Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  ‘Please continue,’ Galya said quietly. ‘Please.’

  ‘Reading, it’s an intimate business. Just you and your imagination connecting with words that have come from the author’s imagination. And this intimacy is, I think, enhanced in letters. The “I” of the letter-writer speaks and connects directly to you, the letter-reader. You and only you. You and your experience. You and your longings. You and your disappointments. And suddenly you’re not alone in your most personal and private thoughts.’

  In a way she couldn’t explain, her letters acknowledged her, they recognised her — much like an absorbing novel did, although in a more personal and targeted way. She wanted to get under the skin of this process, to learn its dynamic, to understand why it was so intense. This was her reason for wanting to write about letters.

  ‘I get to experience other times, places, people, emotions through letters. And while it might be vicarious, it doesn’t feel that way. I feel … remade.’ This was no exaggeration: the letters provided her with the lives she’d never lived, never would live. ‘My letters give me a self that, to be honest, is far more interesting than the housewife, cook and volunteer of my usual life.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose they give me freedom.’

  Again Galina was nodding, she seemed to understand, which gave Sylvie the courage to continue.

  ‘Then there’s handwriting. You’re reading something direct from another’s hand. You’re touching their hand — that’s how it feels to me. And I particularly like letters that are hard to decipher. You have to pore over these; it’s the intensest intimacy.’

  There it was again. Intimacy.

  Whether it was a galloping hand that hurled words across the page, a tidy hand, or a crabbed hand, the manner of writing supplied the same sort of emotional texture that music did to a film. One of her letters, written by a woman to someone she identified only as RO, started neatly in an even, cursive script; but several pages later had disintegrated into a drunken scrawl, just two or three words to a line, and the paper splotched with ink, perhaps even tears.

  ‘And how much more precious does a letter become — not to me, the collector, but the original recipient — when the writer of the letter has died. Think of it: for the wife who lives on after her husband, the man whose brother has passed away, the woman who’s lost her best friend, death does not alter their letters. I think that’s profound. You’re able to sit by yourself reading your beloved’s words, savouring them, responding to them, just as you did when they were alive. Death, which changes almost everything, leaves letters untouched.’

  She wondered if Galina had any letters from her mother. There’d probably been no reason for them to write to each other: they lived together and rarely travelled. But for Galina’s sake, she hoped there were.

  ‘And then there are published letters written by famous people. How extraordinary that an ordinary housewife like me can be privy to the thoughts and ideas and everyday yearnings of people like Winston Churchill, like John Keats, like Somerset Maugham.

  ‘Histories are removed from the action, and historians are at great pains to be clear about what they think happened and why. Diaries are often choked with emotion. But all letters are communications, all letters speak to someone, all letters invite the reader into the heart and mind of the writer. There’s something deliciously clandestine about letters. I love everything about them.’

  At last she forced herself to stop. Of course Galina wasn’t really interested, she was listening out of politeness. Sylvie ought to apologise, dismiss her rantings as nonsense. But before she could say anything, Galina spoke first.

  ‘You say you want my book? Well, I want yours,’ she said. ‘Your book about letters. What is stopping you from writing it?’

  The dishes? The vacuuming? The darning? The driving for the Blind Institute? Her lack of ability. Her lack of courage? Her fear of failure?

  ‘Just do it,’ Galina said. And, as if she could read her mind, she added, ‘No one need see the work. No one need know you’re even writing it.

  ‘What are you waiting for, Sylvie?’

  The day following her visit to Galina, Sylvie began her letter project. She didn’t think in terms of a book, people like her didn’t write books; ‘project’ provided exactly the right weight. Almost immediately there was a changed atmosphere in the Morrow home. In this uncertain phase of their marriage, Leonard, usually the dominant of the two, was quieter and more reflective, while Sylvie was in full voice. After dinner, rather than sitting in silence watching TV, Sylvie now shared her latest thoughts and ideas about letters. Leonard lent her his volume of Coleridge’s letters, and a leather-bound edition of the Barrett–Browning correspondence. He showed himself to be an attentive and constructive critic, with knowledge pertinent to her project.

  Just like the Leonard of old, Sylvie found herself thinking. Not that she forgot their troubles — his were not transgressions easily forgotten — but she was grateful for his help, and grateful, too, for this reawakened connection to the man she had married.

  And Leonard was grateful for anything that made these miserable days pass more quickly; grateful, too, that his wife still needed him. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her of Winston’s return to Hong Kong; he did not trust himself to talk about Winston at all. Life was a doleful affair, and his wife and her new project made it bearable.

  1988 advanced slowly, each month marked with a swag of bicentennial events — new roads, new schools, renovated town halls. After yet another plea to Winston went unacknowledged, Leonard advertised and appointed a replacement: a woman accountant in her fifties, with past experience in small business. The transition was effected with surprising ease. And at home, because of Sylvie’s letter project and their nightly discussions, he allowed himself to hope that his marriage might recover.

  In March, they talked about the narratives attaching to letters.

  ‘But whose narrative is it?’ he asked her. ‘The writer’s? The recipient’s? Seems to me that for every letter — personal letters, not official letters — there are several possible interpretations.’

  In April, they moved on to epistolary novels. There had been an extraordinary number written. He ploughed through Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela, because Sylvie wanted to discuss it with him. He was happy to oblige, happy to do anything she asked. Not that the book appealed. Much of the time, he said, the letters didn’t read like letters at all, just various narrators telling a story in letter form, in which they themselves, as characters in the story were rendered invisible. He baulked at reading Clarissa, but he guessed, given its size, he was not alone in that.

  ‘Imagine,’ he said one evening, ‘a world without letters.’ It was the last day of April, a rare Saturday night when they had decided to stay home rather than join friends for dinner.

  ‘It’ll never happen,’ Sylvie said. ‘Even in the caves, people were leaving written messages for each other — or for the future. Although perhaps prehistoric man’s sense of time, of past and future, was different from ours.’ She smiled. ‘Now that’s a thought.’ And looked quite pleased with herself. ‘I think we’re programmed to write, and we’ll never lose the need nor the desire to communicate in that deeply meaningful and private way. And besides,’ her blue eyes were shining, ‘who would willingly forfeit the great romance of a written correspondence?’

  He wondered how different things might have been if he and Sylvie had written letters to each other. Not only in the past, but now, with their troubles. Would it be easier to write in a letter all they seemed unable to say to each other. And would this be what he wanted? One evening not so long ago, she had shown him a quote written by a Geoffrey Scott, a quote she’d copied down years earlier without a note of where it originated. To dip the quill in ink is a magical gesture: it sets free in each of us a new and sometimes a forbidding sprite, the epistolary self. Perhaps letters offer too much freedom. And once written a
nd sent, you can’t take any of it back, you can’t rub it out.

  She had certainly got him thinking, was forcing his mind to work in a way it had not done for years. One evening, she joked that they were turning into a couple of old blue-stockings with their bookish discussions. He was unsure what to make of her comment. Yes, there was a new togetherness and shared intellectual interests between them, but weren’t blue-stockings always female? And was she therefore suggesting she now regarded him as an old woman? He didn’t dare ask her to explain; he’d already brought too much negativity to their marriage and had no stamina for any more.

  The mood at home picked up even further when Galina was offered a publishing contract for her picture book, When Melbourne Meets Leningrad. Engineered by Sylvie who, even after all these years, could still astonish him with her capabilities, he and Sylvie, together with Andrew and Galina, had celebrated the signing of the contract at a new restaurant in the city. With a series of city-meets-city picture books already under discussion, the publisher had decided to fast-track the production of this first title. The four of them had celebrated that too, with another dinner at a different restaurant.

  Then there was the relationship between Galina and his son.

  ‘They’re seeing a lot of each other,’ Leonard said to Sylvie one Saturday in May. The long, hot summer had finally faltered, and they were taking a walk together on a cool Saturday afternoon.

  Sylvie nodded. ‘But it’d be premature to read anything too significant into it. Andrew says very little, and Galya talks of him warmly but not really like a boyfriend.’

  A couple of months earlier, Galina had told them why she had left Russia. They now knew she could have gone to Canada or America or Israel, but had chosen Australia because of her chance meeting with Andrew. So while she had not come to Australia specifically to be with their son, he was, nonetheless, the reason she was here. And the two of them did seem close, and to be growing closer.

  ‘Could you ask Galina directly about their relationship?’ Leonard now asked.

  He could not bring himself to call her Galya. She hadn’t invited him as she had Sylvie. He knew she was closer to his wife, even more so since the introduction to the publisher, but still, he thought he and the girl had forged something significant. Now, before Sylvie had an opportunity to answer his question, he asked another. ‘What does Andrew call her?’

  ‘He calls her Galya.’ She started laughing. ‘And the not-so-short but apparently very affectionate Galinochka.’

  Andrew and Galina were at that very moment on one of their regular excursions. Adventures, Andrew called them, and in the months since Christmas he had delighted her with a range of destinations. On this particular Saturday he had promised an unforgettable day at a picturesque town on the Surf Coast. ‘It’ll be a day for the senses,’ he said, ‘with scenery to rival anything I’ve shown you before.’ But when, after a ninety-minute drive, they parked in a shopping area that looked no different from a Melbourne suburb, Galina couldn’t help but think this adventure might be Andrew’s first failure.

  The place was called Anglesea, and yet another Australian place name pilfered from the British Isles. She loved the lyrical anarchy of Ballarat and Moorabbin, Yackandandah and Maribyrnong, Koo Wee Rup and Nar Nar Goon, Warrnambool and Woolloomooloo. Anglesea, Torquay, Hastings and Brighton simply could not compete. Either the founding fathers lacked imagination, or they were just plain homesick. Not that she’d feel more at home if she lived in Leningrad, Australia; it would be like living in a pool of mockery, your nose rubbed in the differences every single day. More than mere place names was needed to repair the rupture of migration.

  So here they were in Anglesea, Australia, a special place, according to Andrew, but as far as she could see, displaying little of interest. She had worked late every night this past week, with several sewing patterns to finish before her contract officially terminated. Then, two days ago, requests had arrived for changes to When Melbourne Meets Leningrad — apparently beer, vodka, and kvass carts were not considered suitable for Australian children. She didn’t mind, she had plenty of ideas, but making the changes was surprisingly unnerving. Looking about her, she doubted she’d find a restorative in this place.

  She and Andrew had seen so much together these past months. With Godrevy curled on a rug in the back seat, they had driven to the Dandenong Ranges for the flashy parrots, to Warburton by the river to search for platypuses, to Phillip Island for the plump koalas wedged in the forks of trees, to famous flower gardens and eucalyptus forests. They’d seen giant earthworms and fairy penguins, and quaint places like a house clad entirely in shells. After each adventure they would return to the city and have dinner together, either at a restaurant or at her place with takeaway food.

  These excursions had been crucial to what she regarded as her Australianisation program. Not so much what she saw, although that always delighted, but the fact of them. You decide to go somewhere and you go. No permission required, no car to find, no petrol to source, no money to worry about. While many of the West’s freedoms found her dangling helplessly between an array of choices, this freedom of movement was a freedom she embraced.

  And then there was Andrew, her companion of choice. It was now almost six months since she had first contacted him, and she knew nothing about his girlfriends, if indeed there were girlfriends, and she had met none of his friends. At their regular dinners with Sylvie and Leonard, they treated her as Andrew’s girlfriend, but as for Andrew himself, there was nothing in his behaviour to suggest anything other than friendship. He had never tried to kiss her, he had never made any move towards her. Although she had her suspicions. She saw the way he looked at her, the warmth in his expression, the pleasure he took in her company.

  No such doubt existed when it came to her feelings for him. He was her blizkiy drug, her soulmate and dearest companion. A neighbour gave her a bag of home-grown vegetables, and it was Andrew she shared them with; her contract from the publisher arrived, and she wanted Andrew to witness it and celebrate its signing. When there were mice in the saddlery, she relied on Andrew to solve the problem. With exhibitions, concerts and films, Andrew was her preferred companion. And she loved his weekly excursions; he crafted them like mystery adventures, providing just enough information so she wore the right clothes, but not enough to spoil the surprise. When confronted by flocks of parrots, or panoramic views, or ancient gum trees, or a lyrebird (Yes! Once a lyrebird scuttling across a bush track), she would marvel at the surprise, marvel at this Australia, and marvel at her good fortune to have such a friend. So, as she stood in the ordinary Anglesea shopping strip, she assumed there must be more to this place than was immediately apparent.

  ‘This way,’ Andrew said, and with Godrevy pulling ahead on the lead, they crossed the road to the grassland by the river.

  Blasts of wind gusted up the waterway; she buttoned her jacket and thrust her hands into her pockets. As she walked with Andrew along the bank, she noticed a few ducks and gulls — nothing special in the way of birds, nothing special about the river either.

  The surprise of Anglesea came upon her in a background growl that grew steadily into the crash and rumble of the ocean. She quickened her pace, and soon they were standing on a broad exposed beach; it was weirdly exhilarating to pass in a few minutes from a nondescript town and a nondescript river to this magnificent seascape. She stood in the bluster beneath the puckered sky, and absorbed the hugeness of it all. The dog, released from his lead, was running in delighted circles, the ocean was a fury of foam, the waves rolling up the beach toppled over one another in a riot of spray. Beyond the beach and lining the curve of the ocean was a succession of high, buckled cliffs.

  ‘This is wonderful,’ Galina shouted, the words lost even to herself in the ruckus.

  Andrew cupped his ear and she stepped closer, put one hand on the right side of his neck, and spoke directly into his left ear.

 
Standing together, the only people on the beach, standing firm in this glorious bedlam, he feels her, he feels her breath on his ear, her lips brushing his skin. A shudder passes through him. If only time would stop now, he is thinking. But soon she’s pulling back, she’s turning up the collar of his coat, she’s patting him down, she’s letting him go. And even as she’s stepping away, he’s willing her to stay close. Keep touching me. Keep. Touching. Me. But already she is striding ahead with Goddy bouncing about her, both of them heading in the wrong direction. He runs to catch up with her, grasps her arm and turns her round. ‘This is the way,’ he shouts. He’s still holding her arm just above the elbow. How to stay like this? Then in a fit of exasperation, he slips his hand past her elbow and there they are, linked together. She gives his arm a press — whether shiver or affection, it’s impossible to know — he adjusts his pace to hers, and the two of them are walking arm in arm along the stormy beach. She seems totally relaxed; he, on the other hand, is all at sea. What he needs is a direct line to a romance expert, Lord Byron perhaps, or, better still, Don Juan himself. (Was he a fiction of Byron’s, or did he really exist?) He needs some more experienced, worldly man to tell him what to do. Although he knows exactly what to do, that’s not the problem. It’s the doing it.

  ‘Antarctica is just over there,’ he says, pointing to the horizon with his free hand. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in a lighthouse on Antarctica.’

  Neither Don Juan nor any experienced man would say anything so stupid. Galina’s gaze remains fixed ahead, and he dares hope she didn’t hear. His parents, friends, even Galina herself, know he has an interest in lighthouses, in much the same way as other people are interested in mountains or monuments. But as a sanctuary for a stifled psyche? That remains his secret.