Read Online In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster - Free Book Online

last belt manufacturer had been out of business for more than five years), and an Old Testament printed on rice paper with calfskin binding and gilt-edged pages. But that was some time ago, she said, and for the past six months she had been losing her touch. She was worn out, too tired to stay on her feet forvery long, and her mind now wandered constantly from her work. Nearly every day she would discover herself walking down a street she did not recognize, turning a corner without knowing where she had just been, entering a neighborhood and thinking she was somewhere else. “It was a miracle that you happened to be there,” she said, as we paused to rest in a doorway. “But it wasn’t an accident. I have prayed to God for so long now that he finally sent someone to rescue me. I know that people don’t talk about God anymore, but I can’t help myself. I think about him every day, I pray to him at night when Ferdinand is asleep, I talk to him in my heart all the time. Now that Ferdinand won’t say anything to me anymore, God is my only friend, the only one who listens to me. I know he is very busy and doesn’t have time for an old woman like me, but God is a gentleman, and he has me on his list. Today, at long last, he paid me a visit. He sent you to me as a sign of his love. You are the dear, sweet child that God has sent to me, and now I am going to take care of you, I am going to do everything I can for you. No more sleeping outside, no more roaming the streets from morning to night, no more bad dreams. All that’s over now, I promise you. As long as I’m alive, you’ll have a place to live, and I don’t care what Ferdinand says. From now on, there will be a roof over your head and food to eat. That’s how I’m going to thank God for what he has done. He has answered my prayers, and now you are my dear, sweet, little child, my darling Anna who came to me from God.”
    Their house was on Circus Lane, deep inside a network of small alleys and dirt paths that wound through the heartof the second census zone. This was the oldest section of the city, and I had been there only once or twice before. Pickings for scavengers were slim in this neighborhood, and I had always been nervous about getting lost in its mazelike streets. Most of the houses were made of wood, and this made for a number of curious effects. Instead of eroding bricks and crumbling stones, with their jagged heaps and dusty residues, things here seemed to lean and sag, to buckle under their own weight, to be twisting themselves slowly into the ground. If the other buildings were somehow flaking to bits, these buildings were withering, like old men who had lost their strength, arthritics who could no longer stand up. Many of the roofs had caved in, shingles had rotted away to the texture of sponge, and here and there you could see entire houses leaning in two opposite directions, standing precariously like giant parallelograms—so nearly on their last legs that one touch of the finger, one tiny breath, would send them crashing to the ground.
    The building that Isabel lived in was made of brick, however. There were six floors with four small apartments on each, a dark staircase with worn, wobbling steps, and peeling paint on the walls. Ants and cockroaches moved about unmolested, and the whole place stank of turned food, unwashed clothes, and dust. But the building itself seemed reasonably solid, and I could only think of how lucky I was. Note how quickly things change for us. If someone had told me before I came here that this was where I would wind up living, I would not have believed it. But now I felt blessed, as though some great gift had been bestowed on me. Squalor and comfort are relative terms, after all. Just three or four months after coming tothe city, I was willing to accept this new home of mine without the slightest shudder.
    Ferdinand did not make much noise when Isabel announced that I would be moving in with them. Tactically, I think