If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

The narrator is in the process of disposing of Jojo’s body. It’s too big to fit neatly into a plastic sack. Bernadette says that they should place Jojo’s head in a separate sack. They have no other sacks, however, and must move the body quickly out of the basement. The narrator plans to burn the body. Earlier, they pretended that Jojo was still alive and placed his body in the car. Two police officers stopped them, but a fortuitous, timely venting of gas from the corpse convinced the officers that Jojo was alive. The narrator and Bernadette—who murdered Jojo—were relieved.

Recently, the narrator explains, he has been searching for a new way to live. He feels weighed down by his past. Now he needs a place to burn Jojo’s body. Unfortunately for the narrator, he was too distracted to refuel the car. The gas designated to burn Jojo’s body now must be used to restart the car. The narrator reflects on how he arrived at this moment. Once he and Bernadette learned that Jojo was in Paris, they killed him without his ever learning that his old enemy was one of his murderers. As the narrator tells many stories from his life, he tries to overwhelm the audience with his past so that the audience can feel his burden. He has many passports with many identities. To most people, however, he’s known as Ruedi the Swiss. Bernadetta knows nothing about the history between Jojo and Ruedi. She doesn’t know that Ruedi is certain that Jojo cheated him out of a vast sum of money.

In the present, Bernadette initiates a sexual act with Ruedi in the “tiny car,” claiming that Ruedi interrupted her (when he burst into the room to kill Jojo) just as she was about to orgasm. Just as they finish having sex, Jojo’s body falls on them. Ruedi tells Bernadette that she has nothing to do with his desire to kill Jojo. They carry Jojo’s body out of the car and into an elevator, planning to throw him from the roof to stage a death by suicide. They throw him down into the courtyard and then remember that they must dispose of the plastic sack, which may contain traces of evidence. By the time they descend in the elevator, a group of men is waiting for them. The men ask to examine the plastic sack. To Ruedi, the men seem like they’re related to Jojo. He hands them the sack, and they find a leather shoe inside.

Although the Reader wants to continue reading, the photocopied pages of the novel run out. Mr. Cavedagna doesn’t know where the remaining pages are. Instead, he offers the Reader the remaining files on “the Marana business” (115). From a distant village in South America, Marana wrote various letters about publishing issues. In one letter, he claimed to have access to a new novel by an Irish writer named Silas Flannery, In a network of lines that enlace, and offered Mr. Cavedagna the chance to publish it. Marana sent other letters from various places around the world, describing his struggle to translate Flannery’s novel. The letters confuse the Reader because they seem to defy the linear passage of time. Marana claimed that Flannery was experiencing a spiritual crisis that was affecting the novel’s progress and was searching for “an old Indian” (117), known as the Father of Stories, who is the universal source of all stories. Marana’s letters became increasingly conspiratorial. When he was in Arabia, for example, Marana described how he was hired to translate works of fiction for the wife of the sultan. The sultan was afraid that his wife, the sultana, was conspiring against him, so he needed to ensure that she had plenty of reading material to distract her. The plan was inspired by 1001 Arabian Nights. Although Marana translated many novels for the sultan, he always stopped his translation right at “the moment of greatest suspense” (125), thinking that this would keep the sultana distracted.

As the Reader peruses more letters, mysterious women become a common feature. Some of them are connected to Flannery. Their most common shared trait is that they all love to read. This reminds the Reader of Ludmilla. In another letter, Marana described being captured by an African dictator and told to write novels that bolstered the dictator’s justification for rule. He described how he set up the competing factions inside the organization that kidnapped him: The organization broke into two groups: those who followed the Wing of Light (were enlightened) and those who followed the Wing of Shadow (were nihilistic). The factions fought over who would be allowed to read Flannery’s novel first. They believed that the novel contained secret information about the world. The Reader becomes deeply invested in the conflict and desperate to track down Marana to ask which faction proved right. Additionally, the Reader wants to read In a network of lines that enlace, even though Marana’s translation may have no resemblance to Flannery’s original work. Having arranged to meet Ludmilla in a café, the Reader opens the book.

For the narrator, starting a new book is like hearing a phone ring. In such moments, the narrator is anxious about what the ringing phone could bring. Sometimes, he overhears phones in distant houses and mistakes them for his own ringing phone. The narrator jogs each morning before he teaches his class. While jogging, he passes houses in which phones are ringing and feels as though phones are chasing him. Sometimes, however, everything’s quiet. One day, the narrator becomes obsessed with a constantly ringing phone in a house. No one answers the phone, so the narrator walks around the house in confusion. Eventually, the narrator jogs away.

Even as the narrator jogs into a part of town with no houses, he can’t outrun the sound of the “chasing” phones. He can’t forget the sound. Still haunted by the sound, he returns to the house, where the phone is still ringing, still unanswered. He enters the house, answers the phone, and hears a voice. The caller ignores the narrator, instead, giving him an address where a woman named Marjorie is being held prisoner. She’s tied up and will awaken soon. If the narrator doesn’t reach her in 30 minutes, the house “will go up in flame” (137). The narrator frets about how to explain his situation to the police or fire department. As he runs down the street, he thinks about the name Marjorie and remembers a student named Marjorie Stubbs in one of his classes. She was attractive, he remembers, and he made a fool of himself by inviting her to his house to borrow some books. Although his intentions were innocent, she thought he was asking her out on a date and refused. When he reaches the campus, the narrator asks his students about Marjorie. They haven’t seen her for two days. Worried, the narrator runs as fast as he can to the address. He finds Marjorie inside, tied up on a sofa. He unties her, and she angrily insults him.