by Paul Auster
Even now, I’m at a loss to understand Fanny’s behavior. One could dismiss the whole thing, I suppose, and say that she was simply amusing herself with a brief romp while her husband was out of town. But if sex was all she’d been after, it made no sense to have chosen me as the person to have it with. Given my friendship with Ben, I was the last person she would have turned to. She might have been acting out of revenge, of course, seizing on me as a way to square her accounts with Ben, but in the long run I don’t think that explanation goes deep enough. It presupposes a kind of cynicism that Fanny never really possessed, and too many questions are left unanswered. It’s also possible that she thought she knew what she was doing and then began to lose her nerve. A classic case of cold feet, as it were, but then what to make of the fact that she never hesitated, that she never showed the slightest glimmer of regret or indecision? Right up to the last moment, it never even crossed my mind that she had any doubts about me. If the affair ended as abruptly as it did, it had to be because she was expecting it to, because she had known it would happen that way all along. This seems perfectly plausible. The only problem is that it contradicts everything she said and did during the three weeks we spent together. What looks like a clarifying thought is finally no more than another snag. The moment you accept it, the conundrum starts all over again.
It wasn’t all bad for me, however. In spite of how it ended, the episode had a number of positive results, and I look back on it now as a critical juncture in my own private story. For one thing, I gave up the idea of returning to my marriage. Loving Fanny had shown me how futile that would have been, and I laid those thoughts to rest once and for all. There’s no question that Fanny was directly responsible for this change of heart. If not for her, I never would have been in a position to meet Iris, and from then on my life would have developed in an altogether different way. A worse way, I’m convinced; a way that would have turned me toward the bitterness that Fanny had warned me against the first night we spent together. By falling in love with Iris, I fulfilled the prophecy she made about me that same night—but before I could believe that prophecy, I first had to fall in love with Fanny. Was that what she was trying to prove to me? Was that the hidden motive behind our whole crazy affair? It seems preposterous even to suggest it, and yet it tallies with the facts more closely than any other explanation. What I’m saying is that Fanny threw herself at me in order to save me from myself, that she did what she did to prevent me from going back to Delia. Is such a thing possible? Can a person actually go that far for the sake of someone else? If so, then Fanny’s actions become nothing less than extraordinary, a pure and luminous gesture of self-sacrifice. Of all the interpretations I’ve considered over the years, this is the one I like best. That doesn’t mean it’s true, but as long as it could be true, it pleases me to think it is. After eleven years, it’s the only answer that still makes any sense.
Once Sachs returned to New York, I planned to avoid seeing him. I had no idea if Fanny was going to tell him what we’d done, but even if she kept it a secret, the prospect of having to hide it from him myself struck me as intolerable. Our relations had always been too honest and straightforward for that, and I was in no mood to start telling him stories now. I figured he would see through me anyway, and if Fanny happened to tell him what we’d been up to, I would be laying myself open to all kinds of disasters. One way or the other, I wasn’t prepared to see him. If he knew, then acting as if he didn’t know would be an insult. And if he didn’t know, then every minute I spent with him would be a torture.
I worked on my novel, I took care of David, I waited for Maria to return to the city. Under normal circumstances, Sachs would have called me within two or three days. We rarely went longer than that without being in touch, and now that he was back from his Hollywood adventure, I fully expected to hear from him. But three days went by, and then another three days, and little by little I understood that Fanny had let him in on the secret. No other explanation was possible. I assumed that meant our friendship was over and that I would never see him again. Just when I was beginning to come to grips with this idea (on the seventh or eighth day), the telephone rang, and there was Sachs on the other end of the line, sounding in top form, cracking jokes with the same enthusiasm as ever. I tried to match his cheerfulness, but I was too taken aback to do a very good job of it. My voice shook, and I said all the wrong things. When he asked me to come to dinner that night, I made up an excuse and said I would call back tomorrow to work out something else. I didn’t call. Another day or two went by, and then Sachs rang up again, still sounding chipper, as though nothing had changed between us. I did my best to fend him off, but this time he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He offered to buy me lunch that same afternoon, and before I could think of a way to wriggle out of it, I heard myself accept his invitation. In less than two hours, we were supposed to meet at Costello’s Restaurant, a little diner on Court Street just a few blocks from my house. If I didn’t show up, he would simply walk over to my place and knock on the door. I hadn’t been quick enough, and now I was going to have to face the music.
He was already there when I arrived, sitting in a booth at the back of the restaurant. The New York Times was spread out on the Formica table in front of him, and he seemed engrossed in what he was reading, smoking a cigarette and absentmindedly flicking ashes onto the floor after each puff. This was early 1980, the days of the hostage crisis in Iran, the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia, the war in Afghanistan. Sachs’s hair had grown lighter in the California sun, and his bronzed face was smattered with freckles. He looked good, I thought, more rested than the last time I’d seen him. As I walked toward the table, I wondered how close I would have to get before he noticed I was there. The sooner it happened, the worse our conversation was going to be, I said to myself. If he looked up, that would mean he was anxious—which would prove that Fanny had already talked to him. On the other hand, if he kept his nose buried in his paper, that would show he was calm, which might mean that Fanny hadn’t talked to him. Each step I took through the crowded restaurant would be a sign in my favor, I felt, a small piece of evidence that he was still in the dark, that he still didn’t know I had betrayed him. As it happened, I got all the way to the booth without receiving a single glance.
“That’s a nice suntan you’ve got there, Mr. Hollywood,” I said.
As I slid onto the bench across from him, Sachs jerked up his head, stared blankly at me for a moment or two, and then smiled. It was as though he hadn’t been expecting to see me, as though I had suddenly appeared in the booth by accident. That was taking it too far, I thought, and in the small silence that preceded his answer, it occurred to me that he had only been pretending to be distracted. In that case, the newspaper was no more than a prop. The whole time he’d been sitting there waiting for me to come, he’d merely been turning pages, blindly scanning the words without bothering to read them.
“You don’t look too bad yourself,” he said. “The cold weather must agree with you.”
“I don’t mind it. After spending last winter in the country, this feels like the tropics.”
“And what have you been up to since I went out there to massacre my book?”
“Massacring my own book,” I said. “Every day, I add another few paragraphs to the catastrophe.”
“You must have quite a bit by now.”
“Eleven chapters out of thirteen. I suppose that means the end is in sight.”
“Any idea when you’ll be finished?”
“Not really. Three or four months, maybe. But it could be twelve. And then again, it could be two. It gets harder and harder to make any predictions.”
“I hope you’ll let me read it when you’re done.”
“Of course you can read it. You’ll be the first person I give it to.”
At that point, the waitress arrived to take our orders. That’s how I remember it in any case: an early interruption, a brief pause in the flow of our talk. Since moving into th
e neighborhood, I had been going to Costello’s for lunch about twice a week, and the waitress knew who I was. She was an immensely fat and friendly woman who waddled among the tables in a pale green uniform and kept a yellow pencil stuck in her frizzy gray hair at all times. She never wrote with that pencil, using one she stored in her apron pocket instead, but she liked to have it on hand in case there was an emergency. I’ve forgotten this woman’s name now, but she used to call me “hon” and to stand around and chat with me whenever I came in—never about anything in particular, but always in a way that made me feel welcome. Even with Sachs there that afternoon, we went through one of our typically long-winded exchanges. It doesn’t matter what we talked about, but I mention it in order to show what kind of mood Sachs was in that day. Not only did he not talk to the waitress (which was highly unusual for him), but the moment she walked off with our orders, he picked up the conversation exactly where we had stopped, as if we had never been interrupted. It was only then that I began to understand how agitated he must have been. Later on, when the food was served, I don’t think he ate more than two or three bites of it. He smoked and drank coffee, dousing his cigarettes in the flooded saucers.
“The work is what counts,” he said, closing up the newspaper and tossing it onto the bench beside him. “I just want you to know that.”
“I don’t think I follow you,” I said, realizing that I followed him all too well.
“I’m telling you not to worry, that’s all.”
“Worry? Why should I worry?”
“You shouldn’t,” Sachs said, breaking into a warm, astonishingly radiant smile. For a moment or two, he looked almost beatific. “But I’ve known you long enough to feel pretty certain that you will.”
“Am I missing something, or have we decided to talk in circles today?”
“It’s all right, Peter. That’s the only point I’m trying to make. Fanny told me, and you don’t have to walk around feeling bad about it.”
“Told you what?” It was a ridiculous question, but I was too stunned by his composure to say anything else.
“What happened while I was gone. The bolt of lightning. The fucking and sucking. The whole bloody thing.”
“I see. Not much left to the imagination.”
“No, not a hell of a lot.”
“So what happens now? Is this the moment when you hand me your card and tell me to contact my seconds? We’ll have to meet at dawn, of course. Somewhere good, somewhere with the appropriate scenic value. The walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, for example, or maybe the Civil War monument at Grand Army Plaza. Something majestic. A place where the sky can dwarf us, where the sunlight can glint off our raised pistols. What do you say, Ben? Is that how you want to do it? Or would you rather get it over with now? American-style. You reach across the table, you punch me in the nose, and then you walk out. Either way is fine with me. I leave it up to you.”
“There’s also a third possibility.”
“Ah, the third path,” I said, all anger and facetiousness. “I hadn’t realized there were so many options available to us.”
“Of course there are. More than we can count. The one I’m thinking of is quite simple. We wait for our food to arrive, we eat it, then I pay the check and we leave.”
“That’s not good enough. There’s no drama in it, no confrontation. We have to force things out into the open. If we back down now, I won’t feel satisfied.”
“There’s nothing to quarrel about, Peter.”
“Yes there is. There’s everything to quarrel about. I asked your wife to marry me. If that isn’t sufficient grounds for a quarrel, then neither one of us deserves to live with her.”
“If you want to get it off your chest, go ahead. I’m perfectly willing to listen. But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No one can care so little about his own life. It’s almost criminal to be so indifferent.”
“I’m not indifferent. It’s just that it was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m not dumb, after all. I know how you feel about Fanny. You’ve always felt that way. It’s written all over you every time you come near her.”
“Fanny was the one who made the first move. If she hadn’t wanted it, nothing would have happened.”
“I’m not blaming you. If I were in your position, I would have done the same thing.”
“That doesn’t make it right, though.”
“It’s not a question of right and wrong. That’s the way the world works. Every man is the prisoner of his pecker, and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. We try to fight it sometimes, but it’s always a losing battle.”
“Is this a confession of guilt, or are you trying to tell me you’re innocent?”
“Innocent of what?”
“Of what Fanny told me. Your carryings-on. Your extracurricular activities.”
“She told you that?”
“At great length. She wound up giving me quite an earful. Names, dates, descriptions of the victims, the whole works. It’s had an impact. Since then, my idea of who you are has been completely altered.”
“I’m not sure you want to believe everything you hear.”
“Are you calling Fanny a liar?”
“Of course not. It’s just that she doesn’t always have a firm grasp of the truth.”
“That sounds like the same thing to me. You’re saying it differently, that’s all.”
“No, I’m telling you that Fanny can’t help what she thinks. She’s convinced herself that I’m unfaithful, and no amount of talk is ever going to dissuade her.”
“And you’re saying that you’re not?”
“I’ve had my lapses, but never to the extent she imagines. Considering how long we’ve been together, it’s not a bad record. Fanny and I have had our ups and downs, but there’s never been a moment when I haven’t wanted to be married to her.”
“So where does she get the names of all these other women?”
“I tell her stories. It’s part of a game we play. I make up stories about my imaginary conquests, and Fanny listens. It excites her. Words have power, after all. For some women, there’s no stronger aphrodisiac. You must have learned that about Fanny by now. She loves dirty talk. And the more graphic you make it, the more turned on she gets.”
“That wasn’t what it sounded like to me. Every time Fanny talked about you, she was dead serious. Not a word about ‘imaginary conquests.’ They were all very real to her.”
“Because she’s jealous, and a part of her insists on believing the worst. It’s happened many times now. At any given moment, Fanny has me conducting a passionate affair with someone or other. It’s been going on for years, and the list of women I’ve slept with keeps getting longer. After a while, I learned it didn’t do any good to deny it. That only made her more suspicious of me, and so rather than tell her the truth, I tell her what she wants to hear. I lie in order to keep her happy.”
“Happiness is hardly the word I’d use for it.”
“To keep us together, then. To keep us in some kind of balance. The stories help. Don’t ask me why, but once I start telling them to her, things clear up between us again. You thought I’d stopped writing fiction, but I’m still at it. My audience is down to just one person now, but she’s the only one who really counts.”
“And you expect me to believe this?”
“Don’t think I’m enjoying myself. It’s not easy to talk about it. But I figure you have a right to know, and I’m doing the best can.”
“And Valerie Maas? You’re telling me that nothing ever went on with her?”
“That’s a name that used to come up often. She’s an editor at one of the magazines I’ve written for. A year or two ago, we had a number of lunches together. Strictly business. We’d discuss my pieces, talk about future projects, that kind of thing. Eventually, Fanny got it into her head that Val and I were having an affair. I can’t say that I wasn’t attracted to her. If the circumstances had been different,
I might have done something stupid. Fanny sensed all that, I think. I probably mentioned Val’s name once too often around the house or made too many flattering remarks about what a good editor she was. But the truth is that Val isn’t interested in men. She’s been living with another woman for the past five or six years, and I couldn’t have gotten anywhere with her even if I’d tried.”
“Didn’t you tell that to Fanny?”
“There wouldn’t have been any point. Once she’s made up her mind, there’s never any talking her out of it.”
“You make her sound so unstable. But Fanny isn’t like that. She’s a solid person, one of the least deluded people I’ve ever met.”
“She is. In many ways, she’s as strong as they come. But she’s also suffered a lot, and the last few years have been hard on her. She wasn’t always like this, you understand. Until four or five years ago, there wasn’t a jealous bone in her body.”
“Five years ago is when I met her. Officially, that is.”
“It’s also when the doctor told her she’d never have any children. Things changed for her after that. She’s been seeing a therapist for the past couple of years, but I don’t think it’s done much good. She feels undesirable. She feels that no man can possibly love her. That’s why she imagines I’m carrying on with other women. Because she thinks she’s failed me. Because she thinks I must be punishing her for having let me down. Once you turn against yourself, it’s hard not to believe that everyone else is against you, too.”
