Our Animal Hearts

by Dania Tomlinson

  “I wonder where they’re coming from,” Viktor said.

  “Mexico, maybe. Or even South America,” I said.

  “I’d like to go there someday,” Viktor said.

  “You would?”

  “South America is as far as you can get from the war.” Viktor pulled a cigarette from his pocket. “I’d like to think there are countries in the south that don’t even know of this Great War. For them it doesn’t even exist.”

  I looked out towards the lake and thought of what Yuri had once told me about the beasts in the sea. The beasts that could eat you, but usually didn’t. “What was Europe like? Did you swim in the ocean?”

  “We were such fools.” Viktor lit a match and held it to his cigarette. He breathed in until the tip glowed. “We thought we’d see the world. What I saw of Europe were muddy trenches scattered with the body parts of young men.”

  I remembered Jacob as a boy. His curly red hair and his tiny fishbone chest the day he was bitten by the lake monster. Then I imagined this little boy in a bed of poppies and I had to fight down the tears.

  Viktor took off his shoe and sock and extended his foot into the water. “The ocean, though. Now that’s a sight. The picture of eternity. Nothing but water.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  The dark lake glittered with stars. Molasses waves lapped the shore. I pulled my knees to my chest. “I’m sorry,” I said. The words soured my mouth.

  “For what?”

  “About what happened. About your father.”

  “You should have seen his face the day he found out we got in using Mother’s maiden name. I’ve never been so ashamed. I thought he’d be proud of me, thought he’d know it was just a means to an end, is all. He died still hating me, I’m sure. He was ashamed of me. We took away that last thing he had to pass down, his bloody name.”

  We sat quietly for a while. Viktor took a long pull on the whisky. Coyotes yipped in the hills behind us.

  “Do you still refuse to swim, Iris?”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “There’s nothing in there. Nothing but fish. There’s no demon, no monster. What did your mother used to call it?”

  “An addanc. Henry called it Naitaka. Azami called it a kami.”

  “Azami believed in it?”

  I nodded.

  Viktor passed the cigarette to me. “There are so many real-life monsters. You can’t even imagine. You don’t want to imagine. There’s no need to go making them up. The world has enough, believe me, the world has plenty of monsters. If we’re not careful, we become them.”

  “But I’ve seen the monster, the lake spirit, whatever it is. I’ve seen it countless times. I saw it bite Jacob.”

  “Jacob was bit?”

  “Before you moved here.”

  “Did Jacob see it?”

  “He saw. I know he did.”

  “But did he say so?”

  “He denies it. Or he did.”

  “Are you the only one who actually saw the lake monster?”

  Although I knew Azami saw the lake monster at least once, I didn’t like to say her name. “Henry saw it. And Llewelyna, of course.” I passed him back his cigarette.

  “Iris.”

  “What?”

  “Llewelyna was very sick. Delusional. Remember on the wharf? That day your father and Jacob left?”

  “Even before she was ill she saw it.”

  “You were always protecting her, even when she didn’t deserve it, even when she treated you so terribly.”

  “She was my mother.”

  “I understand that.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “But now you must face your fears. You need to swim. Don’t inherit your mother’s monsters or they’ll destroy you too.” He splashed his foot in the water. “At least you can swim.” His trousers were pinned up around the end of his one knee.

  “You’ll swim again.”

  “Not with one leg.”

  I slipped off my mother’s nylons and rested my feet on the surface of the water. “I’ll only swim if you come with me,” I said.

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “If you don’t swim, then I won’t either.”

  Viktor took a long drink from the bottle. “Temptress,” he called me, and began to unbutton his shirt. He placed it behind him in a gnarl. I looked down at Azami’s necklace around his neck. The Russian tag caught the dregs of moonlight. Remembering how it had once protected me quelled my fear of the lake.

  Viktor caught me looking at the necklace and picked it up off his chest. “Azami gave this to me.” He lifted it over his head and fingered the letters on the tag and the red bead. “She said it was lucky.” He kicked up the phantom leg that began at his knee. “A lot of good it did me.” Then, to my horror, he threw the necklace overhead. It splashed into the darkness. “Now, let’s go for a swim,” he said.

  “Viktor—”

  But he was already pushing himself up off the rocks with one arm and reaching for his crutch. I stood to help him. He unbuttoned his trousers and leaned on me as I slipped them down his hips and legs. It was the first time I had seen the nub of his knee. The skin was folded over itself in a pucker.

  “Isn’t it dreadful?”

  “No, it’s not.” I put my hand on the knotted skin there. It was warm. I ran my fingers over the fresh scars. Viktor looked down at me, his mouth open slightly. “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “When I touch it?”

  “No. That feels nice.” He took off his undershirt. The crescent scar on his chest glowed in the dim light. He was only in his underpants now. “Are you going to swim in that?” he asked. I looked down at my dress.

  “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  He smiled. “Do you need one? It’s so dark. No one will see.”

  Feeling brave, I lifted my dress over my head and slipped it off. My skin burned from the whisky and the exhilaration of being seen so bare. I tried to calm myself by folding my dress neatly on the rocks. I stood before Viktor in only my bloomers and Llewelyna’s old corset.

  The corset was a foolish, bulky thing that pushed my stomach in and my hips backwards. Llewelyna had told me it was a wedding gift from my grandmother and had surely been meant as an affront. Llewelyna had tossed it to the floor then. “These old-fashioned things enslave us, Iris.” The corset was made of golden silk and yellow lace, with pink ribbons up the back. I had picked it up, unable to allow such a beautiful object to go to waste, and tucked it into my wardrobe. I had begun wearing the corset only recently. I liked what it did to my shape and how solid it made me feel.

  Viktor grinned at my appearance. I offered him my hand and pulled him up off the log. “Should I fetch your crutch?” I asked.

  “I can lean on you, can’t I?” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and together we stumbled along the mossy rocks into the biting lake.

  “It’s freezing,” I said.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  When the water was knee high I slipped and we both splashed in.

  “Are you all right?” I worried over his wounded leg. Viktor just laughed as he attempted to push himself up. I had to help him by the elbow. We continued into the dark water until it came up to our shoulders.

  “Funny—in the lake it feels like I have two legs again.”

  “Maybe you do,” I said. “Maybe it’s grown back like a lizard’s tail.”

  A flock of geese swooped down to the lake, landing not far from us. “We’ve got company,” Viktor said. Out in the distance, near the geese, I saw the water ripple.

  “Let’s go back now,” I said.

  “It’s fine. Just geese.”

  “No. There’s something coming towards us.”

  “There’s nothing. It’s just a wave.”

  “Viktor, I’m afraid. I want to go back.” I turned towards the shore, but I couldn’t leave him there.

  “Hush.” He pulled me close. Cool currents tangled between my legs. I imagined
the lake monster approaching us. “Close your eyes,” he said, and I did. His breath was warm against my neck. “Just listen to my voice. Nothing can hurt you.” The currents slowed. All I could feel were Viktor’s warm hands on my back and his beard prickling my skin. Despite the cold, I felt so warm. “Not anything. I won’t let it.” His lips moved down my neck to my shoulder. “I promise.” He moved my bloomers down my hips. He kissed me on my cheek, my mouth, my neck. With one foot I slipped my bloomers down the rest of the way and I stepped out of them. He hoisted me up and I wrapped my legs around him. In the water he balanced easily on his one leg. It surprised me how natural it all felt, his skin against mine. He kissed my collarbone as his hands worked at the knot at the back of the corset. I kept my eyes closed, afraid if I opened them I’d break the magic of darkness. I didn’t try to help him with the knot. I just let myself be kissed, awestruck, speechless, and blind. I ran my hands up his back. I wanted to map the flex of each muscle, the pull of every tendon and bend of each joint.

  The geese took flight and startled us. I opened my eyes at the sound of their splashing and the beat of their flapping wings. We both paused to watch the moons of their bellies float past again. Then, over Viktor’s shoulder, I saw the ripple, closer now, a string of light along the water. The corset unfolded from me like an extra set of ribs and left my breasts abandoned to the icy water. My nipples tingled. Goose bumps budded up my arms and neck. Viktor’s hands were on my back, in my hair. He pulled my gaze back to him.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, his mouth warm on my nipples. But I didn’t want to close my eyes. I slipped Yuri’s wooden ring off my thumb and let it sink. I could only see the parts of Viktor the moon illuminated, disembodied. An earlobe. An eyebrow. A jawbone. I could no longer distinguish between Viktor’s skin against mine and the water. In the lake we were weightless, we were invisible, we were somewhere else, we were nowhere at all. I closed my eyes when he fit himself into me and for a moment, we were only water.

  Viktor and I filled our nights with drinking and lovemaking and stories of the dead. I felt as though I was living out one of Juliet’s romance novels. My body bloomed under his heated gaze. One evening he traced his finger along my collarbone to my sternum. “This would be a nice place to sleep,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Right here. This little hammock.” He made circles in the curve of bone with his finger. “This looks like home. Yes, I could live right here forever.”

  Each day he found a new part of me to admire, the curve of an ankle, a calf, the soft skin of my sole, my wrist, my thighs. Viktor’s sense of wonder made me look down at my body like a stranger. I watched my reflection in the windows to see what I would do next.

  The town was desolate and quiet. It felt wrong to feel so good. They were surely talking about us, but my family was never without scandal, and Winteridge was all whispers anyway. No one escaped the gossip. Each of us was followed by a trail of stories.

  Viktor said it was rumoured that Jesse McCarthy hadn’t said a word since returning from war. Some believed he was struck dumb. I often saw him stalk through the forest surrounding our orchard. Mrs. Bell whispered to me through the fence that it was said Juliet served the young soldiers more than beer at the Pearl Hotel, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Viktor had taken such liberties with her. The only time I could see Juliet was if I helped her with some task or other. We were scrubbing tablecloths when, as if in response to Mrs. Bell’s words, Juliet joked that Mr. Bell had contracted syphilis while at war, and Mrs. Bell was forced to nurse him, spreading salves on his genitals like a mother. Although she hadn’t seen Ronald for herself, she said that the men at the Pearl joked that the war had melted half of Ronald Nickel’s face and made him into a masturbating recluse.

  One day I walked to Henry’s cabin to return the books Llewelyna had last borrowed. Even when Henry was gone it didn’t feel right to keep his books for so long. I knew how much he valued order. When I came to the cabin, I saw someone jamming something through the window, trying to force his way in. He didn’t hear me as I approached.

  “Ronald?” I asked. He flinched like a coyote. When he saw me he turned the burnt side of his face away. “Is that you?” I asked. He didn’t respond.

  “It’s not how it looks. I just wanted to borrow a book. I’ve read everything my father owns a dozen times.”

  “I can get you in,” I said.

  His gaze softened and he turned his ruined face towards me. The skin at his cheek was creased like the shell of a walnut. His eye socket on that side was empty. I caught myself staring. “I’m sorry,” I said, and took a step back. He looked down and away to hide that side of his face from me again. He rubbed his shoe in the pine needles.

  “So you know how to get in?”

  “I’ll show you where Henry keeps the extra key.” I walked into the graveyard hidden by the willow and dusted off the rock with Stewart Brewster written on it. I lifted the rock and showed Ronald the skeleton key.

  “You can’t tell anyone. It’s just for you. And you have to fill out the ledger. Write down the book you return and the one you borrow so everything is in order when Henry comes back.”

  “If he comes back. You can’t be sure of anything these days.”

  I opened the door to the library. Ronald looked around while I put some books on the shelves and filled out the ledger.

  “Have you read this?” he asked, and held a book towards me. It was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  “It’s a little dark.”

  “I don’t mind dark.”

  “Balance it with this.” I passed him Nesbit’s Five Children and It. “It’s a children’s book but it’s fantastic.”

  Ronald browsed the pages. “What’s that?” He pointed to an illustration of a creature with a monkey’s body and insect antenna.

  “The Psammead. The children find it in a sandpit. It grants them wishes.”

  Ronald smiled.

  I looked for a book for myself. I rarely read in those days. Ronald handed me a large novel with a thick blue spine. On the cover it read Moby-Dick in gold letters. “Jacob liked this one,” he said, his face turned towards the window.

  I tucked the book under my arm. “Thanks.”

  “He told me about the voices,” Ronald said.

  “What voices?”

  “Ever since the accident in the lake, he heard voices, mutterings in his one ear.”

  I remembered Jacob shaking his head as if to clear them. “When did he tell you that?”

  “That last time he was here.”

  “I’m glad he had you to talk to.”

  “Do you think he’s alive, Iris?”

  A woodpecker began to tap against the ceiling of the house.

  “No,” I said simply. “I’m sorry, Ronald, but I know Jacob is dead.”

  Ronald turned to me. The side of his face that was still his own went slack. His eye watered. “The only reason I joined up was to find him. Protect him.”

  “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “I couldn’t find him. I tried, Iris, I swear to God, I tried.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I loved him,” he said.

  I approached Ronald carefully. “I know,” I said, and he let himself be embraced.

  23

  That summer Viktor and I often returned to the lake and swam naked in its depths, always at night so no one could see us. Viktor didn’t cure me of my visions, although I told him he did. I still saw Naitaka’s scales in the moonlight, but I was no longer afraid. After we swam we would return to the house and lie, still wet, in the small bed upstairs. I read to Viktor from Moby-Dick until he fell asleep. Yuri’s letters continued to arrive but I was too ashamed to read them now. I kept them, unopened, beneath my bed. We hardly noticed autumn’s arrival.

  Every week Viktor took the Rosamond to Vernon to speak to his mother through the chicken-wire fence. Each time he left I worried Mary would finally tell him of my treachery. Vikto
r would return in low spirits, muttering about Mary’s shrunken body, the yellowed whites of her eyes. Then he’d disappear for a few days into the Pearl or the forest. One night after he returned, I found him sitting on my bed. Open envelopes and Yuri’s unread letters in a pile on his lap. His eyes were glossy and red.

  “We must stop this at once,” he said.

  “Stop what?”

  “He loves you.” Viktor held one of Yuri’s letters towards me.

  “But I love you.”

  “No, Iris. You don’t.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m nothing. I’m worthless. I’ll never work. I’ll never be anything.”

  I knelt between his legs. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll take care of you. I like taking care of you. We take care of each other.”

  Viktor leaned away from me. “He’ll be home in a few weeks. He’s been discharged. We’ll burn these, say they never came.” He began to gather up the letters.

  “Stop,” I said. He ignored me. “Stop.” I grabbed at the letters.

  “Iris, this is over.”

  “But we’re in love.” The word was thick in my mouth and already sounding foolish.

  Viktor looked down at me coldly. “No, Iris, we’re not.”

  “We are.”

  “I don’t love you,” he said, reaching for his crutch. He stood, and the letters fell from his lap and scattered on the floor. “Read them and then get rid of them.” He went past me and down the stairs, his crutch thumping. I heard him nearly stumble once. The door slammed.

  That November, the newspapers declared the war was over, and everyone in Winteridge besides Viktor and me was in good spirits. The rest of our soldiers were to arrive home soon. Yuri was to receive the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the battle of Passchendaele, and the name of that faraway place never failed to evoke hollowness in me for Jacob. The war photograph next to the article in the newspaper revealed a new version of Yuri, a young blond man I barely recognized, with stiff, square shoulders and flat cheeks. Captain George Wilson of Winteridge appeared below the photograph. While some believed the soldier’s hometown was an error, for there was no George Wilson in Winteridge, others whispered about Taras being taken prisoner and knew that this was his quiet boy, Yuri.