Next Life Might Be Kinder

by Howard Norman

  “Go back to Halifax!” I shouted. “Get in your car and go back to Halifax!”

  On the beach now, Peter Istvakson started taking photographs in a crazy way, turning left and right, spinning around sharply—light flashes every ten seconds or so—lest he miss Elizabeth behind him, to his left, to his right, or behind him again. He stumbled and fell, righting himself with difficulty, snapping photographs.

  “Sam Lattimore, my writer,” he said in half-garbled pleading. “This place. This place you come down to see your wife. I’m sorry for violating this beach. But I’ve found my ending. I’ve discovered my ending.”

  He reeled unsteadily backward into the water, roughhoused by waves, up to his waist. He attempted to hold his camera above his head, but when he saw that wasn’t working, he flung it in a high arc onto the beach. And then I walked into the ocean myself, right up to Istvakson, said, “Go back to Halifax!” and pushed him. Even harder a second time, pushed him. He groaned, “What—?” He lost his footing, falling backward into the waves. His arms and legs flailed for a few seconds. Then he disappeared.

  I may have been under every influence except sanity, but I recognized this for what it was, the exact thing it was. The water taking him. One minute here, the next gone. Though I had not held him under, still it was a hands-on drowning. I can testify to that. Give me a witness! I’m that witness. I began wildly sweeping my arms beneath the water. Nothing. I stepped forward, sliding my feet along, again waving my arms as deep in the water as I could manage. I changed direction, probed with one foot and then the other, half losing my own balance, sobering up. I don’t know how long I was out there. Life seemed to be moving in slow motion, even taking in breath was difficult, fits and starts, anxious. I was aware of thinking, Don’t black out again. Don’t black out. I turned back to shore. There was Elizabeth. Holding her books. I didn’t know what she had or hadn’t seen. She took a few tentative steps backward, then turned and walked toward the trees. I thought, If she saw what I did, she won’t come back.

  Standing there. Attempting to keep my balance. Staring at the water. Feeling the pull of the tide. I then thought—I remember thinking, I have a nice fire going in the fireplace. I had become the person who had done this thing. Just in the time it took to drag myself out of the cold water is all it took to say to myself: You won’t own up.

  I didn’t knock on Philip and Cynthia’s door to own up. I didn’t call the Halifax police to own up. I didn’t call Lily Svetgartot to own up. The only other thing I remember from that night was saying out loud—it wasn’t a prayer—“I hope Elizabeth didn’t see anything.”

  Through my kitchen window, at first light, I was watching the cove through binoculars. It was lightly raining. I saw Philip, dressed in a bulky sweater, trousers, and galoshes, walk down to the beach. I followed his movements and saw him approach a body stretched half in the water and half on the sand. A few gulls scattered off. With great effort Philip dragged Istvakson, face-down, fully onto the sand. Istvakson’s raincoat was spread out like enormous black wings, and he had one shoe missing. (A week later Philip told me, “The toxicology report showed Istvakson had enough alcohol in his blood to kill a horse.”) Philip then hurried to his house, and presumably it was then that he called the police, or Lily Svetgartot, or both.

  In the context of continuing to lie to detectives, to this day I still haven’t mentioned that, when I knew that Istvakson had drowned, I’d picked up his camera from the sand, and later I sent the film to Montreal to be developed (accompanied by a note that read, “Still photographs from a movie set”). Thirty-one photographs of a beach at night, empty but for the visible scrawls of rain. Actually, as guilt mercilessly set in, I considered handing the photographs over to the detectives, describing what had happened that night and taking the consequences. That thought was short-lived, though. Because when I sent the film to be developed, I also asked that a set of eight-by-ten prints be made. About a week later, when I put the prints in neat rows on the kitchen table, I discovered that in one photograph I was visible, my mouth in the grotesque elastic shape of Edvard Munch’s The Scream (I was hardly recognizable, even to myself). In another photograph, Philip and Cynthia appear, albeit in silhouette, at their upstairs bedroom window. They had seen. Obviously Philip and Cynthia had seen.

  Philip and Cynthia have not owned up to the detectives, protective friends that they are. Situational ethics in Port Medway. In turn, they don’t know about the photographs, which are in a drawer in the guest room of my cottage.

  My guess is that this is not what Istvakson had in mind for an ending.

  I Haven’t Slept in Ten Years

  THREE DAYS AFTER the drowning, a visibly distraught Lily Svetgartot arrived at my door at about five o’clock. “I haven’t slept in ten years,” she said. In appearance she was entirely disheveled, a mess. No surprise there. I stepped aside and she walked in and began talking as if in midsentence: “And Istvakson figured he had only three or four days left to shoot the movie. Contractually, Emily Kalman’s work was done, but Istvakson begged her not to leave yet. So Emily gave him a week more. She likes Halifax. Istvakson was at wit’s end. He was drinking like a fish. That expression, ‘like a fish,’ and everyone on set was quite put off, you see. Quite put off, and quarreling, everyone was quarreling. Over the smallest things quarreling.” At the counter, she started to make coffee. She turned and said, “Sam—okay, I’m going to say this straight out. Michiko Zento has come up with an ending. She’s been burning the midnight oil—right way to say it? Studying hard Istvakson’s research notes. I’m just going to say it. The ending she’s come up with—and I think that this comes from Istvakson’s notes—rest in peace, Peter Istvakson. Though he probably won’t rest in peace.”

  “Miss Svetgartot—Lily. Please, just tell me what ending she’s going to use.”

  “What happens is, a psychiatrist that you—that is, your character—has been talking to. This is in the script, after the wife Elizabeth is murdered. Your psychiatrist reveals confidential information. About your seeing Elizabeth on the beach at night.”

  “A psychiatrist does this? Unlikely. Whom does he give this information to?”

  Lily took a deep breath and said, “Well, we don’t actually see who. We just see the psychiatrist in a pub, and he’s talking to someone. We don’t see who he’s talking to. The psychiatrist is all nervous and fidgety. He looks like he knows he shouldn’t be talking about any of this, but he’s doing it anyway.”

  “Right now! I’ll drive to Halifax and have a little chat with Miss Zento.”

  Lily wrapped her arms around me, pressing her face close to mine. Then I felt her tighten her embrace as she said, “I’m afraid it’s too late. They have already shot the ending. And Miss Zento and Mr. Akutagawa have left for Japan. Separate flights.”

  “Lily,” I said, “please sit down.”

  She let go of me and sat at the kitchen table. Her face was flushed and she began to comb her hair rapidly with her fingers. “Lily, five deep breaths,” she said, then loudly inhaled and exhaled five times. “The final ending won’t please you in the least, either, Sam. It can’t. See, what happens is, we are now on the beach behind Philip and Cynthia’s house. There’s all sorts of people there. We haven’t seen any of them before. Except for Elizabeth—Emily Kalman, I mean. And the actor playing the dance instructor Arnie Moran. There’s a bandstand. On the beach. There’s a big wooden console radio. This radio is playing loud dance music from the 1930s. And the characters of Arnie Moran and Elizabeth are dancing to jitterbug music. It’s supposed to be taking place in the 1930s, you see. A sudden time travel, and it’s a kind of dance hall. And then along comes the Sam Lattimore character. He is all nicely dressed. He walks right up and cuts in on Arnie Moran. He takes his wife in his arms. The camera holds on her face a long time. She’s staring right into the camera. The music gets louder. Then the screen goes dark.”

  I sat down at the table. “But if Istvakson already had this in a notebook—�
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  “Yes, exactly,” Lily said. “Then why would he need to go down to the beach?”

  I asked Lily Svetgartot to leave.

  “Sam, I’d like to give you my address in Norway. The city of Bergen. I leave tomorrow for there.”

  “You’re a good person, Miss Svetgartot,” I said, purposely sounding as formal as humanly possible. By her expression, I could see the formality had struck a chord. “But no thank you.”

  “Having my address on a piece of paper can’t hurt,” she said. “That’s a phrase I learned, ‘It can’t hurt.’ But then again, I suppose you’ll always associate me with this movie you’re going to hate. Associate me with everything else that’s happened. How can you not?”

  I walked her outside and stood on my porch and watched as she made her way over to Cynthia and Philip’s door. More goodbyes. A short time later, I heard her car start up, and from my bedroom window I saw her taillights fade and finally disappear down the road.

  Eleven Titles

  THE TITLES OF the books missing from the Port Medway Library: A Child’s Christmas in Wales, The Black Swan in Swansea, Lyddie by the Sea in Wales, The Silly Caterpillar in Caerphilly, A Treasury of Welsh Tales, The Girl Who Walked Across Wales, The Morning I Saw Mary Jones at the Market at Blaenau Ffestiniog, Cobbler Harry of Haverfordwest, The Big Storm in Tonyrefail, The Dream of Macsen Wledig, and Preiddeu Annwfn: A Story about a Magic Cauldron.

  I spent a good two hours with the staff at John W. Doull Booksellers in Halifax, and through their kind patience ordered the missing titles. They said it might take months to obtain all eleven. As it happened, in nine weeks Doull’s sent me a postcard saying that the books had arrived. The next day I drove to the bookshop, where I found a neatly packed box waiting for me. I settled my bill and then drove to the Port Medway Library and delivered the books to Bethany Dawson.

  “Do you want your name mentioned in the church bulletin,” she asked, “in this regard?”

  “Not necessary. But you might help me with something.”

  “If I can, I will.”

  “Whom do I talk to about obtaining a grave site in Port Medway?”

  “Feeling right at home, are we, Mr. Lattimore?”

  Hospitable to Your Delusions

  CYNTHIA TELEPHONED TO ask if I’d like to drive out to Vogler’s Cove. Sitting in the café there, she told me that before I’d moved into the cottage, she and Philip had invested money in the movie. “It was fairly simple,” she said. “There had been a public call for investors, and we signed right up. We were told that roughly ten percent of the budget had to come from private sources. Just so you know, that’s why we got to meet the cast and crew. The whole movie thing, it spiced up our life a little, I’ll admit. But as we got to know and love you, it’s become awkward, obviously. On the one hand, we had the famous actress Emily Kalman to the house for dinner. On the other hand, the movie became the bane of your existence. Which was hard for Philip and me to see happening, Sam. Really it was.”

  “You’ve seen things, that’s for sure. And you’ve been dear friends. That’s all that matters.”

  “I have to say this, too. Philip and I have seen you on the beach I can’t count how often. And we have never seen Elizabeth.”

  “Yet I’ve never once felt that you were just—”

  “Hospitable to your delusions?”

  “Oh, right. I told you that’s what Dr. Nissensen said you were being.”

  “But that’s definitely not what we’re doing. Want to know something? What you’ve been experiencing in your life—” Tears came to her eyes and she looked away.

  “Cynthia, what? It’s okay. It’s okay. Just say it.”

  “Whatever it is you are experiencing here,” she said, our eyes meeting again, “it’s . . . enviable in a very profound and human way to us. To love someone so much that you’ll do everything in your power to keep her near, no matter what.”

  “Elizabeth keeps herself near.”

  “Okay, so it’s reciprocal as you experience it. Look, Sam, I’m not your shrink. Philip’s not your shrink. So however it works, we don’t care. I’m trying to say that going through this with you, I’ve realized that sometimes a person gets it right the first time. Philip and I the second time, having each been married once before, I mean. Sometimes with another person you get it right the first time. It then defines who you are, what you’re experiencing, and you never hid it from us. It’s allowed Philip and me to ask some very basic—basic to us, at least—questions about our own marriage. That must sound like some sort of marriage counselor bullshit. But I don’t mean it to. Philip is the love of my life; I’m the love of his life. But we both know, if you are with someone who is not the love of your life, you are always aware of it. Every day, that knowledge is with you. And deep down in your heart you know you’ve settled in some way. Which is just human, to settle. In a marriage, things can just go along, you may even be fucking your brains out all the time, or have ten children together, or have been to hell and back together, and even if it’s been wonderful traveling through time together, side by side, you know. Still, there’d be the secret knowledge that you aren’t with the love of your life. Maybe that’d be like being a secret sharer with yourself. I don’t know. What you’re experiencing, Sam, what you find so necessary to experience—no matter what else, in Elizabeth you found the love of your life. And please, for God’s sake, my little confession in this café here doesn’t warrant another moment’s thought. And don’t think that I’ve said all this to try and offset my guilt about investing in the movie—it’s just money—because you’d be wrong. Okay, sure, having a famous film actress to dinner. Who would have ever thunk all of this, huh? How things turned out. How things turn out. It’s beyond Philip and me. It’s really beyond us.”

  We walked the beach at Vogler’s Cove for half an hour or so. “By now, can you name all the birds we’re looking at, Sam?” Cynthia asked. “What with your field guide always with you.”

  “The gulls, some of the ducks, a few others,” I said. “Slow learner.”

  Then we drove back, radio on, no need to talk.

  A Visit to London

  IT’S ALL CATCHING up to me. The night before the day Elizabeth was murdered, we were lying in bed and she told me about her visit with Marghanita Laski. We had made love so intensely, it made us both laugh and cry. (“Sam, do you think just now we were trying to make a baby? I don’t know for sure, but that felt more than just husband and wife.”) Lying there, we suddenly had a ravenous thirst, and I got up and brought a pitcher of water to the bed, and we each drank directly from the pitcher. She said, “I’m for some mysterious reason having memories left and right. It’s like they’ve invited themselves in without knocking and got into bed with us.”

  “Of what, exactly?”

  She drank some more water. “Okay, well, in London. I stayed at an expensive hotel in London one time. Only once in my life, on my own, and it was far too expensive for me. But I was so nervous, I had to have some kind of comfort. I think that was my excuse.”

  “Nervous about?” I couldn’t imagine what I was about to hear, and in fact didn’t hear it for some time, because instead of answering, Elizabeth began to kiss me, deep, probing, urgent kisses, and for me not to respond was impossible. I knew a good thing when I felt it, and with Lizzy I had felt it from the moment we’d first met. Now we were in the throes of passion again, and I didn’t try to understand it. Afterward, we slept for a while, then Elizabeth woke me and picked up where she’d left off, telling me about her visit to London.

  “I’d written that letter to Marghanita Laski.”

  “I remember you told me you’d sent her a letter.”

  “And the letter said that I loved The Victorian Chaise-Longue, and was writing my dissertation on it, and could I ask her some questions about its composition. That was pretty much it. And she sent me an invitation to come see her. I was so excited. I wrote her right back and suggested some possible dates, and in
her next letter she agreed on January—this was the year before you and I met. I’ve kept her letters, of course. I have them here.” She reached into the drawer of her bedside table and produced a folded letter, and she read from it:

  London is freezing in January. I won’t apologize for that, but will for its being the only plausible time, I’m afraid, for your visit. By the way, you used the word “audience,” that you hoped for an audience with me, but you’ll perhaps be disappointed to know that I live a simple, quiet life, out of the literary limelight to be sure. No audience necessary, just let’s say tea out at a hotel. And yes, you may ask me anything you want, within bounds, and I’ll do my best to answer.

  Elizabeth put the letter back in the drawer. “I borrowed airfare from Mum and Dad,” she said. “They were very sweet about it. Also, they popped for the too expensive hotel. And they suggested I travel up from London to Wales for a visit. Which I did.

  “And guess what? When Marghanita Laski herself came to my hotel for tea that first time—we met four times in four days—she noticed everything. She said, ‘Sorry to put it as such, but there’s a discrepancy between how modestly, yet quite tastefully, you’re dressed and what I imagine this hotel costs per night. And you’re probably staying for several nights.’ That was all she said about that, but she had sized it up perfectly. And that’s where we met all four times, right there, in a kind of pub just off the lobby of my hotel.