Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

She placed her hand flat against it, but there was nothing she could do. All the while she was lifting it off over her head and handing it down to me I saw she was regretting it, and for two pins would have taken back all she had said about God and materialism. I ought to have let her keep it, I suppose. But I thought of Louise, and everything spent with so little return. She had merged “Necessary” and “Unnecessary” into a single column, and when I added what she had paid out it came to a great deal. She must be living thinly now.

“I don’t need it,” said Sylvie, backing away. “I’d have been as well off without it. Everything I’ve done I’ve had to do. It never brought me bonheur .”

I am sorry to use a French word here, but “ bonheur ” is ambiguous. It means what you think it does, but sometimes it just stands for luck; the meaning depends on the sense of things. If the necklace had done nothing for Sylvie, what would it do for me? I went on down the stairs with the necklace in my pocket, and I thought, Selfish child. After everything that was given her, she might have been more grateful. She might have bitten back the last word.

1962

SITTING next to the driver, who was certainly his father, he saw the fine rain through the beam of the headlights, and the eyes of small animals at the edge of the road. They were driving from Shekomeko to Pulver’s Corners, taking the route of the school bus. He felt a slight bump, nothing more, and sprawled on his face in an open field. Somebody, running, kicked him in the back. “Run,” he heard a voice say. “Get up and run.” They turned him over. “Be careful of my back,” he said. “I’ve hurt my spine.”

He knew without opening his eyes that he had been brought to a farmhouse. “I’ve been hurt,” he tried to explain. They had placed him on a kitchen table, and now they stood round him and talked about him. They discussed his past, his character, and his destiny — and he powerless to reply! Then they all went out, and left him to die.

I must be careful, he said to himself. I don’t know who these people are, or what they intend to do. He knew they were on the other side of the door, whispering, listening, waiting for him to die. He opened his eyes and saw the reflection of an oil lamp on the ceiling. The lamp had been placed out of his reach, on the kitchen floor.

Without moving his head, he sensed the weight, or the presence, of a large piece of furniture, such as a Welsh dresser, somewhere behind. A window had been left open; he could smell the snow, and he was rigid with cold.

“You poor devil,” said the woman they had left in the room with him.

She got up from her chair and stood by the table. She bent over him; he could not see her face. “It’s a drink you want,” she said, “but I can’t give you anything to drink. I can just give you something to wet your lips. Wait.” She went outside to the yard and filled a cup with water at the pump. She poured the water from the cup onto his dry lips, but the water splashed to one side. None of it got to his tongue.

“I was in England twenty years,” the woman said, close to his ear. “My husband was a schoolmaster. That is why my English is so fluent. They thought you would want to hear English when you came round.”

They had placed his hands across his breast in preparation for his death, with the fingers of his right hand curled slackly on a worn piece of wood. In the dark — she had turned the lamp down, or else he had closed his eyes — he explored it, barely moving the muscles of his hand. His thumb came to the end of the piece of wood and pressed in.

“You don’t need to ring for me,” said the woman. “I am here. I shall be here until morning.”

She was crouched on the floor, down beside the lamp. He knew she had his examination papers. He heard her rustling them, tearing them perhaps. He moved his jaw; his glued lips parted. His tongue was swollen and dry. He said, “What are you doing?” but all he heard of his words was “Aaah.”

“You poor devil,” she said. “It’s a bad night for you. A week from now you won’t remember it.” She got to her feet, towered over him, and vanished. The room was rosy, then gray. The Welsh dresser dissolved. “Try to sleep,” said the woman’s voice, lingering after her person.

In his sleep they placed him upon a bed as hard to his back as the table had been. Someone at the foot of the bed asked him questions, tormenting him. He made no attempt to reply. He was troubled now only because he could not imagine his parents’ faces, or think of their name. The people at the foot of his bed knew everything, but they did not know the name of his parents, or how they could be reached. “Do you feel that?” they said to him, grasping both his feet. They had tied electric wires between his feet and his spine. He said, “Yes, I can feel it,” and they all went out once again and left him alone.

It occurred to him that he had been brought here for an important reason, dragged unwillingly, and had been injured when he fought. He spread his hands on his chest, and touched the turnback of the sheet, and then the blanket. He moved his hands slowly, exploring.

The first thing he must remember was the name of the language these people spoke. He understood everything that was said but had forgotten what the language was called. The room was white and too bright, and the brightness was part of his pain. He lay in pain, but presently he found small discomforts just as serious. He was thirsty. The blanket covering him was heavy and coarse. “Yes,” he heard in answer to something he must have said aloud, and a woman slipped her hand beneath his pillow and gradually lifted the pillow and his head. She pushed a glass tube between his lips and he drank orange juice and went to sleep. Waking, he tested his fingers, then his wrists. He tried to change the position of his legs but gave it up. He moved his hands cautiously and discovered the wooden bell. It had been pinned to the garment he wore. There was a safety pin around the wire. He ran his fingers along the pin and the wire, and then rang the bell. He dreamed for a time of swimming. He felt the bedclothes drawn away and his hand gently lifted from the bell. He had lost the sensation of swimming and all that accompanied it — youth and pleasure — yet an indifference to his fate and future made him joyous and pure, as a saint might feel. “I have no past and no memories,” he thought he said. “This is what it means to be free.” A light shone on his face; he addressed the darkness around him.

“Drink some water now,” she said. She laid the flashlight on the bed and brought the glass and tube toward him. He tried to lift his head.

One day a blond nurse of great beauty fed him little pieces of toast. The toast was slightly burned, and the texture of the butter disgusted him. He swallowed one bit, was revolted with the next, and spat it out. This girl, whose face floated above him, was of mythical beauty. Her hair was silk and her eyes sea blue. He wanted to see her clearly, but there was a veil. The aura of her own goodness blurred her features. He had never seen the physical evidence of goodness until now, but then he had never in his life been treated so kindly. Meanwhile, the goddess was putting yet a third piece of toast into his mouth. He swallowed it so as to make her pleased with him, and suddenly began to weep; and the goddess, on whom he now depended for everything, was obliged to wipe his tears.

They were speaking French. He understood everything they said, but had not been able to give the language a name. His language was English, which he had not forgotten — neither the name nor how to speak it. The people with secrets to keep, such as the little girls who swept the floor and were scolded by the nurses, talked in a dialect he could not follow, but he knew it was a dialect, and was not troubled as he would have been if it were something he ought to remember. It seemed to him that all anxieties and decisions concerning himself had passed into other hands. This lassitude, this trust, was a development of the vision he had been granted with the veiled goddess who fed him toast. He willed peace, harmony, and happiness to flow around his bed. He succeeded, and he understood how simple everything was going to be now. He smiled.