The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear

objects: a crystal bowl full of lemon drops, a favourite fringed pillow, a silver wedding platter. In this restoration, the vacant areas were bright colourful spaces, not the hazy, white light of memory.
    Andrei greeted her with a kiss and lifted her red cardigan back onto her shoulders. He gave her neck a quick and gentle rub. She smiled and an eyelash slipped off her cheek onto the table. He felt that, inside, she was flinching in his presence.
    The next morning, the street was bustling with people engaged in early spring chores. A woman several doors away from Andrei was beating a knotted rug she had draped over a washing line. Every time she gave a hard whack with the cane pole, a cloud of brown dust exploded in the air. Neighbours on the other side were mending their fence with a ball of wire. Someone fixed a roof leak. Another person cracked a piece of wood in half with a hatchet. A child skipped on the pavement. Yet at the moment Andrei appeared on the front stoop of his house, everyone froze. The entire street seemed to refrain from breathing until he had passed from view.
    There was never a direct accusation, but everyone gossiped, and the gossip that surrounded Andrei and Nicolae grew savage; neighbours and classmates were like pack dogs sniffing the prey. Perhaps Andrei and Nicolae were stepping out of class, or walking toward the forest, or sharing a quick embrace—suddenly the torchlight was on them. People said they were in league with the Magyars, the Jews, the foreigners, the orgiasts, the anarchists. They stared and whispered about obscene excesses and sexual perversions. At first, Andrei stared back, but the merciless faces troubled him. They glowed with smugness. His treachery not only reinforced their loyalty, but also purged them, made them feel holy. For if he was guilty, then they were pure.
    Why did he risk so much?
    He didn’t know. He was swept away. Maybe it was his need for something more, his desire to live a life of his own choosing even if it meant paying a price. Maybe he just needed to believe in something. Or maybe it was simply the way Nicolae put his mouth to Andrei’s ear and murmured, Because I love you.
    The effect was narcotic. Suddenly he experienced a swell of sureness telling him that everything would be all right.
    Nicolae and Andrei met always in secret, always at different times of the day and night. When it became difficult to meet, they confided their thoughts in letters slipped discreetly between the pages of textbooks and passed between classes. Intoxicated poems, burning declarations and carnal prose, scrawled on envelopes, opened matchboxes, napkins. The naughtiest had a cartoon sketch of two humping cats, and, below it, a heart inscribed with the flowing words Te Ador. They took the precaution of leaving their letters unsigned, but Andrei could not bring himself to part with them. Instead, he wrapped his stack carefully in an old tea towel and tucked it between his bed and night table.
    One day he came home and found his mother smoothing out a small mound of earth in the garden by the kitchen. A small shovel lay at her feet. As soon as she spotted Andrei, her cheeks reddened and she reached with a shaking hand for a cluster of dandelions.
    “So many weeds,” she said, and feigned an exasperated sigh. The digging had left her short of breath.
    Andrei watched while she finished.
    “You work too hard, Mama,” he said, and managed a smile of encouragement.
    When he went inside to change his clothes, he found that the bundle of letters by his bedside was gone, the tea towel along with it.
    He waited, but she never mentioned the letters. That evening, he spent longer in the kitchen, stacking the dishes away, wiping the counters. When it began to rain and the earth turned to mud, he thought of them, buried in haste, absorbing the moisture, ink sliding off the pages, everything melting into grey mush. But still she said nothing. Even when the storm winds were so strong he