The Book of Illusions (28 page)

The bony, liver-spotted hands; the gnarled fingers and thick, protruding veins; the collapsed flesh under his chin; the half-open mouth. He was lying on his back with his arms out over the covers when I entered the room, awake but still, looking up at the ceiling in a kind of trance. When he turned in my direction, however, I saw that his eyes were Hector’s eyes. Furrowed cheeks, grooved forehead, wattled throat, tufted white hair—and yet I recognized the face as Hector’s face. It had been sixty years since he’d worn the mustache and the white suit, but he hadn’t altogether vanished. He’d grown old, he’d grown infinitely old, but a part of him was still there.

Zimmer, he said. Sit down beside me, Zimmer, and turn off the light.

His voice was weak and clogged with phlegm, a soft rumbling of sighs and demi-articulations, but it was loud enough for me to make out what he said. The r at the end of my name had a slight roll to it, and as I reached over and turned off the lamp on the bedside table, I wondered if it wouldn’t be easier for him if we continued in Spanish. After the light was off, however, I saw that a second lamp was on in the far corner of the room—a standing lamp with a broad vellum shade—and that a woman was sitting in a chair beside the lamp. She stood up the moment I glanced over at her, and I must have jumped a little when she did that—not only because I was startled, but because she was tiny, as tiny as the man who had opened the door downstairs. Neither one of them could have been more than four feet tall. I thought I heard Hector laugh behind me (a faint wheeze, the merest whisper of a laugh), and then the woman nodded at me in silence and walked out of the room.

Who was that? I said.

Don’t be alarmed, Hector said. Her name is Conchita. She is part of the family.

I didn’t see her, that’s all. It surprised me.

Her brother Juan lives here, too. They are little people. Strange little people who cannot talk. We depend on them.

Do you want me to turn off the other light?

No, this is good. Not so hard on the eyes. I am content.

I sat down on the chair beside the bed and leaned forward, trying to position myself as close to his mouth as possible. The light from the other side of the room was no stronger than the light of a candle, but the illumination was sufficient for me to see Hector’s face, to look into his eyes. A pale glow hovered over the bed, a yellowish air mixed with shadows and dark.

It is always too soon, Hector said, but I am not afraid. A man like me has to be crushed. Thank you for being here, Zimmer. I did not expect you to come.

Alma was very convincing. You should have sent her to me a long time ago.

You shook up my bones, sir. At first, I could not accept what you did. Now I think I am glad.

I didn’t do anything.

You wrote a book. Again and again, I have read that book, and again and again I have asked myself: why did you choose me? What was your purpose, Zimmer?

You made me laugh. That was all it ever was. You cracked open something inside me, and after that you became my excuse to go on living.

Your book does not say that. It does honor to my old work with the mustache, but you do not talk about yourself.

I’m not in the habit of talking about myself. It makes me uncomfortable.

Alma has mentioned great sorrows, unspeakable pain. If I have helped you to bear that pain, it is perhaps the greatest good I have done.

I wanted to be dead. After listening to what Alma told me this afternoon, I gather you’ve been to that place yourself.

Alma was right to tell you those things. I am a ridiculous man. God has played many jokes on me, and the more you know about them, the better you will understand my films. I look forward to hearing what you say about them, Zimmer. Your opinion is very important to me.

I know nothing about films.

But you study the works of others. I have read those books, too. Your translations, your writings on the poets. It is no accident that you have spent years on the question of Rimbaud. You understand what it means to turn your back on something. I admire a man who can think like that. It makes your opinion important to me.

You’ve managed without anyone’s opinion until now. Why this sudden need to know what others think?

Because I am not alone. Others live here, too, and I must not think only of myself.

From what I’ve been told, you and your wife have always worked together.

Yes, that is true. But there is Alma to consider as well.

The biography?

Yes, the book she is writing. After her mother’s death, I understood that I owed her that. Alma has so little, and it seemed worth it to abandon some of my ideas about myself in order to give her a chance at life. I have begun to act like a father. It is not the worst thing that could have happened to me.

I thought Charlie Grund was her father.

He was. But I am her father, too. Alma is the child of this place. If she can turn my life into a book, then perhaps things will begin to go well for her. If nothing else, it is an interesting story. A stupid story, perhaps, but not without its interesting moments.

You’re saying that you don’t care about yourself anymore, that you’ve given up.

I have never cared about myself. Why should it bother me to turn myself into an example for others? Perhaps it will make them laugh. That would be a good outcome—to make people laugh again. You laughed, Zimmer. Perhaps others will begin to laugh with you.

We were just warming up, just beginning to get into the swing of the conversation, but before I could think of a response to Hector’s last comment, Frieda walked into the room and touched me on the shoulder.

I think we should let him rest now, she said. You can go on talking in the morning.

It was demoralizing to be cut off like that, but I wasn’t in a position to object. Frieda had given me less than five minutes with him, and already he had won me over, already he had made me like him more than I would have thought possible. If a dying man could exert that power, I remarked to myself, imagine what he must have been like at full strength.

I know that he said something to me before I left the room, but I can’t remember what it was. Something simple and polite, but the precise words escape me now.
To be continued
, I think it was, or else
Until tomorrow, Zimmer
, a banal phrase that signified nothing of any great importance—except, perhaps, that he still believed he had a future, however short that future might have been. As I stood up from the chair, he reached out and grabbed my arm. That I do remember. I remember the cold, clawlike feel of his hand, and I remember thinking to myself: this is happening. Hector Mann is alive, and his hand is touching me now. Then I remember telling myself to remember what that hand felt like. If he didn’t live until morning, it would be the only proof that I had seen him alive.

A
fter those first hectic minutes, there was a stretch of calm that lasted for several hours. Frieda remained on the second floor, sitting in the chair I had occupied during my visit with Hector, and Alma and I went downstairs to the kitchen, which turned out to be a large, brightly lit room with stone walls, a fireplace, and a number of old appliances that seemed to have been built in the early sixties. I liked being there, and I liked sitting down at the long wooden table next to Alma and feeling her touch my arm in the same spot where Hector had touched me only a moment before. Two different gestures, two different memories—one on top of the other. My skin had become a palimpsest of fleeting sensations, and each layer bore the imprint of who I was.

Dinner was a random collection of hot and cold dishes: lentil soup, hard sausage, cheese, salad, and a bottle of red wine. The food was served to us by Juan and Conchita, the
strange
little people who couldn’t talk
, and while I won’t deny that I was somewhat unnerved by them, I was too preoccupied with other things to give them any real attention. They were twins, Alma said, and they had started working for Hector and Frieda when they were eighteen, more than twenty years ago. I noted their perfectly formed miniature bodies, their crude peasant faces, their effervescent smiles and apparent goodwill, but I was more interested in watching Alma talk to them with her hands than I was in watching them talk to her. It intrigued me that Alma was so fluent in sign language, that she could flick off sentences with a few rapid twirls and swoops of her fingers, and because they were Alma’s fingers, those were the fingers I wanted to watch. It was getting late, after all, and before long we would be going to bed. In spite of everything else that was happening just then, that was the subject I preferred to think about.

Remember the three Mexican brothers? Alma said.

The ones who helped build the original house.

The Lopez brothers. There were four girls in the family as well, and Juan and Conchita are the youngest children of the third sister. The Lopez brothers built most of the sets for Hector’s films. They had eleven sons among them, and my father trained six or seven of the boys as film technicians. They were the crew. The fathers constructed the sets, and the sons worked as camera loaders and dolly operators, sound recorders and propmen, grips and gaffers. This went on for years. I used to play with Juan and Conchita when we were kids. They were the first friends I had in the world.

Eventually, Frieda came downstairs and joined us at the kitchen table. Conchita was washing a plate at the sink (standing on a footstool, working with grown-up efficiency in her seven-year-old’s body), and the moment she caught sight of Frieda, she gave her a long, searching look, as if waiting for instructions. Frieda nodded, and Conchita put down the plate, dried off her hands with a dish towel, and left the room. Nothing had been said, but it was clear that she was going upstairs to sit with Hector, that they were watching over him in shifts.

By my reckoning, Frieda Spelling was seventy-nine years old. After listening to Alma’s descriptions of her, I was prepared for someone ferocious—a blunt, intimidating woman, a larger-than-life character—but the person who sat down with us that evening was subdued, soft-spoken, almost reserved in her manner. No lipstick or makeup, no effort to do anything with her hair, but still feminine, still beautiful in some pared-down, incorporeal way. As I continued to look at her, I began to sense that she was one of those rare people in whom mind ultimately wins out over matter. Age doesn’t diminish these people. It makes them old, but it doesn’t alter who they are, and the longer they go on living, the more fully and implacably they incarnate themselves.

Forgive the confusion, Professor Zimmer, she said. You’ve come at a difficult time. Hector had a bad morning, but when I told him that you and Alma were on your way, he insisted on staying up. I hope it wasn’t too much for him.

We had a good talk, I said. I think he’s happy I came.

Happy might not be the word for it, but he’s something, something very intense. You’ve created quite a stir in this house, Professor. I’m sure you’re aware of that.

Before I could answer her, Alma broke in and changed the subject. Have you been in touch with Huyler? she asked. His breathing doesn’t sound good, you know. It’s much worse than it was yesterday.

Frieda sighed, then rubbed her hands over her face—exhausted from too little sleep, from too much agitation and worry. I’m not going to call Huyler, she said (talking more to herself than to Alma, as if repeating an argument she had gone through a dozen times before), because the only thing Huyler will say is
Bring him to the hospital
, and Hector won’t go to the hospital. He’s sick of hospitals. He made me promise, and I gave him my word. No more hospitals, Alma. So what’s the point in calling Huyler?

Hector has pneumonia, Alma said. He has one lung, and he can barely breathe anymore. That’s why you have to call Huyler.

He wants to die in the house, Frieda said. He’s been telling me that every hour for the past two days, and I’m not going to go against him. I gave him my word.

I’ll drive him to Saint Joseph’s myself if you’re too tired, Alma said.

Not without his permission, Frieda said. And we can’t talk to him now because he’s asleep. We’ll try in the morning, if you like, but I’m not going to do it without his permission.

As the two women went on talking, I looked up and saw that Juan was perched on a footstool in front of the stove, scrambling eggs in a frying pan. When the food was ready, he transferred it onto a plate and carried it over to where Frieda was sitting. The eggs were hot and yellow, steaming up from the blue china in a swirl of vapor—as if the smell of those eggs had become visible. Frieda looked at them for a moment, but she didn’t seem to understand what they were. They could have been a pile of rocks, or an ectoplasm that had dropped down from outer space, but they weren’t food, and even if she did recognize them as food, she had no intention of putting them in her mouth. She poured herself a glass of wine instead, but after one small sip, she put the glass down again. Very delicately, she pushed the glass away from her, and then, using her other hand, she pushed away the eggs.

Bad timing, she said to me. I was hoping to be able to talk to you, to get to know you a little bit, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be possible.

There’s always tomorrow, I said.

Maybe, she said. Right now, I’m only thinking about now.

You should lie down, Frieda, Alma said. When was the last time you slept?

I can’t remember. The day before yesterday, I think. The night before you left.

Well, I’m back now, Alma said, and David’s here, too. You don’t have to take on everything yourself.

I don’t, Frieda said, I haven’t. The little people have been an enormous help, but I have to be there to talk to him. He’s too weak to sign anymore.

Get some rest, Alma said. I’ll stay with him myself. David and I can do it together.

I hope you don’t mind, Frieda said, but I’d feel much better if you stayed here in the house tonight. Professor Zimmer can sleep in the cottage, but I’d rather have you upstairs with me. Just in case something happens. Is that all right? I’ve already had Conchita make up the bed in the big guest room.