The Letter Opener

by Kyo Maclear

The wooden crate in which they hid was hardly large enough for them both. After an hour, their flashlight began to flicker and fade. Andrei turned it off and immediately a damp blackness closed in. He shook the flashlight and turned it back on. The boat was tipping and sliding on the waves, water hitting the deck above them. He tried humming to subdue their fear, but quickly stopped, reaching instead for the jug of water they had been given earlier by the man who hid them. Nicolae’s eyes stayed on him as he lifted the jug, took a long gulp, then offered it.

  “We’re going to be all right,” Andrei whispered, and Nicolae nodded.

  The flashlight faded out one last time and then they were in darkness. Nicolae, who was pressed up against the side of the crate, felt the retching onset of seasickness. His stomach tossed each time the hull hit the water. He sagged into himself, his arms wrapped tightly around his legs, until he passed into sleep. Though they had been told to stay hidden away, Andrei felt his way up the ladder and wedged a small piece of scrap wood in the hatch to allow for fresh air.

  At half past one, a puff of light and sulphur scratched the air. Andrei checked his watch, then extinguished the match. He reached for Nicolae’s hand, distressed at its clamminess, and gave it a gentle tug. Their plan was to enter the water at the mouth of the Bosporus. It was three hours before sunrise. Andrei groped carefully up the ladder and lifted the lid. On deck, he released a long sigh, relieved to be able to stretch his legs. He took pleasure in the moon, watching its reflection carve the black water in two, the sea now so quiet.

  Then Nicolae arrived at his side, pale from fatigue and nausea, whispering, “Let’s hurry. I’m more than ready to throw myself overboard.”

  Together they spread an insulating layer of petroleum jelly over their skin, along their arms, onto the backs of their legs, slipping against each other for a slick and final embrace. It was agreed that if they got separated, they would reunite on the shore.

  Nicolae lowered himself by a rope and entered first. Andrei tripped on a winch, lost a few seconds righting himself, and entered a minute or so later. The freighter travelled slowly along its course, leaving a soft wake across the surface. It was still too early for the passenger ferry boats to begin brightening the water with their lights. The blue-black water and sky merged.

  Andrei felt a strong wind quickening the current where the Black Sea filled the mouth of the Bosporus. The water was choppy and he dipped under for longer stretches of time, sinking and spluttering, fighting to the surface as water swelled over him, coming up with a gasp and then sinking again. The pressure was almost more than he could bear. The force of the sea was crushing, and his lungs were heavy and sore. When the water calmed down, he rolled onto his back and floated for a few minutes to regain his strength. His chest was heaving. The Black Sea was behind him.

  Through a surface skimmed with iridescence, swirls of pink and blue petrol, he swam out of one world and into another. On the Bosporus, he was surrounded by tankers anchored in the night, a spew of industrial waste. His mouth clamped shut. Three hours after they had entered the water, he experienced the first grey light of morning. Ahead he saw a dark, shifting stripe of land.

  When his feet finally touched solid ground, he looked up and noticed the sky spinning above him. For a moment, his eyes pulsed with spots of darkness, then his body gave way, like ink spilled on the shore. He crawled toward, then collapsed against a large rock. For hours, he slipped in and out of awareness.

  He dreamt he saw Nicolae’s head bobbing above the water’s surface. He called out, but there was only his voice and its echo, receding upward to the sky, then caught, gone on the wind.

  Andrei Dinescu, age 27, from Northern Romania, was found alive on a shore near Yenikoy by local fisherman Metin Saygin. He is in stable condition after many hours in the water.

  Metin Saygin, the man who discovered Andrei, was interviewed by the local paper. Wasn’t he afraid the man he rescued might be dangerous?

  “No. I trusted my first impression completely,” Andrei’s rescuer replied.

  And what impression was that?

  “It’s very simple. I saw someone’s son.”

  Metin saw in Andrei a child who was near death. He took a flask of water and held it to Andrei’s lips. When Andrei failed to respond, he dipped his fingers in the clear liquid and swabbed his parched lips until the child suckled in appreciation. He wiped his shirt across Andrei’s forehead to draw off the sweat.

  DESPITE THE PASSAGE OF several years, Metin had remained undiminished in Andrei’s mind. So much so that the moment he finished describing his rescuer to me, he began to cry. We had moved from the living room to Andrei’s small kitchen table. The electric fan, set at medium, was now perched on a stack of newspapers. Its vibrating tone blended with drifts of city noise. Strands of hair fluttered across Andrei’s forehead as he wiped his eyes. There was a vase of daisies in front of us with a penny sitting at the bottom of the stale water. Bubbles clung to the stems. I pushed it aside and reached for his arm.

  We stayed sitting in adjacent chairs. I remember being struck by Andrei’s nearness, the closeness of his warm body smelling of soap and sweat. I remember looking at him and having a funny feeling in my chest.

  He moved his chair closer, put his palm on my shoulder, tilted his face close to mine and kissed me. It started with a delicate touching of lips, then his mouth opened on mine and the kiss became loose, moist. I didn’t stop him—suspended by surprise. He kissed me tentatively, and then more urgently. It was pleasant and then exciting and then…strange. When it was over (maybe a minute had passed, maybe two), he looked at me and shifted in his seat.

  “That’s my first kiss in a long time,” he said, and began to blush.

  I nodded and smiled, equally embarrassed, knowing what he was going to say.

  He continued, “I have to tell you that—” He paused and looked into the vase.

  “It’s okay. I know.”

  “That I—I care very much about you, but—”

  “It’s okay, Andrei. I care about you, too,” I said, trying not to feel rejected.

  He looked away. “Forgive me?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling guilty now as I thought of Paolo. “I forgive you.”

  When it was time for me to leave, we stood in the hall and hugged each other for a long time. Then we said goodbye.

  We never discussed that kiss again. After a few days of awkwardness we slipped back into the roles we had established. Though it was unspoken, we both seemed to agree that friendship was the best thing for us, the easiest intimacy. I took the kiss to be merely a symptom of his increasing loneliness.

  When I returned home that evening, still flustered by the afternoon’s events, the entrance to my apartment was festooned with streamers. A scratchy fibre door mat—HOME SWEET HOME—had been placed across the threshold. On it was a letter from Paolo with an amusing poem he had composed about a dog named Hindrance that insists on squatting at a woman’s doorstep until she adopts him. Paolo ended the letter by saying that he knew I was following my instincts, but soon he hoped my instincts would convince me to invite the dog in. “We can all learn new tricks,” as he put it.

  Inside the apartment, the answering machine light was blinking. I pressed Play and after a pause I was listening to a canine rendition of the song “Our House” by Crosby, Stills and Nash, Paolo’s familiar voice performing a sequence of off-key bellows and howls. The whole production was so ridiculous and elaborate, it made me laugh out loud. A fitting end to a bizarre day, I thought.

  But a part of me knew that Paolo wasn’t joking. He was upping the ante.

  We do not remember days, we remember moments.

  From The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935–1950 by Cesare Pavese

  Part Two

  MY MOTHER’S THINGS

  27 hotel toothbrushes (from my sister, Kana)

  35 bars of hotel soap (also from Kana)

  51 egg cartons (empty)

  117 matchboxes (full)

&nbs
p; 163 ballpoint pens (new and used) divided into bundles of 20 and tied with elastic bands

  11 rolls of digestive biscuits (unopened)

  22 brown sugar packets

  7 tins of cocktail nuts (6 unopened, 1 opened and partially eaten)

  15 cans of chicken broth (unopened)

  Ten

  In early October, I invited Andrei to accompany me to visit my mother at Sakura. For some reason, I decided not to tell Paolo. It was a cool day and when we arrived most of the residents were inside busily preparing for the annual fundraising bazaar. In the dining area, several women dusted homemade manju cakes with rice flour, while others prepared marinated sacks of bean curd for inarizushi. The sweet tang of rice vinegar and cooking sake drifted through the air. Mary Yamada offered us some mugicha, roasted barley tea, which Andrei drank gratefully. I cupped my hands around a recycled office mug and brought the earthy liquid to my lips. It warmed my throat.

  As we finished our tea, Andrei’s eyes began to inspect everything—the upright piano and craft table in the common room, and the scenic posters of Kamakura and Mount Fuji that lined the halls. Near the entrance was a round brass medallion engraved with small-petalled flowers and the words: SAKURA. A BLOSSOM OF LIFE. I left Andrei alone in order to call up to my mother’s room, and when I returned, he had wandered away. For a moment I thought he had left, but I found him standing in Roy Nakano’s room, carefully examining a garden of miniature trees on the windowsill, as if he were acquainting himself with each individual leaf. Ceramic trays of pine, azalea and bamboo were arranged on top of stacks of Popular Mechanics: each curiously curved tree positioned off-centre on a small hill of earth. Bonsai. The art of cultivated deformity. Roy had packed soft green moss around the base of each creation.

  When Andrei noticed that I had entered the room, he walked over to the shelves and pointed to an old photo of Roy, taken in an internment camp.

  “Is this man a professional gardener?”

  I shook my head. “No. I think it’s just something he picked up during the war, in the camps.” I said “in the camps” as flatly as I might have said “at school” or “at the cottage.” “It’s twisted, isn’t it? So-called dangerous enemy aliens tending their flowers.”

  “Ah, yes. The manure-loving pacifist as treason suspect. I know very well about the state and its villains.”

  “If it wasn’t so tragic, it would almost be funny. Just think of all the crimes against national security committed with a trowel and spade,” I said.

  He grinned. “Well, it’s incredible what he’s done,” he said, pointing at the collection of bonsai. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  We left Roy’s room and walked toward the common room, where my mother sat waiting with her hands clasped around a small pleated-leather handbag. Her black, shoulder-length hair was loosely arranged. I said hello and introduced Andrei. She smiled and pulled her shawl close to her, twisting the ends at her chest. I gave her the oranges I had brought. She placed them on the table and then massaged her knees.

  Shiro, the white kitchen cat, tiptoed by with a bandaged stump where its tail had been severed.

  When my mother finally spoke, her voice sounded cracked from underuse. “See the cat?” She pointed. “Gloria thinks that someone in the building chopped its tail off deliberately.”

  “That’s terrible. Why would anyone do something like that?” I said.

  Her voice, now that her throat was cleared, suddenly became warm and buttery. “To make it look like a Japanese bobtail.”

  I leaned forward and reached for the purse she had just placed on the table. It contained a fresh package of tissue, nail scissors and loose change that jangled like spurs when she walked.

  “Gloria has a morbid imagination,” I said, examining the purse.

  My mother stared at my hands.

  “It’s almost broken,” I said, gently tugging at the leather purse strap. The stitching was unravelling.

  “Please give that back.” She reached for the purse and turned to Andrei. “Will you put your mother in a nursing home when she becomes old and inconvenient?” A playful smile crept across her face.

  “Jesus, Mum.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, also smiling, “but if I did, I would be like Naiko and visit often.”

  There was a pause as my mother contemplated his answer. I raised my eyes to look at Andrei, who seemed to be enjoying her directness.

  “Are you married?” she continued.

  “No,” he replied.

  My mother studied Andrei in silence and then began to nod. “Yes. It’s probably better that way.”

  I turned tensely to my mother.

  Andrei laughed. “You must be the first mother I’ve met who doesn’t believe in marriage.”

  “Pfft,” she said, and relaxed a little. “I say pfft to marriage.” Then she leaned over and whispered, “But last night I had two offers.”

  Andrei and I both laughed in surprise. She giggled.

  When we were ready to leave, Andrei walked over to my mother’s chair and offered his hand as she stood up. Their spontaneity and the casual way he touched her made me envious. Here was a man with an abundance of history, but none whatsoever with my mother. She was possibly the only maternal figure he had encountered since arriving in Canada and he was blissfully free to enjoy her company.

  He hugged her. “Bye-bye, Mrs. Ayumi.”

  Although it felt awkward, I hugged her, too.

  When I stepped back, I noticed that the blue cardigan she wore under her shawl was buttoned incorrectly, but I stopped myself from saying anything.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr.—” She smiled and tilted her head for a moment, but the name didn’t come to her.

  “Andrei,” he said gently.

  “Mr. Andrei. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  Her face was glowing and her eyes had a bright, almost lucid look.

  Aging is a form of estrangement. We feel psychically matched to our image until our skin begins to soften and sag, and then one day we look in the mirror, dismayed to see an intruder with jowls and creases. When I was little, my father told me that the bags under his eyes were pockets stuffed with all the visions and images that had slipped away.

  My mother’s apartment at Sakura consisted of a small bedroom, a sitting area, a bathroom and an intercom connected to the caretaker’s station. I found it pleasant but cramped, preferring to meet my mother in the common room, where there was more space to socialize. The walls were painted a cheerful sunflower yellow. Shafts of light streamed through the windows and, in the early afternoons, a largeformat television played American soaps or doramas videotaped from Japanese TV. On the days she remembered to do it, my mother joined the other residents who congregated on the couches between two and four o’clock, eyes glued to the television, avidly enjoying its young models, its undiluted bursts of passion.

  There were many Saturday afternoons that I sat with them on the couch, eating osembe and peanuts, enjoying the confinement that aging permitted, the ever-decreasing perimeter of choice and movement. It startled and amused me to realize that I was a young woman with the precise, repetitious habits of an old woman.

  Before my mother came to Sakura, a social worker arranged to do a cognitive evaluation. He showed me the list of questions but told me he would have to be alone with my mother, presumably so I wouldn’t give her any signs or clues. To test her long-term memory he asked: “Who is the prime minister of Canada? When was the Second World War? When were you married?” To test her short-term memory, he named three objects—motorcycle, earmuffs, pineapple—and asked her to repeat the names immediately and again five minutes later. To test her judgment, he asked, “What would you do if you were walking down the street and saw a wallet on the sidewalk?”

  My mother did all right on some of the questions, but not well enough overall to warrant an unconditional pass. In her ability to remember and master new things, for example, she was assessed as “considerably impaire
d.” By the end of the visit, the social worker had determined that my mother was exhibiting signs of confusion and mental decline that could no longer be attributed to forgetfulness or mere distraction. When he suggested that she was an ideal candidate for assisted-living, somehow making this sound like a lavish compliment, I numbly accepted his opinion and moved her to Sakura—prompting a series of arguments with my absentee but nonetheless disapproving sister. That was twenty-two months ago.

  Kana said, “It’ll just make it worse. There are studies that show—”

  “She needs help. And you’re not around to help her ‘get better again.’”

  “The studies say institutionalized care can lead to a downward spiral…rapid deterioration…intellectual decline. She’s just overtired. What she needs is a good, long holiday.”

  Kana was annoyed because she thought our mother was acting older than she was. She didn’t like admissions of weakness or defeat. She believed in self-diagnosis, self-help, the idea that everyone—with hard work and an occasional spa treatment—was perfectible.

  My mother was now entering Alzheimer’s middle state and I began to picture her mind as a Jackson Pollock painting: repetitive, overlapping loops, bundling and broken lines, all searching vigorously for a beginning.

  Anyone who knew my mother well could see that her mind had become tangled.

  My mother was once a scrupulous organizer. When we were little, she held on to all the photographs we ever took, every letter and birthday card she had ever received. She slipped everything into clear plastic sleeves and made raised print labels with her Avery label gun. My sister and I took my mother’s stashes for granted. We thought she was uptight when really she was just a firm believer in posterity. She was showing us that keeping a record of life gave it meaning.

  Then, around the time of my twenty-first birthday, after Kana had left for Europe to work for a British newspaper, my mother suffered a mild concussion after slipping on a patch of black ice at a subway entrance. She quickly recovered, but soon after began acting oddly. My sister came back and discovered while doing laundry that my mother’s pant pockets were filled with small scraps of paper. Smoothed out on the kitchen table, they formed an inventory of our mother’s mind: things she needed from the drugstore, bills that needed paying, names and numbers of close friends, family birthdays, places she had visited or hoped to visit, the dates and times of television shows she planned to watch, the bloom time of various flowers in our garden.