by Auster, Paul
She lasted another four years. Living alone in a small apartment in the New Jersey suburbs, she grew fat, then very fat, and before long came down with diabetes, clogged arteries, and a thick dossier of other ailments. She held my hand when Oona left me and our catastrophic five-year marriage ended, applauded when Sonia and I got back together, saw her son whenever he and his wife flew in from Chicago, attended family events, watched television from morning to night, could still tell a decent joke when the spirit moved her, and turned into the saddest person I have ever known. One morning in the spring of 1987, her housekeeper called me in a state of quasi-hysteria. She had just entered Betty’s apartment, using the key she had been given for her weekly cleaning chores, and had found my sister lying on the bed. I borrowed a car from a neighbor, drove out to New Jersey, and identified her body for the police. The shock of seeing her like that: so still, so far away, so terribly, terribly dead. When they asked me if I wanted the hospital to conduct an autopsy, I told them not to bother. There were only two possibilities. Either her body had given out on her or she had taken pills, and I didn’t want to know the answer, for neither one of them would have told the real story. Betty died of a broken heart. Some people laugh when they hear that phrase, but that’s because they don’t know anything about the world. People die of broken hearts. It happens every day, and it will go on happening to the end of time.
* * *
No, I haven’t forgotten. The cough sent me spinning into another zone, but I’m back now, and Brick is still with me. Through thick and thin, in spite of that dismal excursion into the past, but how to stop the mind from charging off wherever it wants to go? The mind has a mind of its own. Who said that? Someone, or else I just thought of it myself, not that it makes any difference. Coining phrases in the middle of the night, making up stories in the middle of the night—we’re moving on, my little darlings, and agonizing as this mess can be, there’s poetry in it, too, as long as you can find the words to express it, assuming those words exist. Yes, Miriam, life is disappointing. But I also want you to be happy.
Fret not. I’m treading water because I can see the story turning in any one of several directions, and I still haven’t decided which path to take. Hope or no hope? Both options are available, and yet neither one is fully satisfying to me. Is there a middle way after such a beginning, after throwing Brick to the wolves and bending the poor sap’s mind out of shape? Probably not. Think dark, then, and go down into it, see it through to the end.
The injection has already been given. Brick falls into the bottomless black of unconsciousness, and hours later he opens his eyes and discovers that he’s in bed with Flora. It’s early morning, seven-thirty or eight o’clock, and as Brick looks at the naked back of his sleeping wife, he wonders if he wasn’t right all along, if the time he spent in Wellington wasn’t part of some bad, nauseatingly vivid dream. But then, as he shifts his head on the pillow, he feels Virginia’s bandage pressing into his cheek, and when he runs his tongue over the ragged edge of his chipped incisor, he has no choice but to face the facts: he was there, and everything that happened to him in that place was real. By now, there is only a single, improbable straw to clutch at: what if the two days that elapsed in Wellington were no more than a blink of the eyes in this world? What if Flora never knew he was gone? That would solve the problem of having to explain where he’s been, for Brick knows the truth will be difficult to swallow, especially for a jealous woman like Flora, and yet even if the truth comes out sounding like a lie, he doesn’t have the strength or the will to concoct a story that would seem more plausible, something that would appease her suspicions and make her understand that his two-day absence had nothing to do with another woman.
Unfortunately for Brick, the clocks in both worlds tell the same time. Flora knows that he’s been missing, and when she turns over in her sleep and inadvertently touches his body, she is instantly jolted awake. His anxieties are stilled by the joy that comes rushing into her intense brown eyes, and suddenly he feels ashamed of himself, mortified that he ever could have doubted her love for him.
Owen? she asks, as if hardly daring to believe what has happened. Is it really you?
Yes, Flora, he says. I’m back.
She throws her arms around him, holding him tightly against her smooth, bare skin. I’ve been going crazy, she says, rolling the r with an emphatic trilling of her tongue. Just crazy out of my head. Then, as she sees the bandage on his cheek and the bruises around his lips, her expression changes to one of alarm. What happened? she asks. You’re all beat up, baby.
It takes him over an hour to give a full account of his mysterious journey to the other America. The only thing he leaves out is Virginia’s last remark about wanting to charm his pants off and fuck his brains out, but that is a minor detail, and he sees no point in riling up Flora with matters that have little bearing on the story. The most daunting part comes toward the end, when he tries to recapitulate his conversation with Frisk. It barely made sense to him at the time, and now that he’s back in his own apartment, sitting in the kitchen and drinking coffee with his wife, all that talk about multiple realities and multiple worlds dreamed and imagined by other minds strikes him as out-and-out gibberish. He shakes his head, as if to apologize for making such a botch of it. But the injection was real, he says. And the order to shoot August Brill was real. And if he doesn’t carry out the job, he and Flora will be in constant danger.
Until now, Flora has listened in silence, patiently watching her husband tell his absurd and ridiculous story, which she considers to be the largest mound of crap ever built by human hands. Under normal circumstances, she would fly into one of her rages and accuse him of two-timing her, but these are not normal circumstances, and Flora, who knows every one of Brick’s faults, who has criticized him countless times during the three years of their marriage, has never once called him a liar, and in the face of the nonsense she has just been told, she finds herself stunned, at a loss for words.
I know it sounds incredible, Brick says. But it’s all true, every word of it.
And you expect me to believe you, Owen?
I can hardly believe it myself. But it all happened, Flora, exactly as I told it to you.
Do you think I’m an idiot?
What are you talking about?
Either you think I’m an idiot or you’ve gone insane.
I don’t think you’re an idiot, and I haven’t gone insane.
You sound like one of those crackpots. You know, one of those guys who’s been abducted by aliens. What did the Martians look like, Owen? Did they have a big spaceship?
Stop it, Flora. That isn’t funny.
Funny? Who’s trying to be funny? I just want to know where you’ve been.
I’ve already told you. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted to make up another story. Some stupid thing about getting mugged and losing my memory for two days. Or being run over by a car. Or falling down the stairs in the subway. Some drek like that. But I decided to tell you the truth.
Maybe that’s it. You got beat up, after all. Maybe you’ve been lying in an alley for the past two days, and you dreamed the whole thing.
Then why would I have this on my arm? A nurse put it there after they gave me the shot. It’s the last thing I remember before I opened my eyes this morning.
Brick rolls up his left sleeve, points to a small flesh-colored bandage on his upper arm, and tears it off with his right hand. Look, he says. Do you see this little scab? That’s the spot where the needle went into my skin.
It doesn’t mean anything, Flora replies, dismissing the one piece of solid evidence Brick can offer. There are a million different ways you could have gotten that scab.
True. But the fact is it happened just one way, the way I told you. From Frisk’s needle.
All right, Owen, Flora says, trying not to lose her temper, maybe we should stop talking about it now. You’re home. That’s the only thing that matters to me. Christ, baby, you don’t know what it was
like for those two days. I went nuts, I mean one hundred percent nuts. I thought you were dead. I thought you’d left me. I thought you were with another girl. And now you’re back. It’s like a miracle, and if you want to know the truth, I don’t really care what happened. You were gone, and now you’re back. End of story, okay?
No, Flora, it’s not okay. I’m back, but the story isn’t over. I have to go up to Vermont and shoot Brill. I don’t know how much time I have, but I can’t sit around and wait too long. If I don’t do it, they’re going to come after us. A bullet for you and a bullet for me. That’s what Frisk said, and he wasn’t joking.
Brill, Flora grunts, pronouncing the name as if it were an insult in some foreign language. I bet he doesn’t even exist.
I saw his picture, remember?
A picture doesn’t prove anything.
That’s exactly what I said when Frisk showed it to me.
Well, there’s one way to find out, isn’t there? If he’s some kind of hotshot writer, he has to be on the Internet. Let’s turn on my computer and look him up.
Frisk said he won a Pulitzer Prize about twenty years ago. If his name isn’t on the list, then we’re home free. If it is, then watch out, little Flora. We’re in for some big trouble.
It won’t be, Owen. Count on it. Brill doesn’t exist, so his name can’t be there.
But it is there. August Brill, winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. They look further, and within minutes they have uncovered vast amounts of information, including biographical data from Who’s Who in America (born NYC, 1935; married Sonia Weil, 1957, divorced 1975; married Oona McNally, 1976, divorced 1981; daughter, Miriam, born 1960; B.A. from Columbia, 1957; honorary doctorates from Williams College and the Pratt Institute; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; author of more than 1,500 articles, reviews, and columns for magazines and newspapers; book editor of the Boston Globe, 1972–1991), a Web site containing over four hundred of his pieces written between 1962 and 2003, as well as a number of photographs taken of Brill in his thirties, forties, and fifties, leaving no doubt that these are younger versions of the old man in the wheelchair parked in front of the white clapboard house in Vermont.
Brick and Flora are sitting side by side at a small desk in the bedroom, their eyes fixed on the screen in front of them, too afraid to look at each other as they watch their hopes turn to dust. At last, Flora switches off the laptop and says in a low, quavering voice: I guess I was wrong, huh?
Brick stands up and begins pacing around the room. Do you believe me now? he asks. This Brill, this goddamn August Brill … I’d never even heard of him until yesterday. How could I have made it up? I’m not smart enough to have thought of half the things I’ve told you, Flora. I’m just a guy who performs magic tricks for little kids. I don’t read books, I don’t know anything about book critics, and I’m not interested in politics. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve just come from a place that’s in the middle of a civil war. And now I have to kill a man.
He sits down on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by the ferocity of his situation, by the sheer injustice of what has happened to him. Watching Brick with worried eyes, Flora walks across the room and sits down beside him. She puts her arms around her husband, leans her head against his shoulder, and says: You’re not going to kill anyone.
I have to, Brick answers, staring down at the floor.
I don’t know what to think or not to think, Owen, but I’m telling you now, you’re not going to kill anyone. You’re going to leave that man alone.
I can’t.
Why do you think I married you? Because you’re a sweet person, my love, a kind and honest person. I didn’t marry a killer. I married you, my funny Owen Brick, and I’m not going to stand by and let you murder someone and spend the rest of your life in prison.
I’m not saying I want to do it. I just don’t have any choice.
Don’t talk like that. Everyone has a choice. And besides, what makes you think you’d be able to go through with it? Can you actually see yourself walking into that man’s house, pointing a gun at his head, and shooting him in cold blood? Not in a hundred years, Owen. It’s just not in you to do something like that. Thank God.
Brick knows that Flora is right. He could never kill an innocent stranger, not even if his own life depended on it—which it probably does. He lets out a long, shuddering breath, then runs his hand through Flora’s hair and says: So what am I supposed to do?
Nothing.
What do you mean, nothing?
We start living again. You do your job, I do mine. We eat and sleep and pay the bills. We wash the dishes and vacuum the floor. We make a baby together. You put me in the bath and shampoo my hair. I rub your back. You learn new tricks. We visit your parents and listen to your mother complain about her health. We go on, baby, and live our little life. That’s what I’m talking about. Nothing.
A month goes by. In the first week after Brick’s return, Flora misses her period, and a home pregnancy test brings them the news that if all goes well, they will become parents by the following January. They celebrate the positive test result by going out to a fashionable Manhattan restaurant that is far beyond their means, consume an entire bottle of French champagne before placing their orders, and then gorge themselves on a gargantuan porterhouse for two, which Flora claims is almost as good as the meat in Argentina. The next day, on his second visit to the dentist, a cap is put on Brick’s left incisor, and he resumes his career as the Great Zavello. Bolting around the city in his battered yellow Mazda, he dons his cape and performs at elementary school assemblies, retirement homes, community centers, and private parties, pulling doves and rabbits out of his top hat, making silk scarves disappear, snatching eggs out of thin air, and transforming dull newspapers into colorful bouquets of pansies, tulips, and roses. Flora, who left her catering job two years earlier and is now working as a receptionist at a doctor’s office on Park Avenue, asks her boss for a twenty-dollar raise and is turned down. She explodes in a tantrum of injured pride and storms out of the building, but when she talks it over with Brick that evening, he persuades her to return the next morning and apologize to Dr. Sontag, which she does, and because the doctor doesn’t want to lose such a competent, hardworking employee, he rewards her with a ten-dollar increase in salary, which is all she was hoping for in the first place. Money is nevertheless an issue, and with a child now on the way, Brick and Flora wonder if they will be able to feed that third mouth with what they are earning now. On a grim Sunday afternoon toward the end of the month, they even discuss the possibility of Brick going to work for his cousin Ralph, who owns a high-powered real estate agency in Park Slope. Magic would have to become a part-time occupation, little more than a hobby to be pursued on his days off, and Brick is reluctant to take such a drastic step, vowing to land some higher-paying jobs that will give them the breathing room they need. Meanwhile, he has not forgotten his visit to the other America. Wellington is still burning inside him, and not a day goes by when he doesn’t think of Tobak, Molly Wald, Duke Rothstein, Frisk, and, most disturbingly of all, Virginia Blaine. He can’t help himself. Flora has been so much more tender with him since his return, metamorphosing herself into the loving companion he always longed for, and while there is no question that he loves her back, Virginia is always there, lurking in a corner of his mind, gently putting the bandage on his face and telling him how much she wanted to charm his pants off. By way of compensation, perhaps, he begins reading Brill’s old reviews on the Internet—always in secret, of course, since he doesn’t want Flora to know that he’s still thinking about the man he was instructed to kill—and every time he comes across an article about a book that sounds interesting, he checks it out of the library. He used to spend his evenings watching television with Flora on a sofa in the living room. Now he lies on the bed and reads books. So far, his most important discoveries have been Chekhov, Calvino, and Camus.
In this way Brick and Flora swim along in their con
jugal nothing, the little life she lured him back to with the good sense of a woman who doesn’t believe in other worlds, who knows there is only this world and that numbing routines and brief squabbles and financial worries are an essential part of it, that in spite of the aches and boredoms and disappointments, living in this world is the closest we will ever come to seeing paradise. After the horrific hours he spent in Wellington, Brick too wants only this, the jumbled grind of New York, the naked body of his little Floratina, his work as the Great Zavello, his unborn child growing invisibly as the days pass, and yet deep inside himself he knows that he has been contaminated by his visit to the other world and that sooner or later everything will come to an end. He contemplates driving up to Vermont and talking to Brill. Would it be possible to convince the old man to stop thinking about his story? He tries to imagine the conversation, tries to summon the words he would use to present his argument, but all he ever sees is Brill laughing at him, the incredulous laughter of a man who would take him for an imbecile, a mental defective, and promptly throw him out of the house. So Brick does nothing, and precisely one month after his return from Wellington, on the evening of May twenty-first, as he sits in the living room with Flora, demonstrating a new card trick to his laughing wife, someone knocks on the door. Without having to think about it, Brick already knows what has happened. He tells Flora not to open the door, to run into the bedroom and go down the fire escape as fast as she can, but willful, independent Flora, unaware of the fix they’re in, scoffs at his panicked instructions and does exactly what he tells her not to do. Bounding off the sofa before he can grab her arm, she dances to the door with a mocking pirouette and yanks it open. Two men are standing on the threshold, Lou Frisk and Duke Rothstein, and since each one is holding a revolver in his hand and pointing it at Flora, Brick doesn’t move from his spot on the sofa. Theoretically, he can still try to escape, but the moment he stood up, the mother of his child would be dead.
