The Letter Opener

by Kyo Maclear

  For my mother, Communism meant only one thing, the loss of property, and so revolt was the only possible solution. “We forget how lucky we are,” she said. “Just imagine.” She shuddered. Click-click. The contents of her purse were now spread out on the coffee table in front of her: three hair combs, medicated eyedrops, and a sandwich bag containing store receipts and what looked to be her gold wedding band.

  I petted Miko. He purred loudly, then curled up in my lap and went to sleep, his face buried under his paw.

  At 6 p.m., when the news began, Paolo raised the TV volume. On the screen we saw a montage of the day’s events, combined with flashback shots: a sea of people flowing into the centre of Bucharest, hundreds of candles burning in the snow at the martyr’s shrine, demonstrators sitting on tanks waving tricolour flags alongside rebel soldiers, and the now iconic image of the Ceausescus’ bullet-ridden corpses. Queen Elizabeth had repealed an honorary knighthood she had conferred on Ceausescu a few years earlier. Foreign statesmen who had once travelled with Ceausescu by motorcade were now referring to him as a despot. For so long, the outside world had chosen to see Romania as a semi-free Soviet satellite. Suddenly the true face of tyranny was revealed.

  We had heard from Kana in Prague earlier that day about growing suspicions that the Romanian revolution was not a revolution at all but a coup d’état, that the events had been staged by Party insiders who were waiting to install another Communist junta. That seemed like big news, and we kept waiting for it to be mentioned on the television—but not a word was said.

  What we saw instead was a segment about the arrival of imported goods in Bucharest on Christmas Day. The segment began at Otopeni airport, where a small group of people had been camping out on the Tarmac. One woman was lying on her back, staring at the sky. She was bundled in blankets, ashen-faced from exhaustion. A man was huddled with a young boy under a patched tent. Like members of the resistance, they had been waiting for three days for an airlift bounty of glistening American goods. They had imagined it so often, and now it was their turn: America’s intoxicating promise of material deliverance!

  The planes never arrived.

  There was nothing up there but cloud and snow. What arrived instead—and here the story moved to the centre of Bucharest—was a herd of trucks loaded with smaller favours—bottles of beer, cartons of Kent cigarettes, packets of coffee, cans of cola, cheap consumables. Against the grey riot-torn streets, the colours alone—streaks of red, white, bright blue, yellow—were electric, a spree of capitalist opulence.

  The goods that arrived next were the promised products, not desperately needed and still-rationed items like bread, sugar, meat and petrol, but pleasure items. Imported drugstore cosmetics, digital watches and transistor radios. Inexpensive, usable rubble. I sorted through this kind of stuff every day.

  Next came the religious tracts. Operation Grace: one hundred thousand Bibles and thirteen million gospel pamphlets distributed to “needy families” to help “sweeten the bitterness.”

  The Western cameras couldn’t get enough of it: the kids running around as if it was Christmas (which it was); the driver tossing handfuls of candy into the air; a teenage girl staring at a photo she had just been given of a Hollywood actor; a small boy holding a bar of chocolate up to his nose as if it had to be squeezed and sniffed for a while to be truly believed.

  At one point I thought I actually spotted Andrei near a makeshift retail kiosk. There was something familiar about the way he gripped the strap of his shoulder bag. But when the camera moved in closer, I saw I was mistaken. The man’s face was waxy and pale, anemic. He had an untrimmed beard and dirty, matted hair. He looked as though he had been standing at that corner for centuries. It was certainly not Andrei.

  By 10 p.m., the action in the streets began petering out. The same footage was being recycled. The news graphic now showed a toppled statue of the dictator above the title “Transition: After the Revolution.” It was a new chapter. Suddenly the reporters wanted to know about the future of the country. They were plucking out experts from this and that university, a slew of scholars with presumably enlightening things to say.

  One man, who was identified somewhat ambiguously as a “sociologist of transition,” talked about the fact that Romania was a new growth market for the home-security industry. “As people start to acquire more things, they’ll want to protect their homes. They’ll need better locks, intercoms, alarms, insurance plans.”

  Paolo snorted and raised his glass into the air. “Here’s to a better life.”

  A woman, a psychology professor who had spent time in the Balkans, talked about the power of the secret police, its system of informers creating betrayal even among family members. Her eyes were ringed with dark liner, which gave her a Gothic quality.

  “Scarred,” she said. “The people are scarred.”

  “Emotionally scarred,” the reporter clarified.

  “Deeply, deeply scarred. The bonds of trust were broken and now they must be restored,” she continued. Her face became drawn and pensive. “The trappings of terror have gone, but bits of it are still embedded in the collective psyche.” She placed her finger on her forehead. “It will take time to rid the Securitate from people’s minds.”

  My mother, who had donned a heavy quilted jacket even though the apartment was warm, was resting her hands in the mouth of her purse. She was concentrating on the faces on the screen.

  An expatriate Czech author was asked to comment on “the four lost decades” of Communism. As soon as the reporter asked the question, the writer sneered. He held his pen aloft between his fingertips as if about to throw a poison dart. His other arm was slung over the back of his chair. Behind him a studio screen showed a night view of Bucharest. When he spoke, his voice undulated like a preacher’s.

  “This period of transition cannot erase everything that happened before. Lost decades!” he scoffed. “To suggest that those years were a black hole is a scandalous negation! No matter how difficult it was, no one wants their past reduced to a zero.”

  “I see—” said the reporter.

  “Yes, you will see,” the writer continued. “Give them time and the people will create their own stories about those so-called lost decades: they’ll find excuses, they’ll find heroes, they’ll find answers, they’ll even find nostalgia!” And then he began to chuckle, amused at the thought, and the reporter laughed nervously along with him.

  That Christmas, the attention of the world was gripped by the collapse of Eastern Europe. The jangling of keys carried by crowds in the streets of Prague, the tock-tock-tock of people removing pieces from the Berlin Wall, the resounding boom of gunfire in the streets of Bucharest—a symphony of change.

  I wondered if Andrei was part of it.

  Twenty-three

  When Warren returned to work on the twenty-seventh of December, he came directly over to greet me with a tin of almond florentines that his sister had made. After a few minutes, he moved to his desk and began his morning ritual, adjusting his suspension chair, tinkering with his pens and arranging his ledger, just as Andrei had done when settling in each day. As he busied himself, I continued to stare into space, not yet motivated to commence work. Sensing my distraction, Warren swivelled his chair toward me, his way of saying, we can talk if you feel like it. He continued to face me as he shuffled through a stack of packages, silently counting to himself.

  When he reached the bottom, he set them aside, glanced at the top one and said, “Is it my imagination, or are we seeing more mail from Eastern Europe lately?”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I replied.

  Warren plucked at a staticky piece of cellophane that was stuck to the surface of his desk. “There’ll be a flood of mail within a few weeks. Now that the gates are opening.” Then he looked up, a more serious expression on his face. “I assume you’ve been watching the news?”

  I nodded.

  He continued. “First a flood of letters, then a flood of people following their letters
. Then we’ll see how the West feels about the fall of Communism.”

  The stakes had changed for Western governments and individuals who prided themselves on their broad-mindedness. While the defection of an Olympic gymnast was easy to cheer for, the arrival of masses of asylum-seekers was quite a different test of liberalism.

  “Don’t be so sure they’ll want to leave,” I said. “After all they’ve been through and fought for, they may want to stick around and see how things turn out. Their letters might even be calling their relatives home.”

  I knew from my years at the mail office that the mail arriving in the early moments of political transition was unpredictable. The first parcels arriving from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, after their dictators fell, had surprised me. Of course some of these ended up in the UMO, their recipients having disappeared into the stream of North American life. How did people express their newborn and uncensored freedom? By sending care packages to their relatives in Canada, it seemed—cardboard boxes sealed with tape and tied with cord.

  I had learned from these gifts that satisfying a hunger for North American things was not the only way of expressing freedom. When families “back home” sent packages of goods—bags of sweets, recent photographs, bolts of brightly patterned fabric, bars of soap—it was their way of regaining their dignity. They were reversing the flow of giving. After years of repression and hardship, generosity was liberty.

  Paolo and I went for a long walk that night after work. We ended up at a pub toward 8 p.m. It was right next to a store called Liquidation World. The pub sign was an imitation tin plaque, dark green letters embossed against a mustard-yellow background. The interior was a mixture of old and new. Old in style: cozy nooks, a fireplace next to a massive handcrafted bar. New in attitude: electronic music, a complicated fusion menu. We sat in a cushioned booth by a window overlooking the parking lot.

  Paolo ordered a beer for himself and a glass of wine for me and said, “So?”

  “I’ve never noticed this place before,” I said.

  “You mentioned when we were walking that you wanted to tell me something about Andrei.”

  “Yes.” I rolled up my napkin tightly on the table and watched it slowly uncurl.

  In the past, every time I had reached this part of Andrei’s story, I felt in my mind as though I were standing on a bridge over a dark pit. For months I had believed—somehow needed to believe—that Nicolae and Andrei had a perfect relationship, one that would have survived all adversity.

  Was it possible for a person to be open and closed at the same time? I was realizing that though Andrei had shared many things about himself, there had been other aspects he hid, that perhaps he couldn’t admit even to himself.

  “I’m not sure but sometimes I wonder…”

  “What, Naiko?” Paolo said. “What do you wonder?”

  IT WAS A HOT afternoon in late spring, a few weeks before their defection. Andrei was leaning against the sloped riverbank. Nicolae was squatting a few metres away, building a pagoda of rocks and stones. The sun was so harsh and bright that a row of gulls had retreated to a sliver of shadow near a jutting tree trunk, yellow eyes scanning the water for food.

  “I should head home soon,” Andrei announced, shielding his eyes from the brightness.

  Nicolae looked up. “Already? But it’s hardly been an hour. Can’t you stay a bit longer?”

  “I need shade. This heat makes me dizzy.” He pulled the fabric of his shirt away from him and began flapping it to create a breeze.

  “Go find a place up there,” Nicolae said, indicating a hill. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

  Andrei trudged up and found a shady spot under a tree. He lay down and closed his eyes. He was drifting into sleep when he heard a loud splash. Then another. And another. Andrei opened his eyes. Nicolae was lobbing rocks into the water.

  But Andrei also saw what seemed to be a cloudburst of wings beating in distress, a score of gulls circling maniacally overhead. He squinted into the sun. Every now and then, one of the birds dived toward the ground. Their cries pierced the air. He sat up and called out to Nicolae, but there was no answer.

  He hurried back toward the river to find the source of the commotion. As he approached he saw an injured gull trying to uncurl its head from its torso. There was a gash of blood on its side, and a violent tremor passed from its gullet to its legs. Andrei observed with horror as it made a shuddering attempt at flight, one wing dragging, a blind crash into the sloped riverbank; its beak speared the ground, its body flipped, this way and that, convulsing, its neck twisting from the effort.

  “No! Stop,” Andrei cried, scrambling toward Nicolae.

  Nicolae turned to him, hand still gripping a rock, his whole body flexed and dangerous. He glanced at Andrei’s frightened expression with amusement and started to laugh.

  Andrei grabbed Nicolae firmly by the shoulders. “Stop.” He pointed at the bird as it gave a final twitch and died.

  Nicolae paused, then pitched the rock into the river.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Andrei hissed.

  “It’s just a stupid bird. It was an accident.” The stony expression on Nicolae’s face was unbearable to Andrei.

  The water now flowed placidly, unruffled in the still air. Beside them the bird lay dead. The circle overhead had widened and the cries were fading.

  Andrei felt uncertain now. He had been horrified, but had he overreacted? He touched Nicolae on the shoulder, a tentative caress. He felt Nicolae stiffen, removed his hand.

  “I’d better get going,” Andrei said.

  He was turning to leave when Nicolae’s voice pleaded, “No—don’t go. I didn’t mean it.” His face crumpled. In a second, they were in each other’s arms. “Oh, Andrei, I can’t explain it,” he whispered, tears on his cheeks. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Don’t think about it anymore,” Andrei said.

  But as Andrei held Nicolae, something inside him grew numb.

  “Are you all right?” Nicolae asked on the walk back through the woods.

  “Yes. Just tired,” Andrei replied.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Nicolae said, and reached for Andrei’s hand just as they arrived at the edge of the woods.

  Andrei pulled his hand away and glanced nervously around. “Not here. Have you lost your mind?” he whispered in irritation.

  They walked on together in silence.

  Andrei was superstitious. The dead bird haunted him. He believed it was unlucky to have a fight so close to their departure. He worried that they were cursed after the incident.

  Ten days after the episode with the seagull, Andrei and Nicolae left Romania by car. The journey to Cernavoda took two days. Most of it was spent in silence, but they found ways of explaining it, ways of bearing it.

  They’d need their energy, Andrei said, for the effort ahead.

  Nicolae, hunched in the car seat, said he was nervous. “My stomach won’t stop jumping.”

  Andrei told him to close his eyes and try to relax. “Once you’re in the water, remember not to thrash. Pace yourself, let the waves carry you whenever you can.”

  Their final embrace took place on the deck of the ship, under a suspended, canvas-covered lifeboat.

  Andrei blew up a plastic bag containing a few keepsakes so that it would float during the swim. He tied a tight knot at the top of the bag and attached it to his swimming trunks. The plastic pouch containing his birth certificate and several photographs was taped to his thigh. They had planned the entry carefully. Nicolae had wrapped a long rope around the ballast. He would lower himself first, holding on to the rope, pushing away from the ship so as not to get caught in the propeller. Andrei would count thirty seconds, then follow. Their plan was to swim parallel to the freighter until it was some distance away and then call to each other.

  Nicolae wore a snorkelling mask. Andrei wore marine goggles.

  In the water, Andrei set out steadily, beginning with front crawl and changin
g to a side stroke that made it easier to avoid the water cresting from the ship. Once the ship had passed, he listened for the soft splashing that would help him locate Nicolae. Hearing it, he called out. Nothing. He shouted louder, but there was no reply.

  After a few more tries, Andrei gave up, assuming that Nicolae was out of earshot. He began to swim at a slower pace, trying to contain his worries. An hour or so passed, and he stopped swimming and lifted his head high above the surface. He treaded water and called out to Nicolae again, feeling his precious store of energy draining away with each new effort. He heard splashing, but it could have been the waves or the wake of some ship. He thought he heard Nicolae shouting quite near to him in the darkness, but it might have been the blood pounding in his ears. He continued with a sluggish breaststroke and began praying for morning light to come.

  At roughly one and a half hours, already half the time they had expected it to take from ship to land, Andrei abandoned the plastic bag. With a firm tug he ripped it from his swimsuit, relieved to no longer be towing its weight. His father’s handkerchief, a pendant belonging to his mother grazed the water, then sank.

  He continued swimming, on his side again, chopping his way slowly along. The salt water, inhaled in large amounts, made him feel nauseous, so he closed his mouth and tried to breathe through his nose.

  For a while he floated on his back to regain his strength. His legs were getting heavier and heavier. They ached with cold and exhaustion. How long had he been in the water now? They had calculated three hours from their point of entry to shore, three hours at the most. But now all seemed lost.

  Where was Nicolae? Was that him splashing in the distance?

  A plan had been set. All they had to do was follow it. Metre by metre, they would arrive.

  At approximately two hours, nothing had definition, the world was black to the horizon. His ears throbbed. He felt a humming, then a harsh whine, then a deep drilling pain boring through his head.