She is suddenly seized by a kind of nostalgia for the thing-ness of letter-writing, the sensuality of holding the pens, of writing beautifully for the pleasure of it, of folding the sheets of stationery, of licking stamps and the envelope flaps and sealing them up. Picking up her pen, she sits down and begins to write on a sheet of paper, clumsily, her hand gradually coming unrusted, the motion beginning to flow. A part of her brain has remembered how to do this despite long disuse. Words pour out onto the paper in blue ink. She is happy to see her handwriting, individual and expressive. She had forgotten how much she enjoyed this action.
Finishing up a few sentences, she takes up another sheet, writes "Dear Mother" in the upper left corner and opens her heart. The paper fills with flowing lines, news and old stories and feelings and wishes, and then another sheet, and another. She loses all sense of time; she is in another place in her mind; the writing has unleashed her memory. "Speak, memory," Nabokov wrote. Franca's memory speaks on page after page.
At length, her arm weary, her mind eased by all the telling, she stops, leans back in her chair, and rereads her words. They look beautiful, they look like a part of her, they convey a world of meaning, of personality. Her mother will be startled but delighted to get this letter. Franca smiles.
Sealing up the letter, addressing the envelope, and licking the stamp, she walks out to clip it to her mailbox. Then, with a sigh almost of relief, she returns to her keyboard, logs on, and retrieves her e-mail....
Back