The Old World and Other Stories

by Cary Fagan

Where the hotel is now, right?

  That’s right. It’s such a shame the house was torn down. That’s the power of money for you. As some of you may know, Oresta did not publish a single poem in her lifetime. Her work was known only by her closest friends. It was her fiancé, Gilbert Winters, who first urged her to publish. He was a great support to her. She hadn’t yet decided whether she wanted to publish — we know this from her letters — and then, despite her pleas, Winters went off to war. She received the telegram reporting his death and a few hours later wrote the poem that is now known by its first line — “I Am Lost.” I think she truly loved Gilbert Winters, and felt that at last, at the age of thirty-five, she’d found someone who understood her. She came down the same path that we ourselves took. It was just before midnight and a full moon. And she threw herself or perhaps fell into the water, we’ll never know for sure.

  Did she put stones in her pocket or something?

  It wasn’t necessary. The currents here are very strong. It is believed that Oresta was almost immediately dashed against the largest outcropping. She had a significant gash on her head. Likely she was unconscious when she drowned, a small mercy. When you are ready please follow me back up the path. Feel free to take your time.

  That’s just so sad, eh, Kev? To think she stood right here. I guess every spot has its own tiny history.

  If you ask me she had a screw loose, killing herself for some guy.

  You mean if something happened to me you wouldn’t feel like that? I don’t mean actually doing it, but you wouldn’t at least for a while feel like life wasn’t worth living?

  Don’t start with the weird questions. I’m going to get a video of the waves hitting the rocks. I can post it back at the hotel.

  Kevin, she said not to go any farther.

  I’ve got good soles on these Docs. I’ve always been good at — shit, now my pants are soaked.

  Serves you right. Don’t be stupid for once, Kev. Just come back.

  Just one more — oh, fuck! I can’t believe — I dropped my phone. That phone is almost new. I’ve got all my photos from the trip . . .

  I told you. And now you’re really scaring me. Get back here.

  All right, soon as I grab my phone. Before it washes away.

  Remember what she said, those rocks are — Kevin! Oh Jesus. Kevin! Help! Somebody help!

  JULY 9, 1983

  Did I tell you, sis? That it would be a good spot?

  You did. And it is. It takes my breath away. It’s awe-inspiring. Dad would really have loved it here.

  That’s just what I said. He sailed past here once, I can’t remember which race it was. A couple of miles out, of course.

  Dad loved those races. Did he ever win?

  Not once. I don’t think he even came close. He just liked to be out on the water, to be in control but under pressure at the same time. It made him feel free.

  I’m sure he was more comfortable dealing with his crew than people on land. “Pull this, yank that.” That was his ideal conversation.

  He was going to sail a lot more, now that he finally had the time. I said that I might go with him sometimes. And then it came on so quickly, one moment he’s the picture of health and the next —

  Oh, I hate to think about it. He should have had more time.

  I’ll take the lid off. Do you want to do it?

  Let’s do it together. Are you okay there? I don’t want either of us slipping.

  I’m fine. Just be careful to keep it low so the ashes don’t blow back on us. Do you want to say a few words?

  I’ve said them all in my heart already.

  All right. Here we go.

  Goodbye, Dad.

  AUGUST 24, 1969

  Are you scared?

  I’m not scared.

  Then catch up.

  Okay, okay! But Mom and Dad told us not to come down on our own. And I already got a soaker in my running shoe.

  So? I’ve got two soakers — I don’t care. And Mom and Dad are asleep in the tent. We won’t tell them, okay? You said you wanted to come with me.

  I know. But the rocks are hard on my feet. And the waves scare me.

  Waves are fun. Here, if you really need to, crybaby, hold my hand.

  I’m not a crybaby.

  Don’t squeeze so hard. The water isn’t even that cold. We could just go in up to our knees.

  It looks like it gets deeper over there. I can’t see the bottom.

  I know what we can do. We’ll hop in together. And then the wave will lift us like we’re surfing. It’ll be fun.

  I don’t want to.

  You are a crybaby.

  If I do will you play with me after? Not here, back up at the top.

  Okay, I’ll count to three and then we’ll jump. Are you ready?

  Ready!

  One . . . two . . . here we go . . . three!

  NOVEMBER 4, 1942

  Well, have you got him?

  It’s tricky, sir. The cords are still caught between the rocks.

  Then cut him loose. Before he looks any worse, damn it. Who saw him come down?

  Private Ricket saw him, sir.

  Where’s Ricket? Right. Tell me what you saw, Private.

  He was coming down too fast, sir. There was something wrong with his chute, one side was kind of flapping. It wasn’t slowing him down enough. I think he would have been all right if he’d gone straight into the water. But he hit one of the rocks.

  Did you see the Hawker?

  Came down in a spin, spewing black smoke. Broke up when it hit the surface.

  Blast it. This is a bad time to lose a plane.

  Funny thing, sir. I believe this is the place where Oresta Collings died.

  Who?

  The poet, sir. I was a graduate student before signing up. Her work was published just a few years ago. She’s become quite the rage. In certain circles, I mean. In fact I carry a small volume —

  I don’t care about some poet, Private.

  No, sir.

  Here they come. Help haul him up, would you? I’ve got to file a report.

  JUNE 11, 1877

  It’s lovely, Papa. Are we really going to live here?

  In the summers we are. We’re going to build a house right on the crest. I’m going to have a study and your mother will have a studio. And your own room will be at the very top. You’ll have a wonderful view.

  I think there will be terrific storms. Thunder and lightning and great crashing waves.

  You are a little Romantic, darling.

  And when it’s clear and warm? Can we go swimming then?

  No, it’s very dangerous. There are powerful currents among the rocks. But there’s a beach about a mile down. We’ll go there. We can have picnics.

  And I’m going to bring the notebook you gave me. See, Papa? I have it in my big pocket. I already wrote a poem. It’s about sorrow.

  That’s a very grown-up topic.

  I’m going to write another one about joy. You’ll like that better.

  Much better. You’re a very smart girl to know your father so well. And after you’ve written it you can read it to your mother and me.

  I’ve already got a first line. Can we stop here, up on the grass? And you can smoke your pipe.

  That’s a fine idea.

  I’m going to be a real poet, you know.

  I believe you, darling. I’m sure you are.

  YOU SHOULD HAVE COME

  I was mad for the theatre, and it was this madness that saved me. But it did not relieve me of the grief and guilt I felt over my sisters’ deaths.

  I had been a late, unexpected child, and my sisters were much older than me. And when our mother and father died they became, in effect, my parents. They thought we would be safer in the countryside and so we move
d from our apartment to a small cottage on the outskirts of a village. I was eighteen. Hannah was angry with me for not leaving the country when I’d had a chance to obtain a visa. But I was acting in my first professional production, playing the role of the manservant in Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, and refused to go. “Soon, soon,” I kept saying. Gerta, as usual, played the peacemaker. “This isn’t the time to argue,” she said. “We need to be together. A family. We need to think of our dear parents and love one another.”

  “For God’s sake, Gerta, cut it out,” Hannah said.

  Before the play’s run was over the company had to let me and several others go or risk being shut down, and by then it was too late to leave. I continued to take the train into the city to see my friends, to drink wine and join in the reading of new scripts. I knew my sisters would say the city was too risky, that anyone might betray me, so I kept these visits to myself. Instead, I told them that I was going to the nearby forest to look for mushrooms, berries, and to fish — anything to supplement our meagre food supply. Of course they complained when I came home empty-handed.

  On one of my trips a stagehand who let me watch rehearsals told me that I’d been denounced and that the theatre was no longer safe. Seething with bitterness, feeling that this catastrophe was terrible only because it was ruining my life, I took the train back to the village. Approaching the cottage, I saw two black automobiles pulled up on the dirt road. Figures in long leather jackets went to the door while others moved around the side of the house. Why had they come for us? Had it been my fault? I didn’t know what to do. Should I run to the house and plead with them not to take my sisters? Surely they would just take all of us. And so I ran.

  I headed back into the woods. I knew only the mile or two near our cottage but I kept going, avoiding any signs of human life. As it got dark I found a place, not a cave but a mere hollow in the earth from where a tree had fallen, pulling out the roots. I lay down. Every so often I heard a sharp sound in the distance; it reminded me of the strange noise at the end of The Cherry Orchard.

  For three months I stayed in the forest. Never in that time did I have enough food or feel that I was safe. Twice I met up with other people who were also hiding, but I decided it was better to remain alone. Autumn came and it rained and grew cold. Food became almost impossible to find. After three days with nothing to eat I became delirious. I found a road and began to walk. At the first house I came to I knocked on the door, hardly able to keep standing. The door was opened by a small, balding man in a jacket and tie. He did not ask my name but brought me in and gave me a bowl of soup and bread. Then he showed me to a tiny room at the back of the house where there was a straw-filled mattress and a blanket. I lay down and slept.

  The man was a professor of law who was no longer allowed to teach or practice because of certain articles he had published. He did not ask me to hide. I worked at odd jobs for him, rebuilding the front porch, plastering the rooms, hoeing the vegetable garden. He had a good library that I was welcome to use. I read books of history, science, and poetry. I moved on only when I felt that my presence was putting him at too great a risk.

  And so I lived, sometimes on my own, sometimes with others or with help, until the end of the war. I had no family left. I couldn’t see staying in that country and so, after many letters and the issuing of documents, I got on a ship and left for the “New World.”

  I learned English and went to university, where I began to act in plays again. The approach to theatre was much different and, I thought, much less serious, but I adapted. I got my first professional jobs and then began to direct. I specialized in Strindberg, Ibsen, and of course Chekhov. The better theatres had an appreciation for European artists or, should I say more frankly, a foolish but useful reverence. I also taught at the university.

  There were, of course, women, but none was more important than the others until one evening at a closing-night party. I watched a woman setting out food on a tray — a real job, feeding people, I thought. We began to go out, became a couple, and after she got pregnant we married. We had two daughters, beautiful, smart, stubborn little girls named in honour of Hannah and Gertie. Sometimes at bedtime they would ask me about my sisters and I would say, “Oh that Hannah, she was wonderful and strong and difficult and thought she knew what was best for me. You know what? Probably she was right. And Gerta, sweet Gerta, she was very sensitive. Raised voices, arguing, disturbed her soul.” I did not tell them what had happened to their aunts; that could wait until they were older.

  One evening I came home exhausted from a difficult rehearsal. We had dinner, read to the girls, put them to bed. Before long we were asleep ourselves. Then the telephone rang. It was four in the morning. A harsh voice in the old language said, “Is that you? It’s your sister Hannah.”

  “What? Hannah?”

  “And here is Gerta beside me. It took us all these years to find you. You shouldn’t have changed your name. We are coming to visit and will arrive in one week.”

  I had hardly said a word before the line went dead. My wife stirred beside me, saying, “Who was that? One of your neurotic actors?”

  “No,” I said. “It was my sister. Hannah.”

  She sat up. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s alive.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Yes. And my sister Gerta, too. It was Hannah’s voice, I’d forgotten it. How have they been alive all these years without my knowing? Living in Europe still, one day after another.”

  “How old are they now?”

  “Let me think. Fifty-three and fifty-five. They’re coming here next week.”

  “Oh my God, that is so wonderful. How do you feel?”

  I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know.

  We didn’t own a car so a week later we all took the bus to the airport. The girls had a hundred questions that I couldn’t answer. I checked the arrivals board and then stood at the big window while Hannah and Gertie — the little ones — held my hands. Planes took off and landed. At last one taxied to the gate below us. The plane sat on the tarmac for perhaps fifteen minutes before the door opened and passengers began coming down the stairs. None of them looked as if they could be my sisters. The final passenger emerged, or so it seemed, for there was a long pause and then two women came hesitantly out and made their way slowly down the steps. At the bottom one took the arm of the other. I easily recognized them — Hannah the tall one but now with a limp, Gerta looking broader but with her hair in just the style it had always been.

  “There they are,” I said, and the girls began to wave, hesitantly and then almost frantically. My sisters didn’t see us, at least not at first, and when they finally spotted us they didn’t wave back but kept walking. Now we hurried down to the floor below and waited outside the door, waited what seemed an age before they finally came out, followed by a porter with two ancient trunks on a luggage cart.

  My wife kept hold of the girls as we approached. “My sisters, my dear sisters,” I said in the old language, holding out my arms.

  Hannah came forward and slapped my cheek.

  “You should have come back for us.”

  “Stop it, Hannah,” Gerta said. “Here’s our brother, our little brother. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Of course it is,” Hannah said and hugged me hard. Gerta kissed my wife and they both began to cry. Then Hannah leaned down. I thought that the children would be afraid of her, but they weren’t. They ran right into her arms.

  INVISIBLE

  HIM: I was in love with her sister. She was beautiful and mysterious, and I thought that I might be the answer to her unhappiness. I didn’t see this as arrogance but as a kind of humility. And what did I do about it? Nothing. I didn’t have the courage, or perhaps just the experience. And then she was gone.

  HER: What is every girl’s model of a married couple? Her own parents. I had the example of two p
eople who could not even find the energy to hate one another. Instead, what they felt looked merely like distaste. Perhaps they enjoyed the sarcasm. I remember when I was a teenager I wished that they would both have affairs and just shut up for a while. But I’m sure neither of them did, and not because of a secret fondness for one another or even loyalty. I’m sure they’d become too twisted for anyone to want them.

  HIM: My father brought me up. My mother died giving birth to me and from the earliest age I felt this fact as both guilt and responsibility. I didn’t argue when my father said that nothing was more important than my studies. He was a plumber and put in extra hours on weekends and nights — he was always on call. A good university was expensive and he needed to save for me. In the end, though, I got a full scholarship and didn’t need the money.

  HER: I was the invisible one. People would look right through me. It was my sister they always noticed — she was beautiful and willowy, and she never really looked at anyone directly because she was always gazing inward. This disturbed and attracted people. And yet every once in a while she would take notice of me. I would wake in the night to find she had crawled into my bed and wrapped her arms around me. Possibly she was cold; she was almost always cold. Other times she might braid my hair, and she would ask me the sorts of questions adults asked — what I liked at school, did I have a crush on any boys.

  Every few months came another crisis and there would be doctors, psychiatrists, nutritionists, hospitals. More than once my parents forgot to leave me a note, or a meal. Once they left me waiting at a street corner, our meeting place after my flute lesson. I waited almost an hour and then walked home in the growing dark. A man started to follow me. I got scared and finally turned around and yelled at him until he went away. I walked the rest of the way home crying.

  But they didn’t forget me the day she died. When I came home from school they were sitting on the sofa, waiting to tell me. It wasn’t necessary for them to say anything.

  HIM: Our parents were old friends, so of course my father felt obliged to visit frequently during the period of mourning. He took me with him when I was free, for by then I was in my first year of university. (In the sciences, biology and chemistry, there is a lot of work.) Her parents were stricken. They no longer made the sarcastic remarks to each other that everyone was used to hearing. But they couldn’t help each other, either, even I could see that.