A Life on Paper: Stories Read online

  Delaunay called at the shop three or four times a month. He never came empty-handed. If he happened not to have located an item vet, he was diligent about bringing me a few charming or original baubles that always sold quickly and turned a nice profit. I'd sent him the messenger on Tuesday. He dropped by Saturday morning.

  Delaunay opened his valise and removed a helmet-shaped sauceboat on a pedestal base, hallmarked pre-Empire, and signed Boulanger. I'd sold the piece for nine thousand francs, and counted out three thousand for him on the spot. I would settle with him later for the little knickknacks that rounded out his delivery: a toiletry bag from the time of Louis-Philippe and a gaily decorated billiard cue in its sheepskin sheath.

  "Oh! I almost forgot!" he said, stuffing the money in his pocket.

  He held out an object wrapped in newspaper. A feeling of unease overtook me. Even before undoing the paper, I knew what I'd find inside. At a certain level of insolence, luck no longer amazes us; it terrifies. I finished opening the package and took hold of the snuffbox with a trembling hand. It was indeed as I'd imagined and drawn. The body was of rowan wood. The rectangular lid of yellowed horn was embellished with an engraving of unsophisticated workmanship, depicting a semaphore atop a knoll in a rural setting.

  "The scene is simple and the etching clumsy," said Delaunay. "Midnineteenth century, no doubt. But your client wanted a semaphore, and got one! The configuration of the arms on the tower means `T.' I suppose some Thenard or Tournier, in charge of a signal post, wished to keep some souvenir of his vacation."

  "It's perfect! Perfect!" I said expressionlessly. "My client will be satisfied…"

  "My commission, then?"

  "Right away!"

  I added four hundred francs to the three thousand I had already given him.

  "No new orders for the moment?"

  "No…not yet. Really this snuffbox…It's most uncommon. You have a knack."

  "Yes, yes," he agreed absentmindedly.

  He pocketed the bills, shut his suitcase, bid me farewell, and set off at an easy pace.

  From that day on I knew no sleep. The incident had made the facts plain: all this was unnatural. I should have realized earlier, of course. Even the cleverest, luckiest, most well-connected and zealous broker could not repeat such tours de force week after week. For even if the affair of the snuffbox with a semaphore had impressed me the most, the truth was that Delaunay brought me the most eclectic and singular curios every week.

  I didn't for a moment think him a thief. But then how did he locate the very personal merchandise I asked of him with the required promptness and precision? I'd sooner have believed he'd made a deal with the devil! I don't believe in the devil, but none of the theories I'd put together held up, and I was dying of curiosity.

  I waited until I'd taken a few more orders and passed them on to Delaunay, and then I put Lambert on his trail. Lambert was a private eye. I'd made his acquaintance during a love affair that was, as they say of certain illnesses, painful and protracted. I'd learned to appreciate his seriousness and his discretion. I charged him with tracking Delaunay's every step and keeping me informed from day to day of all his movements. Shabby behavior, maybe-but I wanted to put my mind to rest on the subject.

  One, two, three days went by without a call from Lambert. Furious, I phoned him at his agency. I got his secretary. The girl told me her boss had stuck to Delaunay like gum to the sole of a shoe. So to speak, that is, because Delaunay hardly ever left his place. When he did, he never went far. He frequented a restaurant, a movie theater, and the public library, all a stone's throw from where he lived. He lived alone in two rooms and a kitchen on the highest floor of a modest building. He had no visitors, and barely spoke a word to his neighbors. Lambert hadn't deemed it necessary to inform me of the poverty of his findings. He'd thought it better to wait and learn more before calling.

  I was quite concerned by what was in my eyes a crucial point: "All right, so he isn't going anywhere for the moment. But does he make any calls?"

  "No. Never. He doesn't have a telephone, and never uses the pay phone in the street."

  "What? But there's no such thing as a broker without a phone! He never gave me his number so I'd leave him alone, and he's not in the phone book, but he must have a phone!"

  "Mr. Lambert checked, Mr. Thyll. Mr. Delaunay is unlisted because he doesn't have a phone, simple as that."

  Staggered by this revelation, I hung up after insisting that I be kept abreast of the smallest wrinkle in his routine. I was more intrigued than ever. I'd pictured a frenetic Delaunay, moving heaven and earth, making calls day and night… but he loafed around all day, caught flicks, read paperbacks. He was taking it easy, just as if he wouldn't soon have to deliver a World War I English officer's hat in mint condition; a statuette the subject didn't matter) about eight inches tall and, most importantly, of jade without any saussurite, and more olive than green; and finally a silver sugar bowl with a display stand in the Villard style.

  Five days after my call, in the early evening, while I was closing up, Delaunay appeared, suitcase in hand. He seemed weary. It certainly wasn't from exerting himself for my sake! Ever since my call to order, Lambert had phoned me every night to say that Delaunay hadn't changed his quiet habits in the slightest.

  "Well?" I said.

  "I'm still missing the sugar bowl," he said. "Next time… But the rest was no problem."

  From his suitcase he pulled a heavy object wrapped in newspaper and a splendid box for a regulation English army cap.

  I remained seated long after he'd left, my head in my hands, unmindful of the hour, and of an appointment awaiting me on the other side of Paris. In front of me, atop my desk beside a brown woolen cap encircled by a broad red ribbon, an eight-inch hermit in olive jade, standing firmly on his crooked legs, seemed to taunt me with a goodnatured condescension.

  Eight days later, Delaunay brought me the sugar bowl. And yet I knew perfectly well from Lambert that he'd kept on going to the movies or, locked away in his room, reading the books he'd gotten from his local library.

  I admit that what follows is not to my credit. Nevertheless, you must imagine my state of mind. I no longer thought of anything else. Sleep escaped me. I lost interest in life. Usually quite the gourmand, I picked at my profiteroles, and I must have seemed so tormented that those around me began to worry for my health.

  One afternoon, while Delaunay was at the movies, I broke into his apartment. I'd arranged everything with Lambert. He'd had the keys copied and kept watch in front of the building.

  I was exceedingly uncomfortable. After all, the escapade could cost me quite a bit. My shirt grew damp with sweat just thinking about the headlines: Edmond Thyll, Well-Known Antiques Dealer, Caught Red-Handed in Burglary. But you had to know what you wanted, and I wanted to know.

  The door to Delaunay's opened easily. I slipped through the gap. I closed it without a sound, and started to explore the place. The place: a bare and cheerless foyer, two tastelessly furnished rooms, the kitchenette of a bachelor who takes most of his meals out. I'd been expecting a broker's lair-that is, a mess. Crates stuffed with bric-a-brac, piles of empty frames, tables and small pieces of furniture awaiting restoration, jam jars full of odd bits of molding and keys kept just in case… But nothing of the sort. No artistic touches. Nothing in the least picturesque. It was clean, well-ordered, impersonal to an unusual degree. The best broker in the business put out his cigarettes in complimentary ashtrays of enameled metal, with ads in the bottom, and kept his pens in an empty mustard jar.

  I cursed my own foolishness and slumped into a chair. What had I been hoping for? That Delaunay might have been so kind as to scrawl his secret on the wall? I staved seated for a long moment, contemplating his pitiful furniture with a confounded eye. And little by little the notion of writing made its way into my mind. Delaunay might not've written his secret on the wall, but maybe he'd written it somewhere else. He lived alone. Lonely people write. I myself began a novel after
every break-up, only to abandon it joyously each time I found a new companion. The human heart is a vase filled with humors and tears. One good blow, and out splash its contents. Neglect it, and it rots; parasites proliferate, spin out their filaments, mount an assault on the walls, scale them, and spread…

  I leapt up and ran to the bed. In the drawer of the bedside table, I found a large spiral notebook. I opened it to a page at random and read, in a low voice, the first lines my eyes fell across:

  These lines might have seemed obscure, but I was certain right away of holding, in this notebook, the key to the mystery. I tucked it in my coat and left the apartment.

  That day I photocopied the notebook, and read it that night. I meant to have Lambert replace the original the next day, and I'd already called and told him to come pick it up in the morning, but this turned out to be unnecessary. I'd just opened up shop when Delaunay walked in.

  He headed straight for me. "My manuscript! Give it back!"

  "What are you talking about, my friend?"

  He shook his head menacingly. "You broke into my apartment yesterday afternoon-you, or someone you hired! A manuscript was stolen… the manuscript for a novel. Give it back, if you know what's good for you."

  "What makes you think-"

  He cut me off in a voice trembling with anger. "Who else could it have been?"

  I'm no warrior. I gave up trying to outsmart him. "All right, all right, I'll give it back."

  Despite himself, his face expressed an unspeakable relief.

  I took the notebook from the desk drawer where I'd placed it while waiting for Lambert. Delaunay tore it from my hands.

  "Why did you do it?" His voice was almost as tense as before.

  I wanted to know. Now I know."

  "It's only a novel!"

  "A fantastical novel, then"

  "That's right. A fantastical novel."

  In that moment he hated me-I am sure of it but his desire to deceive me as to the nature of the notebook forced him to keep his hatred in check.

  "It was inspired by my work;" he went on. "You've read it? What did you think?"

  "It's a… disturbing tale. I'd like to know how it ends."

  "You'll find out if it's published someday."

  "… or by reading the newspapers. But in that case I'd be the only one to know what story had just come to an end."

  Our gazes met head-on. He was the first to lower his eyes.

  "You'll have to hire another broker;" said he, lifting his gaze once more.

  "No one could ever match you. If you agreed to stay, I'd increase your percentage. I know-"

  I shut my mouth. I'd almost added that from now on I knew how much each piece cost him. I couldn't think about the pages in the notebook devoted to what he called "the bar" without trembling. I had never read anything more terrifying.

  money's secondary," he said. "I want to work in a climate in of trust. And I no longer trust you."

  I have never seen him again since that morning. A few weeks later, I learned that he'd teamed up with Nedelkovich, one of my most gifted competitors.

  All I have left of this little adventure is the photocopy of Delaunay's diary. I made another copy, and had them both bound. The first I keep by my bedside. I often reread it, and reflect upon it. The second is tucked safely away in a deposit box, where these pages will join it when they come back, in turn, from the binder's. Let posterity make of them what it will. As for me, I believe I have done my duty in thus preserving a part of the only diary of the fantastic in the history of literature. For God knows what may happen to Delaunay and his notebook, and to the pages that he will, without a doubt, keep writing every day, every night, upon returning from his expeditions.

  Lozere, April 1988

  The Excursion

  e didn't know who he was. We never do know much of what goes on. We're too far away from it all. Be it fashion, progress, war, or people's reputations, few things make their way out here. Everything is foreign to us, as though we took part only on an honorary basis in the human race. All we know is wind and rain and the sound of waves on the rocks. Our few visitors find it sad out here. They never stay. After the excursion, they hurry back quick as they can to civilization, to the sunny shallows, as though out here were the depths: the depths of what, God alone knows.

  But they're wrong. It's not sad out here-well, maybe just a bit, in an infinitely gentle way. You have to be born here, and not have known anything else. Then you'd understand, you'd see how it cradles and calms you, lulls you to sleep for life. Your eyes stay open, but you're actually asleep, and all is well; nothing, almost nothing really reaches you, rain falls in a curtain of pearls between you and the world, the wind half drowns out the voices and cries.

  I don't know how we found out he was famous. He wasn't the kind to brag. Maybe all he said was that he was in music, and that was enough to ring a bell; then we rummaged around in a closet and came up with an old magazine. A closet at the inn, no doubt, since it's always visitors who bring the books and magazines alike. There's no delivery service here. There isn't even a post office. We entrust our letters to the pharmacist. He stocks up on remedies at the branch depot every two or three weeks. But we rarely write. Who would we write, and what would we say? As for letters to us… well, no one writes us, either. You can't make reservations in advance, not even for the excursion. You come and work something out on the spot with one of the fishermen… So most magazines are at the inn, where they've been forgotten or left behind. The innkeeper saves them. Sometimes, when we stop by to see her for this or that, she pulls them out of the closet and we flip through them together. How terrifying, how bewildering the tumultuous world they depict! Each time I've taken a peek I've thought back for days on the drugged athletes, corrupt congressmen, and two-timing princesses that haunt it, on the dictators, serial killers, and terrorists… and I think how lucky we are to live here, if only just, in the murmur of the wind and the light tap of rain on our roofs.

  As for him, his music had made him famous: it existed like the wind or the rain, since he, too, was in the papers. We got a kick when we found out, since he was the first. Not our first visitor ever, of course, but the first to come bathed in the same aura of fame he enjoyed back beyond the curtain of pearls. The first to matter. You couldn't tell from his face. Without the innkeeper's magazine, how would we have guessed there was music in that head? Music of his very own, like a matchless scent? For we, too, sometimes sing songs or hymns. But it's not the same. I've often thought I'd liked to have heard his music. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it. In the big cities, crowds might flock to his concerts in the big cities, they might call him maestro, but can we tell beauty from its opposite? Do we know what we like? At any rate, I'm sorry never to have heard his work. If I really wanted… there are recordings, after all. All I'd have to do is get them through the pharmacist. I'd find someone to lend me a record player, or order one at the co-op… everything's always very complicated, though never really out of reach. That's the worst part. Nothing's really out of reach, but nothing ever gets done. A pity… I'll probably never hear his music.

  He arrived one night on horseback. He dismounted, or fell off, more like; happens to all of them, after ten long hours in the saddle through dune, marsh, and peat bog. The innkeeper's used to it. She serves them soup and puts them to bed. They sleep in the next day, and when they make a showing at last, it's to go down to the port, one hand on their aching backs. There they wait, nursing a mug of mulled wine, for the fishermen to return. It might not be their favorite, but the barman hasn't much else to offer, so mulled wine it is. Between sips they watch us in the low, dark room. Their gazes dart about, lingering here on one face, alighting there on another, their nostrils flaring. Back home, in their well-lighted cafes and eateries, where everything is new, clean, smooth, and gleaming, it doesn't smell of rain, tides, mulled wine, and mildew like it does here. The odors disorient them, doubtless even sicken them a bit. Then they study us with a curiosity tin
ged with worry. It's true that we live in the nearness of myth, that since childhood the air we breathe has been as though suffused by it, so much so that visitors start imagining things. They tell themselves that what they've come in the middle of the journey of their lives (or for some, even later) to find, we've always known, which confers on us a certain… if not superiority, then uniqueness at least. But it's not true. They have no reason to envy us. We and they are equally as helpless, as naked before it. What advantage will the fisherman who takes them out tomorrow have over them, once they settle on a price for the excursion? Well, he knows where he's going. He'll take them to the edge of that mystery they alone will brush. On the way back to port they'll no longer be the same; there'll be something feverish in their eyes that wasn't there before. The skipper's gaze won't have changed.

  The maestro did what all the tourists do. He sat himself down in a corner of the bar and, after ordering, asked the barman, who said, "Of course, a number of fishermen take people out for a price. Just wait till the boats get back, and I'll point out a dependable soul" The maestro seemed reassured: it was just like he'd been told it would be. So he nursed his mulled wine, setting his mug down and rubbing his hands together between sips. He waited a long time. He had many more mugs without losing patience. I've often said that in the bar at port you don't feel the hours pass. The sands of time there are so flowing and fine-grained they never stick in the neck of the glass.

  Only three or four sailors make the trip, due to low demand and the very real danger, even if you take all the necessary precautions. But it's not just that. Those who used to go but don't anymore will tell you it's too hard. Before the spectacle of utmost pleasure and utmost pain, you must carry on, never quite knowing what has caused it. "It's cruel," they say, "it's filthy. You can't stomach it for long. It's not about the money: " Those who keep making the trip rarely speak a word. As they grow inured to their singular trade, they say less and less about it. When they're too old to go out to sea, their silence betrays them; you can pick them out as they while away afternoons, even entire evenings, at the bar, mute, back hunched, pensively rubbing their hands before a mug of wine gone cold.