The Letter Opener (15 page)

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

N
ICOLAE
’
S
T
HINGS

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

S
omewhere 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.”

“Did you consider telling him about Nicolae?”

He turned to me in surprise, perhaps puzzled by the mention of Nicolae in the context of family. He shook his head.

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He began fishing around in his pockets, looking for his lighter. I could tell from the changing expression on his face that he was becoming lost in his own thoughts again. I picked up the branch, this time whisking it along the tops of my shoes. I watched his hand curl, uncurl, then curl again, as if clasping something.

In his mind, perhaps he was walking with Nicolae along the banks of a river. Perhaps he was remembering how they used to slip off their clothes and jump in the water, swimming side by side, diving into the cold patches where the riverbed dropped away. Perhaps he was thinking about the way Nicolae’s face used to break through the water, a whip of hair, a bobbing head, circles widening across the surface.

But it is more likely he was thinking about the splash: that final fateful moment when Nicolae entered the water of the Bosporus. Was Nicolae far enough away from the freighter? Did he shout? Andrei couldn’t remember. The moment when so much happened eluded him; it had been left behind.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes, why?”

I placed my hand on his arm. “You’re shaking.”

Andrei lit his cigarette with a trembling hand and inhaled deeply. He exhaled. He breathed in again deeply, this time without the cigarette. I saw from the look on his face that he was back again, back in the sunlight.

Andrei pointed at an approaching truck. “Marvin.” The truck passed, two honks and a wave. We both waved back and watched a cloud of dust rise in the air.

The particular moment Andrei couldn’t remember was always a forbidding blankness; struggling with it would leave him anxious and confused. Every few days he woke up in a panic, his body covered in sweat. Every evening, he told himself stories about Nicolae to dispel these nightmares. The stories he invented spoke of happier circumstances. In one story, Nicolae was in Lisbon eating grilled sardines by the sea. In another, he was walking through the market in Biarritz, buying fresh tomatoes and spiced sausage. In Andrei’s stories, Nicolae was always comfortable and well-fed. He wasn’t languishing in some cockroach-infested room with only a hot plate for cooking and crates for furniture. He was okay. Far away, but okay.

These stories soothed his conscience. Only occasionally did he allow himself to wonder what it meant for Nicolae, assuming he had survived, to move on without him.

Had Nicolae even tried to find him?

But there were bleaker thoughts to which Andrei alluded: that Nicolae all along may have had his own plan of escape—escape from him included; or, most unbearable, that Nicolae may have held him to account for that moment of parting in the black of the Bosporus.

Outside the mail office, Andrei dropped his half-finished cigarette to the ground. I shuffled over in my seat and mashed it with my shoe. I wanted to jump into the silence and ask him if he would consider joining Paolo and me for Thanksgiving dinner the following weekend, but before I could put the words together, he spun around to face me.

“You know, all this time, you hardly ask any questions about Nicolae. Is it because…” But he stopped himself. “Why is that?”

I stared down at my feet. The question caught me off guard. I couldn’t tell if he was accusing me of something, or simply inquiring.

“I…”

“Don’t be shy,” he urged.

I thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, then. How did you meet?”

Andrei raised an eyebrow, then smiled. “That’s it?”

I shrugged.

“All right. Let’s see. How we met. Well, we were classmates in our first year of university. Both of us were eighteen years old. We sat close to each other in mathematics class.

“It was mid-session exams. The classroom noisy with moving paper and chair legs scratching the floor. Nicolae was sitting by the window, leaning on his wooden desk. He was using a ruler to draw a gridding—grid?—a grid on his paper to complete the last question. Around us, everyone was concentrating.

“Only I was moving in my seat. I had forgotten my sharpener, and my flat pencil would not let me finish the final question. The more I tried to fix my…my grid the more messy it became, until I was looking at a terrible grey mark in the middle of the page. I must have sighed loudly, because a moment later there was a tiny sound on my desk. Nicolae had given me a new pencil. I held it up. The tip was a perfect point. I looked over to thank him but his nose was already back on his page.

“When the exam was finished I waited at my desk until everyone had collected their things and the room had become empty. Finally, Nicolae came over, and before I knew it we were touching. It was quick—I think his hand pressed my arm—but I could feel a shivering on my skin.

“’Keep it,’ Nicolae said, pointing to the pencil I was holding. I saw that the end of his thumb was missing. The other fingers were long and skinny.

“‘You don’t mind?’ I said. When he looked at me I felt warm. My cheeks were hot. His attention was pleasing to me.

“‘No.’ He was smiling, ‘My father is a professor. He gets them from the university.’

“Just then a teacher put his head into the classroom. Nicolae turned and looked away, but I didn’t.

“‘I better run,’ he whispered, looking back at me and smiling. He closed the buckle of his bag.

“After he left, I could still feel his breath right here on the side of my neck, his hand on my arm.”

The hollow beneath Nicolae’s shoulders where his shirt hung loosely, his trimmed fingernails, his missing thumb tip, his small front teeth, the light freckles on his arms: such intimate knowledge of body parts fleshed and warmed Andrei’s memory of Nicolae. Now I was the holder of these small parts. As the sole keeper of Andrei’s story, I had to determine its fate. But could I be trusted?

Andrei once said that every memory is a possible betrayal. Our memories are communal and so revealing them without the permission of those with whom they were created is a kind of violation.

Ultimately, it was my own desire for peace of mind that kept me recounting Andrei’s story to Paolo, confiding in Paolo the way Andrei had confided me. In the end, I told him virtually everything. He listened closely, nodding at different points, stopping me every now and then to ask a question. This act of sharing generated a new intimacy between us, and any resentment he harboured toward Andrei seemed to dissolve. (I should mention that Paolo continued to demonstrate a characteristic mind for detail in the questions he asked. For example: Were the letters we wrote inquiring about Nicolae sent by registered mail? Was Andrei a good student? By which I think he meant: was he smart enough not to draw attention to himself?)

Something quite unexpected happened as I spoke. A feeling of calm resolve spread through me, a quiet hope that in recounting Andrei’s story, I was somehow keeping him alive.

A
ndrei carried the pencil Nicolae gave him everywhere he went. He rolled it in his coat pocket while waiting for the bus, always careful not to snap the point. He played with it during class, twirling it around his thumb, lacing it through his fingers, mindlessly doodling just to feel the scratch of the tip against the paper. He tucked it behind his ear while he ate. And he placed it beside his pillow when he went to sleep.

The pencil was the first sign of Andrei’s lovesickness. The second indication was the sighing. He sighed prolifically, an entire dialect of sighs, as though life had many different ways of pressing the air out of him. A soft contented sigh when he was in Nicolae’s presence. A mournful sonorous sigh in his absence. A grumbling sigh when Nicolae had to rush home. A grateful sigh of relief when he entered the room. Andrei had developed an uncommon, non-verbal eloquence.
He could summon the complete range of human emotion. But there was still one sigh that Andrei had not yet uttered, a sigh that had not yet found its proper occasion.

The occasion came in early October. Nicolae surprised Andrei one day by asking if he would join him after class. The invitation was written on the back of an exercise book and passed to him during the professor’s morning lecture. Their professor had given them a hydraulic engineering assignment that involved designing a small dam for the Tisza. Nicolae’s note read:
The river, this afternoon?
Andrei stared at it and felt his pulse jump. He picked up his pencil—
the
pencil—ready to reply in small neat lettering (
Yes!
), but thinking better of it, put the pencil down and gave a furtive nod.

By mid-afternoon, they had found an undisturbed area by the river. They set down their bags and tinkered with their drawings for threequarters of an hour. Conversation was halting. Nicolae did most of the talking. Whenever Andrei tried to contribute he found himself speaking in monosyllables. For months he had fantasized about being alone with Nicolae, but now he felt almost numb with shyness, grateful when Nicolae launched into a monologue about “uncivil engineering.” He listened as Nicolae described a recent trip to the capital: how horrible it was to walk through the potholed streets of Bucharest. Behind the shiny white exterior of Victory of Socialism Boulevard everything was grey, grey, grey. Thousands of people jammed into pitiful apartment blocks with horrible, uniform facades. Grimy, precast concrete for miles. It was monstrous! Inhuman! Evil!

Nicolae’s words stabbed the air. They were hard, bitter words having nothing to do with the occasion—the occasion of their courtship as Andrei perceived it. Yet the truth was that Nicolae’s words didn’t matter to Andrei in the least. What mattered was his proximity. Sitting beside Nicolae gave Andrei a fluttering sensation in his stomach.
A feeling of unadulterated joy. His eyes, his mouth, his neck, his hands! The anticipation of touching Nicolae was enough to make him giddy.

He fought the urge to lick him. Right then. Run his tongue along the edge of Nicolae’s ear.

Andrei realized he was being too forward, his eyes too eager, when Nicolae began to blush and look away. As a diversion, Nicolae massaged his chest pocket and pulled out a crumpled package of cigarettes.

“One left, let’s share it.”

He lit the cigarette and slid to a half-reclining position. He tried to appear relaxed, but his manner was nervous. He took a long haul on the cigarette and then raised it for Andrei to share. The V of their fingers overlapped. It was their second touch, and all Andrei could think was that he wanted to be in Nicolae’s arms.

They stared at each other in suspense, unable to speak. The cigarette was dropped and crushed underfoot, but their fingers continued to touch, tentatively stroking and delving. Fingernails gently scraping a wrist, a thumb lightly brushing the inside of an elbow. Nicolae edged toward Andrei. Andrei could feel his heart beating through his shirt.

When they finally collapsed on the riverbank, the wanting was unrestrained. They clutched at each other, moving on the earth, twisting over the roots and branches, grabbing and pressing urgently. Their lovemaking was both smooth and rough. Dry pads of grass. Pebblecool cheeks. Warm breath. Moist contact of tongues. Loose bunches of fabric. Knees on coarse ground. Flecks of wood. Confetti of brittle leaves. And, finally, the sinking, pleading hardness—being seized and flexed in—the sensation of both substance and evanescence at the same time. In those rapturous moments, sounds came from Andrei that he did not know. Deep, falling, hungry sounds.

When the sun set, they were nestled together under a blanket of clothes.

“I felt you watching me,” Nicolae murmured. “Every time I walked into the classroom, I could feel your eyes on me.” He looked at Andrei and grinned. “Did I imagine it?”

Andrei shook his head and smiled shyly. “I suppose I’m not very good at hiding things.”

“No. But I’m so glad.” The teasing gone from his voice. He took a deep breath and touched the back of Andrei’s head.

A gentle wind swished the tops of the trees and stray leaves floated around them. A bright quarter moon hung in the sky. The stars blinked and Nicolae pointed up at them happily: “Surveillance.”

A squirrel scurried by, and after a pause Andrei whispered blissfully: “Informer.”

The river became theirs, their desire growing stronger with each secret meeting. When winter came, they met in an abandoned shed. A layer of gritty hay covered the floor. They lay together on a bed of woollen horse blankets. They found blocks of wood to sit on. A kerosene lamp. They stuffed burlap sacks for insulation.

In late spring, they returned to the riverside, which was blooming with new life. By early summer there was a wild bush, heavy with ruby berries. There were patches of columbine, edelweiss, and ragged clusters of yellow poppy. One afternoon, as they were lying by the river following a short hike, Nicolae’s body erupted in hives. Raised white lumps that started at his neck. They became redder and angrier the more he scratched.

In an effort to soothe him, Andrei pulled up Nicolae’s T-shirt and blew on the welts criss-crossing his back. Nicolae yelped. A spidery sensation formed a whorl across his shoulder blades. A blazing itch ran down his sides, then along his legs, down his calves. Placing the toe of his right foot against the heel of the left, Nicolae pushed the shoe off. A band of pink bumps circled his ankle.

Andrei set off to find a clearing away from the river.

He found a spot a few metres away and returned with Nicolae. “Lie here,” he said finally, and patted the space beside him. He had stripped down to his underwear. His clothes were spread evenly on the ground. Nicolae lay down on the mat of clothes, slowly peeled off his own shirt, then pants, careful not to scratch himself. Once he was undressed he rested with his arms away from his body. The air was sluggish. He attempted to keep perfectly still, to direct his mind away from the creeping agony of his skin. He stretched his limbs, focusing on the forest smells. He stayed this way for several minutes, then gave up.

His skin was shrieking with discomfort. In surrender, he grunted and rolled on top of Andrei.

“Please,” he groaned in Andrei’s ear, “do something…I’m desperate!” He took Andrei’s earlobe in his teeth. The sun slanted through the trees.

Andrei gripped Nicolae’s buttocks, clamped his feet onto Nicolae’s calves. They made love in quick motions. The trick was to be firm. No light, feathery touches. No aggravating caresses. Nicolae’s penis was unwelted, which made them laugh.

Later that afternoon at Andrei’s house, they sat in a concealed corner of the garden. Andrei had caked Nicolae’s torso and limbs with a soothing mud paste, and as they waited for the mixture to stiffen and set, Andrei held a raw-potato compress against Nicolae’s neck and jawbone. He put it near his hairline and patted it gently down to his shoulder. Nicolae moaned in gratitude as the rash subsided, the welts began sinking. Andrei picked up a Thermos of water with his free hand and took a swig. He passed it to Nicolae, who tipped it toward his mouth. A stream of liquid spilled down Nicolae’s neck to his mud-caked chest, leaving a trail of beige slickness. With the
Thermos now gripped between his knees, Nicolae reached back and patted around for Andrei, mud-stiff arms fumbling for contact. Andrei squeezed the potato cloth in his hand and placed it on the ground. He inched forward and held Nicolae from behind. As he eased his hands across Nicolae’s stomach and down into his pants, he heard the click of a shutter hinge, but chose to ignore it.

The dry mud cracked. Nicolae’s back resembled that of a crocodile. Almost gleefully they found that the mud fell away with the rub of their bodies, shedding debris all around them. Andrei was able to sponge away the last crusts, and by evening the rash had disappeared. Nicolae dressed with a sigh of relief, pausing every now and then to pass his fingers over his new, sloughed skin, touching the round strawberry birthmark under his left collarbone.

The next time they met they avoided the riverbank and pushed deeper into the woods, until they reached a patch of defoliated land near a wind-toppled tree. It was a perfect spot, entirely secluded. They lay down together. Around them was the nutty aroma of beech. Fractions of light percolated through the canopy, leaving dappled shadows on the ground.

In time their love for each other became more reckless and unguarded. They became bolder, began meeting openly, oblivious to the dangers of being seen. Their intimacy would have been obvious to anyone. Nicolae absentmindedly tucking his hand into the sleeve of Andrei’s shirt. Andrei picking an eyelash from Nicolae’s cheek. A head resting on a shoulder. Fingers massaging the nape of a neck.

It was just a matter of time before they made a mistake.

On one occasion, Andrei’s mother was standing by her window, tending to some flower pots. Andrei and Nicolae were setting up a ladder below, preparing to clean the eavestroughs. Andrei slipped the whisk broom into his back pocket, then donned a pair of heavy work
gloves. Before he mounted the ladder he leaned over and brushed his lips against Nicolae’s neck. It happened in a split second, but he heard something clatter against the window above. When Andrei looked up, he saw his mother stepping back into her room, the quick closing of a shutter.

When she peered out again, Andrei was halfway up the ladder. Nicolae was at the bottom holding on firmly. Andrei’s mother nodded, dipped the rag she was holding into a bowl of water and began to scrub the plant leaves.

From that afternoon on, Andrei noticed that his mother hummed while she worked. An acoustic amulet: to make him aware of her presence, to spare herself any future surprises.

When Andrei was in grade school, rumour spread among his classmates that the science teacher was a pederast. Though never substantiated, the rumour stuck to the teacher like a foul stench. Obscene graffiti appeared on the blackboard. Vicious, threatening notes were left on his desk. Eventually the climate became so hostile that he was transferred to another school. Years later, another rumour circulated that the teacher had been picked up by the Securitate and thrown into prison in a campaign to rid the country of sodomites.

What mattered was not the substance of the original rumour, which could have attached itself to anyone, but the reaction to it. The children could not help noticing that the teachers were shamelessly silent while their colleague suffered all manner of harassment, governed by the ineradicable belief that they were serving their students well. To build a single-minded nation, lessons needed to be imparted, punishment dispensed. Without much said, the silence of their teachers conditioned the children.

Lesson #1: The Perils of Wayward Desire

Lesson #2: Sodomy as Treason

The boys learned their lessons quickly. Years before their first sexual experiments, they understood that to be gay was to be morally deficient—and horribly treated.

The lesson was so powerful that the first time Andrei was called a faggot, he experienced a surge of revulsion. A student he hardly knew—they had been on the same swim team as children—punctuated the epithet by spitting on Andrei’s desk on his way out of the class. A white bubbly patch stared back at him like a wrathful eye. Yet it was not that which wrenched his stomach. Disgust was wiped away with his handkerchief, but what remained was a feeling of selfloathing. He fought against it, yet he could feel the hatred entering his heart, lodging there.

Wherever he went, he sensed people staring, gangs of prying eyes and busy minds that concocted fantasies about his depravity. The village always seethed with gossip of some kind or other, but now he was the
cause célèbre
, and in his dreams his persecutors were constantly waiting in ambush.

The first, tentative winds of change were beginning to blow through the cities and towns of Romania. One could hear rumbles of dissatisfaction by eavesdropping by the market stalls, in the factories, on the street. It was obvious that the country was overwrought and angry, and in this climate, fearful of authority despite the poverty and corruption, people turned on one another.

The first rumour was tame. That Andrei had brought Nicolae gifts: a bag of Hungarian sweets, a bottle of homemade plum brandy.

But they became more sinister as the fall of 1983 wore on:

That Nicolae collected postcards of naked boys…

That the two friends were peddling contraband condoms…

That they carried a disease…

Andrei played the role of a disgraced man, though it was not entirely an act. He kept silent around strangers. He was not proud of himself for bending to the humiliation. A braver man would have extended his arms and pushed all obstacles aside. A bolder man would have rejected the fear that had overtaken the town—crackling fear that ignited into open cruelty at the slightest inducement.

But Andrei was not a brave or bold man. At least not in his own estimation. The last thing he wanted was to call more attention to himself. After some months of this, as winter came, he sought to distract attention by avoiding Nicolae in public—not realizing it was too late. By now his love for Nicolae adhered to him as totally as his own skin. It was impossible to shed.