Alice Munro: Open Secrets

The publishers acknowledge the support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for their publishing program.

The stories in this collection were originally published in the following: The New Yorker : “The Albanian Virgin” (originally entitled “Lottar”), “Carried Away,” “The Jack Randa Hotel,” “Open Secrets,” “A Real Life” (originally entitled “A Form of Marriage”), “Vandals,” and “A Wilderness Station.” The Paris Review : “Spaceships Have Landed.”

Some parts of the Journal section in “A Wilderness Station” are copied from the accounts written by Robert B. Laidlaw in 1907. With that exception, all of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This book is for ever-faithful friends—

Daphne and Deirdre, Audrey, Sally, Julie ,

Mildred, Ann and Ginger and Mary .

In the dining room of the Commercial Hotel, Louisa opened the letter that had arrived that day from overseas. She ate steak and potatoes, her usual meal, and drank a glass of wine. There were a few travellers in the room, and the dentist who ate there every night because he was a widower. He had shown an interest in her in the beginning but had told her he had never before seen a woman touch wine or spirits.

“It is for my health,” said Louisa gravely.

The white tablecloths were changed every week and in the meantime were protected by oilcloth mats. In winter, the dining room smelled of these mats wiped by a kitchen rag, and of coal fumes from the furnace, and beef gravy and dried potatoes and onions — a smell not unpleasant to anybody coming in hungry from the cold. On each table was a little cruet stand with the bottle of brown sauce, the bottle of tomato sauce, and the pot of horseradish.

The letter was addressed to “The Librarian, Carstairs Public Library, Carstairs, Ontario.” It was dated six weeks before — January 4, 1917.

Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from a person you don’t know and that doesn’t remember your name. I hope you are still the same Librarian though enough time has gone by that you could have moved on .

What has landed me here in Hospital is not too serious. I see worse all around me and get my mind off of all that by picturing things and wondering for instance if you are still there in the Library. If you are the one I mean, you are about of medium size or perhaps not quite, with light brownish hair. You came a few months before it was time for me to go in the Army following on Miss Tamblyn who had been there since I first became a user aged nine or ten. In her time the books were pretty much every which way, and it was as much as your life was worth to ask her for the least help or anything since she was quite a dragon. Then when you came what a change, it was all put into sections of Fiction and Non-Fiction and History and Travel and you got the magazines arranged in order and put out as soon as they arrived, not left to molder away till everything in them was stale. I felt gratitude but did not know how to say so. Also I wondered what brought you there, you were an educated person .

My name is Jack Agnew and my card is in the drawer. The last book I took out was very good — H. G. Wells , Mankind in the Making. My education was to Second Form in High School, then I went into Douds as many did. I didn’t join up right away when I was eighteen so you will not see me as a Brave Man. I am a person tending to have my own ideas always. My only relative in Carstairs, or anyplace, is my father Patrick Agnew. He works for Douds not at the factory but at the house doing the gardening. He is a lone wolf even more than me and goes out to the country fishing every chance he gets. I write him a letter sometimes but I doubt if he reads it .

After supper Louisa went up to the Ladies’ Parlor on the second floor, and sat down at the desk to write her reply.

I am very glad to hear you appreciated what I did in the Library though it was just the normal organisation, nothing special .

I am sure you would like to hear news of home, but I am a poor person for the job, being an outsider here. I do talk to people in the Library and in the hotel. The travellers in the hotel mostly talk about how business is (it is brisk if you can get the goods) and a little about sickness, and a lot about the War. There are rumors on rumors and opinions galore, which I’m sure would make you laugh if they didn’t make you angry. I will not bother to write them down because I am sure there is a Censor reading this who would cut my letter to ribbons .

You ask how I came here. There is no interesting story. My parents are both dead. My father worked for Eaton’s in Toronto in the Furniture Department, and after his death my mother worked there too in Linens. And I also worked there for a while in Books. Perhaps you could say Eaton’s was our Douds. I graduated from Jarvis Collegiate. I had some sickness which put me in hospital for a long time, but I am quite well now. I had a great deal of time to read and my favorite authors are Thomas Hardy, who is accused of being gloomy but I think is very true to life — and Willa Cather. I just happened to be in this town when I heard the Librarian had died and I thought, perhaps that is the job for me .

A good thing your letter reached me today as I am about to be discharged from here and don’t know if it would have been sent on to where I am going. I am glad you did not think my letter was too foolish .

If you run into my father or anybody you do not need to say anything about the fact we are writing to each other. It is nobody’s business and I know there are plenty of people would laugh at me writing to the Librarian as they did at me going to the Library even, why give them the satisfaction?

I am glad to be getting out of here. So much luckier than some I see that will never walk or have their sight and will have to hide themselves away from the world .

You asked where did I live in Carstairs. Well, it was not anyplace to be proud of. If you know where Vinegar Hill is and you turned off on Flowers Road it is the last house on the right, yellow paint once upon a time. My father grows potatoes, or did. I used to take them around town with my wagon, and every load I sold got a nickel to keep .

You mention favorite authors. At one time I was fond of Zane Grey, but I drifted away from reading fiction stories to reading History or Travel. I sometimes read books away over my head, I know, but I do get something out of them. H. G. Wells I mentioned is one and Robert Ingersoll who writes about religion. They have given me a lot to think about. If you are very religious I hope I have not offended you .

One day when I got to the Library it was a Saturday afternoon and you had just unlocked the door and were putting the lights on as it was dark and raining out. You had been caught out with no hat or umbrella and your hair had got wet. You took the pins out of it and let it come down. Is it too personal a thing to ask if you have it long still or have you cut it? You went over and stood by the radiator and shook your hair on it and the water sizzled like grease in the frying pan. I was sitting reading in the London Illustrated News about the War. We exchanged a smile. (I didn’t mean to say your hair was greasy when I wrote that! )