Congratulations to Kimberley Aslet, who placed 1st in the Adult Fiction category.
Ivan, written by Kimberley Aslet, inspired by Ivan
The library has silence. Not the silence of an empty church after a funeral. Not the silence of a cold night under the stars before the coyotes start to howl. But a silence with the slight breath of others, and warmth that is reflected from the stories that live within the books.
“The old man is back again.” Cerys is filling a silence between her and her co-worker.
“Huh?”
“The old man over there. Older than dirt. He comes every day. Sits in the same place, doesn’t move. Returns one book on the way in, takes another on the way out.”
“Oh, him. That’s Mr. Agafonov. First name is Ivan, though I’ve never said it out loud. Not to him, anyway.”
“Oh. Creepy?”
“Nah. He’s OK. Never causes a problem, never follows you home. All good. His card is nearly worn out.”
“He looks cold. He looks older than my Grampa.” Cerys glances again at the man, bony and still, a coarse stone sculpture in the cheerful light of the reading room.
When they chatter, Ivan wants to turn off the noise. When he was young, he talked more, listened more. He talked with his sisters, his younger brother, his mother. But not his father. His father would come in from the fields, and he would sit at the rough wood table with his muddy work boots on. When he pulled his chair in, it was the signal for everything else to stop, and his supper to begin. Ivan’s mother would be at the counter almost before the door had closed behind him, skirts swirling around her fast, small feet, and she would cut the black bread and serve the hot, filling meal. Once, he watched his father sit for a moment, and when his mother didn’t come, because she was in the outhouse, he stood, walked out the door, and tore the outhouse door open, breaking the latch. He reached in and Ivan saw his mother fall, shocked and stumbling, onto the hard dirt, and then she was in her place, and father was in his.
Today, Ivan has chosen a book about bridges. He chooses a different book every day, and it is his quiet companion. Usually, he can return a book the next day, and only rarely does he need to keep it a second night, as he reads quickly.
He worked in a steel mill for 42 years. The steel he made might have been used to build bridges, or to build train tracks or to build libraries. But, for tonight, it is the bridges that interest him, and words and knowledge will be his companions. When the younger girl steps from behind the counter to begin straightening, he puts on his coat and signs out the book, all in silence. The door closes as he turns toward his home.
Until the next day. Cerys is working with the same woman.
“So, he signs out one book at a time? Have you told him that he can take more so he doesn’t have to come back every day?”
“Of course I did. But, you know, this is the only place some people have to go. He’s been here nearly every day for about 12 years. I checked the records years ago. Our most loyal customer. And he’s quiet and respectful. I’d rather have him than the glue-sniffer who puked on the graphic novels last week.”
“I guess.”
Ivan brings the book on coyotes to the chair where he often sits to begin reading. He feels a pleasure at the coyotes on the cover, a family, on a prairie, like his prairie. He touches the cover with his fingertips and lets his thoughts lift the sound of coyotes in the night from where it has rested since his earliest dreams. He can hear them now, outside, in the spring, so active, hunting the new young creatures. Yelping and howling and yap-yapping like a fluttering net of sound. He was five when his father told him to get more wood for the fire, and he said he was afraid. His father’s hand hit him so hard that it took his hearing from the left ear forever. He did not cry until after he had brought in three armloads of wood, with his fear and pain glowing inside him like a hot coal. But when he went to his bedroom, he curled under the covers, and cried for a very long time. In the morning, his mother wiped the dried blood from his ear, and pulled him close. He thought she might have cried a little too. He had to sit close to the front of the classroom after that, to hear the teacher.
The book has vivid photos, and some maps that he traces with his finger as he sits in his chair that evening, in the vacuum silence of his tidy apartment. He is able to return the book to the library after his breakfast the next day.
“Good morning, sir. Did you enjoy this one?” Cerys tries a smile.
He nods, as he feels that his mouth has been melded shut by time and loneliness. If he spoke, his voice would be dust.
He turns to the computer where the records of the books live. He walks into the stacks to find his next book.
“Is he actually any good at using the catalogue?”
“He got lessons a few times, and he seems to be able to find what he wants. Most of the time he just goes into the stacks and comes out with something, but sometimes he searches the catalogue.”
He hears the girls again, talking, though distantly, and they’re careful to keep their voices low. His Iris had a voice that was sweet and gentle, and he thinks that he would love to hear her close whisper again. She was harsh only once, in her moans and tears when the babies were lost, three messes of blood and meat that had been all their dreams, gone. He held her then and listened to the deep ragged sobs in his good ear. When the doctor pronounced that it was likely to happen again, he curled behind the comma of her body on their bed, and he promised that she would never have to cry like that again. And she did not. Not even when the same doctor told her about the liver cancer that was very advanced. At the end, she held his hand, but her tears were dried up and shrivelled. He arranged the burial with the local church but declined a ceremony for his 41-year-old wife. Instead, he carefully watered the violets that she grew along the windowsills when he got home. He still cared for them every day.
That afternoon, he finds the section on gardening, and when he sits, he opens the new book to the section on violets. They are beautiful, but hers are in his mind, better, in the pretty pots she found, even one in a thin china teacup that his mother gave to her. He takes this book home with him, knowing that he will only feel her loss more, like an old bruise that he has touched again to confirm the pain. Because it has so few words, it leaves room for memories to fill his evening.
When he returns the gardening book, he hands it to the young girl with the funny pink glasses. She smiles at him and asks if he needs any help.
His rough voice scrapes across the words. “I will find something, I guess. I never know until I see it. But, thank you.” It feels like jumping and landing safely to speak to her.
That day he sits with a book on the history of a cholera epidemic. They are telling the stories of sick families, some in every household dying. He remembers his little brother, too sick to even cry, and his mother quietly waiting for the doctor, or for God, or for something to happen. It’s a painting in his memory, with dark colours, except the hot, red face of Misha, and the washed blue of a blanket, pulled away from his struggle. When it did happen, the last tiny breath, his mother knelt down and buried her face in his still chest, and Ivan watched her in silence. He knew that his brother was never taking his hand on the way to school again, and he felt her pain along with his own. She stood, finally, and went to the kitchen, where she got a lavender soap given to her by her sister, and unwrapped the flower-printed paper from it. She got the bread bowl of warm water and a soft cloth. He would help her wash the soft skin, and the smell of lavender and the weight of a lifeless hand were still there, under the skin of his own calloused hand, this 70 years later.
The girl comes toward him, holding a box of tissues in her hand, and he realizes there are tears on his cheeks and a damp spot on his brown jacket. She puts the box on the table beside him without saying anything.
The next day, he returns, and he cannot look directly at her, but she is kind anyway, and doesn’t ask him if he is OK. He feels safer when he sits and reads the book he finds about an explorer who made unfair deals with the people he found in this country.
Cerys is working at the desk that Friday when the old man doesn’t come. She finds a tiny nibble of worry at the edges of her day, remembering his silent tears painting his face, and his care to be polite with every visit. She watches out the window and looks up every time the door opens. At the end of the day, she leaves, and she feels as though she may have misplaced something fragile.
On Saturday, she is still setting up the workstations when she sees him enter and approach the desk. He has a book, and a brown paper bag. She meets him at the desk and looks up to give him a careful smile, not too much. He smiles back.
“I have brought this back,” he hands the book to her, Canadian History she sees, and then he places the bag on the counter in front of her. “It took two nights to finish.”
She’s concerned that the bag might contain some strange food, or something she doesn’t recognize. Instead, he lifts a beautiful pink violet from the bag, in a white, lacy pot. He places it in front of her.
“My wife planted this,” his voice a dirt road shaded by time.
Cerys touches the edge of one nearly transparent petal and tells him it is beautiful.
“She was sad,” he continues. “But she wanted to remind herself and me that things still grow, people and memories, and time.” He smiles a little. “I would like you to have it, and when you look at it, you can remember how time gives as much as it takes away.”
The girl makes a present of her sweet smile and her thanks, and Ivan accepts them before he moves off to search for another book. He will find one about the experience of an immigrant coming to Canada, and he will take it home to read that night. When he signs it out, he will see the flower beside the girl, and he will take that memory too.