Part 3

Flannery's Bear - Part 3

His summer raced by in a blur of darkless nights, Swedish classics, and glimpses of Barbro.

Some mornings he’d see her at breakfast, some evenings at dinner, occasionally on the stairs, and always, it seemed, going in the opposite direction. And always with a smile and an air of curiosity about her.

Glimpses. Glimpses and whiffs. God, that girl smelled like a, like a what? A flower. A field of flowers. Oh, come on Gabriel, you can do better than that. Like a memory of a field of flowers? Ah, that’s better. That’s what she smells like. Sweeping by, trailing memories of distant flowers. Was it her hair or a perfume she wore? A soap she used? He couldn’t tell.

But delightful though they were, these glimpses were not strong enough to knock him off course, just strong enough to linger, sometimes for hours. He didn’t think he was falling in love, or anything, he was just fascinated by her. For a moment, on his way to the books.

She was a tall girl, taller than Gabriel by nearly an inch. She had her mother’s blond hair, which she wore long, and she was as graceful as, well, he could never find the right word, but she was as graceful as the most graceful thing he’d ever seen which was a roebuck who cleared a four-foot hedge to his right from a standstill in one almost impossibly slow movement which more than anything had reminded him of a liquid arching the green bush before it vanished down the hill. That’s how graceful she was, ascending or descending those stairs to the apartment. Whisking by in the hallway. No, it wasn’t falling in love or anything, it was just appreciating perfection, that’s all.

Then came fall. School was starting up again, and Soren Wallengard asked Gabriel if he would like to stay on in his home for the new school year, they would be very happy to have him. Gabriel gladly accepted. Ann-Marie was an outstanding cook. In fact, he had gained some of his weight back again. Soren’s private library was a trove of fine writers, both Swedish and foreign, and he had the run of it. Also, Soren was never too busy to answer any of Gabriel’s questions, and was always delighted to do so.

And then there was the slender apparition floating about that he wasn’t quite in love with, but loved to admire. So it was settled, Gabriel terminated his boarding house rental and settled in long term.

Still on course.

Until, despite her father’s admonitions, which had grown not infrequent and less than subtle, Barbro Wallengard almost ended Gabriel’s writing career on the 15th of September, 1962. It was a Saturday.

For Gabriel had never been kissed. Well, not never, but not really. There had been pecks on cheeks, of course, and some brushing of lips against lips. And the occasional collision of teeth. But never the melting of tongues, and that was the gate that Barbro opened for him that evening, and Gabriel would not ever be quite the same, much to the dismay of Soren Wallengard, who felt not a little responsible for the turn of events.

It happened at a party. Schools all around town were back in business as of two weeks before, and this was to celebrate the re-union of mates and friends, many of whom had just returned to the city from a long, relaxing summer at country residences. It took place in a very large Stockholm apartment, in one of those old five-story houses on Strandvagen in Ostermalm where each floor was a single residence. You could literally get lost in one of them.

Which is what he did, Gabriel, got lost in one of them. He was looking for a bathroom and opened one of many doors he hoped would lead to one. Instead it lead into a small bedroom facing Nybroviken’s water, and by a small desk by the window sat Barbro, staring out into the fall evening.

There were a few barges on the water below, still moving, but you could tell, settling for the night with their loads of firewood or sand. Barbro turned around at his intrusion, and he could see that she had been crying, or at least he imagined that she had, her eyes had that bruised look to them which he assumed came from sadness.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“It’s all right,” she said, and turned back to face the window and the water below.

He looked out as well, and his eyes followed a small, white ferry boat docking to let its late load of passengers from the outlying islands disembark. Neither said anything for nearly a minute.

“If you want me to leave,” he began.

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said, but didn’t turn around to face him.

A lady, a small child on one arm and steering a pram with the other, had trouble getting the rather old-fashioned pram onto the gangway and several of her fellow passengers rushed to help her. She smiled and from what Gabriel could make out, thanked her rescuers ever so much.

“Dad says there’s no way I’m to start anything with you,” she said suddenly to the window, or to the night outside, but not to him.

Halfway down the gangway now the lady with the child was still in trouble with the reluctant pram whose wheels refused to climb the narrow planking that crossed the gangway every foot or so—to provide good footing, he assumed—and soon another passenger came to her aid. She thanked him ever so much as well. Then Barbro’s words reached him, as if reflected from the water below.

“But we haven’t,” he said. “We haven’t, I mean, I haven’t even thought . . .” which was a lie of course.

“I have,” she said, and finally turned around to face him. “Many times.”

Her eyes were very blue even in the dimming light and her face almost almond shaped. Her hair was finely combed and a light blue hair band kept it neatly out of the way. It reflected the fading light as a ribbon of sheen down her left side and onto her shoulder.

“I have too,” he hear himself begin.

Then she stood up. All of her, sculptured by her yellow angora sweater, with long arms already reaching. She took one step towards him and his heart took over. He took one step towards her and next their lips joined oh so gingerly. Their tongues embraced too and melted, and Gabriel was hard pressed to intelligently string more than two words together for most of the fall semester.

On her way to visit Fiona McCullough in Ridgefield, Connecticut, Flannery spent two days in New York City. On the second day, browsing used book stores and antique dealers, she came upon the original of a letter written by Joseph Conrad on October 28, 1895, to his friend and disciple Edward Noble.

It was displayed in a well-dusted glass case, placed on a black background much like you display fine jewelry. It looked very expensive and she would not have given it a second glance, except that in that one glance she did give it, she recognized the hand.

She stepped closer and, almost putting her nose up against the glass, but not quite, for fear of leaving a smudge, she read:

17, Gillingham Street, S.W. London

28 Oct. ‘95

My Dear Noble,

I received your discouraged letter this morning and can assure you I felt very sorry for your disappointment ending the long-drawn hope.

You have any amount of stuff in you, but you (I think) have not found your way yet. Remember that death is not the most pathetic,—the most poignant thing,—and you must treat events only as illustrative of human sensation,—as the outward sign of inward feelings,—of live feelings,—which alone are truly pathetic and interesting. You have much imagination: much more than I ever will have if I live to be a hundred years old. That much is clear to me. Well, that imagination (I wish I had it) should be used to create human souls: to disclose human hearts,—and not to create events that are properly speaking accidents only. To accomplish it you must cultivate your poetic faculty,—you must give yourself every sensation, every thought, every image,—mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain,—you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day’s work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing,—nothing left in you. To me it seems that it is the only way to achieve true distinction—even to go some way towards it.

It took me 3 years to finish the Folly. There was not a day I did not think of it. Not a day. And after all I consider it honestly a miserable failure. Every critic (but two or three) overrated the book. It took me a year to tear the Outcast out of myself and upon my word of honour,—I look on it (now it’s finished) with bitter disappointment. Judge from that whether my opinion is worth having. I may be on the wrong track altogether. I say what I think and from a sincere desire to see you succeed,—but I may be hopelessly astray in my opinions.

The letter came with its original envelope—displayed beside it—address to Edward Noble. The envelope carried a stamp that strangely had not been cancelled. Either the letter, once stamped, was delivered by hand or it was never sent. She asked the dealer which was it. He told her that he did not know.

How much exactly, she wanted to know. He told her, and it was far too much. Would he consider less? No. Ten dollars less? No.

Flannery sighed, and then bought possibly the most expensive thing she had ever bought, or would ever buy. The dealer, a man with dirty hair and a ridiculous mustache, gently opened the glass case and took out the letter and envelope. He carefully—almost lovingly, she noticed—folded the letter along its well established creases, and placed it in its envelope. This he was about to hand to her when she asked him to place it in a larger envelop for protection. This he did, although the dealer’s assistant had to run next door to buy one from a stationary store. She wrote him a check and he gave her the letter.

With the letter safely lodged in her handbag, she thanked first him, and then his assistant for their troubles, wished them both a good day, turned, left the store, and stepped out into the crisp New York October.

She set out down the sidewalk a little lightheaded, she had spent a very large amount of money, but wondered again if this Edward Noble—of whom she had never heard—had in fact received the letter and whether Conrad’s advice had struck home. She hoped so.

And she hoped too, that Heather would recognize Gabriel’s handwriting. Why had he not told her?

She suddenly felt desperately tired. The bear, following at a safe distance, and looking nothing like a bear in a light brown overcoat and three-piece suit, saw to that.

Soren Wallengard felt like he had killed the artist within. He might as well have shot Gabriel, he thought, much quicker and less painful to watch.

His daughter was, as he thought of it in some of his darker moments, leading his protégé around by his, well, dick. He had never seen such puppyish devotion to anyone displayed quite so patently by anyone, and, as he mused, he had seen a few—his own courtship of Ann-Marie included, during which, he had to admit with a smile, he had been nowhere near planet Earth.

Well, in principle, of course, there was nothing wrong with love and all that, and this spectacle would have been fine with him, had the boy’s genius not at the same time sprouted wings and taken vanishingly to the air. The only thing Gabriel seemed capable of writing nowadays were what he suspected to be sappy—his daughter, naturally, refused to show him any of them—love poems for Barbro.

Gabriel was not attentive in class, if indeed he showed up, and his progress as a writer had simply come to a halt. No more intense research, no more late nights at the school library or among the many books in his apartment. Instead he was now given to long walks, often with his daughter, and to grinning a lot.

And naturally, he, Soren Wallengard, was seen as a culprit throughout pretty much the entire faculty. Inviting him to stay with you? What were you thinking of Soren? You know what we have, or had, here? Barbro’s invitation more likely, no? It was hard to take, but nowhere near as hard as seeing Gabriel go to waste in such a ludicrously happy fashion.

Although, as a father, he could not deny that his daughter was happy, too. His normally moody little girl, or not so little anymore, was happier than he had ever seen her. That went a long way to muddy the conflicting waters within.

He decided to speak to Gabriel. Then he put it off, he was no good at these things. He would have Ann-Marie speak to him. Talk some sense into him. Then he decided that it was up to him to do it. Then he put it off again.

Fiona met her at the station. Even though she knew about Flannery’s illness, and although she had seen her not so long ago, she nevertheless drew a quick breath of surprise at how frail she looked, barely able to climb down the railroad car steps on her own. A tall man in a brown coat and a three-piece suit was helping her with her luggage.

Fiona rushed over to help, and Flannery noticed her concern.

“Oh, don’t fuss,” she said with a weak smile. “I’m just fine.”

“Don’t fool yourself, you’re not fine,” said Fiona.

“I’m not fooling anyone,” said Flannery.

The tall man in the brown coat handed Fiona the luggage, one suitcase and a satchel for her overnight things. Flannery nodded a thank you to the man, who touched his hat and bowed courteously in return. They seemed to know each other, but neither said a word. Fiona watched his large back move away from them towards the station house.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Oh, just someone I ran into on the train. I believe they call them gentlemen. I thought they were extinct.”

“Big fella,” observed Fiona.

“A bear of a man,” said Flannery.

Fiona had a car and put Flannery’s luggage in the trunk. Then she helped Flannery into the passenger front seat. Flannery did not seem to resent the help, but rather clung to Fiona’s arm as she lowered herself into the car seat.

Fiona said nothing, then closed the car door gently on Flannery.

“Drive by their house, please,” said Flannery once they were underway.

Fiona didn’t understand at first and her look at Flannery said as much.

“Heather,” said Flannery.

“Of course,” said Fiona.

Flannery slipped her hand inside her handbag to make sure that the envelope was still there. It was.

The house came into view.

“You want me to stop?” asked Fiona.

“No, just drive by, slowly.”

The house was a two-story tract home covered with grayish brown clapboard. It was unattractive, with a small front yard gone to waste apart from two rose bushes, a few pink roses still blooming. Flannery saw people move about inside as they drove by, but she could not make out whether any of them was Heather. Then they were past it.

“Do you want me to drive by again?” asked Fiona.

“No,” said Flannery.

Fiona drove directly to her apartment about twenty minutes away.

The big man in the brown overcoat was nowhere to be seen.

It was a bleak January afternoon in 1901, and Joseph Conrad finally put his pen down on his desk to rub his head. This left a small dark stain on his right temple from an inky finger. His head ached, and he felt depleted. It had not been a productive day. Or at least didn’t feel like one. Perhaps not even a thousand words. But even so, it was done. He had finished it. Well, the first draft anyway.

Picking up the pen again, hand poised over the page, ready to strike, he re-read the final sentence: The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

It was good. Good and true. And paralyzing.

There was a name, the name of a dark angel he could not capture. And there were memories. Memories masquerading as images. Images he had no business possessing. Of green valleys he knew he had never visited. Of tall grasses that knew how to caress or yield out of the way by his mood. Of two sisters, one called Flannery and one called Heather that he had never met. Of a dark brother angel he felt deserved to be hated, but whose name would not come.

None of these images made it onto his pages, still, what pages he did manage to write all sprung from them, this he knew. But when he tried harder still to remember, first his temples, then his forehead protested in pain and he could think no further about it. Though the smell of grass and crisp valley air would not leave him.

He put the pen down again and allowed himself to feel a small satisfaction.

He had finished the first draft of Heart of Darkness, and he knew that he had succeeded in capturing at least a portion of his dream. He knew that. But he did not know where this grass grew, or why he could smell it so loudly.

Fiona, sleuthing, had established that Heather normally went to the grocery store three times a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays in the early afternoon, and Saturdays between ten and eleven in the morning. They had waited outside in Fiona’s car from noon Tuesday until nearly dinner, but no Heather. They came back Wednesday, thinking she may just have slipped a day, but still no Heather. It was not until late afternoon Thursday that she appeared, two large, empty shopping bags under her arm. Flannery stepped out of the car, with an effort, while Fiona remained behind the wheel.

“Heather?”

Heather, nearly twelve now, stopped short and looked up, as if out of a dream. Her eyes were bruised. From tears or from recent fists, Flannery could not tell.

“Yes?” It was as much a question as an acknowledgement.

“Heather?” Flannery asked again. “Is that really you?”

A touch of fear entered her gaze as she looked a little closer at Flannery, not much taller than Heather, weighed down as she was with fatigue and pain, and an unforgiving purpose.

“Who wants to know?” she said, mimicking her father’s abruptness.

“It’s me,” she said. “Flannery.”

“I don’t know any Flannery,” Heather replied.

“You don’t remember?” said Flannery. It was mostly a statement.

“Remember what?”

“Our plan?”

“You crazy?”

“Our plan, Heather. Yours, mine, and Gabriel’s.”

“I don’t know any Gabriel.”

“Listen,” said Flannery. “Trust me, you do.”

“You crazy?” she asked again.

“No, not at all,” she said. “Listen,” she said again, as she opened her handbag and fumbled around for the letter. “Here, you’ll recognize his handwriting.”

She found the letter and handed it to Heather.

Heather didn’t take it.

“Here, look at it.”

“Listen, lady, I don’t know what you want with me.” Then she brightened up as if she had just come upon what the lady did in fact want with her. “If it’s got to do with school,” she said. “Tell Mrs. Forrester that I will be back on Monday, for sure. I’ve been ill.”

“Heather, please. I’m not from your school. I’m Flannery, your sister.”

Heather looked at her, perhaps with fresh eyes, or perhaps that was only Flannery’s hope playing a trick.

“Here, please, take it.”

With each word she was pleading for Heather to recognize her. “This letter was written by Gabriel, your brother, you’ll recognize his hand.”

Heather looked around her now, as if for help. A father ushered his little boy past them as if they were an unpleasantness not to get involved in or to take too close a notice of. The boy turned around and looked at Heather, not curiously, more like the way you watch someone bleed. He was chewing on a piece of candy almost as large as his mouth and he was drooling a little. Others entered the store from the parking lot without paying them any mind.

Flannery held out the envelope for Heather to take.

“Please,” said Flannery. “Look at it.”

Heather finally took the envelope.

“Open it,” said Flannery.

She did. And then the smaller envelope inside. Unfolded the letter. She looked at it for a good while. Flannery could not make out if she was reading it or not. Then she threw the letter on the ground, and looked up at Flannery, terrified.

“Get away from me, stupid woman,” she cried. “You stay away from me.”

“Heather, please.”

“Stay away from me,” she cried again, “or I’ll call the police.”

“Please.”

Heather turned from her and ran into the store.

Fiona got out of the car and hurried over to Flannery to help her collect the letter and the two envelopes which the wind now threatened to carry away.

They didn’t speak on the way back to Fiona’s apartment.

Flannery returned to Milledgeville in late October of 1962. Her illness was getting worse and for the next few months she could make it out of bed on her own only with difficulty, and once up she only had the strength to sit by her typewriter for an hour at the most.

The outline of a large man in a brown overcoat could be seen in the corner of her bedroom—or was it a bear?—but only by Flannery and only in a certain light. It was this phantom of a man, or bear, however, that one day in April of 1963 whispered Gabriel’s address into her ear, so that she could write him.

Milledgeville April 11, 1963

Dear Gabriel,

I trust this letter finds you awake, and able to read English.

I have bad news, I’m afraid. We have lost Heather. I went to see her last fall and she did not recognize me at all. I mentioned your name to her, and she did not recognize that either. She arrived in December of 1950 so she was not yet twelve years old when I spoke with her.

I have since tried to write her, but my letters are returned unopened. From that, and from what a friend of mine who lives in the same town as Heather writes me, I can only conclude that the blanket has gotten the better of her. Just as with Charles.

I know this is not good news, but I felt I had to tell you.

And you, Gabriel, how are you holding up? I sense, when I look in your direction, that you’re having a spot of trouble with the girl and sex thing. Remember, please, that it is not real—we have no such thing in our valleys, remember?—it’s some sort of invention, this snake that invades the sweet understanding between a boy and a girl and swells it and turns it sticky. Once you’re caught in that net, really caught, it’s darn near impossible to wiggle free. It can grab you and drown you as well as any other part of this damn blanket. Please remember, Gabriel; and stay alert. And Netoniel’s blanket, by the way, now reaches all the way to the ground. I have seen it. I see it every day.

The bear, fool that he is, as I may have mentioned on more than one occasion, is here with me, making damn sure I don’t forget, or fall asleep. I don’t like his tactics though. Admittedly, they are very effective, and, as usual, very straightforward: he is basically killing this body I sport, forcing me to fight like hell to stay alive, which, apparently, and incidentally, also keeps me awake. So there is method to his madness. There always was. However, it’s painful and tiresome, and I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.

I have written quite a few stories and a couple of novels. They’ve been very well received and not a few people have read and are reading them. But, Gabriel, not nearly enough. I underestimated both the difficulties and the size of the population. I’m not even making a dent, not even a dent. I’m afraid that it’s going to be up to you now.

I take it you’re still at school in Stockholm, and that you’re on track in your literary studies. It’s soon time, though, for you to begin your English studies for real. Remember, this is the language you will have to write in, long term. If you are to succeed.

I am taking pretty good notes on the craft, of what I have found to work the best. I will summarize them before I leave, I promise, and get them to you, somehow.

My guess is that I will hang on for another year, two at the most. The bear is pretty brutal and his tendril fingers keep hurting me, but, as I said, if that is what it takes to keep me awake, well, then the old thing is doing a fine job.

No need to write back, Gabriel, just remember what you’re about. Who you are. Remember our valley, remember our meeting at my cottage, and get going on your English as soon as possible.

Good luck to you, my brother.

Flannery

P.S. Why didn’t you tell us about Conrad?

Heather’s mother died that morning—April 11, 1963—from injuries she had sustained two weeks earlier when she, with Frank’s help, fell down the basement stairs and fractured the back of her skull and portions of her upper spine.

She drew her last breath—smiling, knowing she had managed to escape her husband at last—at the same time Flannery put her tongue to the envelope holding her letter to Gabriel. She moistened the flap and pressed it sealed. Checked the address again, and wondered, not for the last time if this was enough postage. She would ask Regina to check with the postman before she gave it to him.

Then she tasted the air with her imagination and knew that Heather was now motherless.

There was enough postage, Regina had made sure of that, very sure; had in fact made the postman swear to her, by St. Mary and everything that was holy to him, that there was enough postage on the envelope to make it all the way to Sweden. After some back and forth—including a brief dissertation on the U.S. Postal Service’s position vis-à-vis saints, and Regina’s retort that that was neither here nor there—he did swear in the end and the letter arrived in one piece ten days later, care of Soren Wallengard, Tegnergatan 16, 4th Floor, Stockholm, Sweden. Gabriel found it on his writing desk when he returned from the Academy that afternoon, placed there, as was all his mail, by the Wallengard maid, an old silent, sinewy woman which Barbro had told him was at least half Saami (“They know witchcraft, you know.”).

Gabriel picked it up and looked it over before opening it. Didn’t weigh much. Three American stamps, one covering the last three letters of his name, as if it had been placed there by a hurried afterthought.

He had never had a letter from America before. The envelope was thin and flimsy and was edged by short, alternating blue and red stripes. It had a postmark that read “Milledgeville, GA.” GA, he discovered, was an abbreviation for Georgia, one of their Southern states. He even looked it up in an atlas later, to see exactly where it was.

He found his letter knife and cut open the envelope. It was written on equally flimsy paper. Like bible paper, he thought. In English.

He recognized his name, “Dear Gabriel” it said. But that was about as far as he got with any certainty. His English was simply too poor. He put the two sheets down on his desk and looked out the window at the budding trees. He stood up to open the window, just a crack. It was still chilly outside, but the air was fresh and sweet with spring. He looked down at the letter again. Barbro would have to help him. She was good at English.

Then he picked it up again, and looked at the bottom of the second sheet to see who had signed it. “Flannery,” it said. Flannery? Who was Flannery?

And, where was Barbro? She should have been home by now.

The old bear knew that she was fading. That she was falling asleep under—or within, by now—the thick, suffocating blanket. It was starting to bother him as well, but he certainly did not have the luxury to give in to it. Flannery, however, found it very hard to breathe, hard to hold on to herself. He noticed her slipping into the comforting sheath of habit, and at times she now forgot who she was. He could tell by the pictures that surrounded her. There would always, always be a glimpse of the fields, the grass, of himself waving goodbye by the door, but not now, not now that she was slipping. The memory vanquished by mist.

Though it pained him to do so—for he knew it hurt her terribly—he again extended tendril fingers across the room and into her body. There they found her kidneys and liver and her many other glands and again he poisoned them with the will to die. Flannery, stung awake by the pain, again, and again, and again, had to make the decision to live, to go on no matter what, and in that effort the pictures of their valley returned, and she, as Flannery, one of three children that set out to save the world, returned as well.

He didn’t know how much longer, though, he could keep her from falling.

“Barbro, look what I got.”

She opened the door all the way and stepped inside. She smelled fresh all the way across the room.

“What is it?”

“A letter from America.”

He held it out for her to take.

“I didn’t know you knew anyone there.”

“Neither did I.”

She took the envelope from him and examined it. “Georgia? That’s where Atlanta is,” she said.

“Yes.”

She took out the two sheets and unfolded them. “And now I guess you want me to translate this for you.” It was not a question.

“Yes. Please.”

She did. And that brought everything to a standstill.

A standstill of conflict. On the one hand, the dream fragments he sometimes woke up wondering about had returned, but no longer as fragments and no longer as dream. He could clearly see the valley, the one with grass that knew how to yield, with familiar murmuring winds and with a sun that could do so much more than shine, with trees that knew his name, and those of his sisters. And on the other hand, he looked up at her, a girl—a dear, wonderful girl, his girl—sitting on his bed with a letter in her hand wondering what on earth this was all about.

And sitting next to her, on his bed, or sitting across from him by an old kitchen table, next to another girl who liked to frown and whom he knew was called Flannery, sat Heather. And outside, he knew he would see him if he turned his head, noisily rolling this way then that in his sleep—although he was not really sleeping—Flannery’s old bear.

This of course was totally crazy, and his focus returned to Barbro, to her almost smile, to her questioning eyes, to her wondering. But the valley would not leave, those pictures were his and they were memories, they filled him with a strange certainty that indeed they were, and suddenly another memory rushed in on him: his wintry insight, his exploding aloft to see the world from above. As spirit.

A conflict holding its breath: these certainties, vast and still expanding, filling him, and: this wonderful girl—young woman really—her long, blond hair falling softly like light across her shoulders, sitting on his bed with two sheets of flimsy paper in her hand, unmoving. Her blue eyes now held confusion when she looked up at him, examining him, closely, as if looking for someone she suspected was in there but who had been hiding from her all this time.

“Who is Heather?” she asked finally.

She is my sister, he thought. But said, “I don’t know.”

She probably didn’t hear. “And who is Flannery? And,” she looked down at the letter, “Netoniel? Sounds like an angel. And,” she looked down at the sheets again, “Conrad. Conrad, who?”

I am Conrad, he thought. Netoniel is an angel, and they’re my sisters, Flannery and Heather both, and as he thought he almost said it. But managed not to. Instead, he told her, almost believably, “I don’t know.”

She scrutinized him harder. “You don’t know?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head. “Not really.”

“Not really? What does that mean?”

“It’s,” he began. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but, it’s, I have dreamed them. And now, the dream has, it has, I think it has become memory. I remember them.”

“Do tell,” said Barbro. She hadn’t meant to sound hurt, or flippant, so she added, “Please.”

“I have dreamed them,” he said again, remembering nights when he had smelled this very grass in his dreams. Heather sometimes teasing him about looking like a miniature sun, all that blond, shining hair. Sometimes Flannery was there too. A frown and a quick word mostly to the effect that we were wasting our time. But mostly she was off somewhere, doing important things, looking for Netoniel or keeping an eye on Earth, guessed Heather.

She didn’t reply, waiting for more.

“We’re in a small house,” he said after a while. “By the edge of a valley. There’s a big brown bear outside the door, pretending to be asleep. And we’re planning to save the world.—This world, the Earth,” he added.

Barbro remained silent, watching him as he searched for words. She knew him well enough to know that he was not lying. She could, in fact, see that he was both desperately serious and grappling with something he did not fully understand, but which had touched him deeply. Had shaken him.

But he did not go on, seemingly unable to.

“You are planning to save the world,” she said after a stretch of silence.

Gabriel looked up at her, as if surprised to find her in the room. “Yes,” he said. “We are planning to save the world. We’re drinking tea which Heather has prepared. And the only way to save the world, says Flannery, is to become writers, the three of us. And we decided, well Flannery decided, really, that English should be our language, just like Charles had, and just like Conrad had. And outside the little cottage the valley holds its breath the better to hear, for everything there is sentient, can listen and understand, but has never learned to mind its own business.”

Barbro did not move, hardly dared to breathe lest she would disrupt his dream.

“It’s Netoniel’s mess,” said Gabriel, as if Barbro needed that explanation. “It started out as one of his pranks, one of his stupid ideas, but got really messy.”

What, she wondered, started out as a prank, but Gabriel did not elaborate. In fact, he did not go on.

“Charles?” she said quietly, “Conrad?”

Gabriel returned to the room, his eyes saw her again. Then he shook his head, but did not speak.

Barbro looked down at the sheets in her hand, then over at the envelope on Gabriel’s desk. She half rose, reached over and picked it up, and looked at the return address.

“I’ve heard of Flannery O’Connor,” she said.

He looked at her but did not answer.

“She’s an American writer,” she continued. When he still did not answer, she said, “Gabriel, you’ve just got a letter from Flannery O’Connor. How do you know her?”

“I don’t,” said Gabriel. “I have no idea who she is.”

“But she knows who you are?”

“Apparently.”

Now it was Barbro’s turn to fall silent. Had she not been sure that Gabriel was incapable of lying to her, she would have taken the whole episode, letter and all, as a prank, and one in bad taste at that. But this was no prank. The letter was genuine, and she was pretty sure—no she was in fact certain—that were she to verify the letter’s handwriting, it would prove to belong to the American writer, Flannery O’Connor. But beyond that, nothing really fell into any sort of place.

“Are you going to answer her?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Gabriel, disturbed again from where he had gone.

Stockholm

25 April, 1963

Dear Miss O’Connor,

I received your letter dated 11^th of April. To say it was a surprise is to say not enough.

My girlfriend, Barbro, who is very good at English, translated it for me, and is also helping me to write this. My own English is terrible, I’m afraid.

Your letter left me with many strange images and us both with a lot of questions.

What I want to know is: first, how do you know me? And how can you know about my dreams? About the valley. You sound as if you’re speaking from within my dream, which, of course, not only is quite odd, but also quite impossible. Too weird for coincidence, too impossible to be true.

You make many strange references to things I have no idea about. Such as, “We have lost Heather.” If you mean the same Heather I have met in dreams, how can she have suffocated? And again, how can you know about her?

And what’s with the blanket?

Nor do I remember Netoniel, not really, he’s another name from the same dream, although Barbro thinks his name sounds like an angel’s. I think so too. But the same question returns, over and over actually, how can you know about my dreams?

I don’t know what you mean about sex problems either, nor, if I had any, what business they would be of yours (that’s Barbro talking—and me too).

Yes, there is a bear in my dream too sometimes, and yes, I should stop being surprised that you know, but please elaborate on “is here with me.” It does not make any sense. In fact, in broad daylight, none of your letter makes much sense.

And heading the list of the nonsensical, of course, is how you can possibly know about what goes on when I’m asleep? Are you some sort of strange psychic? If so, you’re a good one, I’ll give you that..

As to English, again, no business of yours. But let me say that I am not planning to learn English nor to write in English, although I must confess that Barbro has suggested I do every now and then.

As to school. I have no idea how you know about that either, and it scares me a little. Where do you get your information from? It’s accurate, to boot, which scares me even more.

Now, what I am interested in, and curious about, is your notes on the craft. But why me?

Hanging on for another year, two at the most? Are you dying?

Tendril fingers? Keeping you awake?

I’m afraid, Miss O’Connor, that this letter is not very polite, and only poses questions, but I fear it would have been even less polite not to write back at all, or to write back but not be honest about it. To put it mildly, I’d be curious to hear what you have to say, and I hope that you will do me, us—Barbro and I—the courtesy of writing back soon.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Rowantree

Flannery read his letter a third time. It was worse than she had expected or hoped. For one, he was quite plainly in love. For another he had immersed, there was little doubt, into the blanket. Dreams, his memories were dreams. Dreams, the last realm of freedom for these poor people.

She closed her eyes and took off her glasses. She rubbed her eyes and felt the strange comfort that comes from rubbing the right spot at the right time spread throughout. God, she was tired.

She glanced over at the bear in the corner. Silent as always, as always speaking his wordless language, replacing words with acts. So it had been for as long as she could remember. In fact, she and the bear had never spoken, the bear had always only acted his meaning. Other than that, he had no meaning to communicate. Her shadow, her guardian bear. She smiled to herself at that, and apparently, so did the bear.

She read his letter a fourth time. Then looked out the window.

Outside her peacocks were strutting about in the early May sunshine. It was already too hot for comfort; they didn’t seem to care though.

How to get through to Gabriel? That was the question.

Then she knew. She found a pen and began to write, knowing full well that what she had to communicate to him would have to go through his girlfriend. Yes, through her and through Conrad.

Milledgeville May 9, 1963

Dear Gabriel,

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to answer my quite mysterious letter. I know that perhaps—well, not only perhaps—this all comes as a surprise to you, but you’re not quite who you think you are. Actually, you are a lot more than you think you are. As are you, Barbro, there is so much more to you than what you think (Gabriel, I hope, can help you remember).

Enclosed, Gabriel, is a letter that you wrote in 1895. Yes, Gabriel, you wrote it. I honestly don’t know what you were doing here then, you never let on—but that, of course, is not unlike you, you take off and tell no one why or where—but I know that you will recognize the handwriting. That should tell you all you need to know.

And the famous bottom line, so cherished here in the United States, is that it will be up to you to pull this off. Heather has suffocated—and I’m afraid that by now you should know what that means—and I will soon have to leave as well. If I can hang on to this wailing body for another year I’ll be surprised. The bear is making it unbearable—pun intended. Though he is keeping me alive, and remembering, I have to give him that.

Here’s another bottom line: You have to learn English, Gabriel, and soon. With a bit of luck you’ll remember most of it, but if so, please be aware that your vocabulary will be slightly out of date, since I doubt you’ve been back since Conrad. You’ll need to freshen it up a bit.

I suggest that you move to London, England, and bring your friend Barbro. She can help you. Read all you can (in English), swim in the language, live it, absorb it. You must.

I plan to send you what I have found to work when it comes to fiction. They are my current thoughts on the subject and I hope you will concur, and find them useful. Of course, your own views on the matter, as Conrad, show that we agree.

Your sister,

Flannery

“Pull what off?” said Barbro.

Gabriel could not answer. But he had woken up. He looked at the letter in his hand and there was no doubt about it. He had written it. In 1895. As Conrad.

“Pull what off?” Barbro said again.

And Heather was lost. He looked out the window but only saw the field of grass, and the three of them by the table, planning.

“Gabriel.” Barbro touched his shoulder. “Where are you?”

He stirred at the touch and looked at her, this woman he had come to know, to love, really.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Pull what off?”

He told her. She listened intently and on the wing of her love for him knew him to tell the truth. Of course, there was no way that what he said could be at all real, but then again—as she had thought to herself many times—there was no way that a love as wonderful as hers for him could be at all real either, so there you have it: it was real all right.

When he had finished his tale she said simply, “We have to go to London.”

That night Barbro wrote her own letter to Flannery:

Stockholm

25 May, 1963

Dear Ms. O’Connor,

As you know, I am Gabriel’s girl. And what’s more, I believe him. And I believe you.

I have read two of your stories—Wise Blood and A Good Man is Hard to Find—and I found you to be a very brave woman. Now I know why.

Do you suffer much?

I will go to London with him, and I will make sure that he learns English, or remembers it, as you put it.

I hope that somehow we can meet before you die. Pardon me for being so blunt.

What else can I do to help? I know, have known for a long time it seems, that the blanket, as you call it, is real, that our blindness is only artificial. Tell me what I must do.

I am not sure I understand how your bear fits in, I wish you would tell me about him.

Please write again.

Sincerely,

Barbro Wallengard

She couldn’t honestly tell herself that she had known Gabriel’s girl would write her, but she nonetheless felt she had expected it, and so did her best not to be pleasantly surprised.

Flannery read Barbro’s letter again, and smiled. She held it up for the bear in the corner and said, “See, you old thing, she wants a rundown on you.”

As usual the bear pretended not to hear.

Soren Wallengard had noticed the change in him, and that was why, in the end, he relented and allowed his daughter to take him to London.

Gabriel wasn’t walking into walls anymore, had regained possession of his reproductive organ, and had graduated from infatuation to true love it seemed. And his daughter felt the same, he could tell. There was now something very mature about them, something, well, almost—he didn’t know why the word seemed so appropriate—ancient.

“But why London?” he had asked.

“He must learn English, dad,” was all she would answer, in a hundred different ways. And he agreed. A talent such as his deserved a language more widely read; for so much is apt to get lost in translation. This boy, his boy in a way, he realized, had a gift that only English would do justice. So he agreed. And paid, as well.

They were out on the North Sea, standing by the rail of the port side promenade deck of the large and very white MS Uppland, a ferry making its way from Gothenburg, Sweden to Felixstowe, England, when he proposed to her.

“Of course I’ll marry you,” she said. “But not until you know English better than the English.”

Gabriel smiled at that, for by now he had come to remember quite well. He had found the trove of thousands of slightly archaic words gathered with such care by Conrad, and was looking forward to putting them into practice.

“Sunday suitable?” he said, in English.

Barbro wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but smiled back and took his hand, and then, his hand still in hers, looked out at the waves—if you could call them waves, they were more like a carpet of ripples on the undulating ocean as it heaved its long, lazy sighs—coruscating now and then in the sunlight. No land anywhere to be seen, only the water, endless water. Easy to see here that the Earth is indeed a large ball.

In August of that year, 1963, Flannery had her second operation, to no avail. She was bedridden, mostly, and was grateful for any day that she could find the strength to rise and feed her peacocks. The bear suffered with her. But he did keep her awake.

Fiona’s letters made occasional mention of Heather, and news about her was not good. Flannery strained against the shackles of her wasting body, to fly loose, to go to Heather, to infuse her with life, but she knew she could not do it. Heather was lost now, and her remaining strength would have to be saved for Gabriel.

She also knew that it was tantamount to spiritual suicide to attempt to move through Netoniel’s blanket without the shield of a physical body. The mist of strands was tangible to the spirit, if not to the body. Its fog thicker than fog, a prison of wishes desperate for life, clinging to anything that approached it, shrouding the bodies like mold, smothering any spirit that ventured near. The blanket—empty space to the human eye—was nearly impenetrable to the soul. She would never make it through on her own.

When Flannery next wrote Fiona she asked her not to mention Heather again.

By December, thinking that she probably did not have long to go, she wrote Gabriel in London, and asked if he and his wife could come and spend Christmas with her.

They had found a flat on Fenchurch Street, not two blocks from where the original London Shipmasters’ Society had had their offices. Gabriel had wanted to see the place where he, as Conrad, had spent so much time, and while in the area had found the sign advertising the two bedroom flat, three stories up in a newly renovated brownstone building.

The rooms were light and comfortable and both Gabriel and Barbro took to their new home right away. Perhaps a little costly, but daddy had promised to help, said Barbro. Let’s take it. And they did.

Barbro, whose English was certainly good enough, enrolled in a small business college three tube stations and a short walk away. A generous grant from the Swedish Government paid the tuition and books.

Gabriel, tempted at first, to take English Literature classes, opted instead—and Barbro agreed—to peruse libraries and old bookstores for anything he could find on the subject of writing fiction, in English. He was surprised at how much had actually been written on the subject. By James, Stevenson, Forster, Woolf, Flaubert, Stendhal, and—amusingly—by himself as Conrad. Not to mention Aristotle.

He also found Elizabeth Bowen’s recently published and wonderful collection of essays called Afterthought; and he read and re-read Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis to make sure he understood what that brilliant man had observed, and later, in a small Istanbul apartment, had set down in his native German during much of the Second World War. From what he could tell, the translation was good, and he trusted it implicitly.

There were others and they all seemed to have something to say on the subject: Joyce, Cervantes, Nabokov, Steinbeck and Hemingway, and by early December 1963 Gabriel realized that he had to put some order into his assimilation of the craft. That is when he began to isolate and outline the various fictional elements recognized by these his many teachers and to record their thoughts and comments on each to illustrate them.

It was to be an ongoing project, for there was always the slightly different, and thus differently illuminating, viewpoint on characterization, or plot, or narrative, or time management, or point of view, or opening paragraphs, and he wanted to make sure he got them all down. He called his growing compendium Elements of Fiction, a Survey, and he added to it daily and paraphrased Montaigne almost as often: “I am gathering a nosegay of other men’s flowers, only the thread that binds them is my own.” He felt the weight of this accumulated knowledge gather a force of its own, first in his gut, and then—of late—in his heart.

“When are you going to start writing your own stories?” asked Barbro one night.

“When I won’t make a fool of myself,” he answered.

“You can prepare forever, and never get anything written,” she replied.

“I am aware of that. Four months is not forever, though.”

“I’m not saying it is.”

He looked up at her and discovered in one glance that she was not out to goad, but to help him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She smiled in return and walked over and kissed him smack on the lips.

The following day the letter from Flannery arrived, inviting them to Georgia. Enclosed were two return airplane tickets, booked for the 19th. There was never the thought of not going. They packed and on that Thursday morning took the train to the airport.

Flannery was too weak to meet them in Atlanta. It was only with an effort that she managed to meet them at the door of her house. But she did manage, resting on a rubberfooted cane, and with an embarrassed smile. She waved at them as they stepped out of the car in her driveway, a couple of peahens still running away lest the car was pursuing them, while a large peacock decided to put on a show for the guests, and so spread his tail to display his very best plumage for their benefit.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Flannery, looking at the peacock, even before she got around to saying “Welcome.”

Gabriel embraced her long and hard, almost hurting her. Barbro noticed her frailty and hugged her less fervently. Flannery showed them in to the parlor and introduced Regina, her mother.

“Welcome to Milledgeville,” said the older woman. “What can I get you international travelers. Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, please,” said Gabriel.

“Fine,” said Barbro.

Flannery, on a strict diet, could have neither, and Regina brought her the juice of two apples.

Once seated and served, Regina—on Flannery’s earlier request—withdrew and left the three of them to talk.

“Tired?” asked Flannery. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Yes, we are and yes we have.”

Barbro, sensitive to the effort it took Flannery to simply sit upright, began to cry in appreciation of the bravery she observed. Flannery noticed.

“Oh, don’t fuss,” she said.

“It’s just that,” began Barbro.

“I know, I know,” said Flannery with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s a fact of life, my life. Get used to it.”

Gabriel then saw her so clearly that he instinctively looked around for the bear. And found him. The bear seemed to nod in recognition, but other than that he remained motionless in his appointed corner.

“How are you holding up?” Flannery addressed Gabriel as if Barbro wasn’t even present. This was a question, one sibling to the other.

“Fine,” said Gabriel. “Pretty good. The Conrad letter helped. Woke me up, in fact.”

“I thought it would. You never told.”

“Well, you know.—And you?”

“I have the bear.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Flannery looked over at Barbro, not quite surprised to find her there. “And you?” she asked.

“How am I holding up?”

“Close enough.”

“I’m holding up fine, I guess.”

“Has Gabriel told you? I assume he has.” Flannery looked over at Gabriel who nodded.

“Yes,” said Barbro. “He has.”

“You asked me once how the bear fits in,” said Flannery to Barbro. “I never answered you. This is how he fits in: by keeping the door to death wide open, and constantly, he never lets me forget who I am. It hurts a lot, but I know it hurts him even more. I don’t know if you can see him, he’s over there in the corner by the bookshelf. No, the other, with the small corner table with the little vase on it. You have to know what to look for though.”

Barbro turned and looked.

“Can you see him.”

“No,” said Barbro.

“Hey, bear, do something,” said Flannery.

At which point two books left their shelf and gently sailed, in unison, to the floor.

“He’s got tendril fingers when he wants to,” said Flannery.

“I can see them,” said Barbro, meaning the fingers.

“The fingers?”

“Yes.”

“Follow the glimmer to its source, and that’s the bear,” said Flannery.

For an instant the bear materialized for Barbro. Huge and brown, slightly bent to fit under the ceiling. She drew a quick breath.

“I see you found him,” said Flannery.

“I did,” said Barbro, and then he was gone.

“Well, he’s been with me, the old thing, since I got here.”

“Hurting you all the time?” said Barbro.

“No, heavens no. Only when I seemed to him to be forgetting.”

“And he, the bear, never forgets?” asked Barbro.

“No,” said Flannery, “he never forgets. There’s something with bears from where we come from, they never forget.”

Gabriel nodded in agreement. “They don’t. Ever.”

“How’s the writing going?” asked Flannery, seemingly of both of them. So Barbro answered before Gabriel could.

“He’s still preparing.”

“I’m trying to gain, well, regain, the feel for it.”

“So, he’s started a massive research project to track down and illustrate every conceivable element of fiction he can find,” said Barbro.

“In and of itself an admirable task,” said Flannery. “But hardly productive of fiction.”

“I know,” said Gabriel, slightly embarrassed.

“You’ve got to get going,” said Flannery.

“I know, I know,” said Gabriel.

“My favorite quote on the subject,” said Flannery, “is from Matthew Arnold, the English poet. He said: ‘Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.’ And I agree, with all my heart. That’s all there is to it. Couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself.”

“I know,” said Gabriel.

“You keep saying that,” said Flannery.

“I know,” said Gabriel.

“So, what’s holding you?” she asked.

“I’m trying to get the right feel of it. I’m trying to get it back.”

“Forget the right feel,” said Flannery with a flash of anger that Gabriel—with a smile—recognized. “You learn to write by writing, not by feeling right about it.”

“I’m not sure I know English well enough. Yet.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Flannery.

Barbro looked at Gabriel and tipped her head in Flannery’s direction as if to say, ‘see what I mean?’

“Another thing Matthew Arnold said was: ‘Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.’ So you’d better listen, for I tell the truth. Get writing. Now. There’s a desk. There’s pen and paper. Tell me something, and tell it clearly, in English.”

Gabriel didn’t answer at first, then he said. “So, you are dying?”

“Of course I’m dying. The bear’s seeing to that.”

“But, how soon?”

“Next year this time I know I’ll be gone.”

Barbro made signs of beginning to cry again.

“Oh, stop it,” said Flannery in her direction. “And, you, Gabriel, are avoiding the topic at hand, which is your writing. There’s the desk. Begin.”

Gabriel, smiling again as he saw his sister so clearly, stood up and walked over to the writing desk, apparently put there for his benefit, for it seemed out of place in the parlor.

He pulled out the chair, sat down and began to write.

Flannery followed his movements with silent approval, then looked at Barbro and said, “And now, my dear, you’ll have to help me to my bedroom.”

Barbro rose immediately, as if startled awake, “Oh, sure.”

Part 4

Thoughts? I'd like to hear them.
Ulf Wolf

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