The Letter Opener (24 page)

M
ore than a year has passed since I last saw Andrei. In the first months after I entered his apartment and discovered his unfinished letter to me, I was plagued by the recurring thought that I had failed both him and Nicolae. Wasn’t I obligated to Nicolae’s memory and Andrei’s well-being to discover the truth of what had really happened that night at sea? I mulled over the muddy, unfinished account of their escape again and again, each time remembering fresh things, but never finding fresh meaning. Some nights I felt furious with Andrei for having involved me in the first place. Why had he earmarked me? Was I someone people took advantage of? I ruminated over the circumstances that had brought us together.

Yet as the months passed, I began to let Andrei go. I relinquished the house that overlooked the Carpathians. I relinquished Mihai, the baby born to Ileana; I relinquished the forest I would never visit, the
freighter with its rusted hull and the settlement house in Toronto. I released it all.

It was not to forget it that I released it all. It was not to bury it, because that was not possible: there is no unplugging the power of the mind, whether tomorrow or ten years later. I simply loosened the grip of my need to possess and comprehend it. More difficult to release was the feeling of purpose his need and despair had given me.

After six months, the last of Andrei’s belongings, which Doreen had stored in a locked drawer on the manager’s request, were given away or destroyed. There were still so many unanswered questions, but there was also an unmistakable air of conclusion as I watched those items be dispersed.

There were times when Andrei’s entire existence seemed an invention of my imagination. But some things had moved out of the realm of the imaginary. Through weeks of watching television newscasts, I had come to know Bucharest as well as I did New York or London. I could call up an image of the city that felt unnervingly real: packs of mangy and scab-covered dogs roaming through concrete courtyards; streets choked with traffic; Romanian-made Dacia cars and brand-new imports swerving around an occasional horse-drawn cart from the countryside.

Over the past year, the missionaries have marched in where the international press galloped off. The Christians have descended on Bucharest, bringing their zealous spirit and salvationist cameras to its ideological vacuum. They tour its neighbourhoods and visit its hospitals and schools. The orphans are the treasures they take home, as previous visitors would have returned with embroidered shirts and busts of Dracula. Every few weeks there are stories of solicitous Americans and Canadians who are preparing to hop on planes and take matters into their own hands. Television is filled with images of iron cribs and street orphans living in sewers.

Paolo and I did take our trip, though in the end, Paolo had a change of heart and we went to Cuba instead of Argentina. It was a repairing vacation. The sun made us mild and generous with each other. I shared a few more pieces about Andrei, but mostly we tried to find our way back to being together, just two. I had told him about Sarah’s letter, but I never showed it to him. I stored the original, along with the translation, in my desk on top of a pile of my own papers. It stayed there for three months, its stiff heavy paper weighing down on the pile just as the words had weighed down on my heart. I knew the letter wasn’t mine, but it also didn’t feel right to keep it a secret. In the end I investigated the options and, after some consideration, sent it to a Holocaust memorial museum in Paris, the first of its kind in Europe.

Paolo and I stayed in Havana but took day trips to the Varadero Peninsula, where we lazed on the beach and did a lot of walking along the water’s edge. On our last night, after strolling through Havana’s Barrio Chino, we came across a restaurant coincidentally called Sakura, a small sushi bar run by an older Japanese Cuban named Eduardo Miyasaki. Over a dinner of miso and salmon maki we found out that the spry man in front of us was actually five years older than my mother, and that he had been interned along with his sons (and eleven hundred other Japanese Cubans) during the Second World War. He clearly took a shine to us, maybe seeing in our relationship some moments of his own past. I told him about my mother, an ocean away, living in the other Sakura. Just as we were about to leave, he hurried into the kitchen and presented us with a small bag of green tea from a nearby farming collective. We were so overwhelmed by his kindness that we asked if there was anything we could send him from Canada. No, no, he insisted, nothing to send. Just something to bring next time we visited: “Dried shiitake. And aspirin.”

Paolo and I returned to Toronto on a blizzardy Sunday night in mid-January and I resumed work the next day. Kana, unexpectedly, was still in town. (In my absence, she had spent more time with our mother than she had since we were kids.) Back at work, to my surprise, I sank into old rhythms as though nothing had happened. And as the routine took over, I eventually began to believe nothing vital had changed at all.

In February, Baba and his wife had their twins a month early. Yasmine Belle Maloof was born first, at 5 1/4 pounds. Asaad Michel Maloof came ten minutes later, weighing just over 6 pounds and, according to Baba, announced himself with an ear-splitting squawk. They were both born with a thick mat of curly hair, which made them look uncannily like their father.

In March my father paid his yearly visit. We met up at his favourite restaurant, a French bistro in the east end of the city. I had been standing outside in my coat waiting. He showed up in a wool suit and tie, his hair noticeably whiter than the last time we had met. He looked distressingly elderly. As we made our way into the restaurant, he touched me lightly on my shoulder.

We had a quick lunch of soup and sandwiches before heading off to visit my mother. My father had rented a car, and as we caught up on recent events—my trip, his retirement—my eyes locked on his hands. I watched them as he flicked the indicator and rotated the steering wheel to the right, letting the wheel slide lightly through his fingers when the turn was complete.

I had always loved my father’s hands. His body was slight but his hands were large, strong and square. They were hands that could play a piano or work a rotary saw. As a child I always wanted to hold them; longing to feel their rough texture and warmth clasping mine. But after my parents separated, this longing felt disloyal and I learned to tuck it away.

When we got to Sakura, my father pulled into a parking spot and turned off the engine. We arrived slightly ahead of schedule, so we sat there and started to talk. I rolled down my window to get some air. He told me he had been meeting up regularly with Kana, whom he referred to, in an aggravating fashion, as “our journalist
du jour.
”

“We connect at airports. Heathrow and sometimes Gatwick,” he said. “Our journalist
du jour
is doing great things out there in the world.”

I said nothing, just sat there, glowering at the dashboard.

“Hey, why the frown?” he said.

I turned to face him. “Am I really such a failure?”

He looked shocked. “Not at all.” He hesitated. “Naiko, you have to understand that sometimes I feel responsible. I imagine that things might have turned out differently if I hadn’t…”

“No,” I snapped. “No, they wouldn’t have.”

He rolled down his own window.

“Look. I like my job. I’m pretty good at it, too,” I said. “Everything else, well, that’s a different matter.”

When he didn’t say anything, I continued, feeling suddenly bold. “You know. Now that we’re on the subject, I’ve always wondered why? Why all of a sudden? What happened? Did you lose ‘the spark’?”

“It’s complicated. We had a lot of ups and downs.”

“That’s it? Ups and downs? That was enough for you to just give up?”

“You were too little to understand.”

“You left us alone.”

“I never shut you out, Naiko. I left but I didn’t reject you.”

“Then why England? I mean, another town maybe I can understand. But a whole other continent?”

He rubbed his temples slowly. “At the time I thought it would be easier, I would save everyone the pain of seeing one another too often.”

“It hurt anyway,” I said. “It hurt more.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.” His tone was resigned but conclusive, as though those two words were the reparation of all his transgressions, all his failures as a father.

I felt the first stabs of a headache and put the heels of my hands over my eyes. When I removed them, everything looked blotchy and unfocused but the pain had receded. I glanced over and saw that my father was now slumped in his seat, a deflated version of himself.

I rolled up the window and took a deep, shaky breath. “Well, here we are.” I smiled at him. “I realize it might not show, but I’m still glad you came.”

“Me too,” he said, and gave me a sad smile back.

I pointed at the clock on the dashboard: 3:03.

He patted his side pocket. “I brought your mother a charm for her bracelet. A silver lily of the valley with a pearl inside. Maybe we should go and give it to her.”

I nodded.

As we walked through the front entrance, he slipped a grey envelope out of his suit pocket. I knew it contained the charm and it touched me. He didn’t like extravagance, but at that moment there was something lavish about how hard he tried, when he tried.

That afternoon, as we sat in the common room at Sakura fumbling through the first moments of our reunion, my father complimenting the stack of tea biscuits my mother had prepared with Mary Yamada, my mother’s stockinged feet, as she sat, brushing the floor with delight, I noticed that my hands were very similar to his. I had inherited large, strong hands—uncommon on a woman. The discovery filled me with pleasure.

While my father poured his third cup of tea, I excused myself to call Paolo and to give them time alone. On my way to the phone, I
had a sudden desire to say hello to Gloria on the third floor, so I made a detour. I took the elevator up and walked down a short hallway to the ward entrance, where a nurse buzzed me in to the common area. I spotted Gloria reading a book in a secluded area by the window. An orderly was seated a metre away. Gloria was holding the book up by her chest like a plate of canapés, resting it flatly on one palm, turning the pages carefully with the other hand. I watched her in profile for a moment, then walked over.

“I filled up the notepad,” she said once I had sat down.

“Shall I bring you another one?” I noticed a strange bracelet on her left arm. It looked like a white wristwatch but the face was blank.

She said, “I’d like that,” then lowered the book to her lap.

I made out tiny black letters on the side of the bracelet: Wanderproof™.

“They won’t let me have matches now.”

I returned to the first floor, made my phone call and then walked back to the common room. When I entered, I saw my mother passing her purse to my father, who ran his fingertips lightly over the leather in a show of appreciation. When he noticed the damaged strap, he stopped and looked up.

My mother gave a little shrug and grinned at him.

He smiled and looked back down.

I glanced out the window and saw that it was growing cloudy outside.

We concluded our visit to Sakura on a friendly note. My father presented my mother with the gift he had brought. She was instantly entranced and kept shaking her wrist so that we could hear the tiny pearl tinkle inside the silver flower. Just as we were set to leave, Roy Ishii walked over and shook my hand. I was happy to see him. He had become a fixture of my visits.

“Bad
tenki, ne
?” he said, gesturing to the sky, then pointing to the matching grey stretch of corridor. “Same
iro, ne
? Exact same colour.” He nodded at my father, then fished around in his pocket and handed us each a wrapped candy.

As I watched my father shuffle toward the departure gate the next morning, searching his jacket pocket for his boarding pass, a blushing smile passing across his face when he noticed my eyes on him, I felt something change inside me. He was not that father I had invented. I was not that daughter I had imagined. I wasn’t pining anymore. I wasn’t lonely.

I had driven with my father to the airport because it was a Sunday and because I wanted to and because he had asked. (“We have become a family of airport habitués,” he drawled in a playful patrician manner.) I waited right up until the plane took off. I put my hand against the glass along with the other families and watched the Boeing 747 taxi along the runway, rise into the air and slowly disappear. I had never done that before and I found the ceremony oddly reassuring. It was a leaving ritual.

It reminded me that there can be such a thing as a good ending.

Two days after my father’s visit, Paolo and I celebrated our fifth anniversary together. To surprise him, I did a little spring cleaning. I emptied out two drawers in my dresser. I cleared off a few more hangers in the hallway closet. I polished a small wooden table near the balcony window and placed a potted ivy on it so it would get just the right amount of sun. My intention was to create a space for Paolo to feel more welcome when he stayed over. Remembering how much
he hated seeing good flowers go to waste, I resuscitated an old bouquet of gerbera, removing the smelly, viscous water from the glass vase, picking off the brown petals and spraying the healthy ones. I let the water run until it was cold and clear, filled the vase and added a spoonful of sugar—a trick Paolo had taught me.

After I had finished preparing the living room, I moved on to the bathroom. I had bought Paolo a fancy shaving kit and I threw out his old disposable razor. The kit came with a chrome-handled razor, a shaving brush with natural boar bristles and a stainless steel bowl filled with shaving soap. I set each item out on the bathroom shelf I had prepared for him.

To my surprise, during our dinner there was no mention of Paolo moving in. I kept waiting for him to say something, but by the time dessert arrived, I realized he wasn’t going to bother. What surprised me—astonished me, really—was my disappointment.