by Auster, Paul
I’m beginning to remember you now, he says. Not everything, but little flashes, bits and pieces here and there. I was very young the first time I saw you, wasn’t I?
About twenty-one, I think, Anna says.
But I kept losing you. You’d be there for a few days, and then you’d vanish. A year would go by, two years, four years, and then you’d suddenly pop up again.
You didn’t know what to do with me, that’s why. It took you a long time to figure it out.
And then I sent you on your … your mission. I remember being frightened for you. But you were a real battler back in those days, weren’t you?
A tough and feisty girl, Mr. Blank.
Exactly. And that’s what gave me hope. If you hadn’t been a resourceful person, you never would have made it.
Let me help you with your clothes, Anna says, glancing down at her watch. Time is marching on.
The word marching induces Mr. Blank to think about his dizzy spells and earlier difficulties with walking, but now, as he travels the short distance from the threshold of the bathroom to the bed, he is encouraged to note that his brain is clear and that he feels in no danger of falling. With nothing to support the hypothesis, he attributes this improvement to the beneficent Anna, to the mere fact that she has been there with him for the past twenty or thirty minutes, radiating the affection he so desperately longs for.
The clothes turn out to be all white: white cotton trousers, white button-down shirt, white boxer shorts, white nylon socks, and a pair of white tennis shoes.
An odd choice, Mr. Blank says. I’m going to look like the Good Humor man.
It was a special request, Anna replies. From Peter Stillman. Not the father, the son. Peter Stillman, Junior.
Who’s he?
You don’t remember?
I’m afraid not.
He’s another one of your charges. When you sent him out on his mission, he had to dress all in white.
How many people have I sent out?
Hundreds, Mr. Blank. More people than I can count.
All right. Let’s get on with it. I don’t suppose it makes any difference.
Without further ado, he unties the belt of the robe and lets the robe fall to the floor. Once again, he is standing naked in front of Anna, feeling not the slightest hint of embarrassment or modesty. Glancing down and pointing to his penis, he says: Look how small it is. Mr. Bigshot isn’t so big now, is he?
Anna smiles and then pats the bed with the palm of her hand, beckoning him to sit down next to her. As he does so, Mr. Blank is once more thrust back into his early childhood, back to the days of Whitey the rocking horse and their long journeys together through the deserts and mountains of the Far West. He thinks about his mother and how she used to dress him like this in his upstairs bedroom with the morning sun slanting through the venetian blinds, and all at once, realizing that his mother is dead, probably long dead, he wonders if Anna somehow hasn’t become a new mother for him, even at his advanced age, for why else would he feel so comfortable with her, he who is generally so shy and self-conscious about his body in front of others?
Anna climbs off the bed and crouches down in front of Mr. Blank. She begins with the socks, slipping one over his left foot and then the other one over his right foot, moves on to the undershorts, which she slides up his legs and, as Mr. Blank stands to accommodate her, farther up to his waist, thus concealing the former Mr. Bigshot, who no doubt will rise again to assert his dominance over Mr. Blank before too many hours have passed.
Mr. Blank sits down on the bed a second time, and the process is repeated with the trousers. When Mr. Blank sits down for the third time, Anna puts the sneakers on his feet, first the left one, then the right one, and immediately begins to tie the laces, first on the left shoe, then on the right shoe. After that, she emerges from her crouch and sits down on the bed beside Mr. Blank to help him with the shirt, first guiding his left arm through the left sleeve, then his right arm through the right sleeve, and finally buttoning the buttons from the bottom up, and all during this slow and laborious procedure, Mr. Blank’s thoughts are elsewhere, back in his boyhood room with Whitey and his mother, remembering how she used to do these same things for him with the same loving patience, so many years ago now, in the long-ago beginning of his life.
* * *
Now Anna is gone. The stainless steel cart has vanished, the door has been shut, and once again Mr. Blank is alone in the room. The questions he was meaning to ask her—about the closet, about the typescript concerning the so-called Confederation, about whether the door is locked from the outside or not—have all gone unasked, and therefore Mr. Blank is as much in the dark about what he is doing in this place as he was before Anna’s arrival. For the time being, he is sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor, but soon, as soon as he feels the strength of will to do so, he will stand up from the bed and once more make his way over to the desk to look through the pile of photographs (if he can summon the courage to face those images again) and continue his reading of the typescript about the man trapped in the room in Ultima. For the time being, however, he does nothing more than sit on the bed and pine for Anna, wishing she were still there with him, wishing he could take her in his arms and hold her.
Now he is on his feet again. He tries to shuffle toward the desk, but he forgets that he is no longer wearing his slippers, and the rubber sole of his left tennis shoe sticks on the wood floor—in such an abrupt and unforeseen way that Mr. Blank loses his balance and nearly falls. Damn, he says, damn these stupid little white fucks. He longs to change out of the tennis shoes and put on the slippers again, but the slippers are black, and if he put them on he would no longer be dressed all in white, which was something Anna explicitly asked of him—as per the demand of one Peter Stillman, Junior, whoever on earth he might be.
Mr. Blank therefore abandons the shuffling strides he used with the slippers and travels toward the desk with something that resembles an ordinary walk. Not quite the brisk heel-to-toe step one sees in the young and the vigorous, but a slow and heavy gait whereby Mr. Blank lifts one foot an inch or two off the ground, propels the leg attached to that foot approximately six inches forward, and then plants the entire sole of the shoe on the floor, heel and toe together. A slight pause follows, and then he repeats the process with the other foot. It might not be beautiful to watch, but it is sufficient to his purpose, and before long he finds himself standing in front of the desk.
The chair has been pushed in, which means that in order to sit down, Mr. Blank is obliged to pull it out. In so doing, he finally discovers that the chair is equipped with wheels, for instead of scraping along the floor as he is expecting it will, the chair rolls out smoothly, with scarcely any effort on his part. Mr. Blank sits down, astonished that he could have overlooked this feature of the chair during his earlier visits to the desk. He presses his feet against the floor, gives a little shove, and back he goes, covering a distance of some three or four feet. He considers this an important discovery, for pleasant as rocking back and forth and turning around in circles might be, the fact that the chair can move about the room is potentially of great therapeutic value—as, for example, when his legs are feeling especially tired, or when he is attacked by another one of his dizzy spells. Instead of having to stand up and walk at those times, he will be able to use the chair to travel from place to place in a sitting position, thus conserving his strength for more urgent matters. He feels comforted by this thought, and yet, as he inches the chair back toward the desk, the crushing sense of guilt that largely disappeared during Anna’s visit suddenly returns, and by the time he makes it to the desk he understands that the desk itself is responsible for these oppressive thoughts—not the desk as desk, perhaps, but the photographs and papers piled on its surface, which no doubt contain the answer to the question that haunts him. They are the source of his anguish, and even though it would be simple enough to return to the bed and ig
nore them, he feels compelled to go on with his investigations, tortuous and painful as they might be.
He glances down and notices a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen—objects he does not remember having been there during his last visit to the desk. No matter, he says to himself, and without another thought he picks up the pen with his right hand and opens the pad to the first page with his left. In order not to forget what has happened so far today—for Mr. Blank is nothing if not forgetful—he writes down the following list of names:
James P. Flood
Anna
David Zimmer
Peter Stillman, Jr.
Peter Stillman, Sr.
This small task accomplished, he closes the pad, puts down the pen, and pushes them aside. Then, reaching for the top pages on the pile farthest to the left, he discovers that they have been stapled together, perhaps twenty to twenty-five pages in all, and when he puts down the sheaf in front of him, he further discovers that it is the typescript he was reading before Anna’s arrival. He assumes that she was the one who stapled the pages together—to make things easier for him—and then, realizing that the typescript is not terribly long, he wonders if he will have time to finish it before James P. Flood comes knocking at the door.
He turns to the fourth paragraph on the second page and begins reading:
For the past forty days, there have been no beatings, and neither the Colonel nor any members of his staff have shown their faces to me. The only person I have seen is the sergeant who delivers my food and changes the slop bucket. I have tried to act in a civil manner with him, always making some small remark when he comes in, but he is apparently under orders to remain silent, and not once have I extracted a single word from this giant in the brown uniform. Then, less than an hour ago, an extraordinary event took place. The sergeant unlocked the door, and in walked two young privates carrying a small wooden table and a straight-backed chair. They set them down in the middle of the room, and then the sergeant came in and put a tall stack of blank paper on the table along with a bottle of ink and a pen.
—You’re allowed to write, he said.
—Is that your way of making conversation, I asked, or are you trying to give me an order?
—The Colonel says you’re allowed to write. You can take that in any way you choose.
—What if I choose not to write?
—You’re free to do what you want, but the Colonel says it’s unlikely that a man in your position would pass up the opportunity to defend himself in writing.
—I assume he’s planning to read what I write.
—It would be logical to assume that, yes.
—Will he be sending it to the capital afterward?
—He didn’t speak of his intentions. He simply said that you were allowed to write.
—How much time do I have?
—The subject wasn’t discussed.
—And what if I run out of paper?
—You’ll be given as much ink and paper as you need. The Colonel wanted me to tell you that.
—Thank the Colonel for me, and tell him I understand what he’s doing. He’s giving me a chance to lie about what happened in order to save my neck. That’s very sporting of him. Please tell him that I appreciate the gesture.
—I will convey your message to the Colonel.
—Good. Now leave me in peace. If he wants me to write, I’ll write, but in order to do that, I have to be alone.
I was only guessing, of course. The truth is that I have no idea why the Colonel did what he did. I would like to think he’s begun to pity me, but I doubt it can be as simple as that. Colonel De Vega is hardly a compassionate man, and if he suddenly wants to make my life less uncomfortable, giving me a pen is surely an odd way to go about it. A manuscript of lies would serve him well, but he can’t possibly think that I’d be willing to change my story at this late date. He has already tried to make me recant, and if I didn’t do it when I was nearly beaten to death, why would I do it now? What it comes down to is a matter of caution, I think, a way of preparing himself for whatever might happen next. Too many people know that I’m here for him to execute me without a trial. On the other hand, a trial is something that must be avoided at all costs—for once the case is taken to court, my story will become public knowledge. By allowing me to put the story in writing, he is gathering evidence, irrefutable evidence that will justify any action he decides to take against me. Assume, for example, that he goes ahead and has me shot without a trial. Once the military command in the capital gets wind of my death, they will be obliged by law to open an official inquiry, but at that point he will only have to give them the pages I’ve written, and he will be exonerated. No doubt they will reward him with a medal for resolving the dilemma so neatly. It could be that he has already written to them about me, in fact, and that I am holding this pen in my hand now because they instructed him to put it there. Under normal circumstances, it takes about three weeks for a letter to reach the capital from Ultima. If I have been here for a month and a half, then perhaps he received his answer today. Let the traitor put his story in writing, they probably said, and then we’ll be free to dispose of him in any way we like.
That is one possibility. It could be that I’m exaggerating my importance, however, and that the Colonel is merely playing with me. Who knows if he hasn’t decided to amuse himself with the spectacle of my suffering? Distractions are scarce in a town like Ultima, and unless you’re resourceful enough to invent your own, you could easily lose your mind from the boredom. I can imagine the Colonel reading my words out loud to his mistress, the two of them sitting up in bed at night and laughing at my pathetic little phrases. That would be amusing, wouldn’t it? Such a welcome diversion, such unholy mirth. If I keep him sufficiently entertained, perhaps he’ll let me go on writing forever, and bit by bit I’ll be turned into his personal clown, his own jester-scribe scribbling forth my pratfalls in endless streams of ink. And even if he should tire of my stories and have me killed, the manuscript will remain, won’t it? That will be his trophy—one more skull to add to his collection.
Still, it is difficult for me to suppress the joy I am feeling at this moment. Whatever Colonel De Vega’s motives might have been, whatever traps and humiliations he might have in store for me, I can honestly say that I am happier now than at any time since my arrest. I am sitting at the table, listening to the pen as it scratches along the surface of the paper. I stop. I dip the pen into the inkwell, then watch the black shapes form as I move my hand slowly from left to right. I come to the edge and then return to the other side, and as the shapes thin out, I stop once more and dip the pen into the inkwell. So it goes as I work my way down the page, and each cluster of marks is a word, and each word is a sound in my head, and each time I write another word, I hear the sound of my own voice, even though my lips are silent.
Immediately after the sergeant locked the door, I picked up the table and carried it to the western wall, placing it directly below the window. Then I went back for the chair, put the chair on top of the table, and hoisted myself up—first onto the table, then onto the chair. I wanted to see if I could get my fingers around the bars of the window, hoping I might be able to pull myself up and hang there long enough to catch a glimpse of the outside. No matter how hard I strained, however, the tips of my fingers fell short of the goal. Not wanting to abandon the effort, I removed my shirt and tried flinging it up toward the bars, thinking I might be able to thread it through, then grab hold of the dangling sleeves, and in that way manage to haul myself up. But the shirt wasn’t quite long enough, and without a tool of some sort to guide the cloth around the metal posts (a stick, a broom handle, even a twig), I could do no more than wave the shirt back and forth, like a white flag of surrender.
In the end, it is probably just as well to put those dreams behind me. If I can’t spend my days looking out the window, then I will be forced to concentrate on the task at hand. The essential thing is to stop worrying about the Colonel, to push all thoug
hts of him out of my mind and set down the facts as I know them. What he chooses to do with this report is strictly his business, and there is nothing I can do to influence his decision. The only thing I can do is tell the story. Given the story I have to tell, that will be difficult enough.
* * *
Mr. Blank pauses for a moment to rest his eyes, to run his fingers through his hair, to ponder the meaning of the words he has just read. When he thinks about the narrator’s failed attempt to climb up and look out the window, he suddenly remembers his own window, or, more precisely, the window shade that covers the window, and now that he has a means of traveling over there without having to stand up, he decides that this is the moment to lift the shade and have a peek outdoors. If he can take stock of his surroundings, perhaps some memory will come back to him to help explain what he is doing in this room; perhaps the mere glimpse of a tree or the cornice of a building or a random patch of sky will furnish him with an insight into his predicament. He therefore temporarily abandons his reading of the typescript to journey toward the wall in which the window is located. When he reaches his destination, he thrusts out his right hand, takes hold of the bottom of the shade, and gives it a quick tug, hoping to engage the spring that will send the shade flying upward. It is an old shade, however, and much of its bounce has been lost, and rather than ascend to reveal the window behind it, it sags down several inches below the sill. Frustrated by this botched attempt, Mr. Blank tugs harder and longer the second time, and just like that, the shade decides to act like a proper shade and goes rolling up to the top of the window.
Imagine Mr. Blank’s disappointment when he peers through the window and sees that the shutters have been closed, blocking any possibility of looking out to discover where he is. Nor are these the classic wooden shutters with movable slats that allow a bit of light to filter through; they are industrial-strength metal panels with no apertures of any kind, painted a dull shade of gray, with areas of rust showing through that have begun to corrode the surface. Once Mr. Blank rebounds from his shock, he understands that the situation is not as dire as he supposed. The shutters lock from within, and in order to get his fingers on the lock, all he has to do is raise the window sash to its maximum height. Then, once the latch has been unhooked, he will be able to push the shutters open and look out at the world around him. He knows that he will have to stand up from the chair to gain the leverage necessary for such an operation, but that is a small price to pay, and so he lifts his body out of the seat, checks to make sure the window is unlocked (it is), places the heels of his two hands firmly under the top bar of the sash, pauses for a moment to prepare for the exertions ahead, and then pushes for all he is worth. Unexpectedly, the window does not budge. Mr. Blank stops to catch his breath, then tries again—with the same negative result. He suspects that the window has jammed somehow—either because of excess moisture in the air or an excess of paint that has inadvertently glued the upper and lower halves of the window together—but then, as he examines the top bar of the sash more closely, he discovers something that previously eluded his notice. Two large construction nails, almost invisible because the heads of the nails are painted over, have been hammered into the bar. One large nail to the left, one large nail to the right, and because Mr. Blank knows it will be impossible for him to extract those nails from the wood, the window cannot be opened—not now, he realizes, not later, not ever under any circumstances at all.
