Read Online Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, Collaborations With Artists, and Interviews by Paul Auster - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul Auster
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afternoon as she shook hands with each of the jurors following the return of the verdict. ‘As long as Harry lived,’ she said to one of them, ‘I was worried. I never knew real happiness. Now I regret that he had to die by my hand. I am as happy now as I ever expect to be….’
“As Mrs. Auster left the court room she was attended by her daughter … and the two younger children, who had waited patiently in the courtroom for the return of the verdict which freed their mother….
“At the county jail Sam Auster … while he cannot understand it all, says he is willing to abide by the decision of the twelve jurors….
“‘Last night when I heard of the verdict,’ he said when interviewed on Sunday morning, ‘I dropped on the floor. I could not believe that she could go clear free after killing my brother and her husband. It is all too big for me. I don’t understand, but I shall let it go now. I tried once to settle it in my way and failed and I can’t do anything now but accept what the court has said.’”
The next day he, too, was released. “‘I am going back to my work in the factory,’ Auster told the District Attorney. ‘Just as soon as I get money enough I am going to raise a head stone over the grave of my brother and then I am going to give my energies to the support of the children of one of my brothers who lived in Austria and who fell fighting in the Austrian army.’
“The conference this morning brought out the fact that Sam Auster is the last of the five Auster brothers. Three of the boys fought with the Austrian army in the world war and all of them fell in battle.”
In the last paragraph of the last article about the case, the newspaper reports that “Mrs. Auster is now planning to take the children and leave for the east within a few days…. It was said that Mrs. Auster decided to take this action on the advice of her attorneys, who told her that she should go to some new home and start life without any one knowing the story of the trial.”
* * *
It was, I suppose, a happy ending. At least for the newspaper readers of Kenosha, the clever Attorney Baker, and, no doubt, for my grandmother. Nothing further is said, of course, about the fortunes of the Auster family. The public record ends with this announcement of their departure for the east.
Because my father rarely spoke to me about the past, I learned very little about what followed. But from the few things he did mention, I was able to form a fairly good idea of the climate in which the family lived.
For example, they moved constantly. It was not uncommon for my father to attend two, or even three different schools in a single year. Because they had no money, life became a series of escapes from landlords and creditors. In a family that had already closed in on itself, this nomadism walled them off entirely. There were no enduring points of reference: no home, no town, no friends that could be counted on. Only the family itself. It was almost like living in quarantine.
My father was the baby, and for his whole life he continued to look up to his three older brothers. As a boy he was known as Sonny. He suffered from asthma and allergies, did well in school, played end on the football team and ran the 440 for the track team at Central High in Newark. He graduated in the first year of the Depression, went to law school at night for a semester or two, and then dropped out, exactly as his brothers had done before him.
The four brothers stuck together. There was something almost medieval about their loyalty to one another. Although they had their differences, in many ways did not even like one another, I think of them not as four separate individuals but as a clan, a quadruplicate image of solidarity. Three of them—the youngest three—wound up as business partners and lived in the same town, and the fourth, who lived only two towns away, had been set up in business by the other three. There was scarcely a day that my
“As Mrs. Auster left the court room she was attended by her daughter … and the two younger children, who had waited patiently in the courtroom for the return of the verdict which freed their mother….
“At the county jail Sam Auster … while he cannot understand it all, says he is willing to abide by the decision of the twelve jurors….
“‘Last night when I heard of the verdict,’ he said when interviewed on Sunday morning, ‘I dropped on the floor. I could not believe that she could go clear free after killing my brother and her husband. It is all too big for me. I don’t understand, but I shall let it go now. I tried once to settle it in my way and failed and I can’t do anything now but accept what the court has said.’”
The next day he, too, was released. “‘I am going back to my work in the factory,’ Auster told the District Attorney. ‘Just as soon as I get money enough I am going to raise a head stone over the grave of my brother and then I am going to give my energies to the support of the children of one of my brothers who lived in Austria and who fell fighting in the Austrian army.’
“The conference this morning brought out the fact that Sam Auster is the last of the five Auster brothers. Three of the boys fought with the Austrian army in the world war and all of them fell in battle.”
In the last paragraph of the last article about the case, the newspaper reports that “Mrs. Auster is now planning to take the children and leave for the east within a few days…. It was said that Mrs. Auster decided to take this action on the advice of her attorneys, who told her that she should go to some new home and start life without any one knowing the story of the trial.”
* * *
It was, I suppose, a happy ending. At least for the newspaper readers of Kenosha, the clever Attorney Baker, and, no doubt, for my grandmother. Nothing further is said, of course, about the fortunes of the Auster family. The public record ends with this announcement of their departure for the east.
Because my father rarely spoke to me about the past, I learned very little about what followed. But from the few things he did mention, I was able to form a fairly good idea of the climate in which the family lived.
For example, they moved constantly. It was not uncommon for my father to attend two, or even three different schools in a single year. Because they had no money, life became a series of escapes from landlords and creditors. In a family that had already closed in on itself, this nomadism walled them off entirely. There were no enduring points of reference: no home, no town, no friends that could be counted on. Only the family itself. It was almost like living in quarantine.
My father was the baby, and for his whole life he continued to look up to his three older brothers. As a boy he was known as Sonny. He suffered from asthma and allergies, did well in school, played end on the football team and ran the 440 for the track team at Central High in Newark. He graduated in the first year of the Depression, went to law school at night for a semester or two, and then dropped out, exactly as his brothers had done before him.
The four brothers stuck together. There was something almost medieval about their loyalty to one another. Although they had their differences, in many ways did not even like one another, I think of them not as four separate individuals but as a clan, a quadruplicate image of solidarity. Three of them—the youngest three—wound up as business partners and lived in the same town, and the fourth, who lived only two towns away, had been set up in business by the other three. There was scarcely a day that my
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