Report from the Interior (35 page)

8
. “I’m a thousand years old, and I’ll be here after you are gone.”

9
. Peter was Peter Schubert, the friend who had shared an apartment with you in New York the previous academic year. He had signed up for the Paris program as well, and within days of his arrival he and his girlfriend moved into your small hotel on the rue Clément, directly across from the Marché Saint-Germain. None of you had much money, and the monthly rent of 300 francs (two dollars a day) was about all you could afford. The ever-droll, vastly talented Peter was a musician, and he was hoping to profit from his time in Paris by studying with Nadia Boulanger, the empress of French music teachers, while continuing to earn credits for his undergraduate degree. He got his wish and stayed on for two years working with her, returned to New York, finished up at Columbia, and for most of his adult life has been in Montreal, where he teaches at McGill and directs an orchestra and chorus that specializes in Renaissance and contemporary music. The fantastic Peter and his fantastically beautiful girlfriend, Sue H., were your closest friends during the months you spent in Paris, your neighbors, your constant companions, your family, and without them it is altogether uncertain whether you would have come through your turmoils in one piece. But Peter had an important role to play in another aspect of the story as well, since he was the person who introduced you to the wife of the film producer Alexandre Salkind, a woman named Berta Domínguez D., whom he had met during a year spent in Paris between the end of high school and the beginning of college. Berta is the “Mexican woman” you begin referring to in a letter dated September 25, the person who was responsible for involving you in the film project you discuss in various letters written in the closing weeks of your time in Paris. You stayed in touch with her after you returned to New York, and when you went back to live in Paris several years later (February 1971), her husband—the producer of
The Trial, The Three Musketeers
, and
Superman
—hired you to work for him on several occasions. You recounted those experiences in
Hand to Mouth,
in which you referred to Salkind and Berta as Monsieur and Madame X. They were alive when you published that book, and you wanted to protect their names. Now that they are no longer alive, you see no reason for them to remain anonymous. They are ghosts now, and the only thing that belongs to a ghost is his name.

10
. It’s grim, it’s funny, but at the moment I have only ten francs. That is to say, two dollars. Not much. After today, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I hope my father sends the money soon.

11
. I no longer know what to say. The rain falls constantly, like sand splattering against the sea. The city is ugly. It is cold—autumn has begun. Never will two people be together—the flesh is invisible, too far away to be touched. Everyone speaks without saying anything, without words, without sense. Legs move drunkenly. The angels dance, and dung is everywhere.

I do nothing. I don’t write, I don’t think. Everything has become heavy, hard, painful. There is neither a beginning to beginning nor an end to ending. Each time it’s destroyed, it reappears among its own ruins. I no longer question it. Once I have finished, I turn around and begin again. I say to myself, just a little more, don’t stop now, just a little more and everything will change, and I go on, even if I don’t know why, I go on, thinking each time will be the last time. Yes, I speak, I force the words to make sounds (what for?), these old words, which are no longer mine, these words that fall endlessly from my mouth …

12
. French poet (1927–2012). You had discovered his work in New York the previous spring—three or four poems in a small anthology of contemporary French poets—and after your arrival in Paris, you tracked down his books and began translating him. For the pure pleasure of it—because you found him to be the best and most original of the new French poets. The two of you met in 1971 and remained close friends until his death this past October. In 1974, a book of your Dupin translations was published under the title
Fits and Starts
(Living Hand); a second book of translations,
Selected Poems,
appeared in 1992 (U.S.: Wake Forest University Press; U.K.: Bloodaxe). Two of the pieces in your
Collected Prose
are devoted to Dupin: a 1971 text about his poetry and a series of reminiscences written in 2006 as a surprise for his eightieth birthday, “The History of a Friendship.” Jacques and his wife, Christine, are mentioned in your last book,
Winter Journal
(p. 76): “the very best and kindest of friends—may their names be hallowed forever.”

13
. Allen Mandelbaum (1926–2011). Your uncle by marriage (the husband of your mother’s sister). Lauded translator of Virgil, Dante, Homer, and Ovid, translator of twentieth-century Italians (Ungaretti, Quasimodo, and others), poet, professor, master of tongues (ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and all major European languages)—without question the most brilliant and passionate literary intelligence you have ever known. He was your friend, your counselor, your savior during the early years of your writing life, the first person who believed in what you were doing and supported your ambitions. May his name be hallowed forever.

14
. Alexandre Spengler, whom you met on your first trip to Paris in 1965. He figures prominently in the second part of
The Invention of Solitude
under the name of S.

15
. Your stepfather, Norman Schiff, a labor lawyer and staunch liberal Democrat, was considering a run for Congress. Not long after, he abandoned the idea.

16
. Contemporary Civilization, a course required for graduation.

17
. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

18
. Footnote in the letter: “A piano piece by Erik Satie.”

19
. It puzzles you that you shared the story of sleeping with another girl with the girl you thought of as your girlfriend, for the genial tone that runs through the letter does not suggest that you and Lydia were on the outs just then. At the same time, you were both young, you had never lived together, you were not planning to get married, and because you were free to do what you wanted, perhaps you felt the story would amuse her, as if it were a story you were sharing with a friend, rather than a lover or (future) spouse.

Other aspects of the letter make you cringe as well, especially the use of the words “fairy” and “queer,” but in 1969 the word “gay” was not widely known, America had not yet come up with a neutral term for homosexuality, and the words of the street all had a pejorative edge to them that sounds ugly today.

2CV
=
Deux Chevaux, the rudimentary French car you had bought for $300 and were driving that summer. It was so small and so light that it was all but useless on American highways. Maximum speed: approximately forty-five miles per hour.

As for Henry K., the person who came back to New York from a forestry camp in Michigan and then mysteriously turned up in the men’s room of the Port Authority bus terminal—you have no memory of who he was, even though he must have been a friend of yours.

There are also some errors in terminology—the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, for example, which you refer to as the Esplanade—but you will let them stand, for that is what you wrote at the time, and a time capsule must never be tampered with.

A
LSO BY
P
AUL
A
USTER

NOVELS

In the Country of Last Things

Moon Palace

The Music of Chance

Leviathan

Mr. Vertigo

Timbuktu

The Book of Illusions

Oracle Night

The Brooklyn Follies

Travels in the Scriptorium

Man in the Dark

Invisible

Sunset Park

NONFICTION

The Invention of Solitude

The Art of Hunger

Why Write?

Hand to Mouth

The Red Notebook

Collected Prose

Winter Journal

SCREENPLAYS

Three Films: Smoke, Blue in the Face, Lulu on the Bridge

The Inner Life of Martin Frost

POETRY

Collected Poems

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

EDITOR

The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR’s
National Story Project

Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P
AUL
A
USTER
is the bestselling author of
Winter Journal
,
Sunset Park
,
Invisible
,
The Book of Illusions
, and
The New York Trilogy
, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis étranger for
Leviathan
, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of
Smoke
, and the Premio Napoli for
Sunset Park
. In 2012 he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He has also been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (
The Book of Illusions
), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (
The Music of Chance
), and the Edgar Award (
City of Glass
). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into forty-three languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

R
EPORT FROM THE
I
NTERIOR
. Copyright © 2013 by Paul Auster. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.henryholt.com

Cover design: Lisa Fyfe