Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things: Mister Max 1

by Cynthia Voigt

  That evening, Grammie served a roast chicken dinner, including gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots, and the lingonberry preserves she liked with her poultry. While they ate they talked about the classes Max had been taking at school. Then Grammie outlined her plan to teach the subjects she knew enough about. At the end she told him, “I’ve found you a math tutor. His name is Ari and he’ll meet you at the house—that is, at your parents’ house—Tuesday afternoon. At three. You should pay him what you pay Joachim, and if there’s not enough money for both, it’s Joachim whose lessons you’ll have to miss.”

  Max had no time to respond as he would have liked to all of these plans made for him without consulting him at all, and all of these orders given to him. What he wanted to say was No, and Wait, and What if I …? But Grammie had gotten up to clear their plates and cut thick wedges of chocolate cake. Finally, after the dishes were washed and dried, the pots and pans scoured and put away, cups of tea were set out on the table and they got down to the most difficult problem, which was: How does a twelve-year-old boy earn a living?

  Grammie had made a long list of possible jobs: delivery boy of groceries or newspapers, flowers, food; window washer or dishwasher, dog walker, old person’s reader; even gardener—although Max shook his head at that. Her last idea was stable hand, even though Max knew nothing about horses. “You can learn,” she promised him. She explained that he would have to be a day laborer, working where the employees were always coming and going so that nobody would ask questions about where he came from or where he was living.

  Max suggested that he would rather have a job that was interesting, to which Grammie told him sternly, “You probably won’t find challenging work. However, all work is worth doing well. And there are things to be enjoyed about most jobs, that’s true, too,” she added, in response to something she saw in his face. “That’s if you’re open-minded. Many people would hate working in a theater, you know,” she said. “Acting. Me, for example. I hope you’re smart enough to be open-minded.” Then she announced to him that, like his continuing education, his joining her for supper was nonnegotiable. “Every night.”

  “Agreed,” Max said quickly. He was almost relieved to think that there was someone who cared where he was at the end of every day. “But, Grammie? If I can’t be who I am, who do I say I am, when I apply for a job?”

  “You’ll think of something,” she predicted.

  At night, at home, lying in his bed waiting for sleep to come out of the hollow darkness and claim him, Max carefully did not think about who was not there in the house with him, nor did he think about how unlikely it was that he could find work. Instead, he considered different names for himself. He’d always rather liked the name Bartholomew, also Tancred, and also—now he started thinking about it—there was Lorenzo. Maybe he would use different names for different jobs. Lorenzo could deliver flowers and Tancred could walk dogs. While Bartholomew—Bart, he’d call himself Bart—sounded like a paperboy to him.

  These thoughts kept him distracted in the silence of the empty house. He was alone, maybe abandoned, but he no longer felt so … so anxious, so overwhelmed, so helpless.

  Or Mister Max, he thought, and smiled, and slept.

  In which Madame Olenka returns with reinforcements, and Max seeks gainful employment

  On Monday (which was the fifth morning after some vessel—but which vessel? going where?—had left Queensbridge with William and Mary Starling on board) Grammie was proved right. Immediately after breakfast, she settled herself on Max’s front steps with a book.

  Max wore the overalls again, and the straw hat, too. He had tied the red bandanna loosely around his neck, and he crouched beside the flower beds along the porch. The front door stood invitingly open on this gentle April morning. A breeze carried the faint city smells of baking bread and horse dung and brewing coffee mixed with the sound of distant carts and, from the lake and river, a certain watery freshness. Puffy white clouds floated on the surface of a pale blue spring sky.

  When the bell rang, Grammie announced in a low, satisfied voice, “I told you. That is a woman with a purpose.”

  That morning, Madame Olenka wore a suit the color of bricks and the same black hat and shoes. Her earrings dangled down copper on either side of her thin neck. She had a uniformed man behind her, a policeman. Pointing straight-armed at Max, she said, “This is the man.” The policeman leaned over the gate to look at Max, who ignored both of them.

  The policeman cleared his throat. Max looked up, as if he had heard a buzzing insect, then returned to his weeding, as if the insect was just a honeybee after all, nothing important.

  “I’ve seen that face on wanted posters,” Madame Olenka said. “I know I have.”

  The policeman cleared his throat more loudly. “Ahem? Sir?”

  Madame Olenka had no patience for politeness. “He said his name’s Mister, what kind of a name is that? He’s up to no good, I tell you, he’s up to something.” She hadn’t noticed Grammie before, but now she did because the little silver-haired librarian stood up, a finger marking her place in the book she carried, to approach the gate, with a mild, grandmotherly smile.

  “A good morning to you, Sven Torson,” she said, and the policeman quickly removed his helmet to hold it respectfully in front of him.

  “Mrs. Nives,” he said. The helmet had flattened his brown hair, and he looked shyly down at his black-booted feet. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Since you were a schoolboy,” she answered. “What were you, ten? I’d say it’s been quite a long time. You do seem to have grown taller.”

  Now he did look at her, and he grinned. “All grown up. Grew wider, too, didn’t I?”

  “I’d have thought I’d see you in my library, at least sometimes. You were a good reader, I remember.”

  “I’ve got my work now,” he apologized.

  “So I see,” she said.

  “And a wife, three children,” he said. “A dog, a garden.”

  “Some other year, then,” Grammie laughed. “But why are you here, Sven Torson? And who is this—this person you’ve got with you?”

  “Madame Olenka had concerns about the gardener,” the policeman explained.

  Madame Olenka demanded, “What do you know about him? What is he doing in this empty house?”

  “Do you mean Mister?” Grammie asked, and turned to look at Max, who—as if he had heard his own name—glanced at the group by the gate. He stood up, as though Grammie had summoned him, but he did not move any closer.

  “What kind of a name is that? Mister,” Madame Olenka said scornfully. She was standing at the gate beside the big policeman, shouldering her way in front of him to get a better look at Max.

  Grammie answered sharply, “No more strange than Olenka, in my opinion. But, Sven Torson, why does this … this person—why does she say the house is empty? When the family just left town a few days ago.”

  “That, she didn’t say, Mrs. Nives.”

  “Well, it’s a curious thing. If I were a policeman, it might make me a little suspicious. In any case, the house isn’t empty. Mister is to live here and take care of things while my daughter and her family are away.”

  “Who is he, Officer? I demand that you find out.”

  “But, Missus,” Officer Torson said in a patient voice, “this lady says he’s living here. She was my schoolteacher, and now she’s the city librarian.”

  “I’ve known Mister for twelve years,” Grammie said to Officer Torson. “More than twelve years, and if there is any question this … any questions she cares to raise about his character, I will vouch for him.”

  “Not true!” cried Madame Olenka. “That is Just Not True!”

  “Well, Missus,” Officer Torson said in not so patient a voice, “I don’t know why you would say that.”

  “The librarian is lying!” Madame Olenka’s copper earrings danced angrily in the sunlight.

  Grammie didn’t even glance at the woman. “You know me, Sven Torson,”
she said. “Am I a person who lies?”

  “No, ma’am,” he answered, and turned to his companion. “We’ll go back to the station now, Missus, if you don’t mind. Mrs. Nives has the right of it. I am wondering why you’re so interested in an empty house. And how you came to know it was empty.”

  Her part in the scene over, Grammie returned to her step and her reading. Max got back to his weeding, and the two visitors went off down the narrow road. Even when they had gone out of sight, Max and Grammie continued to play their parts, just in case. Just in case of what, they couldn’t have said, but they felt a need to be careful.

  After a rather long time—longer for Max, who was on his hands and knees ferreting out deep-rooted weeds, than for Grammie, who basked in the warm sunlight and in fact closed her eyes to let her mind wander—Max went inside to wash and change his clothes. Grammie joined him for an exchange of compliments (“Good job, that,” “And you didn’t even lie!”) followed by a congratulatory handshake and an order: “Go find yourself some work, young man.”

  “Where?” Max asked.

  But Grammie was no help. “That’s up to you. The house does need to look inhabited, I won’t quarrel with you about that, although …”

  “Fine,” Max said. Once he understood that she had no advice to give him, he stopped really paying attention to whatever it was Grammie was saying. Instead, he studied himself in the full-length mirror his parents had hung on the entryway wall. She was a good ally, this grandmother, but she was getting bossier by the minute.

  However, he wasn’t going to worry about that right then. Right then he needed to see that he looked enough like a student at the University, a rather poor student, someone who needed to find odd jobs to earn a little money for food and school supplies. He had changed into dark cotton trousers and heavy work boots, a collarless shirt, and the old blue jacket his father wore to play the part of the poor but honest farmer who came to ask his rich neighbor for the loan of a cow in A Miser Made Miserable.

  Max twisted a gray-and-white-checked cloth cap in his hands to appear both nervous and hopeful. He watched himself in the mirror and thought, Overacting. He tried just turning the cap around and around in his hands, and that was much better.

  “I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten suspicious and been here to help,” Grammie said. “Do you think you’re safe, living here alone? Max, are you paying attention?”

  “No,” Max said.

  “We’ll talk at supper. Good luck, Mister.”

  “Who needs luck?” Max asked, admiring himself in the mirror.

  Max wasn’t feeling so chirpy at the end of the afternoon. He was hungry, and he had failed to convince anyone to hire him. He’d started out confidently enough. He’d ridden his bicycle out of the old city into the New Town, thinking that the people there would have more groceries delivered to their grand homes, would send more flowers to one another, would have more restaurants needing daily, or even twice-daily, deliveries of bread and rolls. Most of the butchers and bakers, greengrocers and florists he had talked to had been polite, even sympathetic. “I know what it’s like, being short of the ready,” they said. “Never was a university student myself, but I’ve had to go without, in my day. Good for you, young man, having the gumption to do something about it. Leave me your name and where I can get in touch with you. I don’t need someone now, but you never can tell.” So he wrote it down, MAX, 5 Thieves Alley, and they put the piece of paper in a drawer and turned back to their customers.

  The cooks in restaurants were not so kindly. “You think I don’t have a boy to do that?” they asked him. “You think my son (or cousin, or nephew, or grandfather) can’t do that, and keep the work in the family? You think I can afford to hire some university student—who’s going to end up with a high-paid job in some fancy office when all’s said and done—to do work any idiot can do? You’re supposed to be so smart, you students. Get out of my kitchen and figure it out for yourself.”

  It was a relief to lean his bicycle against the steps by his own back door, drop his cap onto his own kitchen table, and cross over to Grammie’s kitchen for supper. It was good to be welcomed by the rich smells of beef stew on the stove top and biscuits in the oven and look into the face of someone who smiled to see him. “Any luck?” Grammie asked, then, “Do you want a piece of cheese to keep the wolf away?”

  “No,” Max answered, and “Yes please.”

  While they waited for the biscuits to come out of the oven, Grammie reported to Max about her afternoon’s activities. “I sent a telegram to Bombay. I don’t know if you know that librarians are great joiners? We are, and we have many associations we can join, and every association has its own publications, so there are pamphlets listing the addresses of libraries all over the world, along with the names of their librarians. University libraries, too, not just the ones for a public readership, and law libraries, medical libraries, private libraries … But only the libraries for a wide public readership might answer. That’s what I think. Anyway, I sent telegrams to Bombay and to Colombo.” She helped herself to a chunk of cheese and added, “And I asked at Caracas, as well.”

  “About the Maharajah of Kashmir?” Max asked.

  “Why would I do that? We already know he doesn’t exist. What I asked about was those three ships, the Miss Koala, the Eastern Star, and the Simón Bolívar. I asked to be told when they landed, and if there was anything newsworthy about them or their passengers. I asked them, in short, to do a little research for me. Librarians love researching things, so I hope I’ll hear something back.”

  She was pleased with herself, Max could tell. But still, she was shaking her head to tell him, “Although what I’ll hear back I don’t know. Nor when. Now, you tell me about your afternoon.”

  With a little food in his stomach and a dinner almost ready to come to the table, Max could make a report of—if not success—at least many attempts. Grammie was sympathetic. “It’s not easy, finding work.” Max didn’t argue about that.

  They ate in friendly silence. “Good” was about all Max said, and “Thank you,” Grammie answered. “Do you want seconds?” Max asked, when he got up to refill his bowl. When they were both satisfied, Grammie said, “I’ve been wondering if … Wouldn’t you be happier if you at least slept here? You could still live over there, but what about sleeping here?”

  Max, who had had the same idea, responded quickly. “No, but I’ll help with the dishes,” he said, before he had any time to think of how much he’d rather not spend all of another night absolutely alone.

  “All right, but what about your breakfast?”

  “I bought food, and it’s not as if I have so much money I can afford to waste anything.”

  “You could bring it over here.”

  “I could,” Max agreed. It would be easy to do that, and he also knew he’d sleep better in Grammie’s house. Then why, he wondered, didn’t he want to say yes? And feel safer, feel taken care of, feel cared about?

  It was because of that middle feeling, Max realized. In the shipwreck of his life, letting someone take care of him would sink him. It would drown him. It would finish him off. He couldn’t let Grammie see that he was wavering. So he smiled, and said, “How can I find my father’s fortune if I’m not there on the spot to search for it, day and night? And protect it from marauders?”

  Grammie laughed at the well-worn family joke. “All right. It’s up to you. You know where I am if you need me.”

  Max kept it going a little longer. In a voice that shook with the horror of it, he asked, “Are you implying that you don’t believe in my father’s famous fortune?”

  “I’ll take you up on the offer to wash dishes,” Grammie answered.

  In his own dark house, in his own bed, Max lay stiff and still, trying not to think about his parents (Where were they? What were they up to? Were they actors or victims? Would they get in touch with him and explain?) and not to think about the failures of his afternoon and, especially, no
t to think about the little house across the back garden, where he would not feel so alone.

  In which Max earns a princely sum

  On Tuesday, the sixth morning after his parents sailed without him, Max’s bad luck held firm. He found no employment. He went to hotels, to laundries, to hardware stores, to book stores and stationery stores and even a department store. “No experience? None at all?” they asked, shaking their heads in amazement at his foolishness in expecting to find work under those circumstances. “Try around the corner, tell them I sent you,” he was told, but “Does that imbecile mean to insult me? Does he imply that my people are inexperienced?” he was greeted around the corner.

  In desperation, he asked for work at a clothing store. The manager didn’t even bother to ask his name. He eyed Max’s shabby boots and wrinkled trousers. “I could clean. I could sweep, polish countertops, wash windows,” Max pointed out, but not with much hope. The manager put a hand on Max’s elbow and ushered him out a side door. “Try in the old city,” he advised. “They’re not very particular,” and he turned away.

  Max hadn’t packed any lunch, so he bought himself a meat pie at a streetside stand and rode into the park that formed the centerpiece of the architect’s design for the New Town. This large green space had broad grassy lawns, bright flower beds, and two fountains. Tall shade trees under which benches had been placed lined the walks. Max chose an empty bench, leaned his bicycle against the nearest tree, and sat down to consider what he might try next, as he removed the heavy paper from his lunch. The park was too big to seem crowded, although a throng of people had come out to enjoy this mild spring midday. Businessmen having important conversations, women with small children and large dogs picnicking together on blankets, young shop assistants of both sexes strolling about and laughing, keeping an eye on other young shop assistants of both sexes who were strolling about, looking back at them. Max took a bite of the meat pie.