The Book of Illusions (13 page)

The irony was that I was aware of all this. Shivering in my wet clothes, eager to get back and change into something warm, I nevertheless made a conscious effort to drive as slowly as I could. That’s what saved me, I suppose, but at the same time it also could have been what caused the accident. If I had been driving faster, I probably would have been more alert, more attuned to the vagaries of the road, but after a while my mind began to wander, and eventually I fell into one of those long, pointless meditations that only seem to occur when you’re driving alone in a car. In this case, if I remember correctly, it had to do with quantifying the ephemeral acts of daily life. How much time had I spent in the past forty years lacing up my shoes? How many doors had I opened and closed? How often had I sneezed? How many hours had I lost looking for objects I couldn’t find? How many times had I stubbed my toe or banged my head or blinked away something that had crept into my eye? I found it to be a rather pleasant exercise, and I kept adding to the list as I sloshed my way through the darkness. About twenty miles out of Brattleboro, on an open stretch of road between the towns of T—— and West T——, just three miles before the turnoff that would take me up the dirt road to my house, I saw the eyes of an animal gleaming in the headlights. An instant later, I saw that it was a dog. He was twenty or thirty yards ahead, a wet and ragged creature blundering through the night, and contrary to what most dogs do when they’re lost, he wasn’t traveling on the side of the road but trotting down the center of it—or just to the left of center, which put him smack in the middle of my lane. I swerved to avoid hitting him, and at the same moment I put my foot on the brake. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but I had already done it before I could tell myself not to, and because the surface of the road was wet and oily from the rain, the tires didn’t hold. I skidded across the yellow line, and before I could swing back the other way, the truck rammed into a utility pole.

I had my seat belt on, but the jolt knocked my left arm against the wheel, and with all the groceries suddenly flying out of their bags, a can of tomato juice sprang up and struck me on the chin. My face hurt like hell, and my forearm was throbbing, but I could still flex my hand, could still open and close my mouth, and I concluded that no bones had been broken. I should have felt relieved, lucky to have escaped without any serious injuries, but I was in no mood to count my blessings and speculate on how much worse it could have been. This was bad enough, and I was furious with myself for having banged up the truck. One headlight was knocked out; the fender was crumpled; the front end was smashed in. The engine was still running, though, but when I tried to back out and drive away, I discovered that the front tires were half submerged in mud. It took me twenty minutes of shoving in the glop and rain to get the thing unstuck, and by then I was too wet and exhausted to bother cleaning up the groceries that had been tossed around the inside of the cab. I just sat down behind the wheel, backed up into the road, and took off. As I later found out, I finished the drive home with a package of frozen peas wedged into the small of my back.

It was already past eleven o’clock when I pulled up in front of my house. I was shivering in my clothes, my jaw and arm were aching, and I was in a foul temper. Expect the unexpected, they say, but once the unexpected happens, the last thing you expect is that it will happen again. My guard was down, and because I was still brooding about the dog and the utility pole, still going over the details of the accident as I climbed out of the truck, I didn’t notice the car that was parked to the left of the house. My headlight hadn’t swept over in that direction, and when I cut the motor and turned off the light, everything went dark around me. The rain had slackened by then, but it was still drizzling, and there were no lights on in the house. Thinking that I would be back before the sun went down, I hadn’t bothered to turn on the light above the front door. The sky was black. The ground was black. I groped my way to the house by memory and feel, but I couldn’t see a thing.

It was common practice in southern Vermont to leave your house unlocked, but I didn’t do that. I dead-bolted the door every time I went out. It was a stubborn ritual that I refused to break, even if I was going to be gone for only five minutes. Now, as I fumbled with my keys for the second time that night, I understood how stupid these precautions were. I had effectively locked myself out of my own house. The keys were already in my hand, but there were six of them on the chain, and I had no idea which was the right one. I blindly patted the door, trying to locate the lock. Once I had found it, I chose one of the keys at random and maneuvered it into the hole. It went halfway in, and then it got stuck. I would have to try another one, but before I did that, I would have to pull the first one out. That took a good deal more wiggling than I had anticipated. At the last moment, just as I was unjamming the final notch from the hole, the key gave a little jerk, and the key chain slithered out of my hand. It clattered against the wooden steps, then bounced God knows where into the night. And so the journey ended in the same way it had begun: crawling on all fours and cursing under my breath, searching for a set of invisible keys.

I couldn’t have been at it for more than two or three seconds when a light went on in the yard. I glanced up, instinctively turning my head toward the light, and before I had a chance to be afraid, before I could even register what was happening, I saw that a car was sitting there—a car that had no business being on my property—and that a woman was getting out of it. She opened a large red umbrella, slammed the door shut behind her, and the light went out. Do you need some help? she said. I scrambled to my feet, and at that instant another light went on. The woman was pointing a flashlight at my face.

Who the fuck are you? I asked.

You don’t know me, she answered, but you know the person who sent me.

That’s not good enough. Tell me who you are, or I’ll call the cops.

My name is Alma Grund. I’ve been waiting here for over five hours, Mr. Zimmer, and I need to talk to you.

And who’s the person who sent you?

Frieda Spelling. Hector’s in bad shape. She wants you to know that, and she wanted me to tell you that there isn’t much time.

W
e found the keys with her flashlight, and when I opened the door and stepped into the house, I flicked on the lights in the living room. Alma Grund came in after me—a short woman in her mid-to late thirties, dressed in a blue silk blouse and tailored gray pants. Medium-length brown hair, high heels, crimson lipstick, and a large leather purse slung over her shoulder. When she walked into the light, I saw that there was a birthmark on the left side of her face. It was a purple stain about the size of a man’s fist, long enough and broad enough to resemble the map of some imaginary country: a solid mass of discoloration that covered more than half her cheek, starting at the corner of her eye and running down to her jaw. Her hair was cut in such a way as to obscure most of it, and she held her head at an awkward tilt to prevent the hair from moving. It was an ingrained gesture, I supposed, a habit acquired after a lifetime of self-consciousness, and it gave her an air of clumsiness and vulnerability, the demeanor of a shy girl who preferred looking down at the carpet to meeting you in the eye.

On any other night, I probably would have been willing to talk to her—but not that night. I was too annoyed, too put out by what had already happened, and the only thing I wanted was to peel off my wet clothes, take a hot bath, and go to bed. I had shut the door behind me after turning on the living room lights. Now I opened it again and politely asked her to leave.

Just give me five minutes, she said. I can explain everything.

I don’t like it when people trespass on my property, I said, and I don’t like it when people jump out at me in the middle of the night. You don’t want me to have to throw you out of here, do you?

She looked up at me then, surprised by my vehemence, frightened by the undertow of rage in my voice. I thought you wanted to see Hector, she said, and as she spoke those words she took a few more steps into the house, removing herself from the vicinity of the door in case I was planning to carry out my threat. When she turned around and faced me again, I could see only her right side. She looked different from that angle, and I saw that she had a delicate, roundish face, with very smooth skin. Not unattractive, finally; perhaps almost pretty. Her eyes were dark blue, and there was a quick, nervous intelligence in them that reminded me a little of Helen.

I’m not interested in what Frieda Spelling has to say anymore, I said. She kept me waiting for too long, and I had to work too hard to get over it. I’m not going to go there again. Too much hope. Too much disappointment. I don’t have the stamina for it. As far as I’m concerned, the story is over.

Before she could answer me, I finished off my little harangue with an aggressive parting shot. I’m going to take a bath, I said. When I’m done with the bath, I expect you to be gone from here. Please be good enough to close the door on your way out.

I turned my back on her and started walking toward the stairs, determined to ignore her now and wash my hands of the whole business. Halfway up the steps, I heard her say: You wrote such a brilliant book, Mr. Zimmer. You have the right to know the real story, and I need your help. If you don’t hear me out, terrible things are going to happen. Just listen to me for five minutes. That’s all I ask.

She was presenting her case in the most melodramatic terms possible, but I wasn’t going to let it affect me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I turned around and spoke to her from the loggia. I’m not going to give you five seconds, I said. If you want to talk to me, call me tomorrow. Better yet, write me a letter. I’m not so good on the phone. And then, not bothering to wait for her reaction, I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

I lingered in the tub for fifteen or twenty minutes. Add on another three or four minutes to dry myself off, two more minutes to examine my chin in the mirror, and then another six or seven to put on a fresh set of clothes, and I must have stayed upstairs for close to half an hour. I wasn’t in any rush. I knew that she would still be there when I went downstairs again, and I was still in an ugly humor, still seething with pent-up belligerence and animosity. I wasn’t afraid of Alma Grund, but my own anger frightened me, and I had no idea what was in me anymore. There had been that outburst at the Tellefsons’ party the previous spring, but I had kept myself hidden since then, and I had lost the habit of talking to strangers. The only person I knew how to be with now was myself—but I wasn’t really anyone, and I wasn’t really alive. I was just someone who pretended to be alive, a dead man who spent his days translating a dead man’s book.

She began with a stream of apologies, looking up at me from the ground floor as I stepped out onto the loggia, asking me to forgive her for her bad manners and explaining how sorry she was to have barged in on me without warning. She wasn’t someone who lurked around people’s houses at night, she said, and she hadn’t meant to scare me. When she knocked on my door at six o’clock, the sun had been shining. She had mistakenly assumed that I would be at home, and if she wound up waiting in the yard for all those hours, it was only because she thought I would be returning at any moment.

As I descended the stairs and made my way into the living room, I saw that she had brushed her hair and put on a new coat of lipstick. She looked more pulled together now—less dowdy, less unsure of herself—and even as I walked toward her and asked her to sit down, I sensed that she wasn’t quite as weak or intimidated as I had thought she was.

I’m not going to listen to you until you’ve answered some questions, I said. If I’m satisfied with what you tell me, I’ll give you a chance to talk. If not, I’m going to ask you to leave, and I never want to see you again. Understood?

Do you want long answers or short answers?

Short answers. As short as possible.

Just tell me where to begin, and I’ll do my best.

The first thing I want to know is why Frieda Spelling didn’t write back to me.

She got your second letter, but just when she sat down to answer you, something happened that prevented her from continuing.

For a whole month?

Hector fell down the stairs. In one part of the house, Frieda was sitting at her desk with a pen in her hand, and in another part of the house Hector was walking toward the stairs. It was eerie how close together those two events were. Frieda wrote three words—
Dear Professor Zimmer
—and at that moment Hector tripped and fell. His leg was broken in two places. Some ribs were cracked. There was a nasty bump on the side of his head. A helicopter came to the ranch, and he was flown to a hospital in Albuquerque. During the operation to set his leg, he suffered a heart attack. They transferred him to the cardiac unit, and then, just when it looked like he was recovering, he came down with pneumonia. It was touch and go for a couple of weeks. Three or four times, we thought we were going to lose him. It just wasn’t possible to write, Mr. Zimmer. Too much was happening, and Frieda couldn’t think about anything else.

Is he still in the hospital?

He came home yesterday. I took the first plane out this morning, landed in Boston at around two-thirty, and drove up here in a rented car. It’s faster than writing a letter, isn’t it? One day instead of three or four, maybe even five. In five days, Hector could be dead.

Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me?

I didn’t want to risk it. It would have been too easy for you to hang up on me.

And why should you care? That’s my next question. Who are you, and why are you involved in this?

I’ve known them all my life. They’re very close to me.

You’re not telling me you’re their daughter, are you?

I’m Charlie Grund’s daughter. You might not remember the name, but I’m sure you’ve come across it. You’ve probably seen it dozens of times.