The Letter Opener

by Kyo Maclear

  “Hey,” he said. “We have a life.”

  “Yes, we do,” I said, reaching for his arm.

  “You said we could move in together at the end of the year.”

  “I did?” I touched a mole on his wrist.

  “I miss you. You haven’t been very…here, lately.”

  “Oh, Paolo.” I kissed his neck.

  The automatic coffee maker burbled in the kitchen.

  “Can I ask you something?” He traced his finger lightly along my arm.

  “Of course.”

  “Promise you won’t get angry or take it the wrong way?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and smiled.

  He eyed me for a moment, then asked, “Was Andrei in some kind of trouble? Something with the police…immigration? Maybe a money situation?”

  “No.”

  “Was there anything that might have upset him enough to run away?”

  I stared at the wall, weighed the question.

  “No. Not that I know of,” I said, and sat up. I craned to look at the clock. “It’s getting late.” I kissed his cheek. “I better jump in the shower.”

  After showering I hurried to work. Snow was falling lightly. By the time I arrived, Marvin had already delivered my sorting bin. I sensed a few people watching me, but I ignored them.

  Once Andrei’s desk had been cleaned up, people’s attitude toward me had changed. I was their last reminder of him, and they didn’t want to be reminded anymore, so they avoided me. When I said his name out loud, even to Baba, I felt shushed.

  At the top of my pile sat a small wreath of shellacked roses, a candystriped necktie, a box of tree ornaments—seasonally confused bunny rabbits with Santa hats. I stared at a set of “Last Supper” Russian nesting dolls that I had lined up on my desk: John, the tiny apostle. I dipped my hand back into the bin, lightly sifting the torn wrapping paper, stray greeting cards, sales slips, bright yellow fleece socks, an inflatable beer bucket. Why the objects should have seemed so off that particular day, I don’t know; I just couldn’t imagine any of them being to anyone’s taste. I picked up a small Pierrot doll, fidgeting flecks of silver glitter off its ceramic head.

  There were only four days until Christmas and we were working late into the evening in an attempt to rescue last-minute presents. The kitchen was a banquet of treats that the manager’s wife had prepared. At the edge of my desk was a plate with a half-finished sandwich left over from lunch. Handel’s Messiah played on the radio, filling the room with an air of harmony and good cheer—amplified by waves of colour and sparkling tinsel, popcorn and cranberry chains, ladles of eggnog. I watched the manager’s wife walk by in an elf’s hat holding a bowl of sugar-dusted shortbread cookies. I contemplated joining in, but decided against it, feeling ultimately that it was beyond my ability.

  At 6 p.m., when it was time for dinner, people began making their way to the kitchen. I was examining an engraved drinking mug when Warren walked over.

  “Aren’t you going to eat with the others?” he asked, preparing to join them himself.

  “I can’t,” I said, and paused. “Too much catching up to do.”

  He looked at me and smiled. I smiled back at him with a shrug. We both knew my answer sounded like an evasion. I returned to my work, but I watched him more closely as he started toward the kitchen, seeing him differently right then, seeing him as Warren. It wasn’t his fault he was occupying Andrei’s space. He wasn’t responsible for the circumstances that had led him here.

  When he returned, he was carrying a small plate of food. He presented it to me, assuming the exaggerated posture of a waiter, body tilted slightly at the waist, one hand behind his back. I laughed. His friendliness was a relief—it made me feel normal.

  Warren brought me back to the quotidian world I had abandoned. I believe this. His small gesture of kindness prodded me out of my slump. There is a limit to the amount of isolation and misery one can stand, and I had reached it.

  I finished eating, then picked up the phone to call Paolo. When the machine clicked on I left a message asking him to come by my place that night. Baba was in the kitchen helping to pack up the leftover food. I could see him from my desk picking broken crackers and sprigs of parsley off the cheese tray. The manager’s wife was wiping down the counter. Warren returned with coffee and a plate of honey-drenched sweets Baba had brought from a Lebanese bakery.

  “Cheers, Naiko,” Warren said, lifting his cup to mine.

  Robert the janitor steered his wheeled mop bucket past our workstation.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table when Paolo opened the door to my apartment later that evening. He unbuttoned his coat and slipped out of his boots.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking,” I said.

  His face dimmed. “You want me to go,” he said tonelessly.

  “Go? Oh God no, Paolo,” I said. The uncertainty on his face told me how fragile we were. “I was just thinking. I’ve never really told you about Andrei.”

  Paolo put his coat on the chair.

  “I’ve kept quiet about it for so long, like it was some kind of trust I couldn’t break. I don’t feel that now.”

  One of the first things I told Paolo about were the letters.

  MANY MONTHS BEFORE, TOWARD the beginning of June, Andrei had walked into work with a determined look on his face. He said he had made up his mind. He wanted to send letters to various people inquiring about Nicolae, to uncover what had happened to him.

  Dear Consul General of Turkey,

  I am writing to inquire about the whereabouts of my friend Nicolae Halmos, a citizen of Romania, who was last seen swimming off the coast of Turkey in June of 1984…

  We drafted the letters together and during our lunch hour typed them up on heavy bond paper. Andrei signed them at the bottom, making sure that each letter remained smooth and uncreased. He used the stamp machine at work, but insisted on posting the envelopes from a box near his home.

  Dear Metin,

  It has been several years since we last communicated. I hope your family has kept well…

  We wrote eleven letters in total and then waited for a response. I expected letters to start arriving within a few weeks, but not one arrived. Then more weeks passed and still there was not a single reply. I began to wonder if our letters were even reaching anyone. Were the addresses inaccurate or outdated? Had the letters been blocked or detained somewhere?

  Andrei remained unfazed. “There are thousands and thousands of Nicolaes in Romania, most of them named before the dictator came to power,” he said by way of explanation. “Parents used to like the name because Nicolae is the patron saint of children.”

  “What an unfortunate coincidence,” I said.

  Andrei smiled, then continued, “I doubt there are many babies being named Nicolae anymore. Unless they’re children in the staterun orphanages.”

  He paused, seeming to remember something. “There was a strange story in one of the underground papers about an orphanage director going to prison for naming all the boys in his care Nicolae. He must have been a bit crazy. Imagine a hundred malnourished Nicolaes running around. The director said he was tired of hearing the orphans referred to as ‘nobody’s children.’ They are Ceausescu’s children, he said. Ceausescu was the one responsible for creating a population of unwanted babies when he outlawed birth control and abortion so he could fill Romania’s factories. ‘So let’s name them after their Tata!’ the director announced. I don’t know if he expected to get away with it. The minute Ceausescu heard of it he had the director locked up for treachery.”

  “Those poor kids,” I said. “How did Nicolae feel about his name?”

  “He really only thought about it when it came to leaving. On the way to the port, he said, ‘Maybe I should change my name. I don’t want people in the West to think I was named after him.’“

  “What did he want to change it to?” I asked.

  “Something light,” Andrei replied. “Dan. Brian. George. It’s hard to make up a name
for yourself. Anyway, we experimented with the name Bruce. You know, Bruce Springsteen.”

  We both laughed.

  Around the time of the letters, Andrei began collecting articles from various newspapers and magazines. Stacks of writing about and photographs of unidentified people who had been discovered in different parts of the world, either living or dead. He started spending his weekends at the city reference library, hunting through the international papers. He was not interested in the widely publicized cases, only in the cases tracking the lesser known.

  Unidentified man discovered in a state of unconsciousness on the Island of Rhodes. [?] Middle-aged, grey hair, dressed in black slacks, a green shirt and black jacket. Two Romanian coins were found in the pockets.

  (The Athens News Agency, 7 June 1989)

  Two things struck me when I looked at the clippings. The first was the way Andrei had marked up each text, highlighting and striking through words, inserting question marks in places. The second was a feeling of overload, a sense that the world was crammed with people like Nicolae: missing persons, fugitives, runaways, abductees. Loose ends, all awaiting some finality.

  The body of a dead man was found 6 miles off the coast of Livorno. [??] The body is that of a tall, slightly built man whose features are typically Northern European. Light brown hair. Brown eyes. A dimple on the chin. Postmortem exams, performed at Pisa University, have not found any signs of violence or poisoning, so drowning was the probable cause of death. A few items may help identify the body. 1) a worn rubbersoled brown shoe, size 47, with a red logo. 2) a Casio digital wristwatch with a grey strap. The manufacturing number 47235 printed on the back could help trace the point of purchase. [??] 3) a wedding band, 24 ct., size 27. The ring was made in Italy. (From The Corsica Weekly, 12 June 1989)

  Andrei kept a cardboard filing box filled with his clippings. Dates were carefully pencilled in at the top right corner. And everything was sorted according to geographic region. Even missing persons who didn’t fit his search had a home in Andrei’s box.

  Soon, I was contributing to his collection. It started one morning when I found myself grazing through the newspaper, scissors in hand. Eventually, it became second nature. Sitting on the bus, waiting at the doctor’s office: wherever there was a discarded newspaper, I busied myself. Lost and found people, I came to discover, comprised a subgenre of journalism, tucked between the local crime stories and the obituary section.

  I was drawn to stories of the transient: the bearded drifter who was discovered living in a high-school locker room. And stories of the unhinged: the man who woke up in a Toronto hospital bed with a fractured skull and no idea who he was. He was diagnosed with something called post-concussion global amnesia, or total memory blackout. His picture was sent to various police precincts across the country. Fingerprints, mug shots led nowhere. When months later the detectives finally gave up, the man in question asked to be given a new identity, but his request was denied.

  The stories of people who were afflicted with amnesia presented one of the kinder scenarios. I had heard of people recovering their “blanked-out” memories over time—in some cases as suddenly and inexplicably as they had lost them. Was it possible that Nicolae had suffered a blow to the head? And if so, was it also possible that he was now wandering around in some corner of the world, on the brink of regaining his identity?

  I avoided the stories of the dead.

  Whenever I came across a photograph to add to Andrei’s collection, I felt a mixture of excitement and depression. Even living people in newspaper photos somehow seem ill-fated, ethereal, as if composed of grains of black sand about to blow away.

  For a few weeks, it seemed that stories of human-smuggling operations were everywhere in the newspapers. My fingers were black with newspaper ink.

  In early July, twenty-five Chinese migrants from the province of Fujian were discovered inside two shipping containers aboard a Seattle-bound freighter.

  The following week another cargo vessel carrying Albanian stowaways hit rocks off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, killing at least eighteen people and leaving the rest to survive the treacherous sea.

  Then a week later, twenty-four people drowned when another Turkish vessel carrying thirty-one migrants from Southern Romania capsized in the frigid, stormy waters of the Aegean Sea en route to Greece.

  Such items for most readers were just page-fillers, mere miscellany, horrible but far away. Andrei, on the other hand, took it all very personally.

  Nonetheless he persevered. Throughout the middle of summer, he continued his parallel projects, his letter-writing and his scissoring of newspaper articles, with a kind of manic dedication. And while it didn’t occur to me right away, it soon became apparent that these seemingly disparate activities were, in fact, intrinsically connected. If Andrei’s letters comprised a question to the world, then the clippings were the world’s detached reply. Or so he would have me believe.

  He seemed absolutely certain that our tenacity would be rewarded. That’s why I was baffled when out of the blue he stopped. It was the second week of August. Suddenly there were no more newspaper cuttings lying on his desk. The filing box he had kept on his work shelf disappeared. He started sketching again in his spare time. Elaborate, technical illustrations that kept him occupied for hours.

  When one day I suggested we draft a new batch of letters, he declined. What was the point, nobody’s responding, he said, surprising me with his resignation. All efforts to motivate him just brought a shrug. As far as I knew, he never wrote another letter.

  For several days, I hardly saw Andrei except at his desk. I knew something was wrong. He turned his face away whenever I tried to catch his eye. At lunch he would rush off by himself. I would call after him, and he would give a quick wave and keep walking. He seemed anxious to keep moving. I would catch up with him. “Where are you going? Can I come too?” A forced smile, a shake of his head, he was late for something or other. Sometimes he would be delayed getting back to work. He lost interest in the packages that arrived at his desk.

  Even his gaze, once always watchful, now had a thousand-yard stare. Something had overpowered him. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the beginning of a gradual letting go.

  And what was it that he relinquished? Perhaps Nicolae. Or Romania. Perhaps his ties to the past. Perhaps something as simple as hope.

  So much remains unclear when I look back on that time, but Andrei’s pain was unmistakable. Photos of young men were the hardest on him—those who looked like Nicolae, even those who didn’t.

  Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men?

  From “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville

  Part Three

  NICOLAE’S THINGS

  A box of postcards including:

  A Japanese boy dressed in a Dutch sailor suit

  Men outside a Moroccan bathhouse (hand tinted)

  A Roman statue of a woman with an urn

  Flappers with feather hats

  Bulgarian village dancers (hand tinted)

  The ruins of Angkor

  Sixteen

  Somewhere deep inside, I knew that the key to Andrei’s disappearance was to determine what had happened to Nicolae. One missing person would guide me to the other.

  Throughout my early conversations with Andrei, Nicolae had remained elusive—a blurry figure in a corner of my mind. I could put a face to him from Andrei’s photos, but I lacked the fine character details to bring him to life. Much of this vagueness, I knew, was my responsibility. Wishing not to be intrusive or indelicate, I was at first hesitant to ask too much about their relationship. (Would I have been so circumspect had Nicolae been Nicola? I cannot say for certain, though I hazard to think yes.)

  It had been the pattern with Andrei that I would wait for him to volunteer information, which he began to do more earnestly in early October, two months before he disappeared. It seemed to happen all of a sudden. For some time after we had aborted our letter-writing and
newspaper-clipping campaign, Nicolae’s name had been off limits. Then one afternoon, while we were sitting outside the mail office enjoying a warm spell, Andrei began to speak of him again. We had just come back from walking in a nearby ravine and I was using a branch to pick at dirt that had caked into the ridged soles of my shoes.

  “I still compose letters to him every night in my head,” he said.

  He was looking straight ahead, directing his comments at the row of parked cars, the trees in their concrete planters. I put the stick down to show I was paying attention, but Andrei took no notice. I might not have been there: he was talking beyond any audience, to wherever he stared.

  “The other day I ran into someone I met when I first came to Canada. He’s a bank teller now. We ended up going for a coffee and before long he was showing me pictures from his wallet. There was a snapshot of his wife on their wedding day, one of his house and one of his two young girls feeding geese by the lake.

  “It was as though he was trying to sell me something—you know, the ‘good life’ we’re all supposed to be wanting. I felt relief when he finally closed his wallet and asked me what I had been up to in the five years since we had last seen each other.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that I had a good job. I remembered that he was a chess player himself and told him about my chess matches. It was all very friendly, which is why I was shocked when, just as we were leaving, he held my shoulder, looked me in the eyes and said: ‘My friend, you must get on with your life. We must find you a wife.’”

  “How horrible and presumptuous.”

  “That’s just it. He wasn’t being horrible. He was a nice man. But I realized that it didn’t matter if I had won the lottery or been promoted to manager of his bank. Without a family, I was nothing.”