by Mae Wood
I enjoy cards, Alice. I hope you do, too. Now, before you worry, I don’t play poker or whist if there is serious gambling. I have had to work too hard for money to find risking it at chance to be any fun. If you are not a card player, I trust that I can convert you into quite the fine bridge partner. Bridge takes patience and a quick mind, but it also takes a willingness to bluff and silent communication with your partner who sits across the table. We will be famous for that, because I see the delight in your blue eyes at the idea of some bald-faced bluffing and our having secret, wordless communications right in the middle of a busy room.
Back in Iloilo, I expect that I’ll rejoin my friends at the club on many nights, laughing, having a few drinks with a few hands of cards and, if the evening demands it, some dancing. My friend Lewis Twombly is always good as a partner. He came over to teach shortly before I did, and has parlayed his talents into a sales position with an oil company. Lewis is a good friend to me. I tell you this now, so that you don’t think I’m playing you for a fool: there are women in our set, including Penny Powell. She’s quite sharp, but utterly spoiled and not a match for me, though I hope that perhaps one day her eyes will open to Lewis.
The others in our set are a variety of expatriates, mainly Americans and Brits. We have a Swiss who is also part of our set. His origin excludes him from formal membership at the club, but he’s quite the excellent golfer, so no one cries too much about his inclusion. The Spanish have their own club, which is grand. Even though the Islands now belong to us, the Spanish roots run deep and many of the buildings have a certain Iberian style and the families are intermixed quite thoroughly with the native population. An American Gibraltar, I suppose. Keeping with their tradition, the Spanish club hosts a few balls a year. One even includes masks in a riot of colors. I look forward to escorting you.
That is in the future. For now, I am in Nikko and you are in Seattle. The dense trees here remind me of Seattle and of the walk we took around Alki Point with Mount Rainer in the distance.
It will be the perfect place for a honeymoon, and a good place to get the feel of dry land under our legs before completing the long journey to Iloilo.
I have already scouted out a few places for picnics. There is a long red bridge, much like you’d see over a koi pond in a botanic garden. This one has recently been replaced, and its low profile stretches long across a gorge. Upon my return to town I will look for a postcard to place in this envelope for you so that you can see it. There is also a shrine from the 1600s that is a marvel. Like gargoyles on a castle, this shrine is decorated with carved dragons, monkeys, and even a sleeping cat! Time has gnawed on it, but does not diminish its grandeur.
I’ve enjoyed this little chat with you, Alice, in a place that I hope will become special to us both. Now, I must see as much of this place as I can, take notes and commit it to memory so that I may be a suitable guide for you. I will write again soon.
Yours,
Elliott
Five
Elliott
November 1915
Home, as it is. Elliott disembarks down a rough wooden gangplank onto the docks, valise clutched in one hand, letters to Alice in the other. He barks at a young man and orders his trunk to be delivered to his uncle’s house. The post office is a short walk from the docks. After the few final days at sea, including being holed up in a bay just outside town, waiting for a storm to break so that they could safely enter the city’s harbor, the steady earth beneath his feet feels alien. This place that has been his home for five years, new and fresh and utterly odd.
Like ants, men stream up planks and back down them, hefting crates and trunks, two mail sacks slung over the shoulders of a stooped man. Elliott renews his grasp on his letters in his hand and sets off toward where the post office was, hoping it is still in the same place.
At the post office, three letters embark on their journey to her, retracing his course across the Pacific.
The steamer voyaged from Japan to Manila and then from Manila to Iloilo. He could have filled a ship with words to her, but restraint proved his ally and enemy. Too many would seem rambling and overwhelming, and although he feels lovesick, he has no desire to show that to her. His nature bends that way, toward the florid and maudlin and poetic. Nurture bent him the other—to facts and figures and a God who takes accounts.
And the result? A man who spends time in his head, who dreams with passion and fervor, but who cloaks those dreams in firm plans.
Now at his uncle’s house, his aunt greets him with a glass of ice water, and after a bath, Elliott settles in on the veranda.
“Some lemonade, Elliott?” his aunt asks and he accepts, taking the kindness and wishing it had some gin in it.
She sits across from him on a teak bench, her green day dress covering all of her save her hands and face. “Any news?”
He knows what his aunt wants to hear and he knows that he’s going to disappoint her. “I’m alone.”
“I could tell that much myself. Did you meet the Murdoch daughter?” The lightness in her eyes tells him that she already knows. Already knows that he made no promises, but implied them. That Margaret Murdoch of Ft. Wayne, Indiana should join him next year, when his fortunes are more stable, when he has made plans for them, for a house of his own, for a carriage that isn’t borrowed, for a life suitable for a wife.
“I did.”
“Are you going to make me drag this out of you? I don’t want to wait until Otto returns this evening. You must tell me now.”
“Aunt Martha.” He sighs. “Margaret won’t be coming.” Her face falls. “I plan to return to Seattle in 1917 and, if all goes to plan, become permanently fixed to Miss Alice Hirshhorn.”
Her face is frozen in surprise.
“We shall see what Uncle Otto thinks, and perhaps I can return to her sooner,” he continues. “She’s a school teacher. From Portland, Indiana. I leave you to write letters to determine precisely if, or more likely how, our families know each other, but I intend to return to her, to marry her, and then return with her here after a suitable honeymoon in Japan.” He had not said it aloud before. The words were plain on his lips, an easy paragraph of a plan. If only words could make plans come true. Before Martha can gather her thoughts, he announces his intent to go to find his uncle.
The walk to the center of town from his uncle’s home is short, and the rains of the wet season have given way to blue skies. The city has changed in his absence, he thinks, noting his barbershop is now home to a tobacconist and the stationers is now a haberdashery. Nine months and everything has changed.
The bell perched over the door announces his arrival. Carl, the assistant who worked in his stead, greets him hello. He smiles and shakes hands with the man, glad to see him and even happier to see the pharmacy bustling with customers. His uncle stands behind the counter, white coat signifying his role as pharmacist to the expatriates, mainly Americans, who have sought a chance at a fortune in the Philippine Islands.
“Uncle!” he calls. He and Otto greet one another in the middle of the shop floor and assist a few customers before retiring to the back office for a chat, letting Carl handle the store. It is nearly siesta, when the shop will close for midday.
“Come to collect me for siesta? I don’t know how much rest either of us will get as I have no doubt that Martha will want to hear about everything,” Otto says, leaning back in his chair and rolling his ankles to relieve the pressure of standing all morning.
“I need to speak about business before telling Aunt Martha anything more,” Elliott says.
“What did you already tell her?” Otto leans forward, his head tilted in excitement.
“There is a woman I intend to marry. Provided that all goes to plan, once you return from your travels, I will return to Seattle, marry her, and then happily settle into the bosom of marital life that Aunt Martha has been pushing me into.”
“Confident, as always, Elliott,” his uncle notes wryly, leaning back in his chair and crossing hi
s outstretched legs at the ankles. Because men like Elliott are confident. Confident enough to leave homes and family and friends behind. Confident enough to board trains and ships to arrive at a place they have only read about. Confident enough to know that by their wits and work they will thrive. These are not men who are seeking refuge, forced out of their lives. No, these are men who arrive to claim, to dominate, to create a world for themselves in their own image.
“There is a confidence that comes from knowledge,” Elliott says, his voice deep, steady, and certain.
“This next year will be good for you, then,” says Otto, ignoring Elliott’s announcement. “Test your mettle. The store is yours to run, as you know. Your aunt and I depart in a month, shortly before Christmas, so there is time to talk in detail once you’ve rested. We’ve already sold the house, but you have occupancy until the new year. The contents stay with the home, but the carriage and horse are yours.”
Elliott starts, his confidence ever so slightly paling in the face of reality. “You do plan to return, don’t you?”
“Of course. I’ve already made contact with friends back home and have introductions with their more important friends in San Francisco and Chicago. Even one potential meeting in New York, as far-fetched as that seems. The world is at war, but marches on nonetheless, and I fear that eventually we will be sucked into the war as well. And even if not the war, modernity will creep to all corners, including this small one that we occupy. Fertile land, an abundance of labor, the United States staying neutral—sugar fuels the world. Sometimes it feels like Spaniards have turned every bit of arable land into sugarcane fields. I don’t want to join them in that endeavor, but farmers need capital to expand and we’re going to be the men to do just that.”
Elliott’s first month back is filled with dinner parties, where Elliott sings for his supper by sharing news and updates from his trip back to the States, and his aunt and uncle are bid Godspeed.
At the club one lazy afternoon, over a game of bridge, Elliott chats with his friend Lewis while his bridge partner Penny makes eyes at them both from behind her hand of cards.
“My uncle has sold his house, so I have to find a new place to lay my head,” Elliott tells the table.
Penny’s eyes shoot to his and for a fraction of a second are fixed on his before she requests another cocktail from the waiter. The invitation still stands, Elliott notices. But Princess Penny Powell isn’t for him. She might have been. And, had he caught another train and not met Alice, she might be for him right now in this instant, but she’s not. Alice is for him, and he thinks back to her laugh, her quietness, and her soft beauty and sharp wit.
“Your bid, Elliott,” Lewis prompts, and Elliott snaps back into the game and places a bid of one spade without much thought. “Dreaming of the States still?”
“Two clubs,” bids Joseph Carlisle, a relatively new arrival to Iloilo, and a man who, from what Elliott has gathered, filled Elliott’s empty place in their social set.
“No,” says Elliott, not wanting to share the truth of his thoughts. “Wondering if I could find a house to rent with good sea views and breezes.”
“Well, let’s ask around then for a house with a good sea view and breezes,” says Lewis. “You are playing against the newest vice president of the Standard Vacuum Oil Company,” he announces to the table.
A chorus of congratulations fills the air, and Lewis accepts them all with a proud smile that is tempered by his polished manners.
“The company will pay the rent for a house for me, on the assumption that I have a wife and family, and I can’t imagine bumping around a house alone. I’ve already asked Joseph to join me and there is no reason that you can’t join us as well. A proper bachelor existence. The two of you would split the salary for the houseboy, and we’d all go in together for a cook.”
“Sounds grand to me,” says Joseph. “I’ve been in the hotel for five months, so it’s probably time to do something.”
A little smile creeps across Elliott’s face at the remark. Because that is his problem with Joseph—the man doesn’t seem to do anything. Joseph is jovial enough, and quite the pianist, which has proved very handy to have around at parties. From Elliott’s discreet inquiries, he’s learned that Joseph is from Washington, DC, does not claim relation to any famous politician, and has no visible means of support, but lives well and pays his bills. Joseph also has no aim. And that is what unsettles Elliott about the man. They are all expatriates, far from their home countries, here to make their fortunes, but Joseph seems to already have a fortune and seems satisfied to spend his days golfing and his evenings gadding about Iloilo. It’s not that Elliott doesn’t like him, for Elliott would love to be like him, but Elliott doesn’t quite trust him, just as he hadn’t quite trusted the men like Joseph he’d met at the University of Michigan.
Elliott had little to risk other than his own future when he’d quit the seminary, and studied in Ann Arbor. He’d had little to risk other than a very modest salary when he resigned his position teaching back in Indiana to teach in the Philippine Islands. Yet those risks were big to him. The gambles had consequences and Elliott had won. For Joseph, gambles were meaningless because whoever his father turned out to be, Joseph had a different confidence than the men Elliott now golfed and drank with. Joseph’s confidence was born out of a life knowing that he would not fail. Elliott’s was born out of knowing that he must not fail.
“Elliott? What say you?” Joseph asks.
A house with three bachelors is not Elliott’s plan. A small cottage near the sea where he could carve out a home for himself—a home he could give Alice—that is his plan. But the temptation to put away or even invest a few more pesos a month is too great, and eighteen months is too long to excuse such excess of running a home for a single man. He makes quick work of the math, and even if he lived with Lewis and Joseph for six months, that savings would allow him to afford a full-time cook for Alice as well as more than comfortable passage from Seattle for two. There isn’t a decision to make.
“Count me in,” he replies.
Dear Alice,
Things are settled as they can be and plans are underway. My uncle has agreed to return no later than May, and if all goes well, early April 1917. If I can find someone suitable and utterly trustworthy to mind our business while I am gone, and on the theory that nothing drastic can happen in a month or so’s time, I am free to leave for Seattle in March. I am looking forward to April, but working toward a March voyage. That will put me knocking outside your door, my arms full of roses, in May or April 1917. We can spend a week or so together before becoming permanently fixed. There is a question that I want to ask you, and I want to ask in person, not through a letter. I suspect that you know what it is. And I hope I am correctly anticipating your happy reply.
If you are feeling bold, sweet Alice, I have a more adventurous proposal for you. Meet me in Japan in July of this coming year. That part of the voyage is easy. Seattle to Vancouver to Yokohama. I will send you money so that you can travel comfortably. And if we are as suited as I believe us to be, we can continue to travel home to Iloilo. And if I am wrong, and we are not suited, then I will place you on a ship back to Seattle and you can tell your students of your grand summer adventure to the Orient. Much more exciting than another summer on the shores of Lake Michigan, I assure you.
On my side of the Pacific, the plans for the bank are moving forward. My uncle has several introductions set up on his travels to solicit prospective investments and I’ve begun politicking locally for men like my friend Penny’s father to organize a national bank that is not tied to the French or Spanish. I am confident that we will be successful and that we will be able to establish a branch, if not a full office, in Iloilo. There was much groundwork laid while I was in the States. I am working daily to prepare a life for us, but in the meantime, Alice, write me and tell me when in July I shall meet you in Japan.
Yours,
Elliott
Six
Elliott
Summer 1916
A parcel has arrived from her. Claimed at the post office, a slip in his postal box, the package was lost, the postal clerk explains, but it was found a few days later, as it had been hidden on a shelf, buried with all of the letters and parcels from around the world that flooded into this outpost of a post office.
He recognizes his name by her hand immediately. The large first letters. Mr. Elliott Keller. He imagines an s following the title, squeezed in between the r and the period, wondering what it will look like to see that in her hand.
Elliott is desperate to open it, but he wants to be alone with this thing from her. If it is what he thinks, then the months of damn near begging in his letters have paid off.
He walks beside the sea wall, the roar of the waves crashing on the turbulent sea as the rainy season takes hold with its first storm. A fine mist splashes up in his path, anointing him with the sea’s blessing. The afternoon clouds loom heavy and promise a downpour. Up the steps to the stucco home he shares with Lewis and Joseph. The houseboy takes his jacket and umbrella, and Elliott settles down on the veranda with the brown paper package on his lap.
His fingers glide over his name written in her hand. The last letter he received marked a milestone in his life. They were now as caught up as they would be. When he first arrived home, he was surprised to find letters from her arriving in his post office box almost daily, and then, after a few weeks the numbers thinned. Not from negligence on her part, or feinting of love on his, but because they were now in a back and forth conversation by the mail.
What gripped him in the last letter, dated April, was not her discussion of returning to Indiana and the shores of Lake Michigan for the summer with her family, but the way she closed it. Her “fondly” transitioning to “love.” And how he wished he could hear that word from her lips. How he wished he could have spoken that word to her. Because it felt right, but he didn’t want to scare her with the intensity of his feelings. A half a world away, he kicked himself, cursed himself for not telling her what was in his heart.