Dear Life

a spare man of ordinary height, whose reddish fair hair was cut very short and glistened in the artificial light from the hallway.
    “You’ve met Mary,” he said. “She has a lot to say for herself.She won’t be in your class so you won’t have to undergo that every day. People either take to her or they don’t.”
    He struck me as between ten and fifteen years older than myself and at first he talked to me just in the way an older man would do. A preoccupied future employer. He asked about my trip, about the arrangements for my suitcase. He wanted to know how I would like living up here in the woods, after Toronto, whether I would be bored.
    Not in the least, I said, and added that it was beautiful.
    “It’s like—it’s like being inside a Russian novel.”
    He looked at me attentively for the first time.
    “Is it really? Which Russian novel?”
    His eyes were a light, bright grayish blue. One eyebrow had risen, like a little peaked cap.
    It was not that I hadn’t read Russian novels. I had read some all through and some partway. But because of that eyebrow, and his amused but confrontational expression, I could not remember any title except
War and Peace
. I did not want to say that because it was what anybody would remember.
    “War and Peace.”
    “Well, it’s only the Peace we’ve got here, I’d say. But if it was the War you were hankering after I suppose you would have joined one of those women’s outfits and got yourself overseas.”
    I was angry and humiliated because I had not really been showing off. Or not only showing off. I had wanted to say what a wonderful effect this scenery had on me.
    He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.
    “I guess I was really expecting some sort of old lady teacher come out of the woodwork,” he said, in some slightapology. “As if everybody of reasonable age and qualifications would have got back into the system these days. You didn’t study to be a teacher, did you? Just what were you planning to do once you got your B.A.?”
    “Work on my M.A.,” I said shortly.
    “So what changed your mind?”
    “I thought I should earn some money.”
    “Sensible idea. Though I’m afraid you won’t earn much here. Sorry to pry. I just wanted to make sure you were not going to run off and leave us in the lurch. Not planning to get married, are you?”
    “No.”
    “All right. All right. You’re off the hook now. Didn’t discourage you, did I?”
    I had turned my head away.
    “No.”
    “Go down the hall to Matron’s office and she’ll tell you all you need to know. You’ll eat your meals with the nurses. She’ll let you know where you sleep. Just try not to get a cold. I don’t suppose you have any experience with tuberculosis?”
    “Well I’ve read—”
    “I know. I know. You’ve read
The Magic Mountain
.” Another trap sprung, and he seemed restored. “Things have moved on a bit from that, I hope. Here, I’ve got some things I’ve written out about the kids here and what I was thinking you might try to do with them. Sometimes I’d rather express myself in writing. Matron will give you the lowdown.”
    I had not been there a week before all the events of the first day seemed unique and unlikely. The kitchen, the kitchencloakroom where the workers kept their clothes and concealed their thefts, were rooms I hadn’t seen again and probably wouldn’t see. The doctor’s office was similarly out of bounds, Matron’s room being the proper place for all inquiries, complaints, and ordinary rearrangements. Matron herself was short and stout, pink-faced, with rimless glasses and heavy breathing. Whatever you asked for seemed to astonish her, and cause difficulties, but eventually it was seen to or provided. Sometimes she ate in the nurses’ dining room, where she was served a special junket, and cast a pall. Mostly she kept to her own quarters.
    Besides Matron there were three registered nurses, not one of them within thirty years of my age. They had come out of retirement to serve, doing their wartime duty. Then there were the nurse’s aides, who were my age or even younger, mostly married or engaged or working on being engaged, generally to men in the forces. They talked all the time if Matron and the nurses weren’t there. They didn’t have the least interest in me. They didn’t want to know what Toronto was like, though some of them knew people who had gone there on their honeymoons, and