“Where did these boxes come from?” she asked. “Are they…?”
Evgen nodded. “Good boxes. They’ve been here from the start.”
He pulled out a box and put it in Vanja’s hands. “What’s this?” Vanja locked her elbows to get a better grip.
“Letters and journals. Some people I came to think of.”
“Do you know this archive by heart?”
Evgen reached for another box. “I sort all the documents that come in when someone’s died. All biographical texts are to be preserved.”
“But you haven’t always been here, have you? How do you know so much about them?”
“I like reading.” Evgen waved his box at the door.
He set his box down on the table in the middle of the library. Vanja put hers on top. Evgen took a pair of thin gloves from his pocket and handed them to her.
“Like I said, letters and journals,” Evgen said, and opened the first box. “This one contains letters from one Kettuns’ Daniel. He frequently wrote to his brother in Essre about some sort of eczema he had. His brother sent the letters here a couple of years ago, after Daniel’s death.” He pointed to the other box. “Journal entries and letters from pioneers in that one. Some of them mention, uh, bodily matters.”
“Is this paper, all of it?” Vanja asked. “Good paper?”
“It is. And I won’t let the committee have it.” Evgen made a face. “Yet.”
“That’s good.”
“There’s coffee in my thermos,” Evgen said. “In case you need it.”
Vanja smiled at him. He returned the smile, warily, and sat back down at his desk. Then there was just the rasp of his pencil on the index cards.
Like Evgen had said, Kettuns’ Daniel’s letters were all addressed to a brother, Vikuns’ Tor, in Essre. The oldest letter had been written ten years earlier; the last one was three years old. Daniel had written about one letter every other month and almost exclusively about his body.
Dear brother,
I hope you’re well. Over here things have been a little rough lately. The eczema and all that is getting worse. I wash as little as I can and rub on rich creams but it keeps spreading. The doctor says it’s not psoriasis but it sure looks like it to me. I’ve read about it at the library. Bathe less and keep moisturizing, that’s what the doctor keeps telling me. I’m only supposed to take baths every other week and just wash with a cloth and soap for the rest. The doctor says the intimate soap is the best but I don’t like the smell. Then I’m supposed to use the rich cream. I rub it in and rub it in but I just get kind of greasy. It just sits on top of the rash. Well, that’s enough about that.
Vanja leafed through the pages. Detailed accounts of Daniel’s hygiene habits, his opinions on various soaps and creams, his ruminations on himself. He never referred to his brother’s replies. But the eczema grew steadily worse.
Well, I don’t know what to do. Nothing’s helping. That crusty eczema on the backs of my knees and on my back and in the crooks of my arms, they’ve spread to my scalp. The skin feels sort of brittle and it hurts when I touch it. The scurf on my scalp itch and run. The doctor says it could be a psychosomatic reaction. He means I’m a hysteric. He didn’t say “hysteric” but I could hear that that’s what he was thinking. He asked me how I was feeling. Fine, I said, except for the eczema. I don’t want to go back there anymore. I feel so small when I have to show them all my defects and ailments. Like I’m whiny. I almost wish I had a broken leg or something because then at least there would be something properly wrong with me. Then they could say “you have a broken leg” and fix it.
Daniel tried a range of different treatments: he was committed to the clinic for a round of warm mushroom poultices. He tried diets that excluded mushrooms, root vegetables, or beans by turns. Nothing worked. His joints and muscles began to ache. He wrote less and less often.
I wake up too early in the morning and just lie there, not knowing what to do with myself. I think about when we were little and played by the railroad tracks. Do you remember when we put forks and knives on the rails and waited for the train to come flatten them? We waited all afternoon. No train in sight. We’d got the day wrong. But you talked about taking that train one day, all the way across the tundra to Essre, and becoming someone special there. I hope you’ve become someone special. I thought about something else, too. Another memory:
The rest of the letter was missing. Vanja leafed through the pages. The letter at the bottom of the box consisted of a few short lines. It was dated several months after the previous one.
Things are tough right now. I don’t have a job anymore. They say I’m too ill to work. All I do is sit at home and look out the window. I think about you. Why haven’t you replied?
“Excuse me,” Vanja said out loud. “Do you know what happened to Daniel? Why he died? Because he didn’t die from eczema, did he?”
“I remember it well,” Evgen said from his desk. “He lay down in front of the auto train. People talked about it for months.”
Vanja opened the next box, which contained documents from a number of authors. The paper was thin, some sheets were brittle. The documents smelled dry and musty at the same time. She leafed through logs, letters, a few journals. Most were letters. She had some success: letters from an engineer discussing the development of the commune’s products with a colleague. A doctor ranting in his diary about the excessive use of soap. After a while, she noticed a cup of coffee by her elbow. The doctor’s diary ended abruptly. The last third had been ripped out.
Some letters from a “Jenny” filled the bottom third of the box. Jenny was a pioneer—not just a pioneer to Amatka from Essre, but born on the other side, before the colonization. She wrote letters to her mother in a childish, sprawling hand.
Vanja learned in the first letter that Jenny’s mother hadn’t joined the colonization. Jenny wrote to her anyway, to keep the memory of her mother alive. She gave detailed descriptions of the colonization as she lived it: long rides on uncomfortable seats in coaches that broke down one after the other; the temporary camps; the “hard mental work” of building Amatka. After that particular mention, the page had simply been cut in half. When the letter continued, Jenny was complaining about the lack of basic necessities and that they had to go months without basic hygiene and medical supplies.
I’m so tired of washing menstrual pads. I’m tired of the cloth pads and smelling people’s bad breath. It would be so wonderful to wear a disposable pad just once, or—the luxury—a tampon! And to brush my teeth.
Vanja noted the word “disposable pad” down. Several pages were missing from this letter as well. Finally, she got up to stretch her back. There was a vague discomfort in her belly. She must be hungry.
“Did you find anything?” Evgen said from his desk.
“Yes, plenty. But there are pages missing in several places.”
“That means they’ve been redacted.”
“Redacted?”
Evgen cleared his throat. Vanja pulled the corners of her mouth down. Evgen looked at her and nodded. Silence fell once more.
“Is that your job?” Vanja asked.
“Yes. At least it is when new material comes in.”
“So then you know what they said.”
He cleared his throat again.
“Sometimes I think…,” Vanja began, glancing at Evgen.