Kirsten signaled for her to wait and set off down the glassed-in corridor, her flat feet clumping, toward the chocolate magnate’s mansion, where the pain clinic was housed. Fifteen minutes later she returned with her knapsack on her back, panting from her haste, which her big heart had difficulty coping with. She closed and then locked the apartment door, drew the curtains stealthily, and put her fingers to her lips to warn Irina to keep quiet. Finally she handed her the knapsack and waited, hands behind her back and a knowing smile on her face as she rocked back and forth on her heels. “It’s for you,” she said.
Undoing the backpack, Irina saw several packets tied with rubber bands and knew instantly they were the letters Alma had received so regularly and that she and Seth had sought for so long, the ones from Ichimei. They had not been lost forever in a bank vault as the two of them had feared, but had been stored in the safest place in the world, in Kirsten’s backpack. Irina understood now that Alma, realizing death was drawing near, had given Kirsten the responsibility of looking after them and had told her who to give them to. But why to her? Why not to her son or grandson?
Irina took it as a posthumous message from Alma, her way of showing how much she loved and trusted her. At that moment, she could feel something in her chest shattering like a clay vessel, while her heart swelled with profound gratitude. Faced with such a proof of friendship, she realized how deeply cherished she was, as she had been during her early childhood. The monsters of her past were beginning to recede, and her stepfather’s videos, which had exerted such frightening power over her, were somehow reduced to their true dimensions. They seemed like bleak carcasses fed on by anonymous scavengers without identity or soul, now powerless.
“My God, Kirsten. Just imagine, I’ve lived half my life fearing something that isn’t real.”
“For you,” Kirsten repeated, pointing to the contents of her backpack strewn across the floor.
* * *
That afternoon, when Seth returned to his apartment, Irina threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with a newfound joy, scarcely appropriate to a time of mourning.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, Seth,” she announced.
“Me too. But tell me yours first.”
Irina steered him impatiently toward the granite kitchen island, where she had put the packets of letters from the backpack.
“These are Alma’s letters. I was waiting for you to come to open them.”
The packets were numbered from one to eleven, and contained ten envelopes apiece, all except the first, which had six letters and a few drawings. They sat on the sofa and looked at them in the order their owner had left them. A hundred and six missives in total, some brief and others longer, some more informative than others, all signed simply “Ichi.” The ones in the first packet were written on sheets torn from an exercise book in a childish hand, from Tanforan and Topaz, and were so badly censored that their meaning was lost. The drawings already hinted at the polished style and firm brushstrokes that characterized the painting that Alma had taken with her to Lark House. It would take them several days to read all the correspondence, but a swift glance at the other packets showed they were dated from 1969 on. Forty years of an irregular correspondence that had one thing in common: they were all love letters.
“I also found a letter dated January 2010; it was behind Ichimei’s portrait. But all these letters are old and are addressed to the Belascos’ house at Sea Cliff. Where are those she received at Lark House over the past three years?”
“I think these are the ones, Irina.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My grandmother collected Ichimei’s letters her whole life through, all those that came to Sea Cliff, where she always lived. Then, when she moved to Lark House, she began sending the letters to herself every so often, one by one, in the yellow envelopes you and I saw. She received and read them, treasuring them as if they were new.”