Alice Munros Best

yellow wine. For me a long-stemmed glass that had not been dusted, for Charlotte a glass tumbler, for himself a plastic cup. It seemed impossible that any dinner could come out ofthe little kitchen alcove, where foodstuffs and pots and dishes were piled helter-skelter, but there was a good smell of roasting chicken, and in a little while Gjurdhi brought out the first course – platters of sliced cucumber, dishes of yogurt. I sat in the wicker chair and Charlotte in the single armchair. Gjurdhi sat on the floor. Charlotte was wearing her slacks, and a rose-colored T-shirt which clung to her unsupported breasts. She had painted her toenails to match the T-shirt. Her bracelets clanked against the plate as she picked up the slices of cucumber. (We were eating with our fingers.) Gjurdhi wore his cap and a dark-red silky dressing gown over his trousers. Stains had mingled with its pattern.
    After the cucumber, we ate chicken cooked with raisins in golden spices, and sour bread, and rice. Charlotte and I were provided with forks, but Gjurdhi scooped the rice up with the bread. I would often think of this meal in the years that followed, when this kind of food, this informal way of sitting and eating, and even some version of the style and the un tidiness of the room, would become familiar and fashionable. The people I knew, and I myself, would give up – for a while – on dining-room tables, matching wineglasses, to some extent on cutlery or chairs. When I was being entertained, or making a stab at entertaining people, in this way, I would think of Charlotte and Gjurdhi and the edge of true privation, the risky authenticity that marked them off from all these later imitations. At the time, it was all new to me, and I was both uneasy and delighted. I hoped to be worthy of such exoticism but not to be tried too far.
    Mary Shelley came to light shortly. I recited the titles of the later novels, and Charlotte said dreamily, “Per-kin War-beck. Wasn’t he the one – wasn’t he the one who pretended to be a little Prince who was murdered in the Tower?”
    She was the only person I had ever met – not a historian, not a
Tudor
historian – who had known this.
    “That would make a movie,” she said. “Don’t you think? The question I always think about Pretenders like that is who do
they
think they are? Do they believe it’s true, or what? But Mary Shelley’s own life is the movie, isn’t it? I wonder there hasn’t been one made. Who would play Mary, do you think? No. No, first of all, start with Harriet. Who would play Harriet?
    “Someone who would look well drowned,” she said, ripping off a golden chunk of chicken. “Elizabeth Taylor? Not a big enough part. Susannah York?
    “Who was the father?” she wondered, referring to Harriet’s unborn baby. “I don’t think it was Shelley. I’ve never thought so. Do you?”
    This was all very well, very enjoyable, but I had hoped we would get to explanations – personal revelations, if not exactly confidences. You did expect some of that, on occasions like this. Hadn’t Sylvia, at my own table, told about the town in Northern Ontario and about Nelson’s being the smartest person in the school? I was surprised at how eager I found myself, at last, to tell my story. Donald and Nelson – I was looking forward to telling the truth, or some of it, in all its wounding complexity, to a person who would not be surprised or outraged by it. I would have liked to puzzle over my behavior, in good company. Had I taken on Donald as a father figure – or as a parent figure, since both my parents were dead? Had I deserted him because I was angry at
them
for deserting
me
? What did Nelson’s silence mean, and was it now permanent? (But I did not think, after all, that I would tell anybody about the letter that had been returned to me last week, marked “Not Known at This Address.”)
    This was not what Charlotte had in mind. There was no opportunity, no exchange. After the chicken, the wineglass and the tumbler and cup were taken away and filled with an extremely sweet pink sherbet that was easier to drink than to eat with a spoon. Then came small cups of desperately strong coffee. Gjurdhi lit two candles as the room grew darker, and I was given one of these to carry to the bathroom, which turned out to be a toilet with a shower. Charlotte said the lights were not working.
    “Some repairs going on,” she said. “Or else they have taken a whim. I really think they take