The Letter Opener Read online

  The Letter Opener

  Kyo Maclear

  For my parents, Mariko and Michael

  the way they fell

  the way they lay there

  the dust sifting down,

  hiding all the clues

  From “Stoned Gloves,” by Roy Kiyooka

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Part Two

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Part Three

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Part Four

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Part Five

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  P.S. Ideas, interviews & features

  About the author

  Author Biography

  About the book

  Inside The Letter Opener

  On Postal Phantoms and Becoming Corrupted

  Indelible Ink (My Most Memorable Letter)

  Postcard Art

  Read on

  Letters, Lost and Found

  Further Reading

  Web Detective

  Acknowledgments

  Acclaim for The Letter Opener

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  ANDREI’S THINGS

  A pair of leather shoes (dark grape colour)

  An LP by the Mamas and the Papas (slightly scratched)

  A pack of cigarettes (Player’s, unopened)

  A silver ball made of the foil from cigarette packages (8 centimetres in diameter)

  A small potted houseplant (philodendron)

  A notebook of inventions (spiral bound, slight tear on back cover)

  A navy blue sweater

  A brass belt buckle (second-hand)

  A digital watch

  A canvas shoulder bag (olive, messenger-style)

  A silver chain necklace

  A portable chess set (wood)

  A pair of eyeglasses (steel framed)

  One

  Andrei vanished a year ago, during a snowy week at the beginning of December 1989. Here is what I remember of our last moments together.

  A face peeking through the furry oval of a hooded parka. Blowaway snow sparkling in the air. Grey slush on the tops of our boots. As we walked to the bus stop after leaving the mail office, we were discussing Communist soft drinks. Vita Cola, Top Topic, Traubisoda, Polo Cockta, dark, sweet-sour beverages in thick bottles, a world of fizzy substitutes I had never imagined.

  “Kofola! A delicious blend of coffee beans, herbs and squash!” he said, in his best announcer’s voice.

  “Squash? That doesn’t sound right,” I protested.

  He had been especially talkative all day, full of nervous non-stop banter. We ran to catch the bus together, and when we arrived at the subway station, we went our separate ways, with him rushing down the long flight of stairs to catch the southbound train, and me pushing hip-first through the narrow exit turnstile, off to do some Christmas shopping. Without a word of warning or farewell, he was gone from my life.

  The words vanished without a trace have always seemed fateful, conjuring up images of jets sucked into a swirl of ocean, mountain climbers swallowed by sudden clouds or the deserted, gritty alleys of film noir. But Andrei did vanish without a trace, and I immediately entered the surreal territory inhabited by family and friends of the disappeared. A place of trails winding into mystery, of dead ends.

  Andrei’s desk area at the mail office where we worked soon became a museum tableau. Everything was just as he had left it—the dented cushion he’d rested against, the crumpled coffee cup in his wastebasket—but the alchemy of loss was already at work. A banana ripened on his desk. Burnt-brown spots spread with each passing day, the air carrying its moist, oversweet odour. All my senses were strangely heightened and the smell became emblematic of his absence.

  I didn’t know whether to worry or be angry or sad. Often, I just felt numb. I kept calling his apartment, hoping he would answer, but the phone just rang and rang, echoing the hollowness I was feeling. By the fourth day, his workstation was stacked with unopened packages, a row of yellow buckets piled half a metre high with parcels waiting to be sorted. I began to avert my eyes, lurching my desk away from his, closing off my sightlines by rearranging my shelves. My co-worker Baba was convinced that Andrei would return. “Give him a few more days,” he said. But my mind was not so easily reassured. I kept inventing reasons to get out of my chair and wander around the office.

  On the fifth day, I arrived at my desk earlier than usual and spent a few minutes scanning the local newspaper. I played a game of “what if,” randomly placing myself and people I knew into certain stories.

  A live-in nanny from Manila had defied a deportation order.

  A mother in Utah had lost her baby down a well.

  Two children in Windsor had tied a third child to the railway tracks.

  It was a kind of emotional litmus test. To see if I could bear life’s daggers. I made the substitutions—imagining myself as the brave nanny and the grieving mother—then became aware of what I was doing and folded the paper in half.

  I looked over at Doreen, the office receptionist, eating a Chelsea bun at her desk. Doreen was a thin, nervous bottle blonde who tied her hair up like a ballet dancer’s. Today she wore a light-pink blouse, a blouse so pale it blended with the tone of her skin, producing the brief illusion that she was wearing nothing at all. I considered asking her if she had anything new to report, but she was focused entirely on the pastry in front of her. She uncoiled it delicately, licking the icing off her fingers, taking small savouring pecks. Her nonchalance both fascinated and appalled me.

  Off in the distance, I heard the first mail truck pull up at the unloading dock of the Undeliverable Mail Office, then a second and a third, until I knew a fleet of red and blue trucks was parked expectantly outside the concrete building. I sat back in my chair, arms folded, and waited.

  The mail arrived promptly at 8 a.m. (as it did every morning), with the thunderous clatter of doors opening, the clacking of plastic tubs moving across metal belts and rollers. The wind rushed in, too, and a few stray leaves fluttered to the floor. The first buckets to be unloaded at the dock contained misdirected and miscarried paper mail. Packages and parcels came after. Finally, a bucket arrived containing the rubble, the items that had come loose in the mail: contents that had sprung from burst envelopes and overloaded boxes; things that didn’t yield well to friction belts, flat sorters and mechanized claspers; rebel objects that had bobbed away from the mail stream and now required human hands. All of this was set into a hamper for special attention, then wheeled to my workstation in the corner of the room.

  On that Friday after Andrei disappeared, I was counting on my job to get me through the day. I listened for the last loading door to clang shut.

  Marvin, one of the dock workers, was rolling a hamper toward me, creating a blunt drumming sound on the side with his palm. When he arrived at my desk his face was flushed and shiny, accentuating the small pits in his skin. He took a long, deep breath, removed his toque and unzipped his parka, exposing a T-shir
t that said Brains and Brawn. Delicately, he pulled off a delivery slip attached to his clipboard and handed it to me to sign. As he waited, he raked his hands through the container, letting the smaller objects slip through his fingers.

  He picked up a child’s geometry set, opened the lid and tilted the metal box toward me. “Brings back memories.”

  I glanced up and wrinkled my nose. He smiled, flicked the lid closed and started picking up objects at random, turning them over in his hands. From across the room came the grunts of three workers who were attempting to move a mountain of misdirected magazines onto a larger pallet.

  Marvin turned around and gestured toward Andrei’s desk: “Still no word?”

  “No, not yet. I’m hoping he’ll be in later today.”

  “He’d better be.”

  Marvin tore off a copy of the delivery slip and said goodbye. To my right I could see Baba preparing a cup of coffee in the staff kitchen. (To make his Nabob taste “Lebanese,” Baba always added several heaping teaspoons of sugar and a sprinkle of cardamom from a small envelope he carried in his pocket.) I watched him carefully stir and taste his drink. Below his dark moustache, his lips curved downward in a faint frown.

  “Have you heard anything?” he said, crossing the floor toward me, cradling the steaming cup in both hands.

  “No, I was hoping you had.”

  Baba stood for a moment looking me over. I glanced down but I could feel his eyes running down my flat hair, under the square of my chin, up my pale cheeks to the bags under my eyes.

  “You didn’t sleep again,” he concluded.

  “I stayed up late watching a movie.”

  He shook his head. “I’m starting to worry about you.”

  “Don’t. Honestly, I got a few hours of sleep.”

  And then, perhaps to prove that I had slept, or perhaps because it was preying on my mind, I told him about my dream.

  It was a lucid dream, the kind of dream where you are aware that you are dreaming but remain helpless in determining the outcome. It was about Andrei and his pigeons. The pigeons were swishing around Andrei’s head, cawing—rapid, high-pitched cries—more like crows than pigeons. I couldn’t make out the setting, but I think it was a park because there was a rustle of wind. I was afraid for him.

  I remember calling to him—loudly, I thought—but there was no sound. My mouth wasn’t moving. A few seconds later my alarm clock went off. Then the phone began to ring, and the moment I picked up the receiver and heard Paolo’s voice, Andrei was gone, leaving only a strange afterimage of a man wrapped in a rippling cloak of bird wings, lifting away.

  “Naiko, my dear, what you need is a good, long rest.” Baba was speaking in the voice he used to reassure frantic postal customers. “Andrei will be back. I guarantee you. He’s done this kind of thing before. When we worked together at the hotel, he disappeared once for three days. Maybe he was drinking, I didn’t ask. We’ve called everyone there is to call. Trust me. He’ll turn up eventually.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “You’re right.” But my words were forced. All the random tragedies I had ever read about in the newspaper or seen on the news—the multi-car pileups, subway suicides, house infernos, muggings and murders—flashed through my mind. All those calls to the police, the hospitals, immigration had yielded nothing. There was no one who matched the description we had provided: Romanian, 33, white male, curly brown hair, pale brown eyes, 5′11″, 155 pounds.

  “Was he erratic or depressed?”

  “A drinker? A drug user?”

  “Was there anything in particular that might have driven him away?”

  Perhaps I had omitted something crucial in our report. Maybe there was a scar or birthmark I could have mentioned or a nickname or alias I had never learned that would have made the profile more complete. What were the truly distinguishing parts of a person? Foot size? Ear shape? Teeth condition? The information I had about Andrei suddenly seemed so paltry. For that matter, how would I draw a composite picture of myself: Japanese Scottish Canadian, 29, female…mud-brown hair, medium-to-robust build, dimpled arms, small bust…?

  Police APBs. Personal ads. The idiom of want.

  After Baba left, I sat chewing my nails, feeling shaky. I became aware of the room’s ventilating flues, the lights buzzing overhead, the water pipes clanging as hot water travelled from the basement heater to faucets throughout the building. I could feel the building’s substance seeping into my pores.

  Outside, morning traffic clogged up Ellesmere Road; cars honked in the distance. Every time the door swung open, I expected it to be Andrei. (Maybe Baba was right. There was a precedent. He had vanished, he had reappeared, he had vanished…he would reappear.) I kept picturing him walking through the door and cracking a joke about his absence.

  Perhaps it was the steady rhythm of a conveyor belt across the room that finally soothed me. My mind focused on the clacking of the plastic containers as they moved across the metal rollers. A draft travelled up my pant legs. I popped a vitamin and slipped on a pair of cotton dust gloves. For a moment, I forgot about Andrei.

  By the time the clock struck 9 a.m. I was immersed in my work, matching objects to customer claims letters. The entire room had settled into a hum of efficiency. For the first time since Andrei’s disappearance, I allowed myself to sink into its particular oblivion. As I worked, I settled into my chair, my thighs softened and spread against the stiff cushion. I embraced the tedium.

  The Undeliverable Mail Office employs a staff of twenty-two people. It is the only mail recovery facility in the country and is housed in a suburban building known as the General Post Office. The open space in which we work is as big as an airport hangar, a warehouse that resembles a giant pawnshop. Over five million pieces of mail pass through its doors every year.

  I have been in mail recovery for over eight years. I started working for Canada Post as a summer-jobber during university, a temporary postal clerk selling stamps, weighing packages and so forth. Just as I was about to enter my final year of university, I took a chance and applied for a permanent position. To my surprise I was offered a full-time spot at the Undeliverable Mail Office.

  At the UMO, I store routine in my muscles and bones like a precious fuel, finding gratification in the simple reunion of people and their possessions. Others might see me as unambitious or incomplete, but not so. I love my job because most days it requires attentiveness and intuition, and I have these qualities.

  As much as I try to persuade my father and my older sister, Kana, otherwise, they behave as though I lead a tragically narrow existence. I tell them it’s certainly more gratifying than selling car insurance or writing advertising copy. (They overestimate the value of a liberal arts degree in today’s world.)

  When I wrote to my father in England to announce that I had accepted a permanent position in mail recovery, he made no attempt to hide his dismay. (“Forgive me if I’m sermonizing; but sometimes I worry, not that I’m always right, that your intelligence is being squandered, that you are giving up opportunities to express your creative aspects.”) It’s a terrible thing when people think they’re safeguarding your dignity by putting down what you love to do.

  Thank goodness for my mother, who supports my choices. She’s the only one who doesn’t seem to think that the start of my real life still awaits me. She knows better.

  She knows that some things only appear dull from the outside; if you approach anything with a restless or impatient attitude, you will get bored or irritated. Once you get inside the work, it is infinitely rewarding. Ask a Zen monk. Or a psychiatrist.

  In any given week I might see twenty primary school photographs. Some arrive unmounted. Others are inserted into cardboard frames that have been printed to resemble wood. On the surface, they might all appear the same, but on closer inspection, there are always shades of difference. Hands resting in laps. Hands clasped together. Feet crossed. Feet spread. Hair long or short, tied up or loose. Shoulders hunched or pinched back. Eyes focused or d
rifting. Mouths grinning or not. Most people would readily agree with the verdict that no two children are alike. What’s harder is to get them to extrapolate to the inanimate world: no two clock radios, no two rubber duckies, no two lace doilies…

  That is my experience with my flock of objects. There are always subtle distinctions. A nick, a scratch, a tear, a blot, a blemish, a loose or tight part, a missing widget. Every object carries its own genetic code.

  To my surprise, the last time my sister was in town she came by to see where I worked and to take me out for lunch. Andrei was away having a tooth fixed. I was standing with Baba by the staff kitchen when Kana arrived at reception. I saw Doreen point toward my desk.

  “She looks like you,” Baba said. “Same features.” He indicated his nose and chin.

  “Except she’s prettier,” I said.

  “Only if you like—” He made a gesture signalling very tall. I gave him a friendly jab.

  I am not unattractive, but beside Kana I feel plain and squat. She’s willowy and sleek and wears her long hair loose but perfectly combed. Mine is short and parted on the side in a stylish but sensible bob. But it isn’t just the way she looks that attracts attention, it’s the way she acts. She fills space more purposefully than most people. You get the sense that she is going places even when she is sitting in a chair.

  After a few quick introductions, Kana and I left the office and walked through the parking lot and toward the street. She was wearing a belted beige coat and a pair of brown leather boots that grazed her knees. Her hair had grown several inches since I had last seen her. I was wearing a dark green Paddington coat that suddenly felt several sizes too large. Even though I was leading the way, she walked briskly, her hair whipping lightly in the breeze, and I soon found myself rushing to keep up. By the time we sat down in the restaurant, I was winded.