The Letter Writer

Now that the official Oxford term is over, I have been demoted from student to visitor status in the eyes of the omnipotent Bodelian bureaucracy. No more library access for the likes of me. This means I spend a lot of time reading books in Blackwell's, the largest bookstore in the galaxy. Luckily, there is a proportionately sized Cafe Nero on the second floor where I like to sit and drink delicious hot cocoa and read my little stack of unpurchased books (quite illegally). This was exactly where I was sitting a few days ago, in a nice patch of sun, reading Theocritus. As I read, a skinny, middle aged gentleman tottered over to an empty table across from me. He reminded me of a high school English teacher I had once, with a gray-streaked ponytail and fang earring and glasses. He had that helplessly dazed look characteristic of so many Oxford citizens who drink ideas instead of water and breath books instead of air. There was something else about him too, but I can't say what. His clothes were all black, and his face appeared to be disembodied, vivid and white above the black mass of indistinct coats and scarves. He sat down with a tiny little cappuccino and a glass of water (room temperature, no ice, like all beverages this side of the pond). He also had a greeting card, just purchased, and still wrapped in cellophane. The next 30 minutes of his life was spent doing something extremely ordinary, but with such intensity, I chose to use Theocritus as a prop to disguise the fact that  I was watching him rather than actually read it.

First, he arranged his drinks: the water went to his far left. After several moments, he seemed to decide that the best place for the cappuccino would be  the far right edge of the little, European-sized table. The still-wrapped card took center stage, while the receipt was hastily whisked away into a pocket, like a carpenter would brush wood shavings away from his finished masterpiece. He sat back, unsmiling, and considered the arrangement. He took a tiny sip of the right-hand beverage, and made a face of disgust. Next, he took three sugar packets and shook them down for an unnecessarily long time. Ten seconds, twelve seconds, fifteen... all the while staring ahead into the crowd of coffee drinkers, seeing something I could not see. After pouring two sugars into the water, and the third into his cappuccino, our man finally opened the cellophane wrapping of his card. This was done with a paper clip, (which had previously been serving as a tie clip), most expertly, in one swift, decisive movement I would not have believed possible from a man who had just spent two minutes arranging his drinks, and a whole quarter of a minute shaking down his sugar packets.

He moved quickly now, as though the card would become stale in the fresh air. He brought a black bic pen out from a nondescript bag under the table, and sent the cellophane wrapping down to join the rejected receipt in the inner recesses of his pocket (he was the sort of man who makes you want to know the contents of his pockets). He flashed the card open so fast, I never saw what was on the outside, although the inside was momentarily blank. I was sitting a mere three feet from him, so crammed are the Cafe Nero tables, and even though I had remembered my glasses that day, I could not make out anything other than tiny, nondescript dots of letters blossoming from his pen. Its better that way, no one should read other peoples' letters, but I would not have had the willpower to refrain. He stopped after the first page and drank off the cappuccino in one go, gagging. He continued to write as steadily and determinedly as he had shaken the sugar packets, and this time I am sure it was words in his ears that I could not hear rather than scenes ahead of him in the cafe that I could not see. He wrote all the way down to the bottom of the second half of the card without pausing to think of what to write next, or even to shake his pen, and I worried that he would burn holes in the card. Finally he put the pen down, and brought his eyes down to the table, rather than bringing the card up to his eyes. I watched his beady, nervous black eyes zoom left to right, left to right, and slowly down the page, and then up to the second half, finally stopping at the bottom right corner, as though they had come to rest on some unpleasant sight, like a corpse.

He blew on the ink, as though a bic pen would leave wet smudges like a quill, and then closed the card, and left if lying face down in front of him. He reached for the water now, and drank it off hastily (I should explain that water in Europe is served in almost shot-glass sized cups - it would not be strange to drink off a glass of water in one, shot-like motion). The next five minutes were spent staring at the empty back of the card. He traced the Hallmark logo with his finger, and then put his hands on the edge of the table, looking like he might push himself up out of his seat at any moment. He stayed like that for a long time, and his stillness was just as impressive to watch as though he had been performing gymnastics all around the room. I would have given my first born child to know the contents of the letter, but I feel confident in making such excessive claims because I know that I will never ever know what it said. After some minutes his hands began to shake, almost imperceptibly, and he smiled. I hadn't notice that he had been unsmiling until he finally did curl his lip. He had dimples, and a cracked tooth that suggested charisma. I would have offered up a second child to know why he smiled. Whatever the thought, it made him pick up the pen again, this time with utter ease and relaxation, contrasting maddeningly with the frenzied character in which he had thrown the pen down some minutes before.

The entire back of the card was soon filled with the same neat, minuscule script, and if he signed the card, his name blended in completely with the words preceding it. He blew on the words again, to dry the ink, and then read the entire thing over again. This time he was like a sea after a storm, his eyes drifting from left to right, top to bottom... still mechanically, but on their own time, not driven by some inner frenzy. His chest rose and fell like someone who sleeps in the morning after a long night of fever, and still he smiled. When he had finished reading (without making any editing marks, I might add), he blew on the words a third and final time, closed the card, and reinforced the crease by dragging a long, strong thumbnail down the spine of the card. And then, without his usual period of consideration, as though he had been planning on doing it all along, he took the three sugar wrappers (which had been resting on the cappuccino saucer) and added them to the envelope ahead of the card. I thought of the recipient opening the letter, and holding those packets in their hand, and knowing exactly what they meant- agh! and I will never know! Its like hearing one end of a whispered phone call. I could die from frustration.  He proceeded to lick the edge of the envelope with the expertise of a man who does nothing but lick envelopes all day. He used his otherwordly thumbnail again on the edges of the flaps, which were unquestionably sealed by the time he finished with them. The sighs began about half way through writing the address, and the shaking of the hands started up again when he opened up his wallet to take out a little book of stamps, and an air mail sticker. This preparedness made me wonder if he underwent this process every day. Surely its impossible. He would die from the emotional toll- one more letter like that would do him in, I am sure of it.

Once the letter was sealed, stamped and addressed, he moved with speed, perhaps knowing that it was too late to alter things now. In a flash he had put his bag back on his back, stood up, pushed the chair into the table, and tottered out with uneven strides, letter in hand. He paused only to push the two cups together on the table, the cappuccino and the water, as though he had separated them unfairly in their early lives, and was now facilitating a reconciliation. He left so quickly, I didn't even get to think about saying anything to him, although I am not sure what I would have said. I felt like I had just watched something intensely personal, like a birth, a bad breakup, or a reunion after a decade of exile.

It would be impossible to say whether the letter man had been traumatized that afternoon at the Blackwell's cafe, or if he had come to some sort of epiphany. He had smiled, but he had also shaken like a leaf, and drunk off his coffee with the desperation of a man who really wanted something stronger, but is too polite to drink hard liquor before a certain hour of the evening. As for the letter, I'll never know what it said, or who it was for, or what they wrote in response, or what the sugar packets meant. He left me with nothing but the vision of an empty water glass and cappuccino and saucer cup, sitting on an empty cafe table, staring at their reflections in the glossy, fake mahogany finish. The two dishes stood as monuments to the letter writer, the sloping sides of the water glass just barely touching the rounded lip of the saucer, the way that man's consciousness seemed just barely to kiss the reality around him as he wrote.