Oracle Night by Paul Auster

hardbound notebook – remarkably similar to the one I’d bought in Brooklyn that morning. A writer’s desk is a holy place, the most private sanctuary in the world, and strangers aren’t allowed to approach it without permission. I had never gone near John’s desk before, but I was so startled, so curious to know if that notebook was the same as mine, that I forgot my discretion and went over to have a look. The notebook was closed, lying faceup on a small dictionary, and the moment I bent down to examine it, I saw that it was the exact double of the one lying on my desk at home. For reasons that still baffle me, I became enormously excited by this discovery. What difference did it make what kind of notebook John used? He had lived in Portugal for a couple of years, and no doubt they were a common item over there, available in any run-of-the-mill stationery store. Why shouldn’t he be writing in a blue hardbound notebook that had been manufactured in Portugal? No reason, no reason at all – and yet, given the deliciously pleasant sensations I’d felt that morning when I’d bought my own blue notebook, and given that I’d spent several productive hours writing in it earlier that day (my first literary efforts in close to a year), and given that I’d been thinking about those efforts all through the evening at John’s, it hit me as a startling conjunction, a little piece of black magic.
    I wasn’t planning to mention it when I returned to the sitting room. It was too nutty, somehow, too idiosyncratic and personal, and I didn’t want to give John the impression that I was in the habit of snooping into his things. But when I walked into the room and saw him lying on the sofa with his leg up, staring at the ceiling with a grim, defeated look in his eyes, I suddenly changed my mind. Grace was downstairs in the kitchen, washing dishes and disposing of leftovers from our take-out meal, and so I sat down in the chair she had been occupying, which happened to be just to the right of the sofa, a couple of feet from John’s head. He asked if I was feeling any better. Yes, I replied, much better, and then I leaned forward and said to him, ‘The strangest thing happened to me today. When I was out on my morning walk, I went into a store and bought a notebook. It was such an excellent notebook, such an attractive and appealing little thing, that it made me want to write again. And so the minute I got home, I sat down at my desk and wrote in it for two straight hours.’
    ‘That’s good news, Sidney,’ John said. ‘You’re starting to work again.’
    ‘The Flitcraft episode.’
    ‘Ah, even better.’
    ‘We’ll see. It’s just some rough notes so far, nothing to get excited about. But the notebook seems to have charged me up, and I can’t wait to write in it again tomorrow. It’s dark blue, a very pleasant shade of dark blue, with a cloth strip running down the spine and a hard cover. Made in Portugal, of all places.’
    ‘Portugal?’
    ‘I don’t know which city. But there’s a little label on the inside back cover that says MADE IN PORTUGAL.’
    ‘How on earth did you find one of those things here?’
    ‘There’s a new shop in my neighborhood. The Paper Palace, owned by a man named Chang. He had four of them in stock.’
    ‘I used to buy those notebooks on my trips down to Lisbon. They’re very good, very solid. Once you start using them, you don’t feel like writing in anything else.’
    ‘I had that same feeling today. I hope it doesn’t mean I’m about to become addicted.’
    ‘Addiction might be too strong a word, but there’s no question that they’re extremely seductive. Be careful, Sid. I’ve been writing in them for years, and I know what I’m talking about.’
    ‘You make it sound as if they’re dangerous.’
    ‘It depends on what you write. Those notebooks are very friendly, but they can also be cruel, and you have to watch out that you don’t get lost in them.’
    ‘You don’t