“What has happened,” she asked. It was hard to believe that what she saw had a cause, a beginning, an intention.
When William didn't answer, Anna walked up to him, took his hands and pulled them off his face. He was crying. The cigarette burns in the soft brown leather of the sofa formed a big, crooked star.
“Do you think I've been punished enough?” he asked.
Julia was moving fast behind the doors of her bedroom. When she emerged, she had her rucksack on, a red bandanna across her forehead. The doors closed and the storm doors followed with a thud.
“She threw a party,” William said.
“A party? What kind of a party?”
“The neighbours called the police,” he said. “Someone broke the window in the bedroom. A tire was lit up in the backyard. But they didn't come fast enough to catch anyone.”
He brought a package of black garbage bags, and Anna opened the windows to get rid of some of the smell. “Don't touch anything with your hands,” he said handing her a pair of latex gloves. With these rubbery fingers they picked up sticky condoms, crumpled paper towels, tablecloths and sheets glued together with dried vomit. Turning her head away, Anna pushed the soiled cloth into the black bags. William announced a list of damages: beer spilled into his violin case, the toilet seat broken, CDs missing, a handle torn from the door, black scratches on the living room floor. Flour and sugar dumped into the washing machine.
For days everything they touched seemed sticky, defiled. There were tomato seeds still hiding between telephone buttons; a slice of pizza was rotting behind the bookcase. It scared her to think of the destructive rage that must have fuelled it all.
The neighbours were forgiving. “You are not the first ones,” Pauline said. “A Canadian right of passage, a crashed
party.” John and Louise apologised for not intervening earlier, but, they stressed, Julia seemed always so mature. She must have had a bit to drink, missed the tipping point beyond which there is no control. “Poor kid, who needs an experience like this? She must feel awful, now.”
Anna thought: Poor Julia? What about me? What about her father?
If she did regret what had passed, Julia kept such feelings to herself. She didn't call, didn't write. Not even a postcard with an apology. It's just as well, Anna thought then. She needed time. She needed time not to feel a tinge of pleasure when William said that he didn't want to speak of Julia at all. Ever.
The beige metal shelves in William's office at McGill are full of papers, books, and records. Some of the books have white library stickers on them. Valerie, the secretary in the Music Department gives Anna a few empty cardboard boxes. One of them is marked, “Return.”
“This is for library books if you find any,” she says and sighs. Her red jacket is open at the front. “Take your time. There is no rush. We are all so sorry. He was still so young.”
This is not the worst, Anna thinks. At least she is not offered a spiritual lecture about the ebb and flow of life, the need to accept death. Or told, with an uneasy smile that she will get over it, with time.
“Fifty-one,” Anna says, “Only fifty-one,” and her heart shrinks, for words like these reduce William's life to a number, a score.
There are two photographs on his desk in brown leather frames, one of her and another of Julia, her hair still long, her now straight white teeth exposed in a wide, cover-girl smile. Anna is glad to have the picture here. Julia called her in the morning and suggested they have dinner together. “Do you want me to come and help?” she asked, but Anna said she would rather go through it on her own.
That was in the morning. Now, overwhelmed by the inevitability of the task before her, Anna escapes to the washroom and stands motionless in front of the bathroom mirror, leaning over an orange Formica counter. Swallowing is hard, painful. She touches the purple shadows under her eyes. Her face has turned alien in grief, bird-like, she thinks, revealing the first short lines cutting into her lips, almost invisible, but already there.
Back in William's office she goes through his things, slowly, refusing to part with any traces of his presence. A thought that he won't, ever, touch anything else is what prompts her. At home, she hugs his dressing gown hanging on the door hook, kisses the rim of the collar, touches the polished tips of his shoes, still in the shoetrees to preserve their shape. Here, she is sifting through what has remained.
The papers on the upper shelves turn out to be students' unclaimed assignments, dusty and yellowed. These the department can have. They can also have the music journals, some of them still in their plastic covers, unopened, unread, as well as the files in the drawers, minutes from committee meetings, grant proposals, students' petitions asking for his recommendations.
A thick manila envelope is in the file marked personal. It is sealed and when Anna tears the flap to get inside, letters, postcards, and photographs spill on the desk. In these photographs, taken within moments of each other, William's face is moving from his pensive frown to laughter. He is wearing the black turtleneck and the brown tweed jacket she always liked so much, leaning forward as if trying to convince someone of something very important. In the last picture the lock of his silver hair is falling over his forehead, just before the moment he would brush it away.
A postcard from Baden-Baden â an old, sugar-sweet postcard, flowery wreaths and bells ring merrily, musical notes spilling out. The handwriting is hard to decipher, the letters are tall and tight. It takes Anna a while to see a pattern in these edgy lines, to make out the words.
L'absence est à I'amour ce quest au feu le vent, il éteant le petit il allume le grand
. It is signed:
Ursula.
Anna opens a small blue envelope, and takes out a folded piece of paper. Her heart stops for a few seconds and begins again to pump blood, rushing it to her face. The paper shakes as she holds it.
Darling, It is so empty here without you. The rooms echo my steps, and your voice is still around me. I'm pretending that you've just stepped out for a moment and that you will be back, soon, a good husband, away on a short trip. I feel married to you in the most profound sense of the word. Why would we need anything more? Ursula
Another sheet, folded in four, rustles as she unfolds it. No date.
Got home late, and the apartment was dark and cold; I had turned the thermostat down before I left. My old Prussian hatred of waste, the miserly me. I crawled into bed thinking of you. Today, I don't want to talk to anyone, for then I would forget your voice. Urs.
London, then. We will have late dinner at Durrants Hotel and then walk on George Street and kiss. I want to be courted. Please, buy me a ribbon and a comb and take me to the wax museum, and we will laugh in the still faces. We will make love and drink horribly strong tea (milk first), and be as British as only Germans long to be.
Anna sits down, legs unable to support her. Something has snuck up behind her, is touching her shoulder. She turns her head and looks at the bookshelves she has just emptied. Nothing there but specks of dust. It's not what you think, she says to herself. It can't be.
“It's just for a few days,” she remembers him saying. “I need to be alone. You do understand, don't you?” She stood in the doorway and watched him pack his brown leather suitcase. Round balls of socks went to their place on the right, his beige corduroy pants lay flat on the bottom, Shetland sweaters were folded into even squares, empty sleeves tucked neatly inside. He closed the zipper of a brown leather sachet with its scent of sandalwood.
“Be together but not too close together, like two pillars of a temple,” he had said. A line from
The Prophet
, one of his presents for her, the maxims of the sixties. She didn't drive him to the airport; he hated that. It was better to say goodbye here,
at home, and she was careful not to hold him for too long, faking impatience to cover up the pain. Anger she couldn't afford. It could simmer in her, but she would not let it boil over. “Thank God you are not like Marilyn,” he said once, and she remembered everything he had said about his first marriage. “You don't have her vindictiveness.”
William was already anticipating his own return, slipping his hand under her sweater, around her waist and pulling her toward him. “I'll call,” he murmured into her ear.
He did. From Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, his voice cheerful, concerned. “Do you miss me, love?” he asked and she laughed. “You do understand, don't you?” But she thought he just wanted to be alone for a while. Did he really believe she was allowing him to betray her? Not him. Not William. She must be wrong, of course she is. She has no right to suspect him.
Finished “The Faces of Women” today. All shots are black and white. Colour spoils the deadly transformations I want. You don't have to be alarmed, William, my obsessions are not too easy to spot. The Nazi women are there in spirit only, in the looks of submission, fanaticism, and self-annihilation. I didn't have to go too far for looks like that. A few night tours of Berlin bars sufficed. Lothar didn't say anything, but gave me a bear hug. That was the best review I got. Walked along Ku-damm, still watching. Disco music pours out of the stores. Young women are wearing tight blouses and jeans and balance their bodies on platform shoes. Schoolgirls have loud voices and bold looks. Of course, I'm emptied and sore. Way too concerned with trivia, distracted by moments of inconsequence.
Anna takes off her glasses and closes her eyes. Her eyelids feel as if there were tiny cracks in them, itching and sore. She knows the only way to conquer the itch is to stop rubbing the eyelids, to wait through the surge of pain, but she rubs them until tears appear and torn eyelashes stick to her wet fingers. When she opens her eyes, the edges of the room look softer. Books on the shelves turn into patches of colour; the ceiling is a stretch of white, without a blemish.
Darling, No! No regrets. None! I wake up at night, watch the lights of Berlin and pretend that you are here with me. What I
want is the sea â green, cold, smelling of seaweed and wet wood. Some escape from this constant fever. You tell me I've forgotten that there is something worthwhile beyond ecstasy and despair. I do listen. Sometimes, U.
Anna's cheeks are flushed, and she presses her hands to hot skin. She waits for something to happen now, some necessary sequence to this discovery, something that would explain it, make it go away. From a distance she hears doors open and close, someone's voice outside is rising then falling sharply, silenced, cut short. “Yes, yes of course,” she hears, “I'm sorry.” It occurs to her that Valerie must have placed all these letters into William's mailbox; for years she must have watched as he picked them up and hurried to his room to read them.
She stands up and takes a few steps away from the desk. It's not fair, she keeps thinking. Not now. Not when he is dead, when he cannot explain. She sits down again.
Darling, Your voice sounded rather sad and whiny, and I'm sorry I was so rushed. You caught me in the middle of a session. Tried to call you back, but you were out already. No, it's not easier on me. Just because I was the one to say it, doesn't mean it's solely my decision. There is historical evidence that we would end at each other's throat, and that we would burn in this hatred, so don't try to change my resolve. I might be in Montreal next month, to photograph the faces in your Canadian national parades, the progress of the Referendum, so don't sulk for too long. Rather, tell me what will your wonderful, innocent country do if it splits. “Je me souviens?” Isn't that what your license plates say?
Quebec Referendum. Before she came to Canada. Of course! These letters were written before she even met William. They are from the time she has no rights to. She reasons with her own uneasiness: William had a love affair when he was married to Marilyn. He didn't tell her about it. He didn't want her to think him unfaithful, capable of betrayal. Such reticence is disappointing, but understandable. It may even be thought of as discretion. She didn't tell him that much about Piotr, either.
October, 1979. Blackness is like poison, a drain of colour, and I succumb slowly. First goes hope, then energy seeps out. I sit and stare at the walls of my room and wait until it goes away. I wait
until, by some divine intervention, a new beginning will grab me, and I will rise to start again.
There are magazine articles attached to some of the letters, folded, yellowed at the edges. In German, in English. Anna pushes them aside, impatient. There will be plenty of time to read them later. Now she needs to be reassured.
January 1980. No, it wasn't too bad. Just a skirmish between creativity and despair. You needn't be concerned. I plunge into such days willingly and emerge fortified. The sky is sapphire-blue and the wind penetrates the skin. I slipped into a small church, round the corner from here, smelled the whiff of camphor from the furs, and listened to the pastor with a golden tooth and a slight lisp. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” Not much hope, then, for change, nicht wahr? Today I woke up full of resolutions. Like a prisoner I may have nothing but a teaspoon to dig a tunnel with, but I will go on. As chance presents itself, I'll dispose of the soil, sand, and stones.
March 1980. I went to touch the Wall today. The doors and windows of the apartments facing the Wall in the East are sealed. This is a divided city, after all; German metaphors are solid, made of reinforced concrete. The guards on the other side will shoot to kill. Yet the brave ones dig their tunnels, scale the Wall, run for their lives. If they manage to get here, I see them, sometimes, drinking themselves into oblivion in West German bars, throwing their accusations in our faces. To them we are cold, callous, and naive. We don't understand anything.