Alice Munro

(Part II)

[1] The following weekend he knocked on my door.His expressions of humility was exaggerated, almost enough so to seem mocking, yet in another sense it was real and I felt unsure of myself.

[2] “I won’t take up a minute of your time, ” he said.“I never meant to be a nuisance.I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry I offended you last time and I apologize.Here’s a little present if you will accept.”

[3] He was carrying a plant whose name I did not know; it had thick, glossy leaves and grew out of a pot wrapped lavishly in pink and silver foil.

[4] “There,” he said, arranging this plant in a corner of my room.“I don’t want any bad feelings with you and me.I’ll take the blame.And I thought, maybe she won’t accept furnishings, but what’s the matter with a nice little plant, that’ll brighten things up for you? ”

[5] It was not possible for me, at this moment, to tell him that I did not want a plant.I hate house plants.He told me how to take care of it, how often to water it and soon; I thanked him.There was nothing else I could do, and I had the unpleasant feeling that beneath his offering of apologies and gifts he was well aware of this and in some way gratified by it.He kept on talking, using the words bad feelings, offended, apologize.I tried once to interrupt, with the idea of explaining that I had made provision for an area in my life where good feelings , or bad, did not enter in, that between him and me, in fact, it was no necessary that there be any feelings at all; but this struck me as a hopeless task.How could I confront, in the open, this craving for intimacy? Besides, the plant in its shiny paper had confused me.

[6] “How’s the writing progressing?” he said, with an air of putting all our unfortunate differences behind him.

[7] “Oh, about as usual.”

[8] “Well, if you ever run out of things to write about, I got a barrelful.” Pause.“But I guess I’m just eating into your time here,” he said with a kind of painful buoyancy.This was a test, and I did not pass it.I smiled, my eyes held by that magnificent plant; I said it was all right.

[9] “I was just thinking about the fellow was in here before you.Chiropractor.You could have written a book about him.”

[10] I assumed a listening position, my hands no longer hovering over the keys.If cowardice and insincerity are big vices of mine, curiosity is certainly another.

[11] “He had a good practice built up here.The only trouble was, he gave more adjustments than was listed in the book of chiropractic.Oh, he was adjusting right and left.I came in here after he moved out, and what do you think I found? Soundproofing! This whole room was sound-proofed, to enable him to make his adjustments without disturbing anybody.This very room you’re sitting writing your stories in.”

[12] “First we knew of it was a lady knocked on my door one day wanted me to provide her with a passkey to his office.He’d locked his door against her.”

[13] “I guess he just got tired of treating her particular case.I guess he figured he’d been knocking away at it long enough.Lady well on in years, you know, and him just a young man.He had a nice young wife, too, and a couple of the prettiest children you ever would want to see.Filthy some of the things that go on in this world.”

[14] It took me some time to realize that he told this story not simply as a piece of gossip, but as something a writer would be particularly interested to hear.Writing and lewdness had a vague delicious connection in his mind.Even this notion, however, seemed so wistful, so infantile, that it struck me as a waste of energy to attack it.I knew now I must avoid hurting him for my own sake, not for his.It had been a great mistake to think a little roughness would settle things.

[15] The next present was a teapot.I insisted that I drank only coffee and told him to give it to his wife.He said that tea was better for the nerves and that he had known right away I was a nervous person, like himself.The teapot was covered with gilt and roses and I knew that it was not cheap, in spite of its extreme hideousness.I kept it on my table.I also continued to care for the plant, which thrived obscenely in the corner of my room.I could not decide what else to do.He bought me a wastebasket, a fancy one with Chinese mandarins on all eight sides; he got a foam cushion for my chair.I despised myself for submitting to this blackmail.I did not even really pity him; it was just that I could not turn away, I could not turn away from that obsequious hunger.And he knew himself my tolerance was bought; in a way he must have hated me for it.

[16] When he lingered in my office now he told me stories of himself.It occurred to me that he was revealing his life to me in the hope that I would write it down.Of course he had probably revealed it to plenty of people for no particular reason, but in my case there seemed to be a special, even desperate necessity.His life was a series of calamities, as people’s lives often are; he had been let down by people he had trusted, refused help by those he had depended on, betrayed by the very friends to whom he had given kindness and material help.Other people, mere strangers and passersby, had taken time to torment him gratuitously in novel and inventive ways.On occasion, his very life had been threatened.Moreover his wife was a difficulty, her health being poor and her temperament unstable; what was he to do? You see how it is, he said, lifting his hand; but I live.He looked to me to say yes.

[17] I took to coming up the stairs on tiptoe, trying to turn my key without making a noise; this was foolish of course because I could not muffle my typewriter.I actually considered writing in longhand, and wished repeatedly for the evil chiropractor’s soundproofing.I told my husband my problem and he said it was not a problem at all.“Tell him you’re busy, ” he said.As a matter of fact I did tell him; every time he came to my door, always armed with a little gift or an errand, he asked me how I was and I said that today I was busy.Ah, then, he said, as he eased himself through the door, he would not keep me a minute.And all the time, as I have said, he knew what was going on in my mind, how I weakly longed to be rid of him.He knew but could not afford to care.

[18] One evening after I had gone home I discovered that I left at the office a letter I had intended to post, and so I went back to get it.I saw from the street that the light was on in the room where I worked.Then I saw him bending over the card table.Of course, he came in at night and read what I had written! He heard me at the door, and when I came in he was picking up my wastebasket, saying he thought he would just tidy things up for me.He went out at once.I did not say anything, but found myself trembling with anger and gratification.To have found a just cause was a wonder, an unbearable relief.

[19] Next time he came to my door I had locked it on the inside.I knew his step, his chummy cajoling knock.I continued typing loudly, but not uninterruptedly, so he would know I heard.He called my name, as if I was playing a trick; I bit my lips together not to answer.Unreasonably as ever, guilt assailed me but I typed on.That day I saw the earth was dry around the roots of the plant; I let it alone.

[20] I was not prepared for what happened next.I found a note taped to my door, which said that Mr.Malley would be obliged if I would stop into his office.I went at once to get it over with.He sat at his desk surrounded by obscure evidences of his authority; he looked at me from a distance, as one who was now compelled to see me in a new and sadly unfavorable light; the embarrassment which he showed seemed not for himself, but me.He started off by saying, with a rather stagy reluctance, that he had known of course when he took me in that I was a writer.

[21] “I didn’t let that worry me, though I have heard things about writers and artists and that type of person that didn’t strike me as very encouraging.You know the sort of thing I mean.”

[22] This was something new; I could not think what it might lead to.

[23] “Now you came to me and said, Mr.Malley, I want a place to write in.I believed you.I gave it to you.I didn’t ask any questions.That’s the kind of person I am.But you know the more I think about, well, the more inclined to wonder ...”

[24] “Wonder what?” I asked.

[25] “And your own attitude — that hasn’t helped to put my mind at ease.Locking yourself in and refusing to answer your door.That’s not a normal way for a person to behave.Not if they got nothing to hide.No more than it’s normal for young woman, says she has a husband and kids, to spend her time rattling away on a typewriter.”

[26] “But I don’t think that — ”

[27] He lifted his hand, a forgiving gesture.“Now all I ask is that you be open and aboveboard with me — I think I deserve that much — and if you are using that office for any other purpose, or at any other times than you let on, and having your friends or whoever they are up to see you — ”

[28] “I don’t know what you mean.” “And another thing — you claim to be a writer.Well I read quite a bit of material, and I never have seen your name in print.Now maybe you write under some other name?”

[29] “No,” I said.

[30] “Well, I don’t doubt there are writers whose names I haven’t heard,” he said genially.“We’ll let that pass.Just you give me your word of honor there won’t be any more deceptions, or any carryings-on, etc, in that office you occupy — ”

[31] My anger was delayed somehow, blocked off by a stupid incredulity.I only knew enough to get up and walk down the hall, his voice trailing after me, and lock the door.I thought —I must go.But after I had sat down in my own room, my work in front of me, I thought again how much I like this room, how well I worked in it, and I decided not to be forced out.After all, I felt, the struggle between us had reached a deadlock.I could refuse to open the door, refuse to look at his notes, refuse to speak to him when we met.My rent was paid in advance and if I left now it was unlikely that I would get any refund I resolved not to care.I had been taking my manuscript home every night to prevent his reading it, and now it seemed that even this precaution was beneath me.What did it matter if he read it, any more than if the mice scampered over it in the dark? Several times after this I found notes on my door.I intended not to read them, but I always did.His accusations grew more specific.He had heard voices in my room.My behavior was disturbing his wife when she tried to take her afternoon nap.(I never came in the afternoon, except on weekends.) He had found a whisky bottle in the garbage.

[32] I wondered a good deal about that chiropractor.It was not comfortable to see how the legends of Mr.Malley’s life were built up.

[33] As the notes grew more virulent our personal encounters ceased.Once or twice I saw his stooped, sweltered back disappearing as I came into the hall.Gradually our relationship passed into something that was entirely fantasy.He accused me now, by note, of being intimate with people from Numero Cinq.This was a coffeehouse in the neighborhood which I imagine he invoked for symbolic purposes.I felt that nothing much more would happen now; the notes would go on, their contents becoming possible more grotesque and so less likely to affect me.

[34] He knocked on my door on a Sunday morning, about eleven o’clock.I had just come in and taken my coat off and put my kettle on the hot plate.

[35] This time it was another face, remote and transfigured, that shone with the cold light of intense joy at discovering the proofs of sin.

[36] “I wonder,” he said with emotion, “if you would mind following me down the hall?”

[37] I followed him.The light was on in the washroom.This washroom was mine and no one else used it, but he had not given me a key for it and it was always open.He stopped in front of it, pushed back the door and stood with his eyes cast down, expelling his breath discreetly.

[38] “Now who’s done that?” he said, in a voice of pure sorrow.

[39] The walls above the toilet and above the washbasin were covered with drawings and comments of the sort you see sometimes in public washrooms on the beach, and in town hall lavatories in the little decaying towns where I grew up.They were done with a lipstick, as they usually are.Someone must have gotten up here the night before, I thought, possibly some of the gang who always loafed and cruised around the shopping center on Saturday nights.

[40] “It should have been locked,” I said, coolly and firmly as if thus to remove myself from the scene.“It’s quite a mess.”

[41] “It sure is.It’s pretty filthy language, in my book.Maybe it’s just a joke to your friends, but it isn’t to me.Not to mention the art work.That’s a nice thing to see when you open a door on your own premises in the morning”.

[42] I said, “I believe lipstick will wash off.”

[43] “I’m just glad I didn’t have my wife see a thing like this.Upsets a woman that’s had a nice bringing up.Now why don’t you ask your friends up here to have a party with their pails and brushes? I’d like to have a look at the people with that kind of a sense of humor.”

[44] I turned to walk away and he moved heavily in front of me.

[45] “I don’t think there’s any question how these decorations found their way onto my walls.”

[46] “If you’re trying to say I had anything to do with it,” I said, quite flatly and wearily, “you must be crazy.”

[47] “How did they get there then? Whose lavatory is this? Eh, whose?”

[48] “There isn’t any key to it.Anybody can come up here and walk in.Maybe some kids off the street came up here and did it last night after I went home; how do I know?”

[49] “It’s a shame the way the kids gets blamed for everything, when it’s the elders that corrupts them.That’s a thing you might do some thinking about, you know.There’s laws.Obscenity Laws.Applies to this sort of thing and literature, too, as I believe.”

[50] This is the first time I ever remember taking deep breaths, consciously, for purposes of self-control.I really wanted to murder him.I remember how soft and loathsome his face looked, with the eyes almost closed, nostrils extended to the soothing odor of righteousness, the odor of triumph.If this stupid thing had not happened, he would never have won.But he had.Perhaps he saw something in my face that unnerved him, even in this victorious moment, for he drew back to the wall, and began to say that actually, as a matter of fact, he had not really felt it was the sort of thing I personally would do, more the sort of thing that perhaps certain friends of mine — I got into my own room, shut the door.

[51] The kettle was making a fearful noise, having almost boiled dry I snatched it off the hot plate, pulled out the plug and stood for a moment choking on rage.This spasm passed and I did what I had to do.I put my typewriter and paper on the chair and folded the card table.I screwed the top tightly on the instant coffee and put it and the yellow mug and the teaspoon into the bag in which I had brought them; it was still lying folded on the shelf.I wished childishly to take some vengeance on the potted plant, which sat in the corner with the flowery teapot, the wastebasket, the cushion, and — I forgot — a little plastic pencil sharpener behind it.

[52] When I was taking things down to the car Mrs.Malley came.I had seen little of her since that first day.She did not seem upset, but practical and resigned.

[53] “He is lying down,” she said.“He is not himself.”

[54] She carried the bag with the coffee and the mug in it.She was so still I felt my anger leave me, to be replaced by an absorbing depression.

[55] I have not yet found another office.I think that I will try again some day, but not yet.I have to wait at least until that picture fades that I see so clearly in my mind, though I never saw it in reality — Mr.Malley with his rags and brushes and a pail of soapy water, scrubbing in his clumsy way, his deliberately clumsy way, at the toilet walls, stooping with difficulty, breathing sorrowfully, arranging in his mind the bizarre but somehow never quite satisfactory narrative of yet another betrayal of trust.While I arrange words, and think it is my right to be rid of him.

[1968]

Notes

Text C is the continued part of The Office by Alice Munro, in which the ending of the story is provided and the depiction of female inability in professional pursuit is presented.

For Fun

Works to Read

1. A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence

It is Margaret Laurence’s well-received work in which eight interconnected stories are finely weaved to present Vanessa MacLeod’s growth from a girl of ten years old into her womanhood.

2. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

It is Alice Munro’s most recent stunning collection of new stories demonstrating once again why Alice Munro is celebrated as a pre-eminent master of the short story.With some traditional stories set in “Alice Munro Country” in Ontario or in B.C., dealing with ordinary women’s lives, the collection has a new, sharper edge involving child murders, strange sex, and a terrifying home invasion.