by Paul Auster
His work. You mean he stopped writing?
Yes. He gave up everything. He had great talent, Mr. Blank, but he came to despise that part of himself, and one day he just stopped, he just quit.
It was my fault, wasn't it?
I wouldn't go that far. You played a part in it, of course, but you were only doing what you had to do.
You must hate me.
No, I don't hate you. I went through a tough period for a while, but everything worked out pretty well after that. I got married again, remember, and it's been a good marriage, a long and good marriage. And then there are my two boys, Ben and Paul. They're all grown up now. Ben is a doctor, and Paul's studying to become an anthropologist. Not too bad, if I do say so myself. I hope you get to meet them one day. I think you'll be very proud.
Now Sophie and Mr. Blank are sitting beside each other on the bed, facing the stainless steel cart with the various dishes of Mr. Blank's lunch lying on the surface, each plate hidden by a round metal cover with a hole in the center. Mr. Blank has worked up an appetite and is eager to begin, but before he is allowed to touch a morsel of food, Sophie tells him, he must first take his afternoon pills. In spite of the understanding that has developed between them over the past several minutes, and in spite of the pleasure Mr. Blank feels at being so close to Sophie's warm and ample body, he balks at this demand and refuses to swallow the medication. Whereas the pills he ingested that morning were green, purple, and white, the ones now sitting on the surface of the stainless steel cart are pink, red, and orange. Sophie explains that they are indeed different pills, designed to produce different effects from the ones he took earlier, and that the treatment will fail unless he takes these in conjunction with the others. Mr. Blank follows the argument, but that in no way convinces him to change his mind, and as Sophie picks up the first pill between her thumb and middle finger and tries to give it to him, Mr. Blank stubbornly shakes his head.
Please, Sophie implores him. I know you're hungry, but one way or another these pills are going into your system before you take a bite of food.
Fuck the food, Mr. Blank says, with bitterness in his voice.
Sophie sighs with exasperation. Look, old-timer, she says, I only want to help you. I'm one of the few people around here who's on your side, but if you won't cooperate, I can think of at least a dozen men who'd be happy to come in here and force these pills down your throat.
All right, Mr. Blank says, beginning to relent somewhat. But only on one condition.
Condition? What are you talking about?
I'll swallow the pills. But first you have to take off your clothes and let me run my hands over your body.
Sophie finds the proposition so ludicrous, she bursts out in a fit of laughter—little realizing that this is exactly how the other Sophie responded under similar circumstances all those many years ago at the frozen pond of Mr. Blank's boyhood. And then, to add insult to injury, she delivers the fatal words: Don't be silly.
Ah, says Mr. Blank, tipping backward as if someone has just smacked him across the face. Ah, he groans. Say anything you want, woman. But not that. Please. Not that. Say anything but that.
Within seconds, Mr. Blank's eyes have filled with tears, and before he knows what is happening, the tears are rolling down his cheeks and the old man is crying in earnest.
I'm sorry, Sophie says. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.
What's wrong with wanting to look at you? Mr. Blank asks, choking through his sobs. You have such beautiful breasts. I just want to see them and touch them. I want to put my hands on your skin, to run my fingers through your pubic hair. What's so terrible about that? I'm not going to hurt you. I just want a little tenderness, that's all. After everything that's been done to me in this place, is that too much to ask?
Well, Sophie says thoughtfully, doubtless feeling some compassion for Mr. Blank's plight, maybe we can come up with a compromise.
Such as? Mr. Blank asks, as he wipes away the tears with the back of his hand.
Such as … Such as, you take the pills, and each time you swallow one, I'll let you touch my breasts.
Bare breasts?
No. I'd rather keep my blouse on.
That's not good enough.
All right. I'll take off the blouse. But the bra stays where it is. Understood?
It's not quite paradise, but I suppose I'll have to accept it.
And in that way the matter is resolved. Sophie sheds the blouse, and as she does so Mr. Blank is heartened to see that the bra she is wearing is of the flimsy, lacy variety and not some drab piece of equipment worn by elderly matrons and others who have thrown in the towel on physical love. The upper halves of Sophie's round and abundant breasts are uncovered, and even lower down, the material of the bra is so thin as to allow him a clear view of her nipples jutting against the fabric. Not quite paradise, Mr. Blank says to himself as he downs the first pill with a sip of water, but rather satisfying all the same. And then his hands are upon them—his left hand on the right breast, his right hand on the left breast—and as he savors the bulk and softness of Sophie's somewhat pendulous but noble mammaries, he is further gladdened to observe that she is smiling. Not from pleasure, perhaps, but at least from amusement, thereby demonstrating that she bears him no ill will and is taking the adventure in stride.
You're a dirty old man, Mr. Blank, she says.
I know, he answers. But I was a dirty young man, too.
They work their way through the process twice more— the downing of a pill followed by another delicious encounter with the breasts—and then Sophie puts on her blouse again, and the moment for lunch has arrived.
Unfortunately, the repeated fondling of a desirable woman's flesh has wrought a predictable change in the flesh of the fondler himself. Mr. Blank's old friend is acting up again, and because our hero is no longer wearing the cotton trousers and underpants and is quite naked under the pajama bottoms, there is no barrier to prevent Mr. Bigshot from bounding out through the slit and poking his head into the light of day. This happens at the precise moment Sophie leans forward to begin removing the metal covers from the plates, and as she bends down to store the covers on the lower shelf of the cart, her eyes are just inches from the offending culprit.
Look at you, Sophie says, addressing her words to Mr. Blank's erect penis. Your master squeezes my tits a few times, and now you're all ready for action. Forget it, pal. The fun is over.
I'm sorry, Mr. Blank says, for once truly embarrassed by his behavior. It just kind of popped out on its own. I wasn't expecting it.
No apologies necessary, Sophie replies. Just stick that thing back in your pants, and we'll get down to business.
Business in this case is Mr. Blank's lunch, which consists of a small bowl of now tepid vegetable soup, a club sandwich on white toast, a tomato salad, and a cup of red Jell-O. We will not give an exhaustive account of the consumption of this meal, but one event nevertheless bears mentioning. As was the case after Mr. Blank took his pills in the morning, his hands begin to tremble uncontrollably the instant he tries to eat his food. These might be different pills, designed for different purposes and swathed in different colors, but in the matter of the trembling hands their effect is identical. Mr. Blank begins the meal by attacking the soup. As one might imagine, the inaugural journey of the spoon as it departs from the bowl toward Mr. Blank's mouth is a difficult one, and not a single drop makes it to the intended destination. Through no fault of his own, everything in the spoon comes raining down on Mr. Blank's white shirt.
Good God, he says. I've done it again.
Before the meal can continue, or, more exactly, before the meal can begin, Mr. Blank is obliged to remove the shirt, which is the last article of white clothing he has on, and replace it with the pajama top, thus reverting to the same attire he was discovered in at the beginning of this report. It is a sad moment for Mr. Blank, for now there is not a single trace left of Anna's gentle and meticulous efforts to dress him and prepare him f
or the day. Even worse, he has now entirely reneged on his promise to wear white.
As Anna did before her, Sophie now takes it upon herself to feed Mr. Blank. Although she is no less kind and patient with him than Anna was, Mr. Blank does not love Sophie in the way he loves Anna, and therefore he looks over her left shoulder at a spot on the far wall as she brings the various spoons and forks to his mouth, pretending it is Anna who is sitting beside him and not Sophie.
Do you know Anna well? he asks.
I met her only a few days ago, Sophie replies, but we've already had three or four long talks. We're very different in all sorts of ways, but we see eye to eye on the stuff that really counts.
Like what?
You, for one thing, Mr. Blank.
Is that why she asked you to fill in for her this afternoon?
I think so.
I've had a pretty awful day so far, but finding her again has done me a lot of good. I don't know what I'd do without her.
She feels the same way about you.
Anna … But Anna what? I've spent hours trying to remember her last name. I think it begins with a B, but I can't get any further than that.
Blume. Her name is Anna Blume.
Of course! shouts Mr. Blank, striking his forehead with the palm of his left hand. What the hell is wrong with me? I've known that name all my life. Anna Blume. Anna Blume. Anna Blume …
Now Sophie is gone. The stainless steel cart is gone, the soup-splattered white shirt is gone, the wet and dirty clothes from the tub are gone, and once again, having taken a proper, uneventful pee in the bathroom with Sophie's help, Mr. Blank is alone, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor. He ponders the details of Sophie's recent visit, chastising himself for not having asked her any questions about the things that concern him most. Where he is, for example. Whether he is allowed to walk in the park without supervision. Where the closet is, if indeed there is a closet, and why he hasn't been able to find it. Not to mention the eternal enigma of the door—and whether it is locked from the outside or not. Why did he hesitate to bare his soul to her, he wonders, she who is nothing if not a sympathetic person who holds no grudge against him? Is it simply a question of fear, he asks himself, or does it have something to do with the treatment, the noxious, debilitating treatment that has slowly robbed him of the power to stand up for himself and fight his own battles?
Not knowing what to think, Mr. Blank shrugs, slaps his hands on his knees, and rises from the bed. Several seconds later, he is sitting at the desk, the ballpoint pen in his right hand, the little pad in front of him, opened to the first page. He searches the list for Anna's name, discovers it on the second line directly below James P. Flood, and prints out the letters B-l-u-m-e, thus changing the entry from Anna to Anna Blume. Then, because all the lines on the first page have been filled, he turns to the second page and adds two more entries to the list:
John Trause
Sophie
As he closes the pad, Mr. Blank is dumbfounded to realize that Trause's name returned to him with no effort at all. After so many struggles, so many failures to remember names and faces and events, he considers this to be a triumph of the first magnitude. He rocks back and forth in the chair to celebrate his accomplishment, wondering if the afternoon pills aren't responsible in some way for counteracting his memory loss of the previous hours, or if it isn't just a lucky fluke, one of those unexpected things that happen to us for no apparent reason. Whatever the cause, he decides to go on thinking about the story now, in anticipation of a visit from the doctor that evening, since Farr told him he would do everything possible to allow him to go on telling the story to the end—not tomorrow, when Mr. Blank will no doubt have forgotten the bulk of what he has recounted so far, but today. As the old man goes on tipping back and forth in the chair, however, his eyes fall upon the strip of white tape affixed to the surface of the desk. He has looked at that piece of tape no less than fifty or a hundred times during the course of the day, and each time he did so the white strip was clearly marked with the word DESK. Now, to his astonishment, Mr. Blank sees that it is marked with the word LAMP. His initial response is to think that his eyes have fooled him in some way, so he stops rocking back and forth in order to take a closer look. He leans forward, lowers his head until his nose is nearly touching the tape, and carefully studies the word. To his immense chagrin, he discovers that it still reads LAMP.
With a growing sense of alarm, Mr. Blank clambers out of the chair and begins shuffling around the room, stopping at each strip of white tape attached to an object in order to find out if any other words have been altered. After a thorough investigation, he is horrified to discover that not a single label occupies its former spot. The wall now reads CHAIR. The lamp now reads bathroom. The chair now reads DESK. Several possible explanations flare up in Mr. Blank's mind at once. He has suffered a stroke or brain injury of some kind; he has lost the ability to read; someone has played a nasty trick on him. But if he is the victim of a prank, he asks himself, who can be responsible for it? Several people have visited his room in the past few hours: Anna, Flood, Fair, and Sophie. He finds it inconceivable that either one of the women would have done such a thing to him. It's true, however, that his mind was elsewhere when Flood came in, and it's also true that he was in the bathroom flushing the toilet when Fair entered, but he can't imagine how either one of those men could have pulled off such an elaborate switching operation in the short period of time they were not in his field of vision—several seconds at most, scarcely any time at all. Mr. Blank knows that he is not in top form, that his mind is not working as well as it ought to, but he also knows that he is no worse now than he was when the day began, which would dispense with the stroke theory, and if he has lost the ability to read, how could he have made the two recent additions to his list of names? He sits down on the edge of the narrow bed and wonders if he didn't doze off for a few minutes after Sophie left the room. He doesn't remember having fallen asleep, but in the end that is the only explanation that makes sense. A fifth person entered the room, a person who was not Anna or Flood or Fair or Sophie, and switched the labels during Mr. Blank's brief, now forgotten plunge into oblivion.
An enemy is stalking the premises, Mr. Blank says to himself, perhaps several or many of them working in league with one another, and their only intention is to frighten him, to disorient him, to make him think he is losing his mind, as if they were trying to persuade him that the shadow-beings lodged in his head had transformed themselves into living phantoms, bodiless souls conscripted to invade his little room and cause as much havoc as possible. But Mr. Blank is a man of order, and he is offended by the childish mischief-making of his captors. From long experience, he has come to appreciate the importance of precision and clarity in all things, and during the years when he was sending out his charges on their various missions around the world, he always took great pains to write up his reports on their activities in a language that would not betray the truth of what they saw and thought and felt at each step along the way. It will not do, then, to call a chair a desk or a desk a lamp. To indulge in such infantile whimsy is to throw the world into chaos, to make life intolerable for all but the mad. Mr. Blank has not reached the point where he cannot identify objects that do not have their names affixed to them, but there is no question that he is in decline, and he understands that a day might come, perhaps soon, perhaps even tomorrow, when his brain will erode still further and it will become necessary for him to have the name of the thing on the thing in order for him to recognize it. He therefore decides to reverse the damage created by his unseen enemy and return each one of the scrambled labels to its proper spot.
The job takes longer to complete than he thinks it will, for Mr. Blank soon learns that the strips of tape on which the words have been written are endowed with almost supernatural powers of adhesion, and to peel one of them off the surface to which it is attached requires unstinting concentration a
nd effort. Mr. Blank begins by using his left thumbnail to pry the first strip loose (the word wall, which has landed on the oak board at the foot of the bed), but no sooner does he manage to slide his nail under the lower right-hand corner of the tape than the tip of the nail snaps. He tries again with the nail of his middle finger, which is somewhat shorter and therefore less frangible, and diligently hacks away at the stubborn right-hand corner until enough tape has detached itself from the bed for Mr. Blank to put a small section between his thumb and middle finger and, tugging gently so as not to cause a tear, pull the whole strip from the oak board. A satisfying moment, yes, but one that has required a good two minutes of laborious preparation. Considering that there are twelve strips of tape to be removed in all, and considering that Mr. Blank breaks three more fingernails in the process (thus diminishing the number of usable fingers to six), the reader will understand why it takes him more than half an hour to finish the job.
These strenuous activities have worn out Mr. Blank, and instead of pausing to look around the room and admire his work (which, however small and insignificant it might appear to be, is for him nothing short of a symbolic undertaking to restore harmony to a broken universe), he shuffles off into the bathroom to rinse the sweat from his face. The old dizziness has returned, and he clutches the sink with his left hand as he splashes water onto himself with his right. By the time he turns off the spigot and begins to reach for a towel, he is suddenly feeling worse, worse than he has felt at any moment of the day so far. The trouble seems to be located somewhere in his stomach, but before he can pronounce the word stomach to himself, it is traveling up his windpipe, accompanied by an unpleasant tingling in his jaws. He instinctively clutches the sink with both hands and lowers his head, bracing himself against the attack of nausea that has inexplicably overcome him. He fights against it for a second or two, praying that he can ward off the coming explosion, but it is a hopeless cause, and an instant later he is vomiting into the sink. They've poisoned me! Mr. Blank shouts, once the onslaught is over. The monsters have poisoned me!
