This week, I’m just going to share a few random thoughts about this story.
Not Paris. Not Italy. Madrid. (There are so many pretty pictures of Madrid. But this picture makes me think of the women in the story.)
Pillar fears she is too old to remarry. She married at 17, her husband died two years later, and she’s been a widow for three years. You can do the math.
I’ve always wanted to know how you read cards. Not Tarot. But standard playing cards used for divination. (And how funny that she believes the cards lie on Sundays.)
The irony of Carlos working in a bank, but for a salary so small that he is always in debt.
“I have never seen so many queues, or so many patient people.” They say that people in Toronto love to stand in lines. That they will join without asking what people are waiting for.
Don’t you know someone just like this? “He had already calculated, with paper and pencil, what the future held, and decided it was worth only half a try.” In the story, this describes a young person. But I know people of all ages who would suit this description.
Thoughts of Katherine Mansfield. “It was a pension, of a sort, but secret.” Not the secret part. That’s all Gallant. (I keep meaning to revisit Mansfield. I know I should.)
Her description of Carlos is brilliant. But I love this simple bit, which comes first. “We could have quarrelled about a piece of string.” (Also, how they played chess often, despite all their quarrelling.)
Summary: “Poverty is not a goad, but a paralysis.” I think I remember reading somewhere that Mavis Gallant had to sell her coat once, waiting for payment for a story.
In Transit‘s stories: By the Sea / In Italy / An Emergency Case / Jeux d’Ete / When We Were Nearly Young / Better Times / A Question of Disposal / The Hunter’s Waking Thoughts / Careless Talk / The Circus / In Transit / The Statues Taken Down / Questions and Answers / Vacances Pax / A Report / The Sunday After Christmas / April Fish / The Captive Niece / Good Deed
Note: This is part of a series of posts on Mavis Gallant’s stories, as I read through her short fiction. This is the fifth story in In Transit. Please feel free to check the schedule and join in, for the series, or for a single story; I would love the company. Next story: “Better Times”.
A number of Gallant’s stories are about persons out of their home enviorment but still loosey tied to where they came from. The narrator of the story spends three days a week going to places people might employ to send her money, such as the offices of American Express, Cook’s travel or the post office. We dont learn who is sending her money. The two men are also waiting for money, one gets an allowance and one works at a bank. The two men seem to anticipate one day getting a decent amount. They live in an unregistered pension (ths owner is evading taxes). As Buried in Print said in her post, stories set in Pensions bring to mind Katherine Mansfield.
Nine years in future narrator has lost touch with her friends. All dreaded passing thirty.
There is a sad feel to this story, of people with but shallow attachments. The narrator says she hates reading. They were poor, but in the way of poor college students from rich families playing at poverty.
It is a sad story, isn’t it. And all the more so because it seems as though there are many possibilities available to these characters, possibilities that they have dismissed summarily.
I would love to know where the money was coming from. Simply out of curiosity. But it makes sense that the characters don’t think all that much about it – it’s such an insignificant detail for them (even though it seems like a detail that should matter much more).