The Letter Opener

by Kyo Maclear

  “What kinds of stuff?” he asked.

  “Thrift items mostly. She stores it all away,” I replied.

  “But many people collect things as a hobby. Stamps, coins—there is nothing unusual in itself about collecting things.”

  I shook my head. “It’s the things she chooses to collect. Dried-up pens. Egg cartons. Twist ties and old coupons. Expired warranties. She collects things for my sister and me, too. She keeps old shoeboxes and stuffs them with items she thinks we might find interesting or useful. Rubber bands, disposable chopsticks, pens and more pens…I can’t tell you how many pens.”

  I offered this information because I thought it was the surest sign that my mother had a degenerative brain disease, but as I spoke I began to wonder if I had missed something. Maybe my mother’s magpie behaviour was a normal reaction to a world that had grown more cluttered and disposable. A hundred years ago, most people wouldn’t have used sixty pens in a lifetime. Now we use that many in a few years. Perhaps after all my mother wasn’t so crazy—merely subconsciously intent on salvaging our throwaway world.

  What distinguishes collecting as a hobby, from collecting as an illness? The value of the objects themselves? Accumulation techniques? Conscious selection versus absent-minded accrual? Relevance versus irrelevance? Wealth versus poverty?

  The boundary suddenly seemed razor-thin.

  I have only faint memories of my mother as a younger woman. I remember the scent of the shampoo she used, the texture of her favourite sweater, the shade of her preferred lipstick. I remember my head reaching the slight slope of her tummy. I remember the callused part between her thumb and forefinger that I used to rub for comfort, until she delicately extricated her hand to go to the bathroom or make supper. I remember the cards we sent at New Year’s, and others we received, but those cards are probably among the few things my mother discarded—too much a reminder of the abandoned ceremonies of family.

  But mostly what I remember is the way she let her life shrivel after my father left.

  Year one, the Watching: mostly television, though occasionally the tree by her window, and birds that landed on the tree. The year of her depression.

  Year two, the Cleaning: and the discovery of the “art of homemaking” with its pressed sheets, spotless mirrors and strong solvents—a time of scouring, and defiant cleanliness. The year of her “recovery.”

  Years three to five, the Wrapping: of packages often using only one piece of tape, of couches in fabric, of television converters in Saran Wrap. A foreshadowing of her own unravelling?

  Years five to eight, the Collecting: or should I say “the clinging to and clutching of” various bits and pieces. A declaration that the world could be arranged just as she liked if she owned it?

  I know from experience the affection people have for second-hand objects: almost a kind of kinship with previous possessors. There are Dumpster divers and auction goers and everyday bargain hunters who spend most weekends buying up other people’s castoffs at flea markets, thrift shops and yard sales. There are antiques fetishists who love the feel of worn velvet, the look of an embroidered sampler, the smell of old books. There are people who don’t mind, who even enjoy, sinking into a deep and dusty armchair or wearing vintage dresses with loose hems. (There are even people who wilfully expose unused objects to the rain and elements so they will warp, fade, tarnish, and so become, in the words of decorators, “distressed.”) I suppose I am one of these people, mulling over old objects and heirlooms, digging for history as others would for oil or gold. I admit that I have knowingly transported mites, dust and other asthma-triggers into my home for the thrill of possessing a newly rummaged treasure.

  Yet, in the days following Andrei’s disappearance, I found my tastes changing. The older an object the more thought it required, and now my thoughts were scattered. I couldn’t cope with the shabbiness of it all. A rain slicker that had stiffened, a T-shirt with a baggy neck, a hairband that had lost its elasticity, a deflated ball squishing in my hand—such objects produced feelings of queasiness. I had a sudden wish for newer things, pristine gadgets and gifts, the smell of fresh rubber or vinyl—a whiff of a clean, lustrous future.

  I found myself reassessing people who gravitated toward the synthetic world, who surrounded themselves with plastic flowers, fake leather, glossy ornaments and other objects that mimic happiness, that retain no memory. I had been in the habit of thinking that such people were shallow. But perhaps I had been wrong all along. Perhaps it was possible to prefer the synthetic world, as the very young and the very old often did, for simple and sensible reasons. Plastic dolls lasted. Plastic flowers would never decay.

  Fourteen

  A brackish vinegar smell hung in the air. A small jar of Swedish herring had fallen out of a package and shattered on the floor. The new person was seated at Andrei’s desk. A skinny man with bushy sideburns and an extraordinarily long, almost simian space above his upper lip. Even when he was smiling, which was often the case, his mouth appeared to be too far away from his nose. He was introduced to me as Warren. I greeted him politely and then turned around, somewhat ashamed that I could not stop myself from silently judging him (the horrible brown-and-green-speckled sweater he wore, his ingratiating grin, the odour of fermentation surrounding us).

  To avoid further chitchat, and the risk of saying something I’d regret later, I opened my newspaper and half-heartedly skimmed the headlines. It was the twentieth of December. Five days before Christmas.

  BEST OF THE BAD (ACTOR LEE VAN CLEEF DEAD AT 64)

  OIL SPILL WREAKS HAVOC ON MOROCCAN COAST

  BALLOT FEVER IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

  RIOTS ROCK ROMANIA (CEAUSESCU SAYS, “REFORM WILL COME TO ROMANIA WHEN PEARS GROW ON POPLARS”)

  After Marvin arrived with the morning delivery, I slipped into an effortless rhythm. Every now and then I noticed Warren at the periphery of my vision. At one point I leaned back to stretch my neck and shoulders, and he looked up, mouth widening into a broad smile, his friendliness catching me off guard. I gave a quick smile and lowered my head. Was there any point in trying to understand what had happened to Andrei? A dozen different thoughts swirled in my head. How many days left until his rent expired? Twelve? Would I find anything in his apartment? And what about Gloria? Was she back at Sakura? And Kana? Was she ever coming home?

  Another letter from Kana had arrived the day before. It was written on the back of a small Czech menu. In a quick scrawl that in its rollicking unconcern for legibility bore no resemblance to my own tidy penmanship, she wrote:

  Dear Nai-chan,

  Your present was delivered this morning. So thoughtful! My first granny cardigan! But seriously—it’s just what I needed. It has been freezing here! I’ve taken to walking around the apartment with my overcoat on. So much is happening every day. Everyone is convinced that Havel will be elected president on December 29. The Independent has asked me for a feature story and post-election interview. The feature will be called “The Power of the Powerless,” based on an essay Havel wrote just over ten years ago. I wish I could have been home for the holidays, but this is a big one.

  Love, Kana

  p.s. See reverse. I’ve been living on item #6 (pork back, cabbage and bread dumplings). Sounds revolting but it’s incredible, sublime food. I promise to take you one day!

  The unstoppable Kana. Her letter brought forth a glint of resentment, the taste of some ancient bitterness that made me feel petty and ashamed. (She didn’t even mention our mother.) While I prepared supper, I tried to picture her life in Prague. I knew she was probably smoking too much, living out of her suitcase. Yet I also knew she was doing all this happily. She had become a nomad, long ago liberating herself from the commitments and consolations of family life.

  When Kana decided to live somewhere else in the world, returning from time to time to visit, it became my destiny to keep watch and to tell her what she wanted to hear. I swallowed my resentment.

  Dear Kana,

  I wish
I had some exciting news to share, but life here is as boring and eventless as ever. If anything my days seem to get more monotonous! I don’t even have a new outfit or a horrible snowstorm to report…

  Then again, would I have wanted it any different? The morning cup of coffee. The short bus ride to work. The mail that awaited me when I got home. The pre-decided meals I shared with Paolo—pasta on Tuesdays, Szechuan on Thursdays and curry on Sundays. The scheduled amusements—rented videos, jazz night at the Rex, dancing at El Centro, a bottle of wine, an occasional pinch of marijuana. I had centred my life on simple rituals. It was irrational to turn on Kana because she had built a life on not knowing where she would be tomorrow, to begrudge her a happiness built on passing moments of passion and appetite.

  It’s probably true that Kana shuddered at the thought of winding up like me—domestic, unworldly, without enterprise (for in her eyes, to be a homebody at the end of the century was to be a true global pariah). It was also probably true, though harder to admit, that I lived in dread of ending up like her—drifting all over the place, prey to any sudden gust of wind.

  When I returned home from work that evening Paolo was in the kitchen pouring a glass of juice. He was still wearing his pyjamas. He nodded at me and I greeted him in return. We had a brief exchange about the leaking sink faucet, after which he sat down and began pensively drumming on the kitchen table. I picked up the day’s mail and made my way to the living room. I had intended to flop out on the couch, but the room I entered was in disarray. The curtains were still drawn and a twisted bundle of sheets and blankets was piled in the middle of the couch. Miko, my cat, was nestled on top. A few dirty plates and cups—my plates and cups, but not my dirt—lay on the coffee table. It was not a catastrophic mess, by any means, but every object had become eloquent. The room wanted to say something. On Paolo’s behalf, it ventriloquized: I’m tired of trying.

  I heard water running in the kitchen sink. It stopped for a moment, then started again.

  Ever since Andrei had disappeared, Paolo had done his best to keep the apartment vibrant on the days he came to visit. Flowers appeared regularly on tables. Windows were cleaned and bared to the sun. Elaborate pastas and delicious pilafs materialized at dinner on Friday nights. The robust sounds of Charlie Parker and Jimmy Cliff played on the stereo. His efforts to distract and entertain me, to prove that he was still present and committed to carrying on with our patterns and cycles, helped keep me together. He was so good at making things relaxed that I hadn’t noticed the distance deepening between us.

  But that evening, everything threatened to break in two. It happened just as we were finishing a late dinner. I had been subdued throughout the meal, pushing my pasta around with my fork, pouring a glass of wine, tearing off portions of baguette. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice that Paolo was seething beside me. When he eventually spoke, I started at the tone of his voice.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “I’m worried. You’re beginning to show signs of obsessive behaviour.”

  Obsessive? I felt the bread stick in my throat. The word was a dagger, a cruel shorthand for my mother. Paolo used it knowingly. (He felt the need to be callous, to crack the shell of my “self-pity,” as he later put it.)

  “Face it, Naiko. He’s gone. It’s time to give up. That may seem coldhearted, but it’s not healthy to keep going on this way.”

  Paolo’s theory was that his years in Argentina, while fraught with painful memories, had made him more discerning. He had learned how to tell whom to trust and whom not to. My theory was that it had made him an expert at kind indifference. Perhaps it was unfair of me, but I felt that years of living in a climate of non-response had left him detached from certain emotions. For evidence I thought back to a conversation early on in our relationship, when Paolo had confessed to me that he was unable to console his mother when her brother died. It was just the two of them at home when the phone call from Argentina came.

  “I loved my uncle. Yet when I heard the news I had no reaction,” he had said. Even when his mother’s tears began to scatter, words did not come. He just stood there, mesmerized by the sight of her crying. “It was her eyes, so shiny with tears—how beautiful she looked. But I couldn’t tell her that; it would have seemed insensitive,” he said.

  It was his lasting shame that he was able to appreciate his mother’s beauty but not her sadness.

  It isn’t the child who comforts the parents, I tried to reassure him. But what I was left with was the image of a young man—he was eighteen, after all—observing his crying mother without embracing her.

  I wasn’t always mindful of Paolo’s feelings. And neither was he of mine. There were times that I declared he was cold and insensitive. There were times that he accused me of being naive. We both had it in us to be harsh and uncompromising. But that evening in the kitchen when he challenged my “obsession” with Andrei was the first time I realized how easily our relationship could collapse.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  “No. I told you, Andrei’s gay.”

  “Then what is it? What’s there? Explain. Why can’t you let go?”

  “I can’t just turn my back on someone I care about.”

  “Well, he could,” Paolo said coldly.

  I glared at him.

  “Why don’t you just accept it. Call it what it is,” Paolo continued.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning desertion. It’s simple. Rushing off like that. Without a note or explanation. In the army he’d be court-martialled.”

  “Stop it.”

  “He ran away. Making excuses for him isn’t helping. It isn’t loyalty anymore, it’s craziness.”

  I felt stunned by Paolo’s belligerence. I stared at my hands and breathed in, breathed out. Panic welled up in me.

  “Why do you have to be so intense about everything?” Paolo rubbed his temples and sighed. “Can’t you be like everyone else?”

  “Who?”

  “Other people. The ones who stick to their own business.” He paused. “It’s strange. It’s almost as though you take pleasure from it.” He had stacked the dinner plates and was now leaning back in his chair, eyeing me coldly.

  “What are you accusing me of now?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t have a clue what’s on your mind anymore. Something changed when Andrei—”

  “Nothing changed.”

  “Fuck, Naiko. This is impossible.” He stood, paced for a moment and then stopped, placing his hand on the counter. “You know what? I’m tired of it.”

  I stiffened. “Tired of it? Or tired of me?”

  “It. You. Both. Everything.”

  “Well then, I’m very sorry,” I said.

  “I’m trying to be straightforward with you. You know, trying to communicate. Clearly it’s not working.”

  “No, clearly it’s not,” I said, and left the room.

  Paolo and I rarely fought. What usually happened when there was a disagreement was that we temporarily became aloof. For a joyless day or two we were inaccessible to each other. If the argument occurred while he was at my place, we walked around the apartment like strangers passing on the street, bodies proceeding quickly and politely, eyes averted. It was soul crushing. But this was the way we did battle.

  But that night was different, more troubling. I felt him starting to slip away from me.

  I retreated to my bedroom and sat down at the edge of the bed. On a shelf set into the wall my books stood in neat rows, oversized reference books on the bottom, alphabetized fiction on the top. Most days, this vision of painstaking organization reassured me. I treasured my library, knowing that it would never be ripped apart. Yet who but me cared? And why did I care? It was all suddenly unnecessary. What did it matter how the books were arranged, or if Paolo’s books were added to mine? I had to resolve the situation or he was going to leave me. One night, maybe even this one, he would give up, pack his duffle bag and walk out the do
or.

  My door. Our door.

  I’ll lose him, too.

  I felt dizzy. I closed my eyes, and when I reopened them the books had a funny look to them, as it they were see-sawing in mid-air.

  It was too late to catch the subway, so Paolo stayed that night, but we ended up sleeping separately. At 2 a.m., I woke up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. The table light was on in the living room and Paolo was sitting in a chair with a magazine. He didn’t change his position, didn’t even glance up, so I returned to the bedroom. About an hour later I heard him quietly open the door. I wanted him to lie down and hold me, but I was too proud and frightened to say anything. I pretended I was sleeping. But I felt the tears rising, a lump in my chest. He stood there for an unbearable minute and then I heard the faint click of the door closing behind him.

  Fifteen

  I went to Paolo before dawn. I crossed the dark apartment and lay beside him on the couch, then under him. There were no words. My tongue was tied in my mouth, but my body told Paolo to stay. I needed his existence in my life. His steady, unvanishing presence. We moved to the floor, entwined with each other, his familiar hand slipping between my legs, then inside me. The pressure of him toppled any remaining tension between us. I came with my mouth against his. The sky was still dark. He rested his head against my shoulder and we both slept.

  The clock radio came on in the bedroom a few hours later. We listened to the announcer reporting the traffic news. I snuggled into Paolo before getting up.

  “Why do you think it’s so hard for me to let go?” I asked.

  “It’s your sympathetic nature,” he replied, placing his palm on my chest. “Add to that the fact that you’re irrational, stubborn, overly concerned with other people, and…”

  “I have no life,” I murmured.