Howard Norman - Next Life Might Be Kinder

Dr. Nissensen once said, “From everything you’ve told me about her and your marriage, Elizabeth would have wanted— wants —you to finish this book. In time, perhaps you’ll take your inspiration from that.”

In any case, after escaping from Lily Svetgartot, I spent much of the day at Vogler’s Cove, trying to distinguish one gull from another, walking to near exhaustion, setting up “problems for thought,” as Chekhov wrote, and trying to solve them, finally admitting to myself that I’d have to bring up my seething anger toward Istvakson with Dr. Nissensen at our next session. I went to the seafood café twice more. It was about five o’clock when I got back to the cottage. There was a note thumbtacked to the front door: Dinner at seven! I’m making the Hungarian goulash you like so much! — Cynthia

I was happy to be invited. I decided to take a hot bath. In the tub I realized that I’d caught a chill during the day, maybe even had a slight fever. Toweling off, I took two aspirin, set the alarm clock, and lay down on the bed for an hour’s nap. Waking to the alarm, I went into the kitchen, threw water on my face, and dried off with a dishtowel. I got dressed and, carrying a bottle of wine, walked over to Philip and Cynthia’s, glancing out at the beach, hoping Elizabeth might show up later that night. I knocked on the door and stepped inside. “Hello?”

“Oh, Sam, come on in,” Cynthia called from the kitchen. “Philip and Lily are having drinks.”

I turned to leave. But Cynthia hurried over, took my bottle of wine, and pulled me by the front of my sweater into the kitchen. “Don’t be an idiot, Sam. We aren’t trying to set you two up, for God’s sake.”

“She’s invading my privacy and she’s the lackey of a fucking idiot.”

“It’s not her fault that you hate her boss so much.”

“Why didn’t you say in your note that she was invited?”

“When I left the note, she wasn’t yet. I ran into her at the library in town.”

When I got to the kitchen, I saw that Philip had moved The Sleepless Night of the Litigant from over his typewriter to the wall above the kitchen counter. Philip said, “Sam, I’ve been reading the Max Frisch you recommended. Montauk. It’s the best thing I’ve read in a long time. I’m going to read everything he’s written.” Having noticed my not greeting Lily Svetgartot, he said, “You know Lily, of course.”

I said, “You taking in stray dogs now, Philip?” It was uncalled-for sarcasm, crude, completely lacking in etiquette in the face of his and Cynthia’s hospitality, but it flew right out.

“Lily is a film student, did you know that? She’s been telling stories out of school about Mr. Istvakson, which should please you no end.”

“Have a drink, Sam,” Cynthia said.

“Vodka, please.”

“Orange juice as usual or straight up?”

“Straight up, thank you.”

Cynthia prepared my drink and handed it to me. Lily, dressed in that long sweater and jeans, thick scarf coiled around her neck, stepped out onto the back porch overlooking the horseshoe beach. Philip said, “I’m going to get in some wood. A fire’ll be nice in the woodstove. Temperature drop, the radio said.”

“Sam, why not go out on the porch and try and be civil to our guest,” Cynthia said. “I can’t think of a better way to make up to me and Philip for your absolute rudeness.” Cynthia was otherwise concentrating on a large pot of goulash whose aroma filled the room.

I was caught in the situational ethics: do I stay with my honest feelings about Istvakson, and by association Lily Svetgartot, or do I put my anger aside and apologize to Cynthia and Philip? When I went out on the porch, I brought up the one subject I least wanted to hear about. “How’s the movie going, Miss Svetgartot?”

“Cynthia and Philip said they have a daughter about my age. That’s probably why they’re being so lovely to me.” She set her wine glass on the small wooden table, then wrapped herself tightly in her own arms. “I laugh when people in Nova Scotia complain of the wind. They should feel the wind in my part of Norway. It goes right through you.” She took a sip of wine and set the glass down again. Looking out to the horizon, she said, “I don’t sleep with Mr. Istvakson. Being a lackey doesn’t require that. Nor am I interested.”

“None of my business.”

“Cynthia directly asked me if I slept with Istvakson. She is direct. I like even the way she uses the word ‘directly.’ She says, ‘I’ll get to dinner directly.’ I like that in her. It’s, you know, direct. ”

“How is the movie coming along?”

“Okay, since you asked, let the lackey make a report for you, Mr. Lattimore. First of all, Emily Kalman — she, of course, has the part of Elizabeth — is not sober on most nights. Not every night is she drunk, but almost every night. I make a lot of strong black coffee for Miss Kalman. She has two of her own assistants, but I make the coffee for her. She is a fine actress, though. Second of all, Mr. Akutagawa is intense about his cinematography—‘intensity incarnate,’ as Mr. Istvakson said. He said it with admiration. The actors adore Mr. Akutagawa. Especially the actor playing the role of you, Mr. Clancy Leonard. He is Canadian also. He wants to meet you, talk with you. It might interest you, the lackey has persuaded him into not driving to your cottage. From your attitude toward— everything. Now that you know he wishes to talk with you, if you want to, you can contact him easily. Rumors to the contrary, I don’t sleep with Mr. Clancy or Miss Kalman, contrary to rumors. A movie set, Mr. Lattimore, is made of rumors. One reason I drive to Port Medway is to get away from that. The air is better here, you understand.”

“Will I want to kill myself when I see the finished product, Miss Svetgartot? Knowing me as well as you do.”

“That is funny, Mr. Lattimore.”

“I think dinner’s being served. Let’s go in.”

“Fine. But it’s a small table. I’ll either be sitting next to you or across from you. It can’t be helped. Philip and Cynthia won’t allow the lackey to eat on the porch alone.”

I WAS ORGANIZING AND filing some of Elizabeth’s papers earlier today, and I discovered, tucked inside a notebook, some newspaper reviews of The Victorian Chaise-Longue. Most were photocopied from library sources, others Elizabeth had written out by hand. From an Edinburgh newspaper:

Time travel and fear and confusion and a haunting piece of Victorian furniture, what more could you want of a story on a cold rainy night in front of the fire? Here we have a young wife named Melanie suffering from tuberculosis, a tragic and romantic illness, and who is confined to her room, which affords readers a sense of claustrophobia unlike anything, to this reader’s mind, since Edgar Allan Poe. Melanie, all pent-up hallucinatory desire and intelligence, hopes that she will survive with the help of her trusted physician, perhaps most unselfishly because of her newborn baby, whom she has yet to hold in her arms. At one point her family decides she must move from one room to another in the house, and in the new room there is the Victorian chaise-longue, almost a chair-as-revenant, if you will, or at least it seems to have a life of its own, a separate emotional history, a haunting pedigree. While lying back to rest on this ungainly piece of furniture, Melanie wakes up in a world almost 100 years ago. She is still infected with tuberculosis (time travel did not cure her), and in this incarnation Melanie does not, as in her contemporary life, have a loving husband to look after her, but instead there is a sister who holds a dark secret with her — and what’s more, her formerly neat and clean room has been replaced by filthy and unkempt quarters, her room all sordid décor, in which Melanie inhales gothic dust deep into the lungs. What was once familiar and comforting to Melanie is now all almost entirely unfamiliar, and the effect on Melanie’s mind is one of the intensifying elements of the plot in this strange and mesmerizing tale, which, while it may have antecedents in literature, is quite original and utterly memorable.