
Quinn went back to the living room and sat down in a chair. He saw a half-smoked cigarette with lipstick on it in an ashtray. He lit it up and smoked it. Then he went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found some orange juice and a loaf of bread. He drank the juice, ate three slices of bread, and then returned to the living room, where he sat down in the chair again. Fifteen minutes later he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, a jangling of keys outside the door, and then the girl from the photograph entered the apartment. She was wearing a white nurse’s uniform and held a brown grocery bag in her arms. When she saw Quinn, she dropped the bag and screamed. Or else she screamed first and then dropped the bag. Quinn could never be sure which. The bag ripped open when it hit the floor, and milk gurgled in a white path toward the edge of the rug.
Quinn stood up, raised his hand in a gesture of peace, and told her not to worry. He wasn’t going to hurt her. The only thing he wanted to know was why she was living in his apartment. He took the key from his pocket and held it up in the air, as if to prove his good intentions. It took him a while to convince her, but at last her panic subsided.
That did not mean she had begun to trust him or that she was any less afraid. She hung by the open door, ready to make a dash for it at the first sign of trouble. Quinn held his distance, not wanting to make things worse. His mouth kept talking, explaining again and again that she was living in his house. She clearly did not believe one word of it, but she listened in order to humor him, no doubt hoping that he would talk himself out and finally leave.
“I’ve been living here for a month,” she said. “It’s my apartment. I signed a year’s lease.”
“But why do I have the key?” Quinn asked for the seventh or eighth time. “Doesn’t that convince you?”
“There are hundreds of ways you could have got that key.”
“Didn’t they tell you there was someone living here when you rented the place?”
“They said it was a writer. But he disappeared, hadn’t paid his rent in months.”
“That’s me!” shouted Quinn. “I’m the writer!”
The girl looked him over coldly and laughed. “A writer? That’s the funniest thing I ever heard. Just look at you. I’ve never seen a bigger mess in all my life.”
“I’ve had some difficulties lately,” muttered Quinn, by way of explanation. “But it’s only temporary.”
“The landlord told me he was glad to get rid of you anyway. He doesn’t like tenants who don’t have jobs. They use too much heat and run down the fixtures.”
“Do you know what happened to my things?”
“What things?”
“My books. My furniture. My papers.”
“I have no idea. They probably sold what they could and threw the rest away. Everything was cleared out before I moved in.”
Quinn let out a deep sigh. He had come to the end of himself. He could feel it now, as though a great truth had finally dawned in him. There was nothing left.
“Do you realize what this means?” he asked.
“Frankly, I don’t care,” the girl said. “It’s your problem, not mine. I just want you to get out of here. Right now. This is my place, and I want you out. If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police and have you arrested.”
It didn’t matter anymore. He could stand there arguing with the girl for the rest of the day, and still he wouldn’t get his apartment back. It was gone, he was gone, everything was gone. He stammered something inaudible, excused himself for taking up her time, and walked past her out the door.
