Our Animal Hearts

by Dania Tomlinson

  As I undid the buttons at my throat, Yuri told me he had saved himself for me. Even in Paris, where the beautiful young girls threw themselves at the soldiers in the pubs they went to on their nights off, Yuri said he would return to his room early, make himself a pot of tea, and write a letter to me. I had been glad he was behind me as he spoke, because my eyes surely revealed my shame, and my face went as red as the devil’s.

  As we made love, I could tell Yuri had lied about being a virgin. He pulled my hair and clutched the back of my neck hard enough to leave bruises. And, despite myself, he knew how to please a woman with his hands. As I listened to him snore, I remembered Azami and Kenta in the greenhouse and understood, for the first time, why Azami had given herself so easily to him. I had never thought of her actions as strategy before. I was only then struck by the parallel nature of our misfortunes, or if it could even be called misfortune when I was so great a part of orchestrating the fate of Azami and Viktor’s relationship.

  I stared up at the ceiling and let tears bud at the insides of my eyes. I had ruined the lives of the ones I loved. How could I go on to live in the shadow of such evil? I brought a hand to my stomach and felt for that orb of life beating inside of me. I couldn’t help but imagine the fetus as the form I once saw emerge from a chicken egg. The chick was eyeless and sinewed, born a few days too soon. I had carried the cracked egg to one of the hens, with the hope she might take to it, keep it warm, and it might survive. When I went to check on the chick the next day, it was shredded, eaten up by hungry relatives. With that memory, I had to jump up, reach for the chamber pot beneath the bed, and retch, careful not to wake Yuri.

  I was desperate to get away from Winteridge before Viktor returned. I thought if I could just leave everything for a little while, Yuri and I could be happy. He was as good a man as any. It turned out that during the war, Yuri and Viktor had met a Scot named Jeremy, whose grandfather owned a shipping company that ran between Seattle and South America. All through the war the shipping company took tourists and passengers to a casino off the coast of Chile. Yuri said before Viktor got hurt, the three of them would often talk about this luxury liner that existed in a world so far away from the blood and mud. Jeremy promised that if they made it out of the war, he would make sure Yuri got to take his fiancée on a cruise to South America. Jeremy never survived the war, but Yuri still had his father’s address. He was the one to write to the family and alert them of their son’s death.

  And just like that, Yuri took the lakeboat to the city one day and returned with two tickets for the Jezebel. We were set to leave the following weekend. The brochure Yuri showed me had a jagged mountain range with Tracey Brothers Shipping: North to South Shore across it in bold font. On the opposite page was a drawing of a three-storey casino with a red roof. Ocean waves splashed against the shore.

  “What do you say, wife? Care for a little trip?”

  I was flooded with such gratitude that I took Yuri and kissed him, and for the first time my actions were not forced.

  24

  From the window in our room on the Jezebel, we watched the busy Seattle port fade into the distance. The view was soon replaced with the sandy beaches of California. Then for days we were too far from land to see anything but water. I went out onto the deck with all the wind and water and eternity around me, and thought of Viktor. I wondered where he was at that very moment. I tried to imagine good things.

  In our room, red panels of silk draped down around the bed from the ceiling, and a claw-foot bathtub was in the middle of the room. When we asked to have the tub filled one night, an endless train of maids carried buckets of water all the way up the stairs from the kitchen. We watched from the bed as the dark-skinned girls, Chilean natives, poured the water into the tub, their faces turned away to avoid the rush of steam. The water smelled faintly of salt.

  I had hidden the little blue fish in my suitcase. Since Llewelyna’s death I was more protective of it than ever. I kept the jar wrapped in a cloth and didn’t dare remove it when Yuri was around.

  There was a games room next to the dining room meant to prepare us for the Palacio, the renowned casino of the Americas. In the games room, the maids carried trays of sweating cocktails and martinis. Yuri and I were sitting at the blackjack table when I was overcome once again with nausea. I had been plagued with it the day before and blamed my illness on seasickness. I excused myself from the table and went to the ladies’ restroom. A woman with straw-yellow hair twisted up in a tight chignon eyed me curiously as I leaned over the marble counter to steady myself. She smelled strongly of lilac. She reached into her purse for her powder compact and suggested I borrow it for my shiny forehead. I shook my head. I wanted her to leave me alone. The room was spinning and the new dress Yuri had bought me was too tight. The woman was saying something about sea legs when I vomited into the sink. All that mint julep and lamb heaved out of me. The woman held my hair away from my neck and rubbed at my back. Her palms were cool and her voice was soft and calm. When I was done, the woman poured me a glass of water from the pitcher and poured the rest of the water down the drain to rinse the vomit.

  “Thank you,” I said finally.

  “Don’t mention it.” She was fixing her own hair now. A few strands had come loose and she pinned them back as she watched me in the mirror. I began to fix my own in the reflection next to hers.

  “Here,” she said, and turned me towards her. She brushed some powder on my forehead and painted my lips the same dark red as her own. The woman wore a blue dress with floral beadwork up the sides and long earrings that nearly touched her shoulders. She looked like someone who belonged to the city.

  “It’s my first time on the ocean,” I said.

  She held her handkerchief between my lips for me to blot them. “Seasick, are you, then?” she said, unconvinced. I nodded. “Whatever you say.” She gave me a sympathetic smile as she put her compact and lipstick back in her purse.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re pregnant, no?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “How far along?” she asked as she stroked her hair into place again.

  “A couple months, perhaps.”

  “You’re starting to show, dear.”

  I turned sideways and looked at my profile. “Hardly.”

  “That man with you the father?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Fine. Only ask because he was giving me eyes yesterday. Then he tried to convince me to join him on the top deck.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “You tell him you’re pregnant yet? I wonder why.” Before I could answer, she swung wide the door and left.

  Even after retching, I still didn’t feel much better. As I walked back to the blackjack table it seemed I was traversing stormy waters. The floor rocked. I spotted the woman seated with a man at least twice her age. She watched me carefully.

  Yuri had the ear of one of the waitresses cupped in his hand and whispered to her. The waitress saw me coming. She stiffened, placed his martini on the table, and turned to leave. Yuri took hold of her wrist and tried to pull her back down towards him, but she slipped away.

  “Did I interrupt something?”

  “These silly girls go mad for uniforms,” Yuri said as I pulled my own chair out to take a seat. I was still reeling. I tried to grab hold of the table for balance but it slipped from my grasp.

  “What a nuisance,” I said and stumbled to the ground.

  I woke a few hours later in a cold sweat and with a terrible pain in my stomach. Someone had dressed me in my thin nightgown. There was a faint knock on the door. I thought it might be Yuri, but in walked one of the maids. She was young, no older than twelve or thirteen, but already gorgeous. I can see her face now as clearly as that first day. Her skin was dark against the white of her apron. Her wide cheekbones gave her a no
ble appearance. She set a cool, wet cloth on my forehead. The presence of this girl’s exquisite beauty made me feel better. She said something to me in Spanish I didn’t understand and slipped something into the pocket of my nightgown.

  When Yuri opened the door the light he let in burst into painful shards. My vision went kaleidoscopic. “Something isn’t right,” I told him.

  “You’ve a fever.” He tore off my blankets.

  “Yuri,” I said.

  “George,” he corrected. I could hear him bustling around the room. The very young maid from before stood at the door, waiting for direction. Her presence gave me strength. I thought as long as she remained, nothing terrible could happen.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Yuri’s face brightened. “Well, that’s wonderful—”

  “Yuri.” I didn’t have to say anything else. The maid left and a darkness swept over us. The pain in my stomach returned and made it hard to breathe. Soon a doctor appeared and I was lifted onto a gurney and rolled out.

  What seemed like days later, but could have only been hours, I woke in a white room. There were several other small white beds around me. I stared at the back of a man in a long white jacket. My vision was blurry. Sweat dripped into my eyes. He turned to me.

  “You’re awake,” he said. His eyes were purple and he wore a paper mask over his mouth and nose. He put his hand on my forehead. “It’s important we try to keep your temperature down, for the baby.” A woman moaned in the bed next to mine, her blond hair honeyed against her forehead. Brown splotches covered her cheeks. “The child is okay, might still survive.”

  “What’s happened?” I asked. On the other side of me was a dark-haired man I recognized as the carter who had brought our luggage up to our room. His skin had turned a faint blue. He sat up to cough and foamy blood slipped down his chin.

  “It’s a bacterial infection, I believe,” the doctor said. “Spreads very quickly, though. You were one of the first to become ill, but there have been fifteen other cases since.” He dipped a white cloth in a bucket of ice water and held it against my forehead. “You need to stay relaxed, to rest.”

  Through the window opposite I could see orange rays of morning against the rocky bluffs. For some reason it was important for me to know where we were and how far we had travelled.

  “Ensenada, Mexico,” he said. “We aren’t in the harbour, so don’t fret. The last thing we need is to be contaminated by that filthy place. We’re just anchored offshore.” The doctor turned to help the carter, and I fell back into oblivion.

  When I woke hours or days later, the carter was no longer beside me. One of the Chilean maids who had helped fill the tub in our room had taken his place. The blonde was still in the bed next to mine. Her skin was a dark blue. Her breathing laboured, as if she were drowning. We were all underwater. There were green aquamarine currents in the air. I thought of the woman who had emerged from our lake in Winteridge. I yearned to have the blue fish with me now.

  I remember it like this: Saint Francis was perched on the edge of my bed and eyed me suspiciously. My legs were propped up and spread. The doctor’s hands were covered in blood. He called for the beautiful young maid who had helped me before and handed her what looked like the insides of a fish. She wasn’t prepared for the bundle and stared down at the fetus in her palms. Even covered in blood, I could make out what might be a tiny fist. The maid saw me watching and scurried away with the mess that was to be my daughter. I wanted to ask her if I could hold her, just for a moment, but the maid was already gone. I tasted lemon and knew I was about to be overcome with trembling.

  In my vision I was swimming after Llewelyna, who was a sturgeon now. I had rocks in my pockets. Silver minnows sparkled past like flecks of glass. She led me towards the ruins of a capsized ship, the Rosamond. Peaches rose like bubbles from a spilled crate aboard the lakeboat and floated up to the surface like countless suns. The siren on the bow was Jesus. Ribbons of blood streamed from his wrists and ankles. The ghosts of the drowned were thick in the water around us.

  I swam to the capsized lakeboat, and once I was inside, it became the Jezebel. I was no longer underwater. The hallway was dark and quiet. The jaguar’s spots shone like coins. Her swishing tail guided me down the hall lined with closed doors. There was a weight in my pocket. I had forgotten about the item the young maid had placed there. I reached inside and found a warm, purple egg, a thin crack running down it. I knew my daughter was inside. If I could only cradle her in my palms, keep her safe and warm, she might return to me.

  Then, as if born in that oceanic silence, a girl screamed. Her cry was muffled. Something forced into her mouth. The jaguar led me around a dark corner and disappeared into shadows. I walked up to the door the girl’s screams came from. It was number twelve, the room Yuri and I were staying in. I heard the scream again. A child’s voice. Spanish words. Words that begged. It was the young maid who had disposed of my unripe child. I could hear Yuri now too, struggling against her. I eased the door open a crack and I saw them. He had her pinned against the wall, his fist full of her dark hair. He kept banging her head back against the wall each time he rammed himself into her. She saw me over his shoulder and cried out to me in Spanish. She was just a girl. I eased the door closed.

  A matronly maid, short and round-faced, appeared at the end of the hallway holding a candle set on a plate. She was about to walk away from me with her beacon of light. I called to her, still cupping the purple egg in my hands. I had something to protect. I didn’t want to be alone in all that darkness. “I’m lost,” I said to the maid. She nodded and guided me down the hall and back to the white room where I faded into the rhythm of laboured, drowning breath.

  When I woke the next day, my hands still clutched the egg. The doctor asked to see what I held. For hours I refused to even look for myself. I had to keep it warm. When I finally opened my palms for the doctor, I found not an egg but a small purple potato. The doctor was not surprised.

  “Did the Mapuche girl give this to you?” he asked. I nodded. “It’s a superstition,” he said. “An old wives’ tale to fend off illness.”

  Even then, I would not let the doctor take the potato from me. It was a cruel exchange for a daughter but it was all I had of her. I begged for death to find me. It claimed many in the beds around me. One by one, their faces turned indigo and blood poured from their mouths, noses, and ears. Then they drowned in their own fluids.

  With very little ceremony, seven bodies were lowered into the ocean off the coast of Ensenada, and mine was not one of them.

  I was haunted by Llewelyna’s many stories of drowned infants and wondered whether I had misunderstood them. If her stories weren’t confessions, perhaps they weren’t revisions either, but premonitions. Maybe Llewelyna’s stories weren’t about the past, but the future. Maybe the stories weren’t about Llewelyna at all, but about me. I considered the possibility that she had been trying to shield me, to warn me about the central tragedy of my own life—the death of a daughter.

  I was thankful I never saw that beautiful young Mapuche maid who had given me the purple potato and disposed of my ill-born child. I know she kissed my daughter before she dropped her into the ocean to be swallowed by fish. I know it was when she had gone to tell Yuri of the death that he realized everything and had punished her for my colossal betrayal of him. And still, I hoped not seeing her might mean it was all a dream. I never asked Yuri about what happened that night. In return, we never spoke of the origins of the daughter who died inside me. But after that trip, Yuri no longer insisted people call him George. He changed it back to Yuri, but he couldn’t fool me. I knew who he really was now. I knew the kind of man he had become.

  The day the captain deemed the ship safe to travel and pulled up the anchor to go north, I saw the jaguar scouring the bluffs of Ensenada, so near to the city I thought someone was sure to shoot her before nightfall.

  When we arrived in Seattle our ship was quarantined for twelve days. They used pulleys
to bring us water and food. Many of the more affluent guests found our quarantine humiliating. It would be weeks until we discovered that the Spanish flu had been widespread, catastrophic, and many years until we learned nearly one-third of the entire world population had been infected. Back then some believed the Germans had committed a kind of biological warfare against us. Of course the central powers couldn’t have planned it better if they had: successful soldiers returned home only to spread disease amongst their own dearly beloved.

  25

  The curious thing about fire is its silence. On the Kobas’ orchard, before Jacob and I had turned to run, I had watched the flames slither through the grass towards the Kobas’ home. Bats scooped the darkness above our heads, and the beat of their wings was louder than those deadly flames. I imagined the fire that flooded Winteridge years later in this way: silent as night and bright as day.

  In Vancouver we learned from a merchant waiting for the train that Winteridge had been burned to the ground. Spanish flu had swept over the town with such force that few families were untouched by death or tragedy. In fear the plague would spread to other communities, the town was set aflame. Of course we went to Winteridge anyway, not willing to trust the words of a stranger. I tried to persuade the lakeboat captain, a young man with missing fingers, to stop in Winteridge, but he refused.

  Yuri shivered when we turned the last curve of land. I reached over to hold his hand. The other passengers held handkerchiefs to their mouths as if the tragedy might still catch. Our bay was a gaping mouth. Even the wharf had burned. The fire had levelled most of the buildings we could see from the lake, the blackened mounds of their foundations like the rotten roots of teeth. Somehow the birch trees in the bay were untouched by fire. They seemed to float above the destruction as white and solid as pillars.