The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories Read online

  It was time for her workday Madeira. Brushing her teeth would have to wait. So would chopping firewood and checking the sea level, all of it. She needed to watch out she didn’t get too obsessive. She got her glass, filled it quickly and carelessly, and when it was empty she put it on the table and stood still and listened. The silence had changed. There was a light wind, a steady easterly breeze. The room had lost its morning light, the glow of expectation and potential. The daylight was now gray, and the new day was already used, a little soiled by mistaken thoughts and makeshift undertakings. Everything to do with the squirrel seemed unpleasant and embarrassing. She turned it off.

  She stood in the middle of the room and felt the warmth of the workday Madeira and thought, This lasts only a little while. It will pass, quickly, I have to use it or renew it. All the pots and pans in a row over the stove, all the books side by side on their shelves, and on the wall her nautical instruments—those alien, decorative objects that perhaps you needed when you lived on a winter sea. But there were never any storms. If there were, she could write to someone: We’re up to Beaufort eight. I’m working. The salmon floats are banging against the wall outside, and the windows are covered with foam from the waves . . . No. Blinded by salt water. Fogged with . . . struck blind. Spume from the breakers dashes across . . . Dear Mister K. The storm has reached Beaufort eight . . .

  There were no storms. It just blew, nastily, stubbornly, or else there was a shiny, swollen sea that licked and nibbled at the shore. If the wind did rise, she’d have to see to the boat. When you’ve seen to the boat, you can have a Madeira that doesn’t count.

  Now the squirrel came back. A light rustling, a clattering along the cottage wall, paws scraping on the windowpane, and she saw the animal’s alert little face, stupid little twitchings around its nose, eyes like glass marbles. Only for an instant, very close, and then the window was empty again. She started to laugh. Well, so you’re still here, you little devil . . .

  Now she needed wind, any wind at all, as long as it blew from the mainland and the large islands. She tapped the barometer and tried to see if it was falling. Her glasses weren’t in any of the usual places, they never were, but as usual it seemed to read Change. She had to hear the weather, the weather report, and then she remembered that the batteries for the radio were dead. It didn’t matter, in fact not a bit, the squirrel had stayed. She went to the list by the doorjamb and wrote, Squirrel food. What did they eat? Oatmeal? Macaroni? Beans? She could cook some oatmeal. They’d adapt to each other. But she wasn’t going to tame it, absolutely not too tame. She would never try to get it to eat from her hand, come into the cottage, come when she called. The squirrel was not to be a pet, a responsibility, a conscience, it needed to stay wild. They would live their separate lives and just observe each other, in mutual recognition and tolerance. They would respect each other but otherwise continue doing their own thing in complete freedom and independence.

  She didn’t care about a dog anymore. Dogs are dangerous, they react to everything immediately, they’re distinctly sympathetic animals. A squirrel was better.

  They made ready to winter on the island. They grew accustomed to each other and developed common habits. After her morning coffee, she put bread out on the granite slope and then sat at her window and watched the squirrel eat. She had figured out that the animal couldn’t see her through the windowpane and that it was probably not specially intelligent, but she still moved slowly and had grown used to sitting still for long periods, for hours, while she observed the squirrel’s movements without thinking about much of anything. Sometimes she talked to the squirrel but never if it was within earshot. She wrote about it, speculations and observations, and drew parallels between the two of them. Sometimes she wrote insulting things about the squirrel, shameless accusations that she later regretted and scratched out.

  The weather was unsettled and grew steadily colder. Every day, right after measuring the water level, she walked up the rock slope to the great pile of driftwood and lumber scraps to chop wood. She’d select a few planks or the end of a log, then saw and chop them into firewood, diligently and rather skillfully. As she worked, she felt as strong and sure as she did sitting in front of the fire at sunrise, fully dressed, immovable as a monument, without thought. When the firewood had been chopped , she carried it down to the cottage and arranged it under the stove, carefully, each chunk, each bit of lumber—triangular, square, broad, narrow, rectangles, and semicircles—all tight and pretty, a jigsaw puzzle, a perfect mosaic. She had gathered the great pile of winter firewood herself.

  The wind shifted constantly, and the boat lines had to be restretched and remoored. She woke up at night and lay in bed listening, worrying about the boat. She thought she heard it banging against the rock. Finally she pulled it up on land. But she woke anyway and lay in bed thinking about high water and storms. The boat needed to be pulled up higher, on trolleys. So one morning she went to the woodpile and picked out a couple of smooth old channel markers to use as rollers. She grabbed one of them and pulled. A log fell down on the far side of the pile and there was a quick, animal movement—something darted out and disappeared in headlong fear. She let go of the channel marker and stepped back. Of course it was here that it lived. It had made a nest for itself, and now the nest was destroyed. But I didn’t know, she defended herself. How could I know?

  She let the channel marker lie and ran back to the house for some excelsior, ripped open the trapdoor to the cellar, remembered the flashlight only when she was down in the dark—she was always forgetting the flashlight. Jars, cartons, boxes, had she ever had excelsior or maybe it was fiberglass she’d had, and that’s not good for a squirrel, glass fibers, supposing fiberglass was in fact made of glass . . . She groped around on the shelves and felt the old uncertainty, the one affecting everything that can occur in many different ways, stumbling over forgetfulness and knowledge, memory and imagination, rows and rows of boxes and you never knew which ones were empty . . . I have to get a grip on myself. It’s a box of cotton wadding, for the motor, a carton under the stairs. She found it and started pulling out cotton in long, reluctant tufts. The resistance and the darkness became an image of nighttime dreams, dreams about hurrying and nearly too late. She tore at the nasty, tough material and knew that she didn’t have time, and then it was no longer about the squirrel but about everything, everything that can be too late. Finally she took the whole carton in her arms and tried to take it with her up the cellar stairs. It was too big. It caught in the opening. She pressed on it with her shoulders and neck, the carton burst and the wadding flew all over the floor. Now it was a question of seconds. She ran across the granite, stumbled and ran, crept around the woodpile and pushed in wadding everywhere it would be easy to find and wouldn’t get wet. There you go. Build! Make yourself a nest!

  Then she was done, there was nothing more she could do. Her big body had never felt so heavy. Slowly, she settled herself into a sheltered crevice on one side of the rock, drew up her legs, and completely forgot the squirrel. She was safe and private, completely indifferent in her sweaters, in her boots and raincoat, deep inside a warm space of damp wool and good conscience.

  Shortly after noon, it started to rain. She was awakened by an insight that had ripened while she slept. It was the winter wood, the wood that was needed every day through the whole winter. Her repeated antlike trips across the granite, sawing and chopping, deeper and deeper, would make her a stubborn and merciless enemy, coming steadily closer, opening new gaps for cold and light to reach a terrified and outraged squirrel in its nest of wadding.

  They’d have to divide the winter wood, that much was crystal clear. One woodpile for the squirrel and one for herself, and it had to happen right away. Her body was stiff after her nap, but she was altogether calm because there was only one thing to be done. She went straight for the woodpile, which was as large and heavy as a house. She heaved down logs, then grabbed one end of one log and staggered with it down the rock face tow
ard the cottage. The granite was slippery, the moss slid away beneath her boots, but she continued all the way down and tumbled the log against the wall of the cottage, then turned and walked back up the hill. They had to be carried, not rolled. A rolling log is a loose cannon, a weight crushing everything in its path. It had to be carried, carefully, all the way to wherever it was needed. The person carrying must also be a log, heavy and unwieldy but full of strength and potential. Everything must be put in its proper place, which is what the potential is for . . . I carry, steadier and steadier. I breathe a new way, my sweat is salty.

  It was nearly dusk, and still raining. The trip up and down the granite slope became a quiet, automatic unreality. As she moved up and back down again, she entered a delirium of lifting and carrying and balancing, dropping the wood with a crash against the cottage wall and then walking back up. She grew strong and sure. All the words were flattened and turned off. Beams, boards, planks, logs. She tore off her sweaters and let them lie in the rain. I’m making something the way I pictured it. I’m moving what’s in the wrong place and putting it in the right place. My legs strain in their boots. I could carry stones. Overturn and roll them with a crowbar and a fulcrum, huge stones, and build a wall around me with every stone in its place. But maybe there’s no need to build a wall around an island.

  As evening came on, she began to tire. Her legs started to wobble. She let the logs lie and carried lumber instead. Finally she carried only smaller driftwood to the back wall of the cottage, while small, anxious thoughts ran through her mind. She imagined that the squirrel didn’t live under the woodpile but right in the middle of it, where it wasn’t damp. She’d made a mistake. Every time she raised a plank, it was maybe that particular plank that formed the roof of the squirrel’s nest. Every piece of wood she lifted could disturb or destroy. Whoever dared touch this woodpile must calculate exactly how the logs lay and how they balanced one another, must think calmly and wisely and precisely, know when to heave on a log and when to tease it out with care and patience.

  She listened to the whispering silence over the island, to the rain and the night. It’s impossible, she thought. I won’t go up there again. She returned to the cottage and undressed and went to bed. She didn’t light the lamp this evening, which was a violation of ritual, but it would show the squirrel how little she cared about what happened on this island.

  The next morning, the squirrel did not come to eat. She waited for a long time, but it didn’t come. There was no reason for the squirrel to feel hurt or suspicious. Everything she had done was simple, unambiguous, and fair. She had divided the woodpile and withdrawn. More than fair. The squirrel’s woodpile was several times larger than her own. If the animal had the least personal trust in her, if it perceived her in any way as a friendly fellow creature, then it must see that from the very beginning, she had tried to help.

  She sat down at the table. She sharpened her pencil and put a sheet of paper on the desk in front of her, perpendicular, parallel with the edge of the table. This always made the squirrel easier to understand.

  If now, in spite of everything, the squirrel saw her as movement, as an object, something unimportant and insignificant, then that also meant it did not see her as an enemy. She tried to concentrate. She made a serious effort to imagine how the squirrel perceived her and in what way its fright at the woodpile might have changed its attitude. It was possible that the squirrel had been nearly ready to begin liking her and was then seized by distrust at that decisive moment. On the other hand, if it regarded her as nothing special, as a part of the island, a part of everything that withered as autumn swept on toward winter, then it would not see the episode at the woodpile as a hostile gesture but rather as a kind of storm, the kind of change that . . .

  She was suddenly tired and started drawing squares and triangles on the paper. The squirrel seemed harder and harder to understand. She drew serpentine lines between the squares and the triangles and tiny little leaves growing out in every direction. The rain had stopped. The sea was swollen, shiny and tumid—such eternal chatter about the beauty of the sea! And then she saw the boat.

  It was a long way off, but it was coming, it was moving. It had an inorganic shape that was neither gull nor stone nor buoy. The boat was coming straight toward the island. There was nothing out here to head for except the island. Boats in profile are harmless. They pass along the marked channels, but this one was headed straight on, black as a flyspeck.

  She grabbed up her papers—several fluttered to the floor—and tried to push them into the drawer, but they bunched up and refused to go in. Anyway, it was wrong, quite wrong, they should lie out in plain sight where they’d be misleading and protective. She pulled them out again and smoothed them. Who was it who came, who dared to come? It was them, the others, now they’d found her. She ran around the room moving chairs and objects, then moving them back again because the room was unalterable. The black dot had come closer. She grabbed the edge of the table with both hands, stood still, and listened for the sound of the motor. There was nothing she could do. They were coming. Coming straight at her.

  When the sound of the motor was very close, she threw open the window on the back side of the cottage, jumped out, and ran. It was too late to launch her own boat. She bent over, ran to the far side of the island, and slipped down into a crack in the granite near the shore. From here, she could no longer hear the motor, only the slow motion of the waves on the rock. What if they came ashore? They see the boat. The cottage is empty. They start to wonder, they walk up onto the island, and they see me crouching here. It won’t do. I have to go back. She started to crawl, slowing down as she approached the top of the island. The motor had stopped. They’d gone ashore. She lay down full length in the wet grass, inched herself forward a couple of meters, and rose up on her elbows to have a look.

  The boat had anchored over a bank not far from the island. They were fishing. Three square-shaped men sat dibbing for cod, drinking coffee from a thermos. Possibly they were talking a bit. Occasionally they reeled in their lines. Maybe they were catching fish. Her neck got tired and she let her head sink onto her arms. She didn’t care about squirrels, not about dibbers, not about anyone, she just slid down into a great disappointment and admitted to herself that she was disappointed. She thought, How can this be? Why am I beside myself because they’re coming and then terrifically disappointed when they don’t come ashore?

  The next day, she decided not to get up at all. It was a dreary and excellent decision. She thought no further than this: I will never again get up. It was a day with rain, a quiet, steady rain that might continue for days. That’s good, I like rain. Curtains and draperies of rain, endless infinities of rain going on and on, pattering rustling and pattering—across the roof. Not like sunshine, which hour by hour moves through the room like a challenge, crossing the windowsill, the rug, certifying afternoon on the rocking chair, then disappearing on the stove hood in red, like an accusation. Today is honorably and simply gray, an anonymous, timeless day that doesn’t count.

  She made a warm cavity for her heavy body and drew the covers over her head. Through a little air hole for her nose she could see two pink wallpaper roses. Nothing could get at her. Slowly she drifted back to sleep. She had learned to sleep more and more. She loved sleep.

  The rain darkened toward evening when she woke up hungry. It was very cold in the room. She wrapped herself in her blanket and went down to the cellar to get a can of food. She forgot the flashlight and took a can at random in the dark. And stopped, listening, stock-still with the can in her hand. The squirrel was somewhere in the cellar. There was a tiny scurrying sound and then silence. But she knew it was there. It was going to live all winter in her cellar, and its nest could be anywhere. She’d have to leave the vent open and make sure it didn’t get covered with snow. And she’d have to move all the canned food and everything else she needed up into the cottage. And nevertheless she’d never know for sure if the squirrel was living in the ce
llar or the woodpile.

  She went up and closed the trapdoor. The can she’d brought with her was boiled mutton with dill sauce, which she didn’t like. A belt of clear sky had opened up at the horizon, a narrow, glowing band of sunset. The islands lay like coal-black streaks and lumps in the burning sea. The fire burned all the way to the shore, where the waves swallowed it and then slid around the point in the same curve over and over again as they broke over the slimy November granite. She ate slowly and saw how the red deepened across the sky and the water, a violent, unthinkable crimson. And then suddenly the red winked out, everything went violet, lapsed slowly to gray and then into early night.

  She was wide awake. She dressed and lit the lamp and all the candles she could find, got a fire going in the stove. She turned on her flashlight and put it in the window. Finally she hung a paper lantern outside the door, where it shone clearly and steadily in the quiet night. Now she took out the last of the Madeira and put it on the table beside her glass. She walked out onto the rock and left the door open. The glowing cottage was beautiful and mysterious, like a lighted porthole in a foreign ship. She walked all the way to the end of the point and began walking around the island, very slowly, right at the water’s edge, and the whole time she turned her face toward the wide-open darkness of the sea. Only when she’d walked around the entire island and had come back to the point would she turn and consider her illuminated cottage. Then she’d walk straight into its warmth, close the door, and be home.

  When she came into the cottage, the squirrel was sitting on the table. The animal dashed away, the bottle fell and started to roll, she leaped forward too late, and the bottle shattered on the floor. She got shards of glass between her fingers, and the rug soaked up a dark Madeira stain.