Some years ago we had a foreign exchange student come to live with us. We found it very difficult to pronounce his name correctly, but he didn’t mind. He told us to just call him “Eric.”
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We had repainted the spare room, bought new rugs and furniture, and generally made sure everything would be comfortable for him. So I can’t say why it was that Eric chose to sleep and study most of the time in our kitchen pantry.
“It must be a cultural thing,” said Mum. “As long as he is happy.”
We started storing food and kitchen things in other cupboards so we wouldn’t disturb him.
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But sometimes I wondered if Eric was happy; he was so polite that I’m not sure he would have told us if something bothered him. A few times I saw him through the pantry door gap, studying with silent intensity, and imagined what it might be like for him here in our country.
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Secretly I had been looking forward to having a foreign visitor — I had so many things to show him. For once I could be a local expert, a fountain of interesting facts and opinions. Fortunately, Eric was very curious and always had plenty of questions. Unfortunately , they weren’t the kind of questions I had been expecting. Most of the time I could only say, “I’m not really sure” or “That’s just how it is.” I didn’t feel very helpful at all.
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I had planned for us to go on a number of weekly excursions together, as I was determined to show our visitor the best places in the city and its surrounds.
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I think Eric enjoyed these trips, but it was hard to really know. He just didn’t say very much.
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Most of the time he seemed only interested in small things he discovered on the ground. I might have found this a little exasperating, but kept thinking about what Mum had said.
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About the cultural thing.
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Then I didn’t mind so much.
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Even so, none of us could help but be bewildered by the way Eric left our home: a sudden departure early one morning, with little more than a wave and a polite goodbye.
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It actually took us a while to realize he wasn’t coming back.
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There was much speculation over dinner later that evening. Did Eric seem upset? Did he enjoy his stay? Would we ever hear from him again?
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An uncomfortable feeling hung in the air, like something unfinished, unresolved. It bothered us for hours, or at least until one of us discovered what was in the pantry.
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Go and see for yourself. It’s still there after all these years, thriving in the darkness. It’s the first thing we show any new visitors to our house. “Look at what our foreign exchange student left for us,” we tell them.
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“It must be a cultural thing,” says Mum.
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Book design by Shaun Tan, Inari Kiuru & Phil Falco. The text type was set in Adobe Garamond. The illustrations were created using graphite and colored pencil on paper.
The original version of “Eric” was published in Tales From Outer Suburbia , Scholastic Inc., 2009.
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Copyright © 2008 by Shaun Tan. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. and by arrangement with Allen & Unwin and Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada, a Penguin Random House Company. Made in North Point, Hong Kong. 137
ISBN-13: 978-1-338-75550-3 ISBN-10: 1-338-75550-1
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Some years ago we had a foreign exchange student come to stay, but he didn’t want to use our guest room. He preferred to sleep in our pantry . . .
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