Last Night in Montreal

by Emily St. John Mandel

The problem, Eli used to think before he met her, was that he’d never suffered, except insofar as everyone does: the stalled trains, the alarm clocks that don’t ring when they’re supposed to, the agony of being surrounded by other people who all give the impression of being way more productive and considerably more talented than you are, wet socks in the winter, being alone in any season, the chronic condition of being misunderstood, zippers that break at awkward moments, being unheard and then having to repeat yourself embarrassingly in front of girls you’re trying to impress, trying to impress girls and failing, girls who can be seduced but remain unimpressible, girls who can’t be seduced and/or turn out to have boyfriends in the morning, girls, being alone, paper grocery bags with falling-out bottoms, waiting in line at the post office for a half-hour and then being snapped at because you don’t have the right customs declaration forms to send the birthday gift to your perpetually travelling brother, waiting in line anywhere, phone calls from a disapproving mother who doesn’t understand, the crowd of overeducated friends who understand too much and can’t resist bringing up long-dead philosophers and/or quantum physics over an otherwise perfectly civilized morning coffee, girls, an overall lack of direction and meaning as evidenced in your inability to either come up with an acceptable topic for your thesis and then write the thesis or heroically give up the whole thing c...

“No, look, what I mean is the letters come from these unbelievable places because one day years ago he decided to travel, so he travels. He doesn’t talk about travel. He doesn’t theorize about travel. He just buys a ticket and goes,” Eli said. He was watching Geneviève returning to the table with her coffee. “All the theorizing we do. We all talking about doing things, but no one actually does anything. No one ever takes the leap.”

Not only safe but elated, the first time true happiness ever coursed through her chest, like the breaking open of a gate.

It was Unsolved Cases, and Lilia was Unsolved that night.

“But the thought of her disappearance is so terrible, I sometimes wish I could forget . . .” She trailed off, twisting the tissue in her hands, and Lilia touched her fingertips to her lips. “Forget the abduction?” the interviewer asked. “No. I wish I could forget her.” (Michaela, one year later in another country, rewound the tape to make sure she’d heard right: No . . . forget her.)

Simon told no one. He’d always known exactly why his sister had gone away.

(Notes on the fragility of family, written in his other notebook much later that night: Everything matters. Everything matters. Do not ever pretend that it doesn’t matter what you did.)

She moved over the surface of life the way figure skaters move, fast and choreographed, but she never broke through the ice, she never pierced the surface and descended into those awful beautiful waters, she was never submerged and she never learned to swim in those currents, these currents: all the shadows and light and splendorous horrors that make up the riptides of life on earth.

When she told Eli this, some years later, he understood that she thought of the quiet dissolution of her family as having been more or less Lilia’s fault. Lilia had, after all, written her name in a Bible, and she did run out barefoot into the snow. “You can see why I hate her,” Michaela said.

He walked as quickly as possible toward the hotel, composing a letter to Lilia in his head. I want to find you. I want to disappear with you. I want to find you, and in the finding to make you disappear into me. I want to be your language. I want to be your translator. I want to be your dictionary. I want to be your map. I wish, I wish, I wish I knew where you are tonight. In the hotel room he wrote all of this down on hotel stationery, crumpled it up, and threw it away. The words brought her no closer to him.

It was possibly the worst thing she’d ever tasted, but her father told her that all the best tastes in life are acquired,

It was never possible for him to look at Clara afterward without imagining that she was in some way protective, in some way divine, a patron saint of fugitives in a roadside café. He decided to stop travelling and stay by her side.

“I’m not sure I know how to stay,” Lilia said.

“Her father took her away because he felt he had to, and if you care for either of them, never go to the police. That’s all I wanted to say to you.”

I wanted to be her north star. I wanted to be her map. I was alone before I met her. I wanted to disappear with her, and fold her into my life. I wanted to be her compass. I wanted to be her last speaker, her interpreter, her language. I wanted to be her translator, Zed, but none of the languages we knew were the same.

“You don’t still wish you could be with her?” “I think I’d rather be alone,” he said.