In Another Country

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Praise for David Constantine

 

Winner of the 2013 Frank O'Connor

International Short Story Award

 

Winner of the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award

 

“After reading David Constantine's story ‘In Another Country' … I can't figure out why a US press hasn't caught on to his work. He's won … the Frank O'Connor Award … beating out Joyce Carol Oates, Deborah Levy, and Peter Stamm—and no wonder.”—Nicole Rudick,
The Paris Review

 

“Constantine is writing for his life. Every sentence and paragraph is shaped, tense with meaning and unobtrusively beautiful, his images of the natural world burning their way into the reader's mind.”—Maggie Gee,
The Sunday Times

 

“Masterful … pregnant with fluctuating interpretations and concealed motives.”—
The Guardian

 

“This is a superb collection of stories: Constantine's writing is rare today, unafraid to be rich and allusive and unashamedly moving.”—
The Independent

 

“Sparkling.”—
The Times Literary Supplement

 

“Spellbinding.”—
The Irish Times

 

“The excellence of the collection is fractal: the whole book is excellent, and every story is excellent, and every paragraph is excellent, and every sentence is excellent. And unlike some literary fiction, it's effortless to read.”
—
The Independent
on Sunday

 

“An exacting wordsmith, David Constantine is always in complete control of his material, every sentence exquisitely wrought to convey exactly the mood he intends.”—
The Good Book Guide

 

“Constantine's stories are not pre-prepared in any sense; he starts anew every time. Inspired by an image or specific instance, his work has a feeling of wholeness and growth.”—
The Irish Post

 

“Constantine is, quite clearly, a master draughtsman at work, and the short story is his ideal canvas.”—
The Short Review

 

“Flawless but unsettling.” —Boyd Tonkin,
The Independent

 

“This is a haunting collection filled with delicate ­clarity. Constantine has a sure grasp of the fear and fragility within his characters.” —A.L. Kennedy

 

“So good I'll be surprised if there's a better collection this year.”—
The Independent

 

 

 

I
n Another Country

Selected Stories

 

 

 

 

 

David Constantine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biblioasis

Windsor, On

 

 

 

 

Copyright © David Constantine, 2015

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit
www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

 

 

The stories in
In Another Country
first appeared in David Constantine's
Under the Dam
,
The Shieling
,
Tea at the Midland and Other Stories
, all published in Great Britain by Comma Press, and
Back at the Spike
, originally published in Great Britain by Ryburn Press (to be re-released by Comma Press next year).

 

FIRST EDITION

 

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

 

Constantine, David, 1944-

[Short stories. Selections]

In another country : selected stories / David Constantine.

 

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77196-017-5 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-77196-018-2 (epub)

 

I. Title.

 

PR6053.O513A6 2015 823'.914 C2014-907953-2

C2014-907954-0

 

 

Readied for the press by Daniel Wells

Copy-edited by Tara Tobler

Typeset by Chris Andrechek

Jacket designed by Kate Hargreaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Another Country

 

 

W
hen
Mrs. Mercer came in she found her husband looking poorly. What's the matter now? she asked, putting down her bags. It startled him. Can't leave you for a minute, she said. They've found her, he said. Found who? That girl. What girl? That girl I told you about. What girl's that? Katya. Katya? said Mrs. Mercer beginning to side away the breakfast things. I don't remember any Katya. I don't remember you telling me about a Katya. I tell you everything, he said. I've always told you everything. Not Katya you haven't. She took his cup and saucer. Have you finished here? He had pushed them aside to make room for a dictionary. He was still in his dressing gown with a letter in his hand.
My
Katya, he said. I couldn't finish my tea when I read the letter. I see, said Mrs. Mercer. It worried her. Already it frightened her. Quickly she cleared the table. Excuse me, she said, while I shake the cloth. He raised the dictionary. A name like that, she said, coming back the two steps from the kitchen door, I'd have remembered it. She's foreign, by the sound. I told you, he said. His face had an injured look. One thing he could not bear was her not believing him when he said he'd told her things. You forget, he said. No I do not, she said. When then? That made him think. A good while back, I grant you. It was a good while back. What worried Mrs. Mercer suddenly took shape. Into the little room came a rush of ghosts. She sat down opposite him and both felt cold. That Katya, she said. Yes, he said. They've found her in the ice. I see, said Mrs. Mercer.

After a while she said: I see you found your book. Yes, he said. It was behind the pickles. You must have put it there. I suppose I must, she said. It was an old Cassell's. There were words in the letter, in the handwriting, he could not make out and words in the dictionary he could hardly find, in the old Gothic script; still, he had understood. Years since I read a word of German, he said. Funny how it starts coming back to you when you see it again. I daresay, said Mrs. Mercer. The folded cloth lay between them on the polished table. It's this global warming, he said, that we keep hearing about. What is? she asked. Why they've found her after all this time. Though he was the one with the information his face seemed to be asking her for help with it. The snow's gone off the ice, he said. You can see right in. And she's still in there just the way she was. I see, said Mrs. Mercer. She would be, wouldn't she, he added, when you come to think about it. Yes, said Mrs. Mercer, when you come to think about it I suppose she would. Again, with his face and with a slight lifting of his mottled hands he seemed to be asking her to help him comprehend. Well, she said after a pause during which she drew the cloth towards her and folded it again and then again. Can't sit here all day. I've got my club. Yes, he said. It's Tuesday. You've got your club. She rose and made to leave the room but halted in the door and said: What are you going to do about it? Do? he said. Oh nothing. What
can
I do?

All day in a trance. Katya in the ice, the chaste snow drawn off her. He cut himself shaving, stared at his face, tried to fetch out the twenty-year-old from under his present skin. Trickle of blood, pink froth where it entered the soap. He tried to see through his eyes into wherever the soul or spirit or whatever you call it lives that doesn't age with the casing it is in. The little house oppressed him. There were not enough rooms to go from room to room in, nowhere to pace. He looked into the flagstone garden but the neighbours either side were out and looking over. It drove him only in his indoor clothes out and along the road a little way to where the road went down suddenly steeply and the estate of all the same houses was redeemed by a view of the estuary, the mountains and the open sea. He stood there thinking of Katya in the ice. Stood there so long the lady whose house he was outside standing there came out and asked: Are you all right, Mr. Mercer? Fine, he said, and saw his own face mirrored in hers, ghastly. I'm too old, he thought. I don't want it all coming up in me again. We're both of us too old. We don't want it all welling up in us again. But it had begun.

No tea ready, said Mrs. Mercer, putting down her bag. He was sitting on the sofa queerly to one side as though somebody should be there next to him. No, he said. I didn't know what to get. The blood had dried black in a line down the middle of his chin. Besides, I'm not feeling too good. The one day in the week when you get the tea, said Mrs. Mercer. I know, he said. I'm sorry. She went to see to it. He came in after her and hung in the doorway of the small room where they cooked and ate. His unease was palpable. Whether to stand or sit, whether to speak or not. Two or three times he shrugged. In the end he managed to say: Where was the trip then? Prestatyn, she answered brightly. We went to Prestatyn. You always enjoy your trips, he said. Yes, she said, I wouldn't miss a Tuesday trip if I could help it. He had lapsed away again. His face was desolate and absent. His fingers, under their own compulsion, picked at one another. Yes, she said. We went to Prestatyn market and I got myself a blouse. I'll have to see it, he said.

I've been wondering, Mrs. Mercer said when they were face to face across the little table eating. Why did they write to you about that girl? So long ago it happened and didn't you tell me you were only passing through? I'm next of kin, he said. Mrs. Mercer put down her cup. I beg your pardon. I mean they think I am. She'd have no mother and father, would she, if you think about it. Besides, they were Jews. Dead anyway, of age. But very likely dead long before they died of age. And she was an only child, my Katya was. Yes but, Mrs. Mercer said. Yes but so what? I don't see that makes you the next of kin. Oh I told them we were married, Mr. Mercer said. I see, said Mrs. Mercer. I had to where we stayed. Not like nowadays. You had to say you were Mr. and Mrs. in those days. And wear a curtain ring. We never did, said Mrs. Mercer. We didn't have to, did we, Mr. Mercer said. We didn't have to because we really were. And you two weren't? No, no, said Mr. Mercer. I only said we were. You never told me you were another woman's next of kin. I did, he said. Besides, I'm not. And if I didn't it was so as not to upset you.

The meal went on and finished. They watched some television. They went to bed. In the dark it was immediately worse and worse. How old was she? Mrs. Mercer asked. Same age as you, he answered. Nearly to the day. I told you, you're both Virgo. Same age as me, she said. Still is if you think about it. They thought about it.

So quiet that house was in the night, so quiet all the other little homes around it were that held the elderly in them and the old alone or still in couples sleeping early, waking, lying awake and thinking about the past. So much past every night in the silence settling over those houses that all looked much the same on a hillside creeping up against the rock and gorse and tipping down to the river where it widened, widened and ended in the sea. We went from village to village, said Mr. Mercer in the dark. We had a map to start with but it soon gave out. We asked the way. Sometimes we had a guide from place to place. We had one when it happened funnily enough. To be honest, said Mr. Mercer, I was a wee bit jealous of him. You mean she flirted? Mrs. Mercer asked. I mean they had the language and I was only learning still and couldn't always follow. They laughed a lot, they made some jokes I couldn't understand. Also they went ahead a bit more than they needed to perhaps. Or perhaps I let them, perhaps I lagged behind on purpose and let them go ahead, I don't know why. We were on a path around a slithery purple rock and the glacier on the right of us below. They were laughing. I must have let them go ahead. Then the path went round the rock face left and they were out of sight. Last sound but one I heard from her was laughter when she was already out of sight. And the very last, her scream. When I got there she'd gone and the guide was looking down. His face was dirty yellow, I remember. Was she a blonde? Mrs. Mercer asked. No, said Mr. Mercer, her hair was black. I thought she'd be blonde, said Mrs. Mercer, being German. No, said Mr. Mercer, I told you when I told you the whole story, her hair was like yours, black. Like mine, said Mrs. Mercer.

Wednesday was library day. Same again? said Mr. Mercer. His hands were trembling, he had a scared look. Same sort of thing, said Mrs. Mercer. Mind how you go.

 

Whatever is in there behind the eyes or around the heart or wherever else it is, whatever it is that is not the husk of us will cease when the husk does but in the meantime never ages, does it? Explain him otherwise his agitation when he thinks of Katya in the ice: her bodily warmth and merriment night after night as Mrs. Mercer in the wooden houses among flowers in the snow comes up in him, an old man near the end, inhabits him as thoroughly as does his renewing blood. Sweet first girl, sweet unimaginable shock of the simple sight of her the first time without her clothes. What am I going to do about it? he asks himself aloud. Nothing. What can I do?

At dinnertime he said: This global warming… What about it? Mrs. Mercer said. I read some more about it in the library in a magazine. I've read that book you brought me by the way, Mrs. Mercer said. Sorry, he said. They're very worried in Switzerland especially. Where's all the water going? The glaciers are melting but the water's not come down yet. They think it's waiting, like a dam. I see, said Mrs. Mercer. They fear it will all come down at once one day. Very likely, said Mrs. Mercer. Then she said: When you tell me she's still there where she fell does that mean people can see her if they go and look? Yes, said Mr. Mercer. That's what the letter said. Still there apparently, just the way she was. Twenty, in the dress of that day and age. She'll come down when the waters break with mud and rocks and anything human in the way of it will be wiped out. But we shall be dead by then and turning in our own clay in the earth.

In the night, in the utter silence of the nights among those little houses where old people live, she felt him leave the bed and in the pitch-black reach his dressing gown and leave the room. She let him go. How it troubled her, all this. Not much to ask, peace of mind at nights and a bit of ordinary cheerfulness in the day, some conversation, something to laugh about and doing nobody any harm. And not all this. A slit of light came on under the bedroom door. She heard him fishing about above his head with the stick, tap tap, for the hook to fetch the trap door down and the ladder on it, to mount into the loft. He'll break his neck. But she heard the steps creak and the gasps of his exertion as he got up there. He'll freeze to death. How cold it was in the space under the roof above their little living space, bitter cold and draughty, where they stored the past, its bulk and minutiae, in boxes, parcels, bags, on sagging shelves, in hidey-holes diminishing with the rafters. She heard him on the ceiling above the bed, rooting around. The slithering of cartons. Heard the efforts. Then silence. She slept. Woke in a sudden terror over his absence still. Stood in her nightie at the foot of the ladder, cold even there, calling up to him till finally he showed himself, wrapped up and shivering, without his teeth, leaning over the hole, his face a blue grey with the cold and grief, he leaned down over the hole above her upturned face, its halo of thin silver hair, and tried to say nothing to worry about but couldn't and made a gibbering noise, the photos clutched two-handed against his heart.

He slept late and shuffled in without a shave. His hand was shaking. She poured his tea. That's enough now, she said. Yes, he said. But asked could she remember where she had put the big atlas. I just want to look, he said. Under the sofa, since it was more wide than fat. And my boots, he said. I beg your pardon? My boots. But those aren't the ones. No, no, but I always bought the same. She thought they might be in the shed under the old fish tank. That stick I brought back might be in there as well, he said. I daresay, said Mrs. Mercer. And will you make an appointment and get something to quieten you down?

He had found the photos and a book of hers he was carrying for her in his rucksack when she went ahead with the guide and out of sight fell down through the snow into a crack in the glacier. It was a book of poems in Gothic script with a Nazi eagle stamped on the inside cover. In the pages were some gentians, flat and nearly black. But blue if you looked long enough, an eternal blue. In the photographs she was just as she was: slim, in a long skirt, smiling, her black hair in a curve around her cheek. The white mountains were behind. The paths she stood on to be photographed often looked vertiginous but were safe enough in reality, until the last one. They were heading south, more or less, trying to find a way into Italy, as she said she had always wanted to. Her idea was there would be a last big climb, up very high where it would be hard to get your breath, and after that all the streams would run the other way and they would run down with them getting warmer and warmer through an unbelievable profusion of flowers and before long they would see the vines and that would be Italy. But some days they forgot where they were going and if a place was nice they stayed.

One thing I didn't tell you, Mr. Mercer said next morning after a quieter night though sleepless mostly, open-eyed and thinking. Oh? said Mrs. Mercer. You made an appointment at the doctor's, I hope. Yes, he said. This afternoon. I was thinking in the night one thing I never told you. Never told anyone come to that. Not a living soul. Nobody ever knew. I'm the only one in the world who knows it even now, only one alive, I mean. Well? Mrs. Mercer said. She was going to have a baby. My Katya was. More and more slowly Mrs. Mercer went on with her toast and homemade damson jam. He sat, turning over his empty hands. His face, she knew, had she confronted it, was looking at her with its puzzled and pleading look, the eyes behind the glasses rather washed out. I suppose I thought it might upset you at the time. I see, she said after a while when her mouth had given up trying to eat. I suppose you would think that. Then she took her own things to the draining board and left him sitting there with his.