Book of Illusions, The by Auster Paul

Author:Auster, Paul [Auster, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Modern Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9780571246151
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2008-11-15T02:00:00+00:00

After that night, Nora went on telling him everything. It made sense that she should want to share her troubles with someone, but of all the people in the world, of all the potential candidates she could have chosen from, Hector was the one who got the job. He became Nora’s confidant, the repository of information about his own crime, and every Tuesday and Thursday night, as he sat next to her on the davenport and struggled through another one of his lessons, he felt a little more of his brain disintegrate in his head. Life was a fever dream, he discovered, and reality was a groundless world of figments and hallucinations, a place where everything you imagined came true. Did he know who Hector Mann was? Nora actually asked him that question one night. Stegman had come up with a new theory, she said, and after backing out of the affair two months ago, the private eye had called O’Fallon over the weekend and asked for another chance. He’d found out that Brigid had published an article about Hector Mann. Eleven months later, Mann had disappeared, and he wondered if it was just a coincidence that Brigid had disappeared at the same time. What if there was a connection between the two unsolved cases? Stegman couldn’t promise any results, but at least he had something to work on now, and with O’Fallon’s permission, he wanted to pursue it. If he could establish that Brigid had gone on seeing Mann after she wrote the article, there might be some cause for optimism.

No, Hector said, he’d never heard of him. Who was this Hector Mann? Nora didn’t know much about him either. An actor, she said. He’d made some silent comedies a few years ago, but she hadn’t seen any of them. There hadn’t been enough time to go to the movies when she was in college. No, Hector said, he didn’t go very often himself. They cost money, and he’d once read somewhere that movies were bad for your eyes. Nora said that she dimly remembered hearing about the case, but she hadn’t followed it too closely at the time. According to Stegman, Mann had been missing for almost two years. And why had he left? Hector wanted to know. No one was sure, Nora said. He’d just vanished one day, and he hadn’t been heard from since. It didn’t sound too hopeful, Hector said. A man can stay hidden for just so long. If they hadn’t found him by now, that probably meant he was dead. Yes, probably, Nora agreed, and Brigid was probably dead, too. But there were rumors, she continued, and Stegman was going to look into them. What kind of rumors? Hector asked. That maybe he’d gone back to South America, Nora said. That was where he was from. Brazil, Argentina, she couldn’t remember which country, but it was incredible, wasn’t it? How so incredible? Hector asked. That Hector Mann should have been from the same part of the world that he was.

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