Oracle Night by Paul Auster Read Free Book Online Page B

depression. I was about to say something then, but just as I opened my mouth to offer my opinion, I got another one of my infernal nosebleeds. They had started a month or two before I was put in the hospital, and even though most of my other symptoms had cleared up by now, the nosebleeds had persisted – always striking at the most inopportune moments, it seemed, and never failing to cause me intense embarrassment. I hated not to be in control of myself, to be sitting in a room as I was that night, for example, taking part in a conversation, and then suddenly to notice that blood was pouring out of me, splattering onto my shirt and pants, and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. The doctors had told me not to worry – there were no medical consequences, no signs of impending trouble – but that didn’t make me feel any less helpless or ashamed. Every time my nose gushed blood, I felt like a little boy who’d wet his pants.
    I jumped out of the chair, pressed a handkerchief against my face, and hustled toward the nearest bathroom. Grace asked if I wanted any help, and I must have given her a somewhat peevish answer, although I can’t remember what I said. ‘Don’t bother,’ perhaps, or ‘Leave me alone.’ Something with enough irritation in it to amuse John, in any case, for I can distinctly remember hearing him laugh as I left the room. ‘Old Faithful strikes again,’ he said. ‘Orr’s menstruating schnozz. Don’t let it get you down, Sidney. At least you know you’re not pregnant.’
    There were two bathrooms in the apartment, one on each level of the duplex. Normally, we would have spent the evening downstairs in the dining room and living room, but John’s phlebitic leg had pushed us up to the second floor, since that was where he was spending most of his time now. The upstairs room was a kind of supplementary parlor, a cozy little spot with large bay windows, bookshelves lining three of the walls, and built-in spaces for stereo equipment and TV – the perfect enclave for a recovering invalid. The bathroom on that floor was just off John’s bedroom, and in order to reach the bedroom I had to walk through his study, the place where he wrote. I switched on the light when I entered that room, but I was too involved with my nosebleed to pay any attention to what was in it. I must have spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom squeezing my nostrils and tilting back my head, and until those old remedies began to work, so much liquid flowed out of me that I wondered if I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital for an emergency transfusion. How red the blood looked against the whiteness of the porcelain sink, I thought. How vividly imagined that color was, how aesthetically shocking. The other fluids that came out of us were dull in comparison, the palest of squirts. Whitish spittle, milky semen, yellow pee, green-brown mucus. We excreted autumn and winter colors, but running invisibly through our veins, the very stuff that kept us alive, was the crimson of a mad artist – a red as brilliant as fresh paint.
    After the attack was over, I lingered at the sink for a while, doing what I could to make myself presentable again. It was too late to remove the spots from my clothes (which had hardened into small rusty circles that smeared across the fabric when I tried to rub them out), but I gave my hands and face a thorough washing and wet down my hair, using John’s comb to complete the job. I was feeling a bit less sorry for myself by then, a bit less battered. My shirt and pants were still adorned with ugly polka dots, but the river wasn’t flowing anymore, and the stinging in my nose had mercifully abated.
    As I walked through John’s bedroom and entered his study, I glanced over at his desk. I wasn’t really looking there, just casting my eyes around the room as I headed for the door, but lying out in full view, surrounded by an assortment of pens, pencils, and messy stacks of paper, there was a blue