Deep River Night

by Patrick Lane

  His hand moved down the cat’s back, the dark fur lying down and then lifting, a shudder running along the cat’s spine, a moan quiet as a distant grouse cry falling.

  “Pauvre Marie. Her cat was a stray that came each day to her window above the café and slept in the empty flower box. There were no geraniums in 1945. Mon petit chat, ma jolie, is what she would have called you, and she would give you a scrap of the chicken she stole from La Closerie des Lilas where she worked in the kitchen. Her hands were rough and chapped from the bad soap, the cold water. A black cat like you, but a tom, not a queen.”

  He heard his voice but it seemed another’s. It seemed made up, a storyteller’s voice, someone who pretended what he did, what he seemed to do, what he’d done. The cat was all that held him still. He reached out and stroked her ears flat. “Listen, mon amie sauvage,” he said.

  “In the Gare Saint-Lazare the glass roof went on forever. The sky that morning was dirty and the rain wouldn’t wash it away, the heavens smeared with soot and dirt. I looked up and saw the glass ceiling like a blunt knife jutting into the sky, its blade tearing at the clouds as they passed over. The station was almost deserted but for a line of soldiers carrying litters with the bodies of men upon them, all of the bodies alive, all of them broken, their heads, their hands, their hearts. The wounded called to each other. There was the laughter, the jokes, but there was crying too, there were the silent ones. I could almost hear the breathing of the injured, the labour of their lungs. Soldiers were carrying them to the trains, the echoing slaps of their boot soles on the marble, the dull thuds of their heels. And one of those soldiers was Tommy. Yes, he was there. The concourse at Saint-Lazare was like an extended hand, cement fingers reaching past the hospital train into the open in the hope the falling rain might clean them. The cars were dead-ended in the station, no engine to be seen. The rails beyond the cars stuttered in the thin mist rising from the sleepers.”

  Art took a long drink and then tipped the glass and emptied it. He felt nothing, his body numb. The cat on his lap lay very still.

  “It’s okay, little one, it’s okay. There’s more,” he said. He placed the empty glass on the table, his other hand burrowed in the cat’s fur.

  “I sat in the little café near the west gate, the one whose window was always smeared with steam from the kettles and the yellow catarrh of the cheap cigarettes the poor smoke as they wait for a chance to make a few aluminum centimes carrying heavy bags to the taxis. A few pennies, a rare franc or two from a soldier on leave, a real dollar from an American soldier showing off to his girl. There was still a war somewhere. The wounded were being carried to the hospital train and then on to Le Havre. I looked out the café window and remembered the church on rue Saint-Séverin, the one with the twisted pillar and the bone garden, the one where if you stood in the Gothic chapel in the apse at dawn you could hear the dry tears fall from the eyes of the two old women who sat every morning at dawn a pew apart to mutter their rosaries, their bodies gently rocking, their heads nodding as if moved by strings held in the hands of angels.

  “Marie hated it when I went to the chapel, mon chat. But I went there for the quiet, not the god. She hated the Church, she hated what it had done to her, the priest who hurt her when she was a little girl in Marseille. And she hated her mother who did not believe her even as Marie bled in her arms. Pas le père Boniface, her mother said. Pas lui, pas ça, she said again and again. Il ne ferait jamais ça. He would never do that, her mother said. She was so angry. Pas le père.”

  Not the Father.

  “And Marie hated and she hated until she wept in my arms from the exhaustion of her hate, the weariness of her body when it refused to cry for her, the inexhaustible journey of her heart.”

  The cat looked to the door, but Art didn’t notice Joel sitting outside listening. Art reached out for the glass on the stool beside him, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t pick it up.

  “Mon petit chat,” Art said, the cat beginning to purr again, the tips of Art’s fingers hanging on to the table edge, the other hand stilled in the cat’s thick fur. Écoute, mon chat. It was a month later on the rue Saint-Séverin, a different leave. I was coming out of the church when I saw Tommy again. He was crossing the street. The woman with him tripped as she stepped from the curb, a broken shoe in her hand, the high heel hanging from the leather heel by a thread. She spoke his name. I’d only seen his face for a moment but when she said Tommy, I knew.

  “I stood in the shadow of the church door and saw Tommy pull her across the street, the girl stumbling as she tried to keep up. Mon chat, ma jolie, she was just another woman from the quarter, someone who had made it through the war only to discover the war wasn’t over. I followed them to a little hotel in an alley off the rue du Cherche-Midi. The clerk told me Tommy had been living there for a week. I looked at the register and saw he was with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. Tommy Bukowski, a corporal. Dank u, Canada, dank u. Tommy who told me Godelieve died because she choked and couldn’t breathe. The girl is always with me, petit chat. I remember the fear in her face when Tommy first brought her from her hiding place into the light at the farm. Yes, and I watched her mother drown. I did nothing, mon amie. I didn’t stop them raping Godelieve. I didn’t stop Tommy.”

  The cat shifted its body on his knees as Art finally got the glass into his hand. He lifted it to his lips, tipped it up, and drank the emptiness.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the cat digging its claws into his knees.

  Art wept.

  “Ah, I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t report him when we reached Walcheren after the farm and when I finally did, Claude said it was too late. But it wasn’t, mon chat. Claude was the major. He could have done something even though we were on a short leave in Paris. A telephone call. It would have taken nothing to call someone. When I got back to the unit Tommy had transferred. I could never get anyone to tell me where. Claude told me later he was killed in some alley fight over a girl, but I didn’t know if I could believe Claude. Alvin said he was sure it wasn’t true Tommy got a transfer, that Tommy had either died or deserted. One day he was there and the next day he was gone was what Alvin said. But he wasn’t dead. There he was, Corporal Tommy Bukowski of the Royal Canadian Medical Corps, walking down the rue Saint-Séverin. Arrête de me blesser. Stop hurting me! the girl cried. Poor girl, I thought, to be with him.”

  Joel’s voice was soft. “Art,” he said. “Wake up.”

  Art looked at Joel, but he didn’t see him. He turned his head and spoke to the empty doorway where Joel was standing. “Tommy was in the Medical Corps. It didn’t take long for me to find out where he was stationed. He worked the hospital trains. I followed him. I knew where he stayed in Paris then. Little Tommy Bukowski, a corporal. I remember wondering how he got the rank. He should have been demoted. He should have been in the stockade. He should have been hanged.”

  Joel said Art’s name again.

  Art’s hand went still when he finally heard Joel’s voice, his palm resting on the cat’s back. The purrs went on, a small motor somewhere in the cat’s throat. Art nodded his head slowly. “Joel,” he said, a voice coming out of a dream. “How long have you been there?”

  “It’s okay, Art,” said Joel. “I came to tell you Jim McAllister took his trailer off the blocks. He’s hitched it to his truck.”

  Art spoke from far away. “Did Claude look after it?”

  “Claude?”

  “Have you told him?”

  “Me?”

  The cat stood then on his lap and arched its back as Art ran his hand up its long black tail. She jumped down, glanced at Joel, then slid past like moving smoke, disappearing like a shadow into the tall grass under the window.

  “I’m sorry,” Art said. “I was thinking of someone else.”

  Joel shrugged his shoulders.

  Art took his feet off the apple box he used as a stool and stood, balancing himself as if on a rocking boat, his back stra
ightening, his shoulders pulling themselves up, knees clicking into place. He reached back and put his hand on the chair and braced himself as he prepared for a first step, wanting to make sure he got it right. His other hand gripped the empty glass, his knuckles white with the strain of not dropping it.

  “There’s something I’m trying to remember,” Art said. “It’s driving me crazy, but I don’t know what it is. It was up at the dump where the dress was.”

  “Dress?”

  “Irene’s dress. Jim threw it away on the dump. Other stuff too.”

  Joel nodded, suddenly seeming to Art older than he was, older than all of them.

  “I think I fixed it,” Joel said.

  The Express going to Vancouver went by on the tracks. They were quiet as they listened to it pass. When it was gone Joel heard far off the engine on the southbound night freight start up. The freight train had been pulled into the siding waiting on the Express.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Art, Joel coming back into focus. “Fixed what?”

  “I got Emerson to slash McAllister’s truck tires. There’s no way he can get them repaired. Not with the men from the shop at the dance. He’s not going anywhere tonight.”

  “Emerson? The Turfoot boy?”

  “He’s good with a knife,” said Joel. “Don’t worry. Jim will never know it was him. Emerson’s a ghost.”

  “Why him?”

  “He’s been following me around.” When Art looked at him, Joel said, “It’s because of Myrna,” he said.

  “Is she okay? Myrna, I mean.”

  “She’s going to have a baby.” Art stared at him, Joel adding, “My baby.”

  “Yeah,” Art said. “I think maybe Molly told me.” Art was half in one world and half in another. “I think maybe she did,” he said.

  He took his hand from the chair, leaned down, and picked up the whisky bottle, gripping it by the neck. Ignoring Joel, he took a step to the cold wood stove and, trembling, placed his glass on the iron. He slowly poured it half full of whisky, spilling a single drop on the iron. He set the bottle on the stove and looked at the drop for a moment as if unsure whether to leave the drop or lick it up, then cupped the glass in both shaking hands, but didn’t lift it. Bending down, he placed his lips to the rim, raised his head and the glass at the same time, the whisky draining into his throat. He stood there, the glass pressed against his teeth, and waited for the clouds in his head to lift.

  He was no longer in Paris with Marie. He was no longer looking for Tommy. Saint-Séverin was full of ghosts, the first one a poor hermit living alone near the Seine. Art was sure the last thing the man had wanted was a pile of stones built on top of his home.

  I’m in my cabin by the North Thompson River and Joel is standing in the doorway, Art thought. Joel is in the shadows, but I know he’s there because I’m talking to him. Art poured another drink, his hands steadier, and drank three more fingers, a fleeting image in his mind of a line of soldiers carrying empty stretchers across a field of snow. One man dressed in a red coat was screaming, another man was pushing his entrails into his body. Art did not know them.

  He placed the glass on the stove by the bottle and looked around for the cat, but she was nowhere to be seen. He went to the bunk and sat down. He rested his elbows on his knees and placed his face into his waiting hands. It felt good for his face to be held.

  “Joel.”

  “What?” Joel asked.

  “Go away,” Art cried. “I can’t help you.”

  Joel closed his eyes.

  Art sat on the edge of the bunk and went over the past day and night and day as he tried to figure out what was driving him crazy. The drinking and the drugs didn’t help. All they did was make him forget and right now, at this moment, he was tired of forgetting. He concentrated as he tried to force the people in his head to go back to sleep. It was the dump he needed to be thinking about. The grizzly bear kept coming back into his mind. He’d smelled it on the trail, he remembered that. The stink of bear. And the bear smelled him. The stink of man.

  Holland, he thought. When he was first at the farm. The two plates and two sets of knives and forks on the table. Tommy had seen them too. But it wasn’t until the mother had shown Art the photograph that he knew what the table setting for two people meant. Tommy had figured it out right away. He was the one who went into the night and found the girl in her hiding place.

  “Christ,” he said into his hands. “I know Godelieve’s name, but the mother didn’t have one. I never asked.” He pressed his hands into his knees and looked through the doorway into the night. “What’s wrong with me?” he whispered.

  He could hear his voice, the sound he’d listened to ever since the war. He knew just as he’d always known there was nothing he could do about any of it. Tommy just did what the Tommys of the world always do. And Art had let him take her into the barn. And then the others went in after them. He’d known what they were going to do. How did doing nothing make him the better man?

  “What have I done?”

  And there was a howl in him, and he knew it would break him if he ever let it out. He opened his mouth and far off he heard the sound of an animal crying and he wanted to help, but he didn’t know how.

  * * *

  —

  JOEL SAT ON THE TOP STEP outside Art’s cabin, scared. Art wasn’t supposed to fall apart. He wasn’t supposed to break. Not like this. He was a soldier in the tank corps. Soldiers don’t cry. What did he mean when he asked what he’d done?

  No matter how hard he tried to keep them out, Myrna and Alice refused to go. They swirled behind his eyes like wild blossoms in a wind. The dance would start soon. He couldn’t wait for it to begin, couldn’t wait until she was there. He could feel Alice’s skin in the palm of his hand, his arm around her waist, Alice smiling at him, a thickness in his throat, his cock getting hard. And then Myrna’s white body was under him, her groan as he entered her. Myrna dancing with her father, dancing with him, the baby in her belly dancing too.

  A cool breeze off the river slipped across his back and he shivered, Buddy Holly singing “Heartbeat,” the Hall going crazy. He was dancing with Myrna and the record was playing full blast.

  The cat passed by through the grass, a soft meow and then silence. No matter what, Art loved that cat. Joel’s mother came into his mind and he remembered her and how no matter the grief in her life she had loved him. He wondered what she would say did she know he was going to be a father. For a moment he didn’t know how to understand where he had come from and where he was going. Maybe someday he would take this child of Myrna’s and show it to his own mother. But his father? What would his father say, knowing the Crapseys’ eighty acres was forever gone? Joel didn’t know. The baby that was coming wasn’t real to Joel. It was, but what was it? He could hear Art pouring himself another drink and it was quiet inside. He went back in.

  Art was sitting on the edge of his bed, but this time with his .30-30 Winchester 94 lying across his lap. When Joel saw the rifle he was scared of what Art might do and asked him if he was going to kill himself.

  “What’re you doing here?” Art asked. When Joel didn’t reply, Art said, “I got no time to kill myself. I got a cat to look after,” and he tried to grin, almost making it.

  Joel said nothing, only watched when Art took the rifle over to the table and began to strip it down. After a few minutes Joel realized Art had already forgotten him being there. It was as if nothing had happened, nothing had been said, no story had been told. It was always like this, Joel thought, but this time Art didn’t look right. Something was different. Joel wasn’t sure if it was safe to leave him now. “You sure you’re all right?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” Art said.

  “Why are you cleaning the rifle?”

  “It’s something I’ve been meaning to do all weekend,” said Art.

  “That’s all?”

  Art didn’t reply as he took up a screwdriver so he could take the tang out of th
e rifle.

  Joel left the cabin again and circled around the side. He watched through the window as Art pulled the tang and then the stock and was unwinding the last screw so he could drop the lever. He looked concentrated on the job at hand. Sure it was going to be okay, Joel slipped away.

  He had to go back to the bunkhouse and clean up before the dance. He’d hung his only clean shirt on a wire hanging down from his window. He hoped the wrinkles had fallen out, but he doubted it. His clothes were always wrinkled. It wasn’t until Myrna and Alice came along that he’d started to think about how he looked.

  One day when Joel knew Myrna was coming down to the train station Joel had changed out of his work clothes into what few clean things he had. Wang Po saw him from the cookhouse door and called him over, asking Joel who the girl was he was dressing up for. Joel told him there wasn’t any girl and Wang Po laughed. “Here’s a love poem for you, boy,” he said. It was one Joel knew he remembered right because he’d asked Wang Po to tell him the words again and he wrote them down on a scrap of the cook’s drawing paper.

  I watched you comb your long hair.

  Your hands were small birds in the shadows.

  If I had wings tonight I would fly to you,

  Nest in your darkness.

  But you are far away by the River Chin

  And I am in the north on the endless sea.

  I touch the spare grasses and I weep.

  Joel had asked him why all his poems were sad and the cook told him love was sad.

  “But the pictures you drew of the girl back in China are beautiful.”

  “Maybe beautiful is only sad in China,” Wang Po replied.

  “Is the man in the poem a sailor?”

  Wang Po told him it wasn’t the ocean in the poem. It was the northern desert. He said soldiers were sent there in the old days to guard the frontier. Sometimes they weren’t allowed to come back for many years. “In China the desert is called Hanhai,” he said. “It means ‘the endless sea.’ ”