perhaps a crow, perhaps a seagull, he can't tell which…
By now, Mr. Blank has read all he can stomach, and he is not the least bit amused. In an outburst of pent-up anger and frustration, he tosses the manuscript over his shoulder with a violent flick of the wrist, not even bothering to turn around to see where it lands. As it flutters through the air and then thuds to the floor behind him, he pounds his fist on the desk and says in a loud voice: When is this nonsense going to end?
It will never end. For Mr. Blank is one of us now, and struggle though he might to understand his predicament, he will always be lost. I believe I speak for all his charges when I say he is getting what he deserves—no more, no less. Not as a form of punishment, but as an act of supreme justice and compassion. Without him, we are nothing, but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us, for once we are thrown into the world, we continue to exist forever, and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead.
Mr. Blank might have acted cruelly toward some of his charges over the years, but not one of us thinks he hasn't done everything in his power to serve us well. That is why I plan to keep him where he is. The room is his world now, and the longer the treatment goes on, the more he will come to accept the generosity of what has been done for him. Mr. Blank is old and enfeebled, but as long as he remains in the room with the shuttered window and the locked door, he can never die, never disappear, never be anything but the words I am writing on his page.
In a short while, a woman will enter the room and feed him his dinner. I haven't yet decided who that woman will be, but if all goes well between now and then, I will send in Anna. That will make Mr. Blank happy, and when all is said and done, he has probably suffered enough for one day. Anna will feed Mr. Blank his dinner, then wash him and put him to bed. Mr. Blank will lie awake in the dark for some time, listening to the cries of birds in the far distance, but then his eyes will at last grow heavy, and his lids will close. He will fall asleep, and when he wakes up in the morning, the treatment will begin again. But for now it is still the day it has always been since the first word of this report, and now is the moment when Anna kisses Mr. Blank on the cheek and tucks him in, and now is the moment when she stands up from the bed and begins walking toward the door. Sleep well, Mr. Blank. Lights out.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Auster is the bestselling author of twelve previous
Also by Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy (City of Glass • Ghosts • The Locked Room) • 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
White Spaces • The Invention of Solitude • The Art of Hunger • Why Write? • Hand to Mouth • The Red Notebook • Collected Prose
3 Films: Smoke, Blue in the Face, Lulu on the Bridge
Unearth • Wall Writing • Fragments from Cold • Facing the Music • Disappearances: Selected Poems • Collected Poems
The Story of My Typewriter
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
Copyright
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2006 by Paul Auster
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Auster, Paul, 1947-
Travels in the scriptorium / Paul Auster.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Novel.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8145-9
ISBN-10: 0-8050-8145-3
I. Title
PS3551.U77T73 2007
813'.54—dc22 2005055038
Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.
First Edition 2007
Designed by Victoria Hartman
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
