Day/Night: Travels in the Scriptorium and Man in the Dark

Author:Auster, Paul [Auster, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2013-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Frisk said he won a Pulitzer Prize about twenty years ago. If his name isn’t on the list, then we’re home free. If it is, then watch out, little Flora. We’re in for some big trouble.

It won’t be, Owen. Count on it. Brill doesn’t exist, so his name can’t be there.

But it is there. August Brill, winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. They look further, and within minutes they have uncovered vast amounts of information, including biographical data from Who’s Who in America (born NYC, 1935; married Sonia Weil, 1957, divorced 1975; married Oona McNally, 1976, divorced 1981; daughter, Miriam, born 1960; B.A. from Columbia, 1957; honorary doctorates from Williams College and the Pratt Institute; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; author of more than 1,500 articles, reviews, and columns for magazines and newspapers; book editor of the Boston Globe, 1972–1991), a Web site containing over four hundred of his pieces written between 1962 and 2003, as well as a number of photographs taken of Brill in his thirties, forties, and fifties, leaving no doubt that these are younger versions of the old man in the wheelchair parked in front of the white clapboard house in Vermont.

Brick and Flora are sitting side by side at a small desk in the bedroom, their eyes fixed on the screen in front of them, too afraid to look at each other as they watch their hopes turn to dust. At last, Flora switches off the laptop and says in a low, quavering voice: I guess I was wrong, huh?

Brick stands up and begins pacing around the room. Do you believe me now? he asks. This Brill, this goddamn August Brill … I’d never even heard of him until yesterday. How could I have made it up? I’m not smart enough to have thought of half the things I’ve told you, Flora. I’m just a guy who performs magic tricks for little kids. I don’t read books, I don’t know anything about book critics, and I’m not interested in politics. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve just come from a place that’s in the middle of a civil war. And now I have to kill a man.

He sits down on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by the ferocity of his situation, by the sheer injustice of what has happened to him. Watching Brick with worried eyes, Flora walks across the room and sits down beside him. She puts her arms around her husband, leans her head against his shoulder, and says: You’re not going to kill anyone.

I have to, Brick answers, staring down at the floor.

I don’t know what to think or not to think, Owen, but I’m telling you now, you’re not going to kill anyone. You’re going to leave that man alone.

I can’t.

Why do you think I married you? Because you’re a sweet person, my love, a kind and honest person. I didn’t marry a killer. I married you, my funny Owen Brick, and I’m not going to stand by and let you murder someone and spend the rest of your life in prison.

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