The Uncanny Reader

by Marjorie Sandor

  She insisted on Charlotte’s drinking a glass of sherry and nibbling a bit of toast; then they returned to the drawing room, where the fire had been made up, and the cushions in Mrs. Ashby’s armchair shaken out and smoothed. How safe and familiar it all looked; and out there, somewhere in the uncertainty and mystery of the night, lurked the answer to the two women’s conjectures, like an indistinguishable figure prowling on the threshold.

  At last Charlotte got up and said: “I’d better go back. At this hour Kenneth will certainly go straight home.”

  Mrs. Ashby smiled indulgently. “It’s not very late, my dear. It doesn’t take two sparrows long to dine.”

  “It’s after nine.” Charlotte bent down to kiss her. “The fact is, I can’t keep still.”

  Mrs. Ashby pushed aside her work and rested her two hands on the arms of her chair. “I’m going with you,” she said, helping herself up.

  Charlotte protested that it was too late, that it was not necessary, that she would call up as soon as Kenneth came in, but Mrs. Ashby had already rung for her maid. She was slightly lame, and stood resting on her stick while her wraps were brought. “If Mr. Kenneth turns up, tell him he’ll find me at his own house,” she instructed the maid as the two women got into the taxi which had been summoned. During the short drive Charlotte gave thanks that she was not returning home alone. There was something warm and substantial in the mere fact of Mrs. Ashby’s nearness, something that corresponded with the clearness of her eyes and the texture of her fresh firm complexion. As the taxi drew up she laid her hand encouragingly on Charlotte’s. “You’ll see; there’ll be a message.”

  The door opened at Charlotte’s ring and the two entered. Charlotte’s heart beat excitedly; the stimulus of her mother-in-law’s confidence was beginning to flow through her veins.

  “You’ll see—you’ll see,” Mrs. Ashby repeated.

  The maid who opened the door said no, Mr. Ashby had not come in, and there had been no message from him.

  “You’re sure the telephone’s not out of order?” his mother suggested; and the maid said, well, it certainly wasn’t half an hour ago; but she’d just go and ring up to make sure. She disappeared, and Charlotte turned to take off her hat and cloak. As she did so her eyes lit on the hall table, and there lay a gray envelope, her husband’s name faintly traced on it. “Oh!” she cried out, suddenly aware that for the first time in months she had entered her house without wondering if one of the gray letters would be there.

  “What is it, my dear?” Mrs. Ashby asked with a glance of surprise.

  Charlotte did not answer. She took up the envelope and stood staring at it as if she could force her gaze to penetrate to what was within. Then an idea occurred to her. She turned and held out the envelope to her mother-in-law.

  “Do you know that writing?” she asked.

  Mrs. Ashby took the letter. She had to feel with her other hand for her eyeglasses, and when she had adjusted them she lifted the envelope to the light. “Why!” she exclaimed; and then stopped. Charlotte noticed that the letter shook in her usually firm hand. “But this is addressed to Kenneth,” Mrs. Ashby said at length, in a low voice. Her tone seemed to imply that she felt her daughter-in-law’s question to be slightly indiscreet.

  “Yes, but no matter,” Charlotte spoke with sudden decision. “I want to know—do you know the writing?”

  Mrs. Ashby handed back the letter. “No,” she said distinctly.

  The two women had turned into the library. Charlotte switched on the electric light and shut the door. She still held the envelope in her hand.

  “I’m going to open it,” she announced.

  She caught her mother-in-law’s startled glance. “But, dearest—a letter not addressed to you? My dear, you can’t!”

  “As if I cared about that—now!” She continued to look intently at Mrs. Ashby. “This letter may tell me where Kenneth is.”

  Mrs. Ashby’s glossy bloom was effaced by a quick pallor; her firm cheeks seemed to shrink and wither. “Why should it? What makes you believe— It can’t possibly—”

  Charlotte held her eyes steadily on that altered face. “Ah, then you do know the writing?” she flashed back.

  “Know the writing? How should I? With all my son’s correspondents.… What I do know is—” Mrs. Ashby broke off and looked at her daughter-in-law entreatingly, almost timidly.

  Charlotte caught her by the wrist. “Mother! What do you know? Tell me! You must!”

  “That I don’t believe any good ever came of a woman’s opening her husband’s letters behind his back.”

  The words sounded to Charlotte’s irritated ears as flat as a phrase culled from a book of moral axioms. She laughed impatiently and dropped her mother-in-law’s wrist. “Is that all? No good can come of this letter, opened or unopened. I know that well enough. But whatever ill comes, I mean to find out what’s in it.” Her hands had been trembling as they held the envelope, but now they grew firm, and her voice also. She still gazed intently at Mrs. Ashby. “This is the ninth letter addressed in the same hand that has come for Kenneth since we’ve been married. Always these same gray envelopes. I’ve kept count of them because after each one he has been like a man who has had some dreadful shock. It takes him hours to shake off their effect. I’ve told him so. I’ve told him I must know from whom they come, because I can see they’re killing him. He won’t answer my questions; he says he can’t tell me anything about the letters; but last night he promised to go away with me—to get away from them.”

  Mrs. Ashby, with shaking steps, had gone to one of the armchairs and sat down in it, her head drooping forward on her breast. “Ah,” she murmured.

  “So now you understand—”

  “Did he tell you it was to get away from them?”

  “He said, to get away—to get away. He was sobbing so that he could hardly speak. But I told him I knew that was why.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He took me in his arms and said he’d go wherever I wanted.”

  “Ah, thank God!” said Mrs. Ashby. There was a silence, during which she continued to sit with bowed head, and eyes averted from her daughter-in-law. At last she looked up and spoke. “Are you sure there have been as many as nine?”

  “Perfectly. This is the ninth. I’ve kept count.”

  “And he has absolutely refused to explain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Mrs. Ashby spoke through pale contracted lips. “When did they begin to come? Do you remember?”

  Charlotte laughed again. “Remember? The first one came the night we got back from our honeymoon.”

  “All that time?” Mrs. Ashby lifted her head and spoke with sudden energy. “Then—yes, open it.”

  The words were so unexpected that Charlotte felt the blood in her temples, and her hands began to tremble again. She tried to slip her finger under the flap of the envelope, but it was so tightly stuck that she had to hunt on her husband’s writing table for his ivory letter opener. As she pushed about the familiar objects his own hands had so lately touched, they sent through her the icy chill emanating from the little personal effects of someone newly dead. In the deep silence of the room the tearing of the paper as she slit the envelope sounded like a human cry. She drew out the sheet and carried it to the lamp.

  “Well?” Mrs. Ashby asked below her breath.

  Charlotte did not move or answer. She was bending over the page with wrinkled brows, holding it nearer and nearer to the light. Her sight must be blurred, or else dazzled by the reflection of the lamplight on the smooth surface of the paper, for, strain her eyes as she would, she could discern only a few faint strokes, so faint and faltering as to be nearly undecipherable.

  “I can’t make it out,” she said.

  “What do you mean, dear?”

  “The writing’s too indistinct.… Wait.”

  She went back to the table and, sitting down close to Kenneth’s reading lamp, slipped the letter under a magnifying glass. All this t
ime she was aware that her mother-in-law was watching her intently.

  “Well?” Mrs. Ashby breathed.

  “Well, it’s no clearer. I can’t read it.”

  “You mean the paper is an absolute blank?”

  “No, not quite. There is writing on it. I can make out something like ‘mine’—oh, and ‘come.’ It might be ‘come.’”

  Mrs. Ashby stood up abruptly. Her face was even paler than before. She advanced to the table and, resting her two hands on it, drew a deep breath. “Let me see,” she said, as if forcing herself to a hateful effort.

  Charlotte felt the contagion of her whiteness. “She knows,” she thought. She pushed the letter across the table. Her mother-in-law lowered her head over it in silence, but without touching it with her pale wrinkled hands.

  Charlotte stood watching her as she herself, when she had tried to read the letter, had been watched by Mrs. Ashby. The latter fumbled for her glasses, held them to her eyes, and bent still closer to the outspread page, in order, as it seemed, to avoid touching it. The light of the lamp fell directly on her old face, and Charlotte reflected what depths of the unknown may lurk under the clearest and most candid lineaments. She had never seen her mother-in-law’s features express any but simple and sound emotions—cordiality, amusement, a kindly sympathy; now and again a flash of wholesome anger. Now they seemed to wear a look of fear and hatred, of incredulous dismay and almost cringing defiance. It was as if the spirits warring within her had distorted her face to their own likeness. At length she raised her head. “I can’t—I can’t,” she said in a voice of childish distress.

  “You can’t make it out either?”

  She shook her head, and Charlotte saw two tears roll down her cheeks.

  “Familiar as the writing is to you?” Charlotte insisted with twitching lips.

  Mrs. Ashby did not take up the challenge. “I can make out nothing—nothing.”

  “But you do know the writing?”

  Mrs. Ashby lifted her head timidly; her anxious eyes stole with a glance of apprehension around the quiet familiar room. “How can I tell? I was startled at first.…”

  “Startled by the resemblance?”

  “Well, I thought—”

  “You’d better say it out, mother! You knew at once it was her writing?”

  “Oh, wait, my dear—wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  Mrs. Ashby looked up; her eyes, traveling slowly past Charlotte, were lifted to the blank wall behind her son’s writing table.

  Charlotte, following the glance, burst into a shrill laugh of accusation. “I needn’t wait any longer! You’ve answered me now! You’re looking straight at the wall where her picture used to hang!”

  Mrs. Ashby lifted her hand with a murmur of warning. “Sh-h.”

  “Oh, you needn’t imagine that anything can ever frighten me again!” Charlotte cried.

  Her mother-in-law still leaned against the table. Her lips moved plaintively. “But we’re going mad—we’re both going mad. We both know such things are impossible.”

  Her daughter-in-law looked at her with a pitying stare. “I’ve known for a long time now that everything was possible.”

  “Even this?”

  “Yes, exactly this.”

  “But this letter—after all, there’s nothing in this letter—”

  “Perhaps there would be to him. How can I tell? I remember his saying to me once that if you were used to a handwriting the faintest stroke of it became legible. Now I see what he meant. He was used to it.”

  “But the few strokes that I can make out are so pale. No one could possibly read that letter.”

  Charlotte laughed again. “I suppose everything’s pale about a ghost,” she said stridently.

  “Oh, my child—my child—don’t say it!”

  “Why shouldn’t I say it, when even the bare walls cry it out? What difference does it make if her letters are illegible to you and me? If even you can see her face on that blank wall, why shouldn’t he read her writing on this blank paper? Don’t you see that she’s everywhere in this house, and the closer to him because to everyone else she’s become invisible?” Charlotte dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. A turmoil of sobbing shook her from head to foot. At length a touch on her shoulder made her look up, and she saw her mother-in-law bending over her. Mrs. Ashby’s face seemed to have grown still smaller and more wasted, but it had resumed its usual quiet look. Through all her tossing anguish, Charlotte felt the impact of that resolute spirit.

  “Tomorrow—tomorrow. You’ll see. There’ll be some explanation tomorrow.”

  Charlotte cut her short. “An explanation? Who’s going to give it, I wonder?”

  Mrs. Ashby drew back and straightened herself heroically. “Kenneth himself will,” she cried out in a strong voice. Charlotte said nothing, and the old woman went on: “But meanwhile we must act; we must notify the police. Now, without a moment’s delay. We must do everything—everything.”

  Charlotte stood up slowly and stiffly; her joints felt as cramped as an old woman’s. “Exactly as if we thought it could do any good to do anything?”

  Resolutely Mrs. Ashby cried: “Yes!” and Charlotte went up to the telephone and unhooked the receiver.

  THE STOKER

  Franz Kafka

  Translated by Michael Hofmann

  As the seventeen-year-old Karl Rossmann, who had been sent to America by his unfortunate parents because a maid had seduced him and had a child by him, sailed slowly into New York harbour, he suddenly saw the Statue of Liberty, which had already been in view for some time, as though in an intenser sunlight. The sword in her hand seemed only just to have been raised aloft, and the unchained winds blew about her form.

  “So high,” he said to himself, and quite forgetting to disembark, he found himself gradually pushed up against the railing by the massing throng of porters.

  A young man with whom he had struck up a slight acquaintance during the crossing said to him in passing: “Well, don’t you want to get off yet?” “I’m all ready,” said Karl laughing to him, and in his exuberance and because he was a strong lad, he raised his suitcase on to his shoulder. But as he watched his acquaintance disappearing along with the others, swinging a cane, he realized that he had left his umbrella down in the ship. So he hurriedly asked his acquaintance, who seemed less than overjoyed about it, to be so good as to wait by his suitcase for a moment, took a quick look around for his subsequent orientation, and hurried off. Below deck, he found to his annoyance that a passage that would have considerably shortened the way for him was for the first time barred, probably something to do with the fact that all the passengers were disembarking, and so he was forced instead to make his way through numerous little rooms, along continually curving passages and down tiny flights of stairs, one after the other, and then through an empty room with an abandoned desk in it until, eventually, only ever having gone this way once or twice previously, and then in the company of others, he found that he was totally and utterly lost. Not knowing what to do, not seeing anyone, and hearing only the scraping of thousands of human feet overhead and the last, faraway wheezings of the engine, which had already been turned off, he began without thinking to knock at the little door to which he had come on his wanderings. “It’s open!” came a voice from within, and Karl felt real relief as he opened the door. “Why are you banging about on the door like a madman?” asked an enormous man, barely looking at Karl. Through some kind of overhead light-shaft, a dim light, long since used up in the higher reaches of the ship, fell into the wretched cabin, in which a bed, a wardrobe, a chair and the man were all standing close together, as though in storage. “I’ve lost my way,” said Karl. “I never quite realized on the crossing what a terribly big ship this is.” “Well, you’re right about that,” said the man with some pride, and carried on tinkering with the lock of a small suitcase, repeatedly shutting it with both hands to listen to the sound of the lock as it snapped shut. “Why d
on’t you come in,” the man went on, “don’t stand around outside.” “Aren’t I bothering you?” asked Karl. “Pah, how could you bother me?” “Are you German?” Karl asked to reassure himself, as he’d heard a lot about the dangers for new arrivals in America, especially coming from Irishmen. “Yes, yes,” said the man. Still Karl hesitated. Then the man abruptly grabbed the door handle, and pulling it to, swept Karl into the room with him. “I hate it when people stand in the corridor and watch me,” said the man, going back to work on his suitcase, “the world and his wife go by outside peering in, it’s quite intolerable.” “But the passage outside is completely deserted,” said Karl, who was standing squeezed uncomfortably against the bedpost. “Yes, now,” said the man. “But now is what matters,” thought Karl. “He is an unreasonable man.” “Lie down on the bed, you’ll have more room that way,” said the man. Karl awkwardly clambered on to the bed, and had to laugh out loud about his first vain attempt to mount it. No sooner was he on it, though, than he cried: “Oh God, I’ve quite forgotten all about my suitcase!” “Where is it?” “Up on deck, an acquaintance is keeping an eye on it for me. What was his name now?” And from a secret pocket that his mother had sewn into the lining of his jacket for the crossing, he pulled a calling-card: “Butterbaum, Franz Butterbaum.” “Is the suitcase important to you?” “Of course.” “Well then, so why did you give it to a stranger?” “I forgot my umbrella down below and went to get it, but I didn’t want to lug my suitcase down with me. And now I’ve gone and gotten completely lost.” “Are you on your own? There’s no one with you?” “Yes, I’m on my own.” I should stay by this man, thought Karl, I may not find a better friend in a hurry. “And now you’ve lost your suitcase. Not to mention the umbrella,” and the man sat down on the chair, as though Karl’s predicament was beginning to interest him. “I don’t think the suitcase is lost yet.” “Think all you like,” said the man, and scratched vigorously at his short, thick, black hair. “But you should know the different ports have different morals. In Hamburg your man Butterbaum might have minded your suitcase for you, but over here, there’s probably no trace of either of them any more.” “Then I’d better go back up right away,” said Karl and tried to see how he might leave. “You’re staying put,” said the man, and gave him a push in the chest, that sent him sprawling back on the bed. “But why?” asked Karl angrily. “There’s no point,” said the man, “in a little while I’ll be going up myself, and we can go together. Either your suitcase will have been stolen and that’s too bad and you can mourn its loss till the end of your days, or else the fellow’s still minding it, in which case he’s a fool and he might as well go on minding it, or he’s an honest man and just left it there, and we’ll find it more easily when the ship’s emptied. Same thing with your umbrella.” “Do you know your way around the ship?” asked Karl suspiciously, and it seemed to him that the otherwise attractive idea that his belongings would be more easily found on the empty ship had some kind of hidden catch. “I’m the ship’s stoker,” said the man. “You’re the ship’s stoker,” cried Karl joyfully, as though that surpassed all expectations, and propped himself up on his elbow to take a closer look at the man. “Just outside the room where I slept with the Slovak there was a little porthole, and through it we could see into the engine-room.” “Yes, that’s where I was working,” said the stoker. “I’ve always been terribly interested in machinery,” said Karl, still following a particular line of thought, “and I’m sure I would have become an engineer if I hadn’t had to go to America.” “Why did you have to go to America?” “Ah, never mind!” said Karl, dismissing the whole story with a wave of his hand. And he smiled at the stoker, as though asking him to take a lenient view of whatever it was he hadn’t told him. “I expect there’s a good reason,” said the stoker, and it was hard to tell whether he still wanted to hear it or not. “And now I might as well become a stoker,” said Karl. “My parents don’t care what becomes of me.” “My job will be going,” said the stoker, and coolly thrust his hands into his pockets and kicked out his legs, which were clad in rumpled, leather-like iron-grey trousers, on to the bed to stretch them. Karl was forced to move nearer to the wall. “You’re leaving the ship?” “Yup, we’re off this very day.” “But what for? Don’t you like it?” “Well, it’s circumstances really, it’s not always whether you like something or not that matters. Anyway you’re right, I don’t like it. You’re probably not serious about saying you could become a stoker, but that’s precisely how you get to be one. I’d strongly advise you against it myself. If you were intending to study in Europe, why not study here. Universities in America are incomparably better.” “That may be,” said Karl, “but I can hardly afford to study. I did once read about someone who spent his days working in a business and his nights studying, and in the end he became a doctor and I think a burgomaster, but you need a lot of stamina for that, don’t you? I’m afraid I don’t have that. Besides, I was never especially good at school, and wasn’t at all sorry when I had to leave. Schools here are supposed to be even stricter. I hardly know any English. And there’s a lot of bias against foreigners here too, I believe.” “Have you had experience of that too? That’s good. Then you’re the man for me. You see, this is a German ship, it belongs to the Hamburg America Line, everyone who works on it should be German. So then why is the senior engineer Rumanian? Schubal, his name is. It’s incredible. And that bastard bossing Germans around on a German ship. Don’t get the idea”—he was out of breath, and his hands flapped—“don’t you believe that I’m complaining for the hell of it. I know you don’t have any influence, and you’re just a poor fellow yourself. But it’s intolerable.” And he beat the table with his fist several times, not taking his eyes off it as he did so. “I’ve served on so many ships in my time”—and here he reeled off a list of twenty names as if it was a single word, Karl felt quite giddy—“and with distinction, I was praised, I was a worker of the kind my captains liked, I even served on the same clipper for several years”—he rose, as if that had been the high point of his life—“and here on this bathtub, where everything is done by rote, where they’ve no use for imagination—here I’m suddenly no good, here I’m always getting in Schubal’s way, I’m lazy, I deserve to get kicked out, they only pay me my wages out of the kindness of their hearts. Does that make any sense to you? Not me.” “You mustn’t stand for that,” said Karl in agitation. He had almost forgotten he was in the uncertain hold of a ship moored to the coast of an unknown continent, that’s how much he felt at home on the stoker’s bed. “Have you been to see the captain? Have you taken your case to him?” “Ah leave off, forget it. I don’t want you here. You don’t listen to what I say, and then you start giving me advice. How can I go to the captain?” And the stoker sat down again, exhausted, and buried his face in his hands.