The Letter Opener

by Kyo Maclear

  But, as it turns out, inhabiting a cultural boundary is actually good for writers. It means being constantly on your toes, in a state of perpetual observation. I think this vantage point has been formative in drawing me to the stories and experiences of people who feel they don’t quite belong or feel they belong in many places at once—those who stand outside national narratives by virtue of who they are.

  “Memory is what gives us our identity.”

  In The Letter Opener, I derived a certain pleasure from playing with racial expectations through the characters of Andrei and Naiko, in terms of who typically gets cast in the role of “the immigrant” and who tends to fit the profile of “the Canadian.” It was clear from the beginning that I wanted to avoid a simplifying saviour motif—the notion that an immigrant arrives to an open and rescuing embrace. My intention was to explore an empathetic relationship between the two characters, not a flawless one.

  Your protagonist, Naiko, struggles to deal with her mother’s declining cognitive abilities as a result of Alzheimer’s. What are your thoughts on memory and how it defines us?

  Let me say here that I have no direct experience with Alzheimer’s in my family, but having watched families undergo the ordeal, I feel I have gained a few limited insights.

  I don’t think it is overstating matters to say that memory is what gives us our identity. We rely on memories for a sense of continuity. When a memory is revised or missing, our self-perception can be affected in ways that may leave us feeling lost, upset or angry. Think about how unhinging it is to forget the name of a person in your personal photo album or school yearbook, especially someone with whom you were once on intimate terms. Then imagine that you are the one being forgotten, that your mother is quizzing you, asking, “How are we related again?” What happens when a relationship is irretrievably altered by memory loss—say, through dementia or emotional amnesia?

  “Forgetting is a necessary and even a healthy condition of life.”

  There is a kind of doubling that occurs in the novel between Naiko’s mother and Andrei; both feel they are losing a foothold in worlds they once knew deeply. The way Naiko’s mother reacts to this sense of flux and uncertainty is to grab hold of the material world. She becomes a hoarder. Rather than see her response through the medical lens of “obsession,” I try to humanize it by setting her behaviour in a wider context and by showing that there can be moments of grace, humour and intense connection even in the midst of a devastating memory illness. I also wanted to explore this idea of “letting go” and whether there are times when forgetting is a necessary and even a healthy condition of life.

  What place, if any, does the old-fashioned letter have in this electronic age?

  I grew up writing letters because it was expected of me. All of our relatives were in other countries, and it fell upon me to keep in touch. I have since learned that many immigrant families delegate this job of keeping in touch to the children of the house. Now that many of my relatives have e-mail accounts, my list of traditional pen pals has dwindled to two—a step-grandmother living in Brighton, England, and a friend in Toronto with whom I continue an erratic but satisfying correspondence.

  “Nothing can replace the tactile significance of holding and reading a letter sent by someone you desire.”

  My six-year-old son recently cottoned on to the whole letter-writing idea. To him, dropping an envelope in a red-and-blue box and having it appear two days later in your home mailbox is a kind of magic—on par with pulling rabbits from hats. When I see his excitement, a part of me thinks, How quaint. You see, my son still doesn’t know that letters are “old-fashioned.” He has no idea that letters have become the ascot or bowler hat of communication media, that to partake of a dying trend is to be ascribed with an aura of outmodedness and—worse!—affectation. Because I have a sentimental streak, I sometimes wonder if either of my children will ever have the opportunity to send a handwritten love letter without feeling pompous or ironic. I feel fortunate that I was born early enough to have had the experience of conducting deep friendships and romances by surface mail. I’ll never forget the experience of receiving a letter from my husband-to-be when I was staying for a time with an uncle in Mallorca. Nothing can replace the tactile significance of holding and reading a letter sent by someone you desire.

  Having said all this, letter writing is still the primary means of written communication for many of the world’s people. Such is the unevenness of technological “progress” that a BlackBerry still holds the connotation of exotic fruit in most global communities. Even at my son’s downtown Toronto school, at least a third of the families are without e-mail access.

  In my novel, I wanted to give form to the idea that people live in different “nows.” By dint of geography, history, trauma or good fortune, they may be worlds and decades removed from one another. A teenager in Fallujah and a teenager in Tulsa may wear identical Nike t-shirts but in every other respect be completely out of sync.

  “If Canada is a kind of meta-version of the Undeliverable Mail Office, what letters and people aren’t finding a proper home?”

  So for me, the questions become: What stories are being left behind or are not finding a listener simply because they don’t fit a familiar form or idiom? What qualities of social interaction are lost when a medium—such as letter writing—fades in significance? If Canada is a kind of meta-version of the Undeliverable Mail Office, what letters and people aren’t finding a proper home?

  In some respects, The Letter Opener is an allegory of disconnection and connection: it is about friends who never write back and strangers who choose to listen.

  —To listen to a HarperCollins Canada Prosecast interview with the author and hear her read from The Letter Opener, visit www.foursevens.com/prosecast and scroll down to “Kyo Maclear.”

  On Postal Phantoms and Becoming Corrupted

  Shortly after The Letter Opener was published, I was invited to give a talk to a large group of book devotees about the inspiration for the story. Given that the novel was incubated in my household letterbox, I thought I’d prepare for the talk by collecting a week’s worth of mail as an exercise in inventory.

  “Mr. Szabo is our family’s postal phantom. I should think every house has one.”

  Well, here’s my stack, more or less: A few bills, bank statements, membership renewals, postcards, gallery announcements…and a well-timed arts grant.

  There are times when my mail is less uniform, less boring.

  Every now and then, something unexpected or unusual arrives. A letter from a childhood friend whose big, loopy handwriting appears to have remained the same since fifth grade. A large manila envelope containing half a quilt, literally a quilt cut in half, sent from an offbeat writer/acquaintance living in British Columbia.

  Not only this week but many weeks, I receive mail addressed to a certain Mr. Szabo. Mr. Szabo is our family’s postal phantom. I should think every house has one. Over the past few years, we have seen at least a hundred letters addressed to Mr. Szabo—a man who, for whatever reason, never got around to having his mail redirected.

  Because I have moved countless times over the course of three decades, and because I scrimp and only ever pay for several months of mail forwarding, it is highly possible that I am someone else’s postal phantom. It is probable, in fact, that there are envelopes addressed to Kyo Maclear regularly mingling with Canadian Tire flyers or “2 for 1” pizza coupons in recycling bins around downtown Toronto.

  “I don’t like the idea of my mailbox being an end point. I believe every letter deserves a fair chance at survival.”

  In my efforts to be a good citizen, I am fairly consistent about returning Mr. Szabo’s mail. I leave it for the mail carrier or drop it in a postbox with the words MOVED or INCORRECT ADDRESS scrawled on the front. I consider this a small act of resuscitation. I don’t like the idea of my mailbox being an end point. I believe every letter deserves a fair chance at survival.

  A few years ago, Mr. Sz
abo’s mail prompted me to start thinking about other unsolicited arrivals. I found myself wondering: What if I were suddenly to receive someone else’s mail in my box—a parcel so tempting and irresistible that it set off all my prying urges, triggered all the habits of voyeurism I have cultivated through countless years of reading People magazine, watching reality TV and whatnot? What if, upon receiving such a parcel, I simply could not resist “coaxing” it open? But then, what if upon opening it I were to discover that it was not what I thought or expected at all? It was not a love letter. Or a prize announcement. Or a shiny new bauble. Or a party invitation. What if this package did not conform to any of my ritualized expectations? What if—more to the point—it contained a letter asking for help or insight or, more simply, a witness.

  “Some letters cannot be sealed. They make demands of us.”

  My first novel has something to do with this world of lost and misdirected mail. It’s the story of a young woman named Naiko Guildford who, in her strange detective work as a mail recovery employee at a dead-letter office in Toronto, finds more mystery and more meaning in the world of lost objects than in the people around her—that is, until she meets Andrei. He is a Romanian refugee who arrived in Canada five years earlier and who works beside her in the dead-letter office. One day, he mysteriously disappears. During the short time that Naiko and Andrei are acquainted, he shares the story of his past life in communist Romania and the tale of his harrowing escape across the Bosphorus.

  Naiko has led a fairly insulated existence until this point, and her initial reaction to Andrei’s story and subsequent disappearance is to want to return to the secure harbour of her former life, to bury herself in familiar routines. She tries to put Andrei’s story out of her mind, its enormity and otherness, its unresolved drama. But she finds that it won’t budge.

  What Naiko discovers is that some stories cannot be consumed and forgotten. Some letters cannot be resealed. They make demands on us.

  In the 1990s, I met a man from Romania. I knew nothing about the country. I quickly racked my brain for some associations and images. I came up with very little. Transylvania. Dracula. And from the art history pocket of my mind, the name Constantin Brâncuşi—really just a few simplified bits. Had I met the man today, I might have had a few more items to summon forth—but truthfully, not many more. The reality is that Romania (like so many other neglected “B-list” countries) rarely cracks North American headlines, unless in the context of former gulags being used in the U.S. war on terror or a village standing in for Borat’s fictional hometown in Kazakhstan.

  “Writing is the art of bothering. Of paying attention.”

  When I met this man from Romania, I knew only the barest details of the 1989 revolution and the fall of Ceauseşcu. I was only dimly aware of the widespread repression that preceeded the revolts and had no frame of reference for the anarchy and bloodshed that ensued. Any information I had was vague and impersonal. I could not trace a single name or story.

  Perhaps the seed of this novel rests in that initial encounter with a stranger—and the embarrassment I felt at my own lack of knowledge. Perhaps most of my work is an attempt to bring what was once faraway and hazy a little bit nearer. At any rate, I found myself driven to pursue the matter. And so, I began the gradual limning of scenes and characters that up to that moment had not existed. The process was sporadic, tentative, delirious.

  It turns out that characters do not appear at the mere flourish of a wand or simply because you want them to.

  Writing is the art of bothering. Of paying attention. For me, it has been a way of entering into a conversation with the unfamiliar. I’ve never subscribed to the motto “Write what you know.” Substitute the words read, eat, do, be, live for write and you get a sense of how restrictive and solipsistic it is as an idea. I sometimes think a more useful bit of advice is, “Write what you wish or need to know, bearing in mind that to do so means to proceed carefully, thoughtfully.”

  “I’ve never subscribed to the motto ‘Write what you know.’”

  I like to think that fiction—as opposed to journalism—opens a particular ethical window onto the world. One thing a novel can do, which newspaper articles can’t always do, is particularize. By focusing on the anecdotal, novels can take a big narrative—such as post-war communism in Romania—and make it feel less epic and anonymous. It can, for instance, take one man’s personal unhappiness and give it depth and grit, and, in so doing, lift it out of the vast and (sadly) more impenetrable context of collective despair. It may move us to care about a stranger—such as a Mr. Szabo or a man from Romania—with whom we seem, at first, to share nothing in common. For me, that’s what makes a book worth reading—and writing.

  We spend most of our time shut in our homes, our cars, at work. How many of us regularly (or ever) experience what Naiko does in this novel, a chance encounter that pushes her outside of her comfort zone, that opens a door to the unknown?

  I wrote The Letter Opener because I was compelled to pursue a conversation that had been left unfinished in my mind. The novel was driven by fragments. It was incited by questions as basic as Who is Mr. Szabo? Why should I care about Romania? Where do dead letters go? Having arrived at this point, I can tell you that the answer to that last question was by far the easiest to obtain.

  As Tony Kushner put it so simply and so beautifully in the opening monologue to his play Homebody/Kabul, “Ours is a time of connection. The private, and we must accept this, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted.”

  —Adapted from a talk presented at the Ben McNally/Globe and Mail Books & Brunch, Spring 2007.

  Indelible Ink (My Most Memorable Letter)

  “I swooned over him for a full year—and I know I wasn’t alone. He could make black jeans, a plaid shirt and suspenders look really good.”

  A. was the kind of person who attracted devotees. His warmth made the shy feel unshy, the awkward feel less so. He had a fully formed look (call it “Brainy New Wave”), which showed that he took pleasure in appearances, even if he didn’t seem to care how he was seen by others. While many of us in grade nine were splintering off into cliques and subsets, he was fluid and global in his friendships. I swooned over him for a full year—and I know I wasn’t alone. He could make black jeans, a plaid shirt and suspenders look really good.

  Summer holidays had just begun when he died unexpectedly. He was in Botswana on an expedition with his anthropologist father. Their vehicle overturned on a remote bush road. Two days after I heard the news, I was banished to Japan (or so it felt at the time). The truth was that I was travelling to Tokyo with my mother to visit family, but it meant that I missed A.’s memorial service and with it, the opportunity to mourn among friends.

  That summer was a lonely and painful one, probably the worst I’ve ever experienced. There was one saving grace: J., a friend of mine and a childhood friend of A.’s, was spending the summer with his parents in Paris. Our sense of exile created a kinship between us. J. kept me afloat by sending me entertaining letters and mixed cassettes of “synthpop” by Jean Michel Jarre and The Art of Noise, the music creating a melancholy and otherworldy mist that floated over my days and nights.

  J. and I didn’t discuss A. much, but we were both aware of each other’s grief, and this was comforting. We were fifteen. Losing A. was the saddest thing that had ever happened to us.

  A week before I was set to return home, my father called from Toronto.

  “There is a letter here for you.”

  “Who’s it from?”

  “I’m not sure. I think maybe that boy…”

  “When did it arrive?”

  “I’ve been very busy these past few weeks.” (He had a deft way of deflecting my questions.)

  “He talked about the letter as though it were written with a poison pen.”

  “Is it a long letter?”

  “I’m really looking forward to seeing you,” he said with a cheerful tone of finali
ty.

  The letter had been waiting for me for nearly two months. My father later claimed he believed that if I had read it while still in Japan, it would have upset me “unnecessarily.” He wanted to protect me. He talked about the letter as though it were written with a poison pen.

  Even though I’d been forewarned, returning home and seeing the envelope lying there on my bedspread was surreal. The handwriting was recognizable. I remember thinking, A letter from a dead person? Is this some sort of cruel hoax?

  I carried the envelope around for a full day before opening it, and later, curled up on the sofa, I opened it with the sort of precision one might use when defusing a bomb, nail scissors moving slowly and surgically along the edge. A.’s death had robbed me of a certain spontaneity. I was conscious of posterity.

  “The letter wasn’t one that allowed me to wallow in sadness, because it was so pulsing and real.”

  He began with greetings in Setswana, Herero and !Kung, and in the body of the letter, his writing displayed all the twisted elements one might expect from a fifteen-year-old boy. (He describes drinking beer from vending machines in Amsterdam one moment, then watching Mr. Dressup in Afrikaans in Johannesburg the next.) The letter is funny and hormonal, thumbprints and scribbles and contradictory emotions all muddle together on the page. In the middle of an intimate confession, he breaks into a completely unrelated comic-strip fantasy about a character named “New Wave Dave,” who transforms into a superhero named “Pot Man.”