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No.
50
Fall
1992
The
Quest for a Letterbox
Translated
by Arch Tait
I was alarmed.
Something was happening to me, and I had no idea what. I was unable any
longer to keep my heart safely to myself. Too hot, it was burning me up
inside, making me almost cry out with the pain.
I had
no choice but to sit down at my desk, take some paper, and start writing.
This gradually settled my heart, and when the letter was written and sealed,
I could feel the shape of a heart through the thin transparent paper of
the envelope. It was a warm heart, hot even. You could not hold the envelope
in your hand for long. I put it down on the table.
Behind
me someone was watching. Not that I could see them, of course. I just sensed
I was being watched. I knew whoever it was had wide round eyes, peering
like moist spheres out of their sockets, and inflamed, reddened eyelids.
The eyes were swelling up, their fissiparous cells teeming like points
of black light. They had come closer, very close. Now they were immediately
behind my hunched back, but, I could not look round. I was wooden, unable
to see them, feeling only something at my back. Something white was fluttering
in front of my face. It took me a long time to realise it was the sheet
of paper shaking in my hand. I was under scrutiny by the Void.
The sheet
of paper fell from my hand, swished over the table and brushed against
a pencil. The pencil swayed, began to roll, tottered for a moment, tinkled
loudly as it hit the floor. I wanted to cry out, but my lips would not
move. I straightened myself up and turned round.
The light
from the table lamp divided the darkness gathering in the corners and forming
a blanket just below the celing, hanging there like smoke. The walls were
intangible, dissolving and retreating beyond their finiteness to where
their existence could only be guessed at. The room was unfathomable, and
almost certainly had an echo.
I had
spent the whole of my life obtaining this room, with its separate entrance
and private kitchen, its strong, thick walls and strong, solid door with
the deep, ingenious lock which cut me off from the world outside. I had
had enough of communal flats. All I wanted was peace, quiet where I could
be on my own, remote from the rest of humanity. When this flat was still
only a dream I loved imagining myself its master, coming home to it: it
would greet me with its blinds billowing over a window which had nobody
but me to close it. An alarm clock would be ticking loudly on the bedside
table. Soundless, splitting floor boards would be waiting to creak as I
stepped on them. I imagined my homecoming with nobody able to make a nuisance
of himself, nobody to turn on the light as I was going to sleep, or to
talk loudly. Nobody to play records loudly or to bring a friend home at
inconvenient times.
Nobody
was going to disturb me, for I had no intention of telling anyone my address.
Even if somebody knocked at the door, I would pretend nobody was in the
flat.
For some reason I can't recollect moving in, and sometimes I even imagine
I built and plastered the walls, hung the door and fitted the lock myself.
The eyes
were on me again, their red lids twitching, the pupils swollen, radiating
a chill which made me shiver uncontrollably. I realized I could not stay
in this place any longer. Another night in this room, and I would have
no option but to hang myself.
I took
the envelope from the table, feeling with my fingers the flat, heart-shaped
letter inside.
Opening
the door was an effort. The air outside was dense and unyielding, and I
had to walk out, pushing it aside with my arms as if walking through rubber.
The street
was deserted, the sound of my shoes on the tarmac resonant and desolate.
The white globes of street lamps floated in round clouds of yellow light.
I had the envelope in the inside pocket of my coat and kept slipping my
hand in under my scarf to make sure it was there. Each time, I felt a flat
heart shape through the thin, rustling paper.
I walked
to the end of the block and crossed the square. The traffic lights had
been switched to their night-time mode and were flashing mechanically on
amber. I stepped on the pavement again, expecting to find a letterbox,
but I walked the length of a building without success. I went back and
walked the length of the building a second time. There was no letterbox.
I thought
I must be mistaken and that the letterbox was at the next building. No
doubt I had simply forgotten.
I walked
past three more buildings, but still there was no letterbox. At this point
I had a quite clear recollection that the letterbox was not in fact any
further along the street and had indeed been outside the first building
after the square. I turned and retraced my steps, now deliberately observant,
looking in under the archways to courtyards to see if it was hidden in
there. I walked back in this way, past the buildings to the corner where
the blinking yellow eye of the traffic lights floated out to me. There
was no letterbox.
I took
the envelope from my pocket and looked at it in the yellow light. The letter
inside looked like a dark stain. I felt an urge to scream. I sat down at
the curb side and covered my face with my hands, my fingers pressing the
envelope against my cheek. It felt warm at first, but became gradually
hotter and hotter until it burned me. I pulled my hands from my face. My
cheek hurt. I could feel my skin stretched and inflamed.
Slowly,
I got up and set off down another street. The night was mantling itself
in fog through which the more distant street lamps were no longer visible,
blurring and merging into a single cloud of yellow light. The air had become
crisp, and there was a frost sneaking in. I turned up my coat collar, pushed
my hands into my pockets, and paddled ahead with my right shoulder, looking
all the while at the walls of the buildings. I was walking now at random
along a street I did not know. There must be letterboxes somewhere. All
I needed was one!
The streets were still completely empty. Nobody came towards me, nobody
overtook me, and not a single car went by. Without exception the windows
of the houses I was walking past were darkened. The street ended, crashing
into a building which suddenly blocked its way. I turned down another,
and walked to the end of that one too. It didn't take long. I turned into
another, and then another. I wandered endlessly through the streets, but
never a letterbox was to be seen.
I had
been walking for a long time now. I could not remember when I had left
home. My feet were tired and I noticed a sound as if somebody were shuffling
alongside me. Several time I looked round, but there was nobody there.
I realised it was the sound of my own shuffling feet.
There were no letterboxes. There were none anywhere in town. All letterboxes
vanished. All of them.
Suddenly I felt eyes again watching me. I became aware of their red, inflamed
eyelids and the needle-like glinting of their pupils. They began to enlarge
and close in on me. The eyelids had become antennae tipped with yielding
sacs of suckers. My innards turned to ice in an instant. I was being dissolved
by those eyes. I screamed.
Lights
immediately blazed in the windows of the building before me. It was as
if a pane of glass had shattered, revealing a secret entry. High above
my head, in red letters in the air, blazed the words "Central Post Office".
A van roared past and hit me with its wing, knocking me to the ground.
A screaming of brakes, the tread of a tire frozen above my head. A car
driver stuck his head out of the window. "Look where you're going, you
eyeless prat. Think I want to land injail because of you?" The doors of
the Post Office were opening and slamming, heels were clacking on its concrete
steps.
I picked myself up. The car drove off.
The Post
Office was busy, its vast hall boiling with hundreds of people in motion.
There were the ink-stained, glue-smeared table, the heavy, leather-upholstered
stools, the long rows of glass-fronted counters with their bronze numbers.
I looked around.
Where
the oversize plastic or varnished wooden letterboxes you find in post office
should have been there was only tiled wall. I went over to a counter empty
of any lines of people. A young woman sitting at a table behind the window
was sorting envelopes. She sat very upright, as if afraid to move, her
skin very white as if steeped in starch. The rest of her seemed starched
too.
"Excuse
me," I said. "Where can I post a letter?" "In the letterbox by the entrance."
"It isn't there."
She had
long fingers. They were white too, with sharp nails painted with nail varnish.
"Of course
it is." "It isn't," I said. She looked up again. "What've you done to your
cheek?"
I fingered
my cheek. The skin had stretched tight and was rubbery to the touch. "Have
you burned it?" "Yes," I said, pulling out the envelope. "With this letter."
She took
the heart-shaped letter carefully, extending out only two of her fingers.
"Ohhh, it's hot," she cried as she pulled her fingers away.
"I can't
carry it around any longer, you know. I really can't. I must post it."
"Put it in the letterbox then." "It isn't there." "It is for everybody
else. What's special about you?"
"Look,
I'm telling you, there isn't one there. Don't you understand plain Russian?"
She went
back to counting envelopes. "Perhaps I could give it to you," I suggested.
"Certainly
not. This counter is for buying envelopes, not handing in letters. Put
it in the letterbox."
"But there
isn't one there!" I shouted. "Don't you understand. I've been all over
town looking. There isn't a single letterbox to be seen."
"That's
impossible. Everybody know letterboxes are located on every street corner.
Anyone can post letters in them, by the hundreds if they want to."
"Take
it," I said quietly. My burned cheek was beginning to hurt again. "Please
take it. There aren't any letterboxes anywhere."
She looked
up again.
"Citizen!" she announced in her white, starchy voice, "I repeat, that of
course there are. Who ever heard of such nonsense! How could there possibly
be no letterboxes!"
"I''ve
been all over town," I said. "You may not believe me, but I have. And there
are none in here either."
"You're
drunk," she said. "You're drunk. Of course you are! Can't you see I've
got work to do. Go away or I'll call the police!"
Her hand
reached for the telephone. Pushing the envelope back in my pocket, I made
for the exit.
Cars were
thronging the crossroads waiting for the lights to turn green, while others
were rushing across before the lights turned red. Behind me two women with
shopping bags slammed the Post Office doors.
I walked down the steps and looked up to Find the windows of the Post Office
now dark. The sign high up in the air that designated the "Central Post
Office" was gone. The building itself was stitched impenetrably shut by
a line of double doors firmly bolted together. There were no cars to be
seen, no women. Nobody.
I started
back home, walking this time on the other side of the street, no longer
expecting to find a letterbox, but walking on that side anyway, just in
case ...
It had
grown very cold while I was in the Post Office, and the fog had thickened.
When I came down the steps from the entrance a fit of shivering hit me.
I must have shivered for five minutes without getting any warmer, but by
that time the trembling lessened. Although my body was no warmer, I didn't
feel the cold in my bones, and that was all I cared about.
I wasn't wandering aimlessly now. I was cutting corners purposefully. Soon
I was back at the square I had set out from on my quest for a letterbox.
I was only a short distance from home. Around the corner, the amber of
the traffic lights washed toward me, switching mechanically on and off.
They had been in front of me when I had left the house and now they again
reminded me of my letter. It was still there in my inner coat pocket. I
had no reason to go back to my room.
I propped myself up against the
wall.
Something
pressed bluntly into me just below the shoulder blade. I turned round.
It was the clamp the letterbox had been attached to, a single iron clamp,
ribbed and rusty, bent into a hook. Barely protruding from the wall, it
was hard to discern.
Through
the fog there drifted a muffled sound like the heavy clip-clop of horses'
hooves. It came to my ear suddenly and then vanished just as suddenly.
I thought I must have imagined it, but a moment later the sound was there
again, and this time it didn't go away. In the fog a human figure took
shape. The clouds of yellow light threw it from one to the other. The figure
would disappear for several seconds, dissolving into the night, but the
next patch of light would catch him, outlining him dimly, and limning him
more clearly and materially until finally I could make out a man in a long
coat with a peaked cap pulled down over this eyes and wearing heavy boots.
He caught
sight of me too, pressed against the wall. For just a moment he hesitated
in his stride, but quickly resumed his pace, giving me a wide berth and
taking his hands out of his pockets.
I broke
away from the wall. "Excuse me," I said.
He made
no reply and didn't look over. He had not yet come level with me. I had
said "Excuse me" quietly. He might not have heard.
"Excuse
me!" I shouted, and barred his way. "Eh?" he asked. "What do you want?"
"There
used to be a letterbox here," I said. "I was going to post a letter, but
it isn't there anymore."
"So?"
he said. "What am I supposed to do about it? Find it for you? It must have
moved. Look for another one."
"There
are no other ones!" I cried. "None! Do you understand? Please try to understand...
I've been all over town and haven't found a single one."
The man
put his hand to his cap and set it on the back of his head. Now I could
see his deepset eyes, light and mischievous. "You mean you really want
only a letterbox?" he asked.
"Yes,"
I stammered. He pulled his cap back down, flat as a pancake, over his eyes.
"Come
on. I know one, and I'm going that way. It's a block from here, to your
left."
"Aren't
you cold?" I asked. "Should I be? Are you? It's ten degrees above zero."
I could
see he was feeling no discomfort from the cold. You couldn't see his breath
in the air either.
"Weird,"
I said. "Ten degrees above! I thought it was ten degrees below at least."
He made
no reply.
We didn't
look at each other, the clouds of light catching us up and releasing us,
leading us on past the barren walls of buildings. Finally we turned into
the side street. "There you are," the man said, stabbing a Finger in the
air. "A letterbox just for you."
I looked
to the spot at which he was pointing. There was no letterbox, only a rusty
clamp bent into a hook shape, black against the whiteness of the wall.
"What
letterbox? There's none here either."
"Do I
have to do it for you?" the man said. "Can't you see? A perfectly good
blue letterbox, collections Five times daily from 6:00 a.m. until 7:00
p.m.. What more do you want?"
I suddenly
remembered seeing exactly the same sort of clamp as this one and also the
one I had leaned against on one of the buildings earlier. I had not known
then what it was.
"You're
sure..." I said, and just as the sound of my own footfalls had seemed to
exist apart from me when I had been walking along the street, so now I
seemed to hear the sound of my voice reflected off the buildings. "You're
sure there is really a letterbox here?"
The man
took the letter out of my hand. I heard the metallic click as he opened
the flap covering the slit. I waited, expecting to see the corner of the
letter disappear, then a quarter, then a half, and then to hear the flap
click back down.
The man
launched the letter. It flew in a downwards curve, struck the wall, somersaulted
and flopped down on the tarmac.
He leapt
back from the letter and stared at me, the cap shifting on his head. I
could not see his eyes, shielded as they were by the peak of his cap, only
the whites jerking convulsively.
I bent
down slowly to pick up the letter, and my companion did the same. I touched
it first, but he continued to reach down for it, and his fingers drove
into my hand, entering it as if it were not there, tearing through it as
if it were fog, coming out on the other side.
We did
not move. His fingers were sticking out of the palm of my hand like gross
stumps. I looked at my hand and only now realized I could see through it,
like those apples which become transparent when they are ripe. My hand
had the same kind of transparency. The tarmac, grainy as apple pits, was
as clearly visible to both of us as if my hand were not there.
A long
moment the two of us were motionless. Finally the man tugged his fingers
from my hand, and again I felt nothing. The cap flew from his head and
I saw his hair standing on end.
He backed
away, still half-crouching. He did not shout, but stared, his eyes enormous
and saucer-like. His lips moved soundlessly as he tiptoed away, tripping
over his own feet. Colliding with the wall, he turned slowly around. Then
he ran furiously away.
"Stop!"
I shouted and tried to run after him, but my legs gave way beneath me.
I turned up my trouser leg—my sock retained the form of a foot, but there
was no longer any suggestion of a leg. It was as if it had been severed
from my body, and whatever was in the shoes on the tarmac was no longer
part of my body.
I began
to discard my clothes, removing my coat, unwinding my scarf, peeling off
my jacket, pulling my shirt over my stomach. I could see through to the
wall behind me. I sat down on the tarmac, threw the coat over myself, and
propped myself against the wall.
Although
trees were growing curly with hoar frost, I did not feel cold. Quite the
reverse. I even began to feel warm. Well, not warm exactly: I felt nothing
at all. I took off my shoes, pulled away my socks, pulled my trousers up,
and found myself gazing with a bemused smile at the spot on the tarmac
where my feet should have been.
I did
not exist. I was still alive, because I could still talk and think. My
clothes retained the shape of my body, but I no longer existed.
I fell
into a deep sleep and dreamed of the frost at Epiphany when the smoke stands
above the chimneys like a staff rising into the sky. I was walking through
town with a great bundle of letters in my hands, and there was a letterbox
on every building. I posted several letters in one, then in another, and
went on to a third. Guests were waiting at home for me, not because it
was my birthday but just because they wanted to come around and talk. In
the kitchen the kettle was boiling, an ice-cold bottle of Stolichnaya vodka
was in the fridge, and there was music playing. And as I made my way from
house to house the bundle of letters never lessened.
The dream
began to fade and then it vanished.
I heard
my coat, now formless, flop softly to the tarmac, heard the clatter of
my belt buckle, and my shirt sliding down in a rustle.
It was
the last thing I knew.
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