Mortal Fire

by Elizabeth Knox

  * * *

  SISEMA TOLD SHOLTO TO WAIT in the car and bore Canny away to the principal’s office.

  The hallways of the administrative block were sour and musty. It was an early-summer, end-of-term, teenage boy smell made of sweat and hair oil and tired woolen socks. It was everyday to Canny, but Sisema pressed the back of one of her soft, scented hands against her nose.

  When she saw them, the school secretary jumped up and knocked on the principal’s door. She opened it, murmured something, and stepped to one side to usher Canny and her mother into the office.

  The principal came around her desk and pressed Canny’s hand. She congratulated her and made a little speech about how proud the school was of the team’s performance. Then she gave Sisema’s hand a brief shake and asked them to please take a seat.

  Sisema said she’d rather stand. She opened the large bag she was carrying and took out a fan. It was of bleached flax and intricately woven. She used it to fan herself at first—and the principal opened a window. Later Sisema used the fan to gesture, with grace and force and exotic lordliness.

  “I have come about my daughter’s school report,” Sisema began, solemn.

  Canny realized that her mother was going to begin by speaking as if English was a hard task she’d mastered only for these occasions. Her whole bearing declared that she was making a great effort and was to be treated accordingly.

  The principal said, “It is a very good report. Agnes is one of our top pupils. Not an all-rounder, but I hardly think that today of all days you will find anyone inclined to complain about that.”

  Sisema didn’t say anything. The fan stilled. Canny watched her mother’s nostrils flare.

  “It is only that—” the principal began, and then swallowed. She asked again whether Mrs. Mochrie wouldn’t really rather have a seat.

  “It is only that…?” prompted Sisema.

  “The school will be required to write Agnes a letter of reference, and it is only fair that Agnes knows what kind of things she might expect that letter to contain.”

  “Why would you be writing someone a letter about my daughter?”

  “Why, for University entrance, of course.”

  The fan stirred again. The air was allowed to move.

  Canny took a breath and said, “Why do you have to talk about me?”

  “Akanesi. It is what this appointment is for,” Sisema said, “to talk about you.”

  “But I haven’t even had a chance to read my school report.”

  “I presume your mother has it here with her.”

  Sisema shook her head.

  “Oh dear,” said the principal. “I really think you should look at it, Agnes, before we proceed.”

  “I don’t want my daughter to read your report. My daughter does not need to hear those things. Those things that you think,” Sisema said, her tone ponderous.

  “If the report says something I don’t agree with I can defend myself, if I care to,” Canny said.

  Sisema turned to her. “But you won’t care to. You don’t care.”

  “Which is part of my point,” the principal said. “You must see, Mrs. Mochrie, the qualities in your daughter’s makeup that cause her teachers to feel it necessary to raise our concerns with her family.”

  “What have I done?” said Canny.

  The room was silent apart from the twang of a soccer ball on the concrete outside and urgent sporty shouting, all of it ordinary.

  “When I came to this country from the islands”—Sisema began—“the government put money in my pocket and gave me a nice government job. I would go out on the town with my paycheck like all the other little government and armed services girls, and I’d try to buy clothes. I’d try to buy shoes. But my feet were too wide for all the pretty shoes in the shops. And the shopgirls would snigger at me as if my big feet meant I was a lewd person.”

  The principal had gone white. “Mrs. Mochrie—” she pleaded. “It is only that we feel Agnes must do more, for her own sake, to fit in with other young people. That is all we are saying. We’re worried about her.”

  Sisema inhaled, a long slow breath, and at some point in the middle of it, the principal seemed to run out of breath herself as though Sisema had drawn into her lungs all the air in the room. Once the principal was silenced, Sisema said, “My point is that you shouldn’t make nasty assumptions, like those shopgirls. I would have thought that the differences in Akanesi’s background were taken into account.” She had stopped pretending that her English was poor.

  The principal flushed, and snapped, “We have children from all sorts of backgrounds at this school! Our assessment of Agnes’s difficulties has nothing whatsoever to do with her background. Wherever she finds herself there will be requirements.”

  “I would have thought,” Sisema went on, “that the school would shape itself around the needs of its pupils, as my dress shapes itself to my body, not my body to my dress.”

  Canny watched the principal’s gaze flicker, startled, from her mother’s swelling bosom to her round hips and disproportionately tiny belted waist. Sisema smirked and shifted her weight and her silk stockings rubbed against each other with a soft hissing noise.

  The principal was now quite pink. “We’re not saying we expect Agnes to try to win popularity contests. But she doesn’t care to try to please anyone.”

  “Oh. You are making a mistake,” Sisema said, her tone flat, as though she were about to tell a lie and the necessity to do so filled her with such scorn that she had to show it. “It is only that Akanesi’s face doesn’t move. Her muscles are damaged. That’s why she doesn’t smile like a normal girl. A doctor at her birth had an accident with his forceps when he was trying to deliver her.”

  The principal looked down at her own fingers, which were tapping on her blotter. She seemed acutely embarrassed. “Whatever the case, surely at least you should discuss this matter with Professor Mochrie.”

  Sisema flourished the fan. Its sleek white fiber flashed in the light. “My husband, Professor Mochrie, is not Akanesi’s father.”

  Canny was so stunned that her ears were ringing. This dismissal of her stepfather was just about the nearest her mother had come to talking about her real father. She barely had time to catch her breath before the principal said, “Then perhaps Akanesi’s father might like to join the discussion?” She had a savage glint in her eye. She’d had enough of being cowed and was fighting back.

  Canny’s mother was motionless. She seemed not to be breathing at all. Then she said, “Perhaps one day he will.” A pause. “But you wouldn’t like it.”

  And then the two women just stared at each other. Finally the principal said, “You should let Akanesi read her report. And then you could actually discuss it with her instead of simply questioning it.”

  “You write a kind of curse and then tell me to show it to my daughter,” Sisema said.

  “I’m very sorry you see it that way, Mrs. Mochrie.” The principal stood up to signal that the interview was at an end. She looked at Canny, blushed again, and said, “We are terrifically proud of your achievements at the competition, Agnes. And we all believe that you will do something astonishing one day.” She offered Canny her cold hand. Canny took it and shook, and then followed her mother out of the office.

  * * *

  BETWEEN THE QUAD AND THE PARKING AREA, where there was less chance of being overheard by either schoolmates or Sholto, Canny took her mother’s arm and said, “I hate the way you talk about me.”

  “But I was there to do that.”

  “I hate it when you try to explain. What you said about the forceps delivery was a lie.”

  “I blow smoke in their eyes. They don’t deserve explanations. You’re a good girl with good marks, and one day you won’t have to put up with this testing and examination.”

  “Mother!” Canny dug in her feet, but Sisema wouldn’t stop. She pulled away from her daughter and strolled on, her fan working, and her other hand pressed to her cleavage
as though she had heartburn.

  Canny ran to catch up with her. “Is my father still alive?”

  They had reached the car, and Sholto, whose eyes flew open when he heard Canny’s question.

  “I only mentioned your father to discomfort that silly woman.”

  “Really?” Canny was suspicious.

  Sholto edged out of Sisema’s way and, at the same time, deftly opened the car door for her.

  “Yes, of course. Your father is dead. His arms came off. No one could survive their arms coming off.”

  Sisema glanced at her stepson. “I’ll walk into town, Sholto,” she said—and then let her suffering show. “Before all my other appointments I think I need to go to church. You can drive your sister to the hospital to visit her friend.”

  Canny opened her mouth to mention the prize-giving rehearsal, then closed it again. Sisema kissed her on both cheeks, a demonstration of fealty and ownership rather than affection. She ambled off down the hill, her rolling walk turning the heads of a number of senior boys she passed.

  Canny got into the car beside Sholto and they sat in silence for a time, collecting themselves. Finally, “Hell’s bells,” said Sholto.

  “I couldn’t get her to say anything more,” Canny told him. “She talked about my father as if he was alive.”

  “Your mother is the slipperiest person there is,” Sholto said, meaning that it wasn’t Canny’s fault that she didn’t get any information out of Sisema. “What was her fight with the principal about, anyway?”

  “Apparently there’s something wrong with me,” Canny said.

  Sholto started the car and they drove out of the school grounds, and it wasn’t until they were nearly at the hospital that Canny realized he hadn’t responded to what she’d said. They parked under the oaks, just above the lane at the back of Marli’s ward. Sholto said he’d have a little nap. “The day holds more ordeals, I’m afraid, but I won’t tell you about them before you’ve seen Marli.” He slid down the seat and jammed one of his big square knees up under the steering wheel.

  “Sholto,” Canny said. “Did you just forget to be kind?”

  “What?”

  “When I said that there was something wrong with me, you should have said something nice, like that it takes all sorts.”

  “It takes all sorts,” Sholto said, and closed his eyes.

  2

  AFTER HOSPITAL VISITING HOURS and getting on toward teatime, Sholto was still sitting slumped in the car. He was resting his eyes, only opening them now and then to check the progress of the afternoon.

  Sholto had the knack of letting time go by. He may have had things to worry about, but since he couldn’t do anything right that minute about his father’s and stepmother’s plans, he dropped his shoulders and closed his eyes.

  Another ten minutes passed, and Sholto’s eyes came idly open. Then he saw something that made him straighten so quickly that the underside of the steering wheel nearly shaved off his kneecap.

  Reflected in the round chrome frame of the Austin’s wing mirror, Sholto saw Canny hurrying up the hill. Even in the warm light coming through the oak leaves, Canny looked drained, her coffee-colored skin tinged gray. She had pulled the ribbons from the ends of her plaits and they’d unraveled. Her hair, straight but never sleek, was fuming behind her, as black as the smoke from a burning tire. And what had she done with her uniform?

  Sholto immediately understood that something must have happened to Marli. If Marli was worse, then Canny’s world was in peril—and here he was, the first on hand to help. Sholto jumped out of the car and opened his arms, ready to catch her. He was nervous, but strangely thrilled.

  The path under the oaks was empty. Beyond the trees, the windows of the women’s medical wing blazed blindly. There was no one in sight. No running girl.

  Sholto stood feeling silly. He dropped his arms, put his hands in his pockets, and leaned on the car. He took a slow careful look around, just to make sure. Then, superstitious, he stooped to look into the mirror, which showed him nothing but his own face, his freckles standing stark against his pale skin.

  * * *

  WHEN CANNY ARRIVED ON THE WARD she kissed Marli. She stayed stooped over her friend so that their combined breath misted the mirror directly above the padded leather collar that circled Marli’s neck.

  The mirror was one of three attached to the head-end of Marli’s iron lung. One mirror gave Marli a view of the door, so that she could see who was passing in the corridor. A second was angled up toward the ward’s tall windows and the treetops beyond. That mirror was full of sparkling green light. The third, a long rectangle, showed Marli herself, her daily, friendly face. She had to use her mirrors to look around, because the iron lung’s bulk took up most of her field of vision.

  The collar around Marli’s neck created the iron lung’s first seal. The seals made the lung airtight and allowed it to do its work. At the top of the machine was an electrical pump and a bellows, which rose and fell, pushing air in and out of the man-size chamber. When the bellows rose, it drew air out of the chamber, creating a vacuum that made Marli’s lungs expand. When the bellows depressed, the air pressure in the chamber increased, pushing the breath back out of Marli’s lungs again. The machine did what Marli’s paralyzed pulmonary muscles could no longer manage. The pump hummed, the bellows clicked and hissed, and Marli said, “Look.” She shifted her gaze to the picture taped to the enameled wall of the machine. It was a postcard Canny had sent only two days before—of the cathedral of St. Lazarus, on the Isle of the Temple in Founderston. The postcard was stuck over earlier pictures—drawings in crayon by Marli’s little brothers, photographs cut from movie magazines, and a couple of illuminated scripture cards, the kind handed out to the children of Marli’s church. Canny thought the quotes weren’t very encouraging. One said, “Teach us to number our days,” and the other, “We are saved by hope.”

  Canny found a polishing cloth and cleaned Marli’s mirrors. She fetched Marli’s hairbrush and smoothed her hair. Then she produced her present, a beautifully wrapped and beribboned box. She began to tear its wrapping off, saying, “It’s only fair you open it when I’m here.”

  Marli laughed, her laugh odd, since it had to work with the regularity of the machine. Marli couldn’t open her own present. Her hands were inside the iron lung and could be seen through one of its several portholes. Her left one was clubbed because the muscle had shrunk and contracted. The right one sometimes rose to fiddle with a button, to touch her clothes and herself, her ticking, warm self, no longer visible to her, and trapped.

  Canny showed Marli the chocolates, white, milk, and dark, and swirly combinations of the three. “White, please,” Marli said, and Canny popped one in her friend’s mouth. There was no talk for the next few minutes, only sticky hums of enjoyment.

  Once she’d had several chocolates Marli said, “We listened to the broadcast. Even the ward sister sat down.”

  “I bet it sounded smoother than it was.”

  “Smoother?”

  “Oh, you know,” Canny said. She couldn’t think of the right word.

  “You sounded confident. I mean—you all did.”

  Canny knew Marli would have some idea what it was really like—the silences filled with the reverent murmur of the radio commentator, narrating her team’s consultations as if he was talking about a slow patch in a cricket game. Canny hadn’t been able to hear him—he was in a glass booth—but she could see his mouth moving. Murmur murmur murmur.

  Each team had a captain whose job it was to deliver the answers to the judges, and it was mostly the captains’ voices that people heard on the radio. Canny was not her team’s captain, though she’d carried her team through the provincial heats and, in the capital, through the play-offs and into the finals. In their semifinal and final rounds, despite the ticking clock, her team had made a show of putting their heads together over every question. They did that because Mr. Grove had sat them down in their hotel on the second day of the co
mpetition and said that they had to perform more as a team. Apparently he’d had an uncomfortable conversation with the mathematics mistress of Founderston Girls Academy, whose team was the last of the all-girl teams knocked out of the competition in the quarterfinals. The mathematics mistress had said that she’d been very interested to notice that it was a girl who was the power behind his school’s great effort.

  Canny explained some of this to her friend.

  Marli was incredulous. “He made you pretend to have to consult the others?”

  “Yes. But to be fair, Jonno was quicker on the plain number questions. Jonno’s an adding machine.”

  A nurse put her head around the door. “I’m just boiling the jug. Do you want a cup of tea, Agnes?”

  Canny said no thank you, she wasn’t staying long, and the woman left.

  Marli said, “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Sholto’s waiting in the car. I’ll walk over tomorrow. Remind me to tell you all about Ma’s meeting with the principal. Ma told one of her stories. Bald-faced and unblinking.”

  Marli said she was looking forward to that. They had another chocolate, then Canny found a place for the box on top of the iron lung.

  Someone in the corridor had turned on a radio. It was often on and switched to the government-sponsored National Radio with its current affairs and dramas and its big repertoire of inoffensive music.

  Canny kissed Marli again. “I’ll wait for the news and listen with you, but then I’ll have to go,” she said, sounding apologetic, as she often would. Then, brighter, “What’s the plot for today?”

  Marli filled her in on the day’s top news stories, which concerned a horse-doping scandal and the mayor of Metternich, who’d been arrested for public indecency.