Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

“Bon anniversaire,” said Igor, looking already like any postal clerk in Moscow, and the two others muttered it in a ragged way, like a response in church. They had brought me a present, an April fish, but not made of chocolate. It was the glass fish from Venice everyone buys, about twenty inches long, transparent and green — the green of geranium leaves, with chalky white stripes running from head to tail. These children have lived in my house since infancy, but their taste is part of their skin and hearts and fingernails. The nightmare I ought to be having is a projection into the future, a vision of the girls they will marry and the houses they will have — the glass coffee tables and the Venetian-glass fish on top of the television, unless that space has already been taken up with a lump of polished olive root.

Igor advanced and put the fish down very carefully on the table beside me, and, as he could think of nothing else, began again, “Bon anniversaire, Maman.” They had nothing to tell me. Their feet scuffled and scratched on the floor — the rug, soiled by the dogs, was away being cleaned.

“What are you going to do today?” I said.

“Play,” said Robert, after a silence.

A morning concert struck up on the radio next to me, and I looked for something — an appreciation, a reaction to the music — in their eyes, but they had already begun pushing each other and laughing, and I knew that the music would soon be overlaid by a second chorus, from me, “Don’t touch. Don’t tease the dogs,” all of it negative and as bad for them as for me. I turned down the music and said, “Come and see the birthday present that came in the mail this morning. It is a present from my brother, who is your uncle.” I slipped on my reading glasses and spread the precious letter on the counterpane. “It is an original letter written by Dr. Sigmund Freud. He was a famous doctor, and that is his handwriting. Now I shall teach you how to judge from the evidence of letters. The writing paper is ugly and cheap — you all see that, do you? — which means that he was a miser, or poor, or lacked aesthetic feeling, or did not lend importance to worldly matters. The long pointed loops mean a strong sense of spiritual values, and the slope of the lines means a pessimistic nature. The margin widens at the bottom of the page, like the manuscript of Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’ You remember that I showed you a photograph of it? Who remembers? Ulrich? Good for Ulrich. It means that Dr. Freud was the same kind of person as Keats. Keats was a poet, but he died. Dr. Freud is also dead. I am sorry to say that the signature denotes conceit. But he was a great man, quite right to be sure of himself.”

“What does the letter say?” said Igor, finally.

“It is not a letter written to me. It is an old letter — see the date? It was sent about thirty years before any of you were born. It was written probably to a colleague — look, I am pointing. To another doctor. Perhaps it is an opinion about a patient.”

“Can’t you read what it says?” said Igor.

I tried to think of a constructive answer, for “I can’t read German” was too vague. “Someday you, and Robert, and even Ulrich will read German, and then you will read the letter, and we shall all know what Dr. Freud said to his colleague. I would learn German,” I went on, “if I had more time.”

As proof of how little time I have, three things took place all at once: My solicitor, who only rings up with bad news, called from Lausanne, Maria-Gabriella came in to remove the breakfast tray, and the dogs woke up and began to bark. Excessive noise seems to affect my vision: I saw the room as blurry and one-dimensional. I waved to Maria-Gabriella — discreetly, for I should never want the children to feel de trop or rejected — and she immediately understood and led them away from me. The dogs stopped barking, all but poor blind old Sarah, who went on calling dismally into a dark private room in which she hears a burglar. Meanwhile, Maître Gossart was telling me, from Lausanne, that I was not to have one of the Vietnam children. None of them could be adopted; when their burns have healed, they are all to be returned to Vietnam. That was the condition of their coming. He went on telling it in such a roundabout way that I cut him off with “Then I am not to have one of the burned children?” and as he still rambled I said, “But I want a little girl!” I said, “Look here. I want one of the Vietnam babies, and I want a girl.” The rain was coming down harder than ever. I said, “Maître, this is a filthy, rotten, bloody country, and if it weren’t for the income tax I’d pack up and leave. Because of the income tax I am not free. I am compelled to live in Switzerland.”

Maria-Gabriella found me lying on the pillows with my eyes full of tears. As she reached for the tray, I wanted to say, “Knock that fish off the table before you go, will you?” but it would have shocked her, and puzzled the boys had they come to learn of it. Maria-Gabriella paused, in fact, to admire the fish, and said, “They must have saved their pocket money for weeks.” It occurred to me then that poisson d’avril means a joke, it means playing an April-fool joke on someone. No, the fish is not a joke. First of all, none of them has that much imagination, the fish was too expensive, and, finally, they wouldn’t dare. To tell the truth, I don’t really want them. I don’t even want the Freud letter. I wanted the little Vietnam girl. Yes, what I really want is a girl with beautiful manners, I have wanted her all my life, but no one will ever give me one.

A fter the Cook’s party of twenty-five Japanese tourists had departed for Oslo, only four people were left in the waiting room of the Helsinki airport — a young French couple named Perrigny, who had not been married long, and an elderly pair who were identifiably American. When they were sure that the young people two benches forward could not understand them, the old people went on with a permanent, flowing quarrel. The man had the habit of reading signs out loud, though perhaps he did it only to madden his wife. He read the signs over the three doors leading out to the field: “ ‘Oslo.’ ‘Amsterdam.’ ‘Copenhagen.’ … I don’t see ‘Stockholm.’ ”

She replied, “What I wonder is what I have been to you all these years.”

Philippe Perrigny, who understood English, turned around, pretending he was looking at Finnish pottery in the showcases on their right. He saw that the man was examining timetables and tickets, all the while muttering “Stockholm, Stockholm,” while the woman looked away. She had removed her glasses and was wiping her eyes. How did she arrive at that question here, in the Helsinki airport, and how can he answer? It has to be answered in a word: everything/nothing. It was like being in a country church and suddenly hearing the peasant priest put a question no one cares to consider, about guilt or duty or the presence of God, and breathing with relief when he has got past that and on to the prayers.

“In the next world we will choose differently,” the man said. “At least I know you will.”

The wild thoughts of the younger man were: They are chained for the rest of this life. Too old to change? Only a brute would leave her now? They are walking toward the door marked AMSTERDAM, and she limps. That is why they cannot separate. She is an invalid. He has been looking after her for years. They are going through the Amsterdam door, whatever their tickets said. Whichever door they take, they will see the circular lanes of suburbs, and the family cars outside each house, and in the backyard a blue pool. All across northern Europe streets are named after acacia trees, but they may not know that.