by Joan Clark
“Would you like to see it?”
Wordlessly, the little girls bobbed their heads.
“There are wooden people inside.” All this was said in a low, confiding voice but if the children’s parents had been outside, they would have heard her.
Moranna took the children by the hand and led them across the road and along the drive to the house. Except for the plastic wrap around the veranda, she might have been living in a fairytale gingerbread house with its peaked roof and scalloped trim.
“We’ll use the back door,” Moranna said, and they went inside. While the twins stood and stared, Moranna made tea and poured it into mugs and stirred in milk and sugar. “My daughters used to have a china tea set,” she said, “but I haven’t seen it anywhere so I think they must have taken it with them.”
She cleared two chairs. “You can sit here.”
The little girls dipped their heads and drank their tea, smacking their lips as Bonnie and Brianna used to do when she served them tea. The twins had brown eyes, rosy lips and glossy brown hair cut straight across. Moranna reached out and stroked the hair of the nearest twin, which seemed to give the child courage for she said, “Can we have some cookies?” She had perfect enunciation, just like Bonnie had at three.
“Certainly,” Moranna said but when she rummaged in the pantry all she could find were a few damp soda crackers nibbled by mice. She carried the crackers to the sideboard and smeared them with her homemade cherry jam, then set them on the table with a flourish.
When they finished their tea, Moranna gave them a tour of the house including the attic—she harboured the notion that little girls enjoyed seeing the inside of other people’s houses—then took them out to the veranda to visit the wooden people. The children were enchanted with the figures, probably because they were about the same size as themselves. While Moranna watched, they played on the veranda, pretending the people were playmates, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers. They hadn’t been playing long when a belligerent man steamed up the driveway and, catching sight of his children, demanded to know what Moranna was doing with them.
She can’t remember now exactly what the father said, although she thinks he threatened to call the police and report her for kidnapping. She does remember that when he took the twins away, they were crying. She thinks they turned and called goodbye to her at the end of the driveway, but she can’t be sure.
The scripture reading over, the congregation rises to its feet to sing “Silent Night.” Still remembering the afternoon the little girls visited and how sad she was after they had gone, Moranna sings not in her usual loud soprano but in a subdued, desultory voice. Following the carol, Andy, unfamiliar in a black suit and clerical collar, introduces the guest speaker, Lesley Fellowes, from the Canadian Office of Amnesty International in Ottawa. Peering over the heads of the congregation, Moranna watches the Amnesty official get out of her chair and stand at the pulpit. Tall, with a lantern jaw and long, horsey features, Lesley Fellowes doesn’t make a favourable first impression, and discouraged by the sight of her using a neck scarf to clean her glasses, Moranna regrets she was persuaded to come this evening. Why should she listen to a speaker who is so gauche she cleans her glasses on a scarf? Lesley Fellowes hasn’t yet said a word, instead she gazes myopically around the congregation. Finally, she puts on her glasses and begins to speak.
She speaks not about Christmas but about the instability of the world on the cusp between 2001 and 2002; of the bombing of New York in September and now of Afghanistan; the ongoing hostilities between Palestinians and Jews; the violence in Zimbabwe, Kosovo and Rwanda. “Every day humankind is confronted with violence,” Lesley reminds them. “It’s on the radio and television, in magazines and newspapers, pictures of horror and destruction, images of starving people whose homes have been devastated by floods, famine and war. Every day we are barraged by these images on television. How do these pictures of horror affect us? Do we turn the images off?” Moranna is impressed that Lesley Fellowes has put a finger on another reason why she doesn’t own a television—absorbing all that horror would send her to bed for days.
Lesley asks the congregation if they turn away from the horror, convinced they are powerless to help, or if they have developed an immunity that allows them to become passive witnesses to misery. Lesley pauses to look around the congregation and Moranna follows her gaze. Every single head is turned toward the woman at the pulpit who chooses this moment to remove her glasses and, once again, wipe them on the scarf.
When the glasses are back on her nose, she launches into a description of Amnesty International’s work and its goal to rid the world of human rights abuse. She talks about the repressive, intolerant regimes in Zimbabwe, the Congo, Iran, Iraq, China, where innocent people are falsely accused and imprisoned for doing nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or for simply expressing their opinions, people who are locked up for years without access to their families and loved ones, often tortured and denied the necessities of life. “For prisoners confined to a dark cell, receiving a letter from someone like you and you and you,” over and over Lesley jabs a finger at the congregation, “is a beam of light shining through a barred window.”
Unfolding a sheet of paper, she begins reading statements written by prisoners of conscience explaining how Amnesty letters have improved their lives. “The first letters came and nothing happened, but after a bundle of them arrived, I was moved from a dark pit to a cell above ground.”
Moranna imagines a narrow room with a window and a wooden bed, and as the next statement is being read, she imagines a bar of soap and a clean towel being shoved through a small opening in the cell door, the same opening through which a plate of breakfast gruel was passed.
“Until Amnesty intervened and the letters arrived, I was often whipped on the back and the soles of my feet.”
Listening to the testimony, Moranna has the urge to jump up and rant about the travesty of living in a world corrupted by cruelty and suppression, but like the rest of the congregation, she is completely enthralled by Andy’s guest speaker and sits quietly listening.
Lesley refolds the sheet of paper before continuing to speak. “Each one of us has the power to change a prisoner’s life. One letter won’t do much but many letters can sometimes yield astonishing results and I am inviting every single one of you here tonight to become one of Amnesty’s letter writers. All you need is a sheet of paper, an envelope and a postage stamp.”
To one side of the pulpit is a Christmas tree decorated with miniature lights and dozens of white envelopes tied to branches with red bows. Pointing to the tree, Lesley explains that inside each envelope is the name of someone who has been unjustly imprisoned and she’s asking everyone in the congregation to take one of the envelopes home and write a letter on a prisoner’s behalf. The particulars about how to go about writing the letter are in the envelopes.
“Your letter would be a gift that would carry the true meaning of Christmas all year long,” Lesley says and removing her glasses, collapses in a chair. By now, Moranna is thinking of Lesley as a kindred spirit. “You poor woman,” she says aloud, ignoring the curious looks, “with all the good work you’re doing, it’s no wonder you’re exhausted.” Andy takes the pulpit again and over the congregation’s excited whispers, announces the last carol. Getting to her feet, Moranna belts out “Joy to the World” as if she’s been called upon to lead the singing and afterwards hurries to the front of the church. By the time she reaches the tree, all the envelopes have been taken and feeling cheated, she shouts, “So much for sharing the loaves and fishes!” People making their way along the aisles with their envelopes in hand gawk at her, but having been imbued with the spirit of helping those who have been jailed as a result of intolerance, not one of them makes a snide or unkind remark although they have no idea what on earth she means.
“I have an envelope for you, Moranna!” pipes Lottie, waving from halfway up the aisle. She waits at the entrance for her neighbour and they
walk to the truck together.
Rattling home at her usual clip, Lottie says, “As we were leaving church, I saw Andy put an arm around Lesley Fellowes. Right there in the entryway, he put his arm around her and kissed her on the forehead. Do you think they’re lovers?”
“I hope so,” Moranna says. With the Amnesty envelope in her hand, her spirits are soaring. “As Rob used to say, ‘Hooray for houghmagandie!’”
“Did Burns say that?”
“Something like that. He called sex a rejuvenator and I certainly find that’s true.”
“Lucky you,” Lottie says wistfully. “By the way, how is Bun?”
“Fine as far as I know, but I haven’t heard from him since he left last month.”
Another reason Moranna stayed in bed this morning was because she was disappointed there was no letter from him in the mailbox, which she’s now checking every day.
“If you want to telephone him, all you have to do is come on over, you know that,” Lottie says, then adds playfully, “Maybe you could read him some Burns.”
Bellowing lustily over the truck engine, Moranna sings, “Gin a body meet a body,/ Comin’ thro the rye;/ Gin a body fuck a body,/ Need a body cry.”
Lottie says, “You’re outrageous.”
“I know,” Moranna says. Being outrageous is part of being wingy. Turning to Lottie, she says, “Do you know what William Cowper said about madness?”
“No,” Lottie says, “but I remember reading one of his poems in school.”
“He said,” Moranna makes a sweep with her hand, “’There is a pleasure in madness.’”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Lottie retorts. In all these years, it’s the first time she’s heard her neighbour admit to madness.
As soon as she’s dropped off, Moranna shucks her coat onto the floor and tears open the Amnesty envelope. Inside is a postcard with a picture of a Chinese woman whose name is Zhu Hu. The photograph is so dark and smudgy that it’s impossible to read her face, but the accompanying information states that she’s thirty-eight and the mother of a three-year-old daughter who was torn from her while being breast-fed two years ago. A professor of English literature, the woman was seized for participating in a demonstration of the Falun Gong and is being detained in prison for “re-education” and hasn’t seen her daughter or her husband since her arrest. The names and addresses of the officials to whom Moranna is to write polite, firm letters requesting Zhu Hu’s release are included. After typing these official letters, Moranna writes to the prisoner herself.
Dear Zhu Hu,
Hello to you from Baddeck, Cape Breton, Canada, a village of 843, which will seem tiny to someone who lives in a country of more than a billion people. It may sound strange to you but Baddeck is almost too big for me and I prefer the peace and quiet of my farmhouse. I doubt that you are enjoying peace and quiet. According to the information provided, you are being detained for “re-education,” which sounds to me like brainwashing. I have been told that you are a professor of English literature and that you were seized while breastfeeding your infant daughter who is not allowed to be with you. I also had my daughters taken from me when they were not much older than babies, and although it was a long time ago, I miss them terribly.
I have been advised not to expect a reply to my letter, but I hope mine reaches you. I have written two letters on your behalf, one to China’s premier and another to China’s ambassador to Canada. I know nothing of the Falun Gong except that it is a religious movement. Living where I do it will be difficult to find out much about it, but maybe I will pick up something from the radio and the newspapers. I will also send you something to read, to help pass the time.
Signing herself Moranna MacKenzie—she abandoned her married name, Fraser, after the divorce—Moranna searches the bookcase for a novel a professor of English in China might like. Her father did not read any novels except those of Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, and Moranna doesn’t care for the work of either one. Although she hasn’t read many Canadian novels—she holds the view they are amateur efforts—she admires a novel by Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, that she took from the library years ago without signing out and never returned so it must be somewhere in the house and she sets out to find it in the chaos of clutter.
It’s midnight before she finds the novel upstairs on the dust-balled floor beneath a bed and wraps it in brown paper she came across during her search. The post office won’t open until after Boxing Day, but she wants the satisfaction of having the parcel and the letters ready for the mail. Then she lights the lantern and goes out into the dark, starless night to look for the piece of wood she set aside in the barn for Anne MacKenzie. She knows she’s riding a wave of mania and should go to bed, but she isn’t sleepy and wants to begin working on Anne who, next to the Seer, is the second bestseller in the clansmen series. Anne was a seventeenth-century Highland poet who composed verses in Gaelic, which Moranna doesn’t speak, no one in her family does, not even Hettie spoke it, the language having died with her great-great-grandparents. It’s a shame, really, and one day she intends to take lessons at the Gaelic college in St. Ann’s so she can compose Gaelic verses and sing them to tourists.
Moranna brings in the wood and, settling herself in front of the stove, picks up a chisel and hammer and begins shaping the woman she’s carved four times before. She always carves Anne singing, but to make the work artful, she varies the circumstances. This Anne will be singing to clansmen gathered around a fire in the heathered hills—so Moranna will later tell potential buyers, enticing them with words from Brigadoon. She works throughout the night and only when the grey light of dawn eases through the trees does she put down her tools and go to bed. She sleeps through most of Christmas Day, and when she wakes, she eats Lottie’s plum pudding and sauce while reading the newspapers.
Among Andy’s bundle of papers is an errant National Post. Moranna knows the newspaper carries her ex-husband’s column, which is syndicated worldwide, but since it only runs one day a week, she doesn’t expect to come across it. But there it is on the bottom of page five, along with a grainy photograph of Duncan. He has grown a goatee, an attempt perhaps to make himself look distinguished. Moranna supposes he is distinguished, being a seasoned journalist of more than thirty years and the author of several books. After he left her, he moved to New York and then London, where he became a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs: Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and now apparently Afghanistan. For the National Post column, Duncan interviewed various people about the whereabouts of the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and whether they thought he was alive or dead. Moranna notices the column doesn’t specify where the interviews took place or if they were conducted in person or on the telephone. Certainly not in Afghanistan or the caption wouldn’t have been posted in London. Now in his sixties, Duncan has probably passed the age of being able to work near the front lines of a war-torn country and has cobbled together the column from a string of telephone conversations, which explains why the piece discloses nothing she hasn’t already heard on the radio. It isn’t up to the high standards Duncan once set for himself. Moranna has become so dispassionate that she could be reading a column written by a stranger, which of course Duncan now is.
She wasn’t as dispassionate in 1991 when she saw him on television in Lottie’s kitchen, expounding with great authority on the Gulf War and the bombing of Iraq and the odds against a successful assassination of Saddam Hussein. As soon as she saw him sitting in a chair talking to a newscaster, she picked up Lyle’s empty coffee mug and hurled it at the screen. Pottery shards scattered on the tile floor and an ugly scratch appeared on the television frame. Fortunately the screen didn’t break.
“That man,” Moranna said, “is the father of my children.”
Lottie had recognized Duncan, having remembered him from the week he once spent in Baddeck. She advised her neighbour to sit down—she looked angry enough to put her foot through the screen. Moranna ignored her and remained standing, c
aptivated by the sight of the man she believed had brought her to the lowest point in her life. It was a shock seeing Duncan in vivid colour on the television screen, seeing the phony he’d become. That was how she saw him, as an imposter who had set himself up as an expert about what was happening on the other side of the world.
Finally, the interview was over, and to hurry Moranna out of the house Lottie offered to walk her home. She didn’t want her here when Lyle returned from the hardware store. Their neighbour had always made her husband uneasy and he didn’t like her being in his house. Also, when he saw the scratch on the frame, he might insist that Moranna pay for the repair or replace the television—with his failing health, he had become bellicose and demanding. The television didn’t need replacing, and using a putty stick, Lottie could mend the scratch herself.
“You look exhausted,” she said.
By now Moranna was slumped in a chair. Seeing Duncan, so alive, so smug and pleased with himself, had exhausted her and allowing herself to be led home by one of the few people she trusted, she collapsed in bed.
FOUR
MORANNA MET DUNCAN FRASER in Ingonish the summer following her first year at Acadia University. Henry, her father’s brother, had persuaded the owners of Keltic Lodge to hire her on as a waitress. In those days landing a job in summer hotels required connections. Duncan’s connection was his uncle, Stewart Fraser, a Sydney lawyer. Duncan was a Haligonian with a political-science degree and plans to study journalism in the fall. He had returned to the lodge to work as a bellman for the second time in order to be near his girlfriend, Susie, who lived in Ingonish.
During her first year of university, Moranna had gone out with half a dozen men, so she thought them, having left the boys behind in Sydney Mines. Except for Perry, who wanted to become a druggist like his father, none of the boys she knew in high school had shown a speck of ambition. But Moranna was ambitious, not to become a concert pianist as she had planned but a stage actress. Fully intending to pursue a musical career, during her first term at Acadia she had taken courses in the music faculty, but she had also signed on as script assistant to drama professor Terrence Scipio, who was directing Shaw’s Saint Joan, and spent most evenings at play rehearsals as an understudy for Bella Maunder’s Joan, a role Moranna was convinced she could play better than Bella. During rehearsals she sat beneath the stage, script in hand, whispering lines actors forgot and pretending she was the impassioned Joan chastising the King for claiming Luck, not God, had brought him victory. Moranna went so far as to cut her hair peasant short in the event that Bella became ill and she had to take over the role.
