He hears the girl struggling again with the door but does not hear it open. Here comes the mugwort.
“Mr. Less,” comes a male voice from behind him—from behind the door, in fact, he realizes when he turns around. Less kneels down close to it, and the voice says: “Mr. Less, we are so sorry.”
“Yes, I know!” Less says loudly. “I am too early for the cherry blossoms!”
A cleared throat. “Yes, and also, also…We are so sorry. This door is four hundred years old, and it is stuck. We have tried.” A long silence behind the door. “It is impossible to open.”
“Impossible?”
“We are so sorry.”
“Let’s think for a minute—”
“We have tried everything.”
“I can’t be trapped in here.”
“Mr. Less,” comes the male voice again, muffled by the door. “We have an idea.”
“I’m all ears.”
“It is this.” A whispered exchange in Japanese, followed by another clearing of the throat. “That you break the wall.”
Less opens his eyes and looks at the latticed paper wall. They might as well be asking him to leave a space capsule. “I can’t.”
“They are simple to repair. Please, Mr. Less. If you could break the wall.”
He feels old; he feels alone; he feels unpoplar. In the garden: a cluster of small birds passes like a school of colorless fish, darting back and forth before the window of this aquarium (in which it is Less who is contained, and not the birds), disappearing at last to the east with one stately gesture, and then—because life is comedy—there appears one final bird, scrambling across the sky to catch up with his mates.
“Please, Mr. Less.”
Says the bravest person I know: “I can’t.”
It was around seven in the morning not long ago that your narrator had a vision of Arthur Less.
I was awakened by a mosquito who had, impressively, made her way past a fortress of fuming coils, electric fans, and permethrin-coated netting to settle inside my ear. I thank that mosquito every hour. If she (for humans are only hunted by females) had not been so skilled an intruder, I think I never would have seen it. Life is so often made by chance. That mosquito: she gave her life for me; I killed her with one smack of my palm. The South Pacific made a quiet rumble from the open window, and the sleeper beside me made a similar sound.
Sunrise. We had arrived at the hotel in the dark, but gradually, light began to reveal that our room was covered on three sides by windows; I realized the house was set out in the ocean itself, like a thrust stage, and that the view from every window was of the water and the sky. I watched as they took on shades of iris and myrtle, sapphire and jade, until all around me, in sea and sky alike, I recognized a particular shade of blue. And I understood that I would never see Arthur Less again.
Not in the way I had; not in the casual sprawl of all those years. It was as if I had been informed of his death. So many times I had left his house and closed the door, and now, carelessly, I had locked it behind me. Married—it seemed instantly so stupid of me. Around me everywhere, that shade of Lessian blue. We would run into each other now, of course, on the street or at a party somewhere, and maybe even get a drink together, but it would be having a drink with a ghost. Arthur Less. It could never be anyone else. From somewhere high above the earth, I began a plummeting descent. There was no air to breathe. The world was rushing in to fill the void where Arthur Less had always been. I hadn’t known that I assumed he would wait there forever in that white bed below his window. I hadn’t known I needed him there. Like a landmark, a pyramid-shaped stone or a cypress, that we assume will never move. So we can find our way home. And then, inevitably, one day—it’s gone. And we realize that we thought we were the only changing thing, the only variable, in the world; that the objects and people in our lives are there for our pleasure, like the playing pieces of a game, and cannot move of their own accord; that they are held in place by our need for them, by our love. How stupid. Arthur Less, who was supposed to remain in that bed forever, now on a trip around the world—and who knows where he might be? Lost to me. I started shaking. It seemed so long ago I had seen him at that party, looking like a man lost in Grand Central Station, that crown prince of innocence. Watching him only a moment before my father introduced me: “Arthur, you remember my son, Freddy.”
I sat upright in bed for a long time, shivering, though it was warm in Tahiti. Shivering, shaking; I suppose it was what you would call an attack of something or other. From behind me, I heard rustling and then a stillness.
Then I heard his voice, my new husband, Tom, who loved me, and therefore saw everything:
“I really wish you weren’t crying right now.”
And he is standing up within his paper room, our brave protagonist. He stands very still, fists clenched. Who knows what is raging through that queer head of his? They seem to echo now, the birds, the wind, the fountain, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. He turns from the garden, which moves fluidly behind the ancient glass, and faces the paper wall. Here, he supposes, is the door. Not into the garden at all, but out of it. Nothing more than sticks and paper. Any other man could break it with a blow. How old is it? Has it ever seen a snowflake? Of all the absurdities of this trip, perhaps this is the most absurd—to be afraid of this. With one hand, he reaches out to touch the rough paper. The sunlight glows brighter behind it, making the shadow of a tree branch more distinct upon its surface—the Persian silk tree he climbed as a boy? There is no returning there. Or to the beach on a warm San Francisco day. Or to his bedroom and a good-bye kiss. In this room, everything is reflecting, but here is just the blank white wall of the future, on which anything might be written. Some new mortification, some new ridicule, surely. Some new joke to play on old Arthur Less. Why go there? And yet, despite everything, beyond it—who knows what miracle still awaits? Picture him lifting his fists above his head and, now with unconcealed pleasure, laughing, even, with ringing madness and a kind of crazed ecstasy, bringing them down with a splintering noise…
…and picture him getting out of a taxi on Ord Street in San Francisco, at the bottom of the Vulcan Steps. His plane has dutifully departed Osaka and landed on time in San Francisco; his crossing was fair, and his neighbor, who was reading the latest by H. H. H. Mandern, was even treated to a little story (“You know, I once interviewed him in New York City; he was sick with food poisoning, and I wore a cosmonaut’s helmet…”) before our protagonist passed out from his pills. Arthur Less has completed his trip around the world; he is finished; he is home.
The sun has long since entered the fog, so the city is washed in blue as if by a watercolorist who has changed her mind and thinks it’s all rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. He has no suitcase to carry; it is apparently making its own way around the world. He screws his eyes up the dark passage to home. Picture him: the balding blond of his hair, the semi-frown on his face, the wrinkled white shirt, the bandaged left hand, the bandaged right foot, the stained leather satchel, and his beautiful gray tailored suit. Picture him: almost glowing in the dark. Tomorrow, he will see Lewis for coffee and find out whether Clark has really left him and whether it still feels like a happy ending. There will be a note from Robert, to be filed with everything that will never be in the Carlos Pelu Collection: To the boy with red toenails—thank you for everything. Tomorrow, love will surely deepen its mystery. All that, tomorrow. But tonight, after a long journey: rest. Then the strap of the satchel catches on the handrail, and for a moment—and because there are always a few drops left in the bottle of indignity—it seems as if he is going to keep walking, and the satchel will tear…
Less looks back and untangles the strap. Fate, thwarted. Now: the long ascent toward home. Placing his foot on the first step with relief.
Why is his porch light on? What is that shadow?
He would be interested to know that my marriage to Tom Dennis lasted one entire day: twenty-four hours. We talked it all through on
the bed, surrounded by the sea and the sky in that Lessian blue. That morning, when I stopped crying at last, Tom said as my husband he had a duty to stay with me, to help me work through it. I sat there nodding and nodding. He said that I had traveled an awfully long way to figure out something I should have known sooner, something people had been telling him for months, and that he should have known when I locked myself in the bathroom the night before our wedding. I nodded. We embraced and decided he could not be my husband after all. He closed the door, and I was left in that room filled side to side, and top to bottom, with the blue that signified the vast mistake I had made. I tried to call Less from the hotel phone but left no message. What would I say? That when he told me, long ago, as I tried on his tuxedo, not to get attached, he was years too late? That it did not do the trick, that good-bye kiss? The next day, on the main island, I inquired about Gauguin’s house but was informed by a local: “It is closed.” For many days, I watched and was amazed by the ocean, composing endless fascinating variations on its tedious theme. Then, one morning, my father sent me a message:
Flight 172 from Osaka, Japan, arriving Thursday, 6:30 p.m.
Arthur Less, squinting up at his house. And now a security light, triggered by his movements, has come on, blinding him briefly. Who is that standing there?
I have never been to Japan. I have never been to India, or to Morocco, or to Germany, or to most of the places Arthur Less has traveled to over the past few months. I have never climbed an ancient pyramid. I have never kissed a man on a Paris rooftop. I have never ridden a camel. I have taught a high school English class for the best part of a decade, and graded homework every night, and woken up early in the morning to plan my lessons, and read and reread Shakespeare, and sat through enough conferences and meetings for even those in Purgatory to envy me. I have never seen a glowworm. I do not, by any reckoning, have the best life of anyone I know. But what I am trying to tell you (and I only have a moment), what I have been trying to tell you this whole time, is that from where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad.
Because it is also mine. That is how it goes with love stories.
Less, still dazzled by the spotlight, starts up the stairs and becomes ensnared, as he always does, in the thorns of a neighbor’s rosebush; carefully he removes each spur from his shimmering gray suit. He passes the bougainvillea, which, like some bothersome talkative lady at a party, briefly obstructs his path. He pushes it aside, showering himself with dried purple bracts. Somewhere, someone is practicing piano over and over; they cannot get the left hand right. A window undulates with a watery television radiance. And then I see the familiar blond glow of his hair appearing from the flowers, the halo of Arthur Less. Look at him tripping at the same broken step as always, pausing to look down in surprise. Look at him turning to take the last few steps toward the one who awaits him. His face tilted upward toward home. Look at him, look at him. How could I not love him?
My father asked me once why I was so lazy, why I did not want the world. He asked me what I wanted, and though I did not answer then, because I did not know, and followed old conventions even to the altar, I know it now. It is long past time to answer the question—and I see you, old Arthur, old love, looking up to that silhouette on your porch—what do I want? After choosing the path people wanted, the man who would do, the easy way out of things—your eyes wide in surprise as you see me—after holding it all in my hands and refusing it, what do I want from life?
And I say: “Less!”
About the Author
Andrew Sean Greer is the author of five works of fiction, including the bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He is the recipient of the Northern California Book Award, the California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the O. Henry Prize for short fiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library. He lives in San Francisco and Tuscany.
andrewgreer.com
twitter.com/agreer
facebook.com/LessANovel
Also by Andrew Sean Greer
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
The Story of a Marriage
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
The Path of Minor Planets
How It Was for Me
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