Deafening

by Frances Itani

  Angus had already moved to the back of the hut, ignoring the activity in the centre of the room. The injured boy’s head was an open dirty mixture of blood and bone. It was so piteous, Jim’s eyes tried to refuse the image, but it was too late. He held his breath, but stepped forward because the M.O. was signalling to him and Irish. The M.O. was manoeuvring between more stretchers that had been set every which way around the edges of the dirt floor, and he managed to avoid stepping on a wounded soldier.

  “Take him out to the yard.” A hand gestured towards the soldier with the split-open head and then towards the back of the hut where Jim now saw that there was another covering of rubber sheeting. The doctor seemed to have spoken in a whisper but Jim realized, in the split-second lull between explosions, that he’d heard what the doctor had said. Even so, the M.O. was motioning again with his hand. Sign language. He moved back to the centre of the hut and leaned over the middle stretcher, surprising Jim with the lightness of his movements because his face revealed such obvious fatigue. The torso of the boy he was leaning over was covered in blood. The upper part of the uniform had been violently wrenched off.

  Jim bent to lift the stretcher of the boy he’d been ordered to remove and realized that the boy was not dead. Long shuddering sighs were coming out of the extended and exposed throat. The boy’s clothing had been opened and his sternum was sucking in hard every time his lungs tried to pull in a breath. There were long intervals between these terrible attempts to get air. Jim gripped the handles and felt or maybe heard Irish signal the lift and they left the trestles behind and carried him out, passing two walking wounded who were entering and who stood aside to let them exit. The sheeting closed behind them and they were in darkness again.

  They found themselves in the yard, a spongy area of ground from which stench and moan seemed to rise up out of the earth itself. It was a small, churned rectangle of soil where bodies had been laid, most of them directly on the ground. Others were on stretchers. Someone had tossed straw over the dead boys’ faces. A hand, palm up, was sticking out over a blanket that had been pulled up to cover a corpse. The face could not be seen but the hand seemed to expect something to be placed in it. Jim looked down at the boy they had set among the dead and dying, and said a quick prayer. He thought the boy looked at him for a moment but he wasn’t certain that the eyes had seen his own.

  Other stretcher bearers were carrying loaded stretchers out of the hut now, and they were heading back at a good pace in the direction of the Main Dressing Station. There, the wounded would be treated and sorted again. No one noticed that one more body had been placed outside; no one noticed Jim. The noise around him was relentless. He wanted to stay to help the boy he had abandoned, but what was there to do? His feet followed Irish and he looked at his friend’s face and saw that it was completely white and then he saw nothing because they stepped down into the hut again, in darkness. A shout, and a candle was quickly lit; a match flared, another and another—each to a candle stuck in a bottle, or in melted wax, upright in a battered mess tin.

  Jim’s eyes focussed again on the soldiers lying in the room, the ones who had not yet been attended by the doctor. He began to see individual detail: fragments of uniform, thick muddy cloth driven through skin into muscle and wound, open flesh that oozed dirt and mud. Wounds that were filthy, contaminated. How could the M.O. hope to clean up tissue and bone? Jim thought of the lectures he’d attended during his training in England—he had scrubbed his hands, held them out. Here on the floor of the hut there were two buckets of muddy, bloody water, placed against a corner wall so they wouldn’t be kicked over.

  “Infirtaris,” his mouth said. “Inoaknonis.” He spoke the words knowingly, a chant to himself. No one could have heard him anyway; the din and thunder of the guns had assumed every bit of hearing space. His ears were tunnelled with pain, and he looked down at his hands and saw his own long fingers flexing rapidly as if conducting themselves through a bizarre set of exercises. He stared into a jagged hole that was a man’s abdomen. A twist of bowel was lying outside the body, and someone had made a crude attempt to shove the loop back in with two abdominal dressings. The bowel was so pinkish, so clean looking in this shadowy place, the sight of it almost made Jim shout. The fingers of the soldier clenched spasmodically, much the way Jim’s fingers had been flexing. Jim could not tell if the man lost consciousness, because the fingers suddenly relaxed and stopped moving. A highlander lay silent, arms folded across his chest as if he’d been readied for placement inside a coffin. He had a leg injury, maybe not so serious. Looking at him, the peace on his face, Jim remembered Herbert’s anxiety as he was stretched out on the farm table when Dr. Whalen had sewed up his thigh. Herbert had been a lucky man.

  The boys on the stretchers had received anti-tetanus. Some of them, the ones who were not going to the yard outside, were tagged, pieces of rectangular cardboard pinned to their uniforms with safety pins.

  There was no time to think. The noise rose to a greater pitch and Jim had a frantic moment when he thought his head would explode. A corporal by the door gestured to him, and Jim understood that he and Irish were to start a carry back to the next station—a PPCLI man with a destroyed femur. Pieces of bone and pinkish-white tendon had been exposed and a layer of heavy dressing slapped on. If they could get him to the Main Station farther back, he would be sorted and treated, along with the others headed there now. After that, he would be moved again, to the Clearing Station, and then the railhead, and on to the coast and then to England—to Blighty.

  Jim gathered himself, resolving to be steady as he lifted. There was no chance, no luxury of four bearers being available to do a shoulder lift. Stash and Evan had already left, carrying a patient of their own.

  The man was heavy, but not as heavy as some Jim had carried during his training. He glanced over at Irish and saw that he, too, wanted out of this room of pain and death. They stepped up and outside, adjusting hands to the familiar grips of the stretcher. Machine-gun fire rattled close around them, and Jim had to force himself not to duck. He took half a dozen steps and the sky lit up. If he ducked, he’d dump the patient, and if he dumped a man with a shattered femur, the injury would be made worse and the man’s pain unbearable. As it was, the soldier was frighteningly silent. Jim saw the outline of two bearers ahead, and two ahead of those. He increased his pace, being in the lead. He and Irish had trained together so thoroughly, so closely, their feet were in step the moment they were under way. They tried to stay in the tracks made by the others, and set out with their first carry across a land that was broad and flat and pocked with holes and mud traps at times as deep as their knees.

  Irish and I go back and forth four more times in the night. I force myself to see what must be seen, to do what I have to do. We walk through sound that bears down upon us like an engine on tracks. It is so thunderous, so close, I keep checking the sky for signs of a storm. A storm would be a relief. My skin feels as if it will burst inward, inside the sound that is all around.

  When we get back to our billets in the morning we want to collapse but immediately we are ordered to move to new billets again. Mice made a nest in my packsack while I was gone overnight. I dump the sack in a hurry, contents scattering. We eat breakfast. How can we eat after what we have seen? We do, we are famished. Eggs and potatoes, we fill ourselves up. In the few minutes I have before we leave, I pay an old woman for a half bucket of hot water, and I wash. I fill my water bottle. The sun is out. The room of wounded men, the yard of death, are obscene dreams in the morning’s brightness. I have begun my work in this war.

  Chapter 9

  My dad said that if you saw five men talking and a shell exploded nearby, when the smoke had gone they would not be there because they would be blown to pieces. When the Germans first used their gas, Dad was caught and had to go to the hospital. Now, every morning when he gets up he has a bad cough. Dad will stay at Knox College Hospital for about two months.

  The Canadian

  No matter
where she was or what she picked up to read, war news was now pointed directly at her. Town papers, city papers from Toronto or Ottawa or Belleville, or The Canadian from the school: there was no possibility of remaining indifferent. She was subject to constant bombardment of unfiltered information, true or false. It did not help matters that shortly after Jim’s departure, the government in Ottawa published casualty figures: 539 officers and 13,017 men killed in action so far.

  She could scarcely speak Jim’s name except to Mamo and Tress. No matter what she was doing, day or night, he was always behind her first layer of thought. After he left on the train, she had stayed overnight in Belleville with Fry and Colin. One day after returning to Deseronto and moving back to her parents’ home, she wrote her first letter to him. She sent that, and another and another, but none of the letters reached him before he sailed. When she received a response, it was to tell her that five letters had arrived in England, in a clump together.

  The day she mailed her first letter from the town post office, she understood that from that day forward it would be an act of faith to print name, rank, number—all of the unit information she had to include—and expect that her words would actually reach their destination. The address she wrote across the first envelope was so long, it seemed impossible that she could stow it in her memory. At the time, she had thought so.

  Now, the newspapers were alerting her to ideas she had never before considered.

  Postage need not be paid on letters or parcels addressed to prisoners of war.

  She had never given a thought to prisoners of war.

  Sugar and chocolate, because of their strength-giving properties, have become part of the daily ration of soldiers in the trenches.

  There had been a rush on sugar and chocolate in the stores of the town. Supplies had run out because so much had been sent overseas.

  When chocolate is given a soldier, he is better able to fight off fatigue and resist breaking under nervous tension.

  She had not known about that.

  Before Christmas, six hundred soldiers had arrived in Belleville and had used the canning factory on Pinnacle Street as their barracks. They had probably sailed shortly after Jim; Grania thought that they, too, were probably part of the Third Canadian Division.

  When she had worked at the school hospital, she used to see soldiers marching in the direction of the fairgrounds, or to Zwick Island. In good weather, she’d seen them picnicking near the school dock beside the bay, just below the flag station. She wondered, if she and Jim ever had children, if she would tell them that there had been a time when trains stopped, on request, at Mileage 114.9, the Deaf and Dumb stop. Cedric, in the school paper, had an opinion, as always. “Dumb,” he once wrote, “has the secondary meaning of dull, stupid, or doltish. The word mute brings forth the image of an attendant at a funeral.”

  Grania missed Fry, who wrote once a week, the letters arriving in Deseronto the day after they were mailed from Belleville. She had just collected this week’s letter from the post office and, after taking Father’s business mail to his office and a small package to Bernard, Grania went to a quiet corner of the hotel lobby to read what her friend had to say. Fry’s news was not surprising.

  Colin tried to join up, she wrote. Third try. But at last minute, he was found out.

  Grania thought of Colin’s blue eyes, how they must have burned with intent as he’d tried, once again, to bluff his way through. This time, using his considerable lip-reading skills, he’d managed to get as far as the end of the physical exam.

  He turned away to pull on his clothes and Doctor spoke. Colin does not know what he said. When Colin did not answer, Doctor was suspicious. Then, special check of hearing was done.

  I am not sorry. I know it is hard for you, worrying while Jim is over there. Colin volunteers with school cadets. On days they have drill, he helps when he finishes work in print shop.

  Grania knew that Colin was again considering a move to Toronto to work as a typesetter. A deaf man who owned his own business had contacted him twice. It was one of the few ways the boys could get work after they left school. They’d already worked in the print shop; their visual accuracy was exceptional, and they could not possibly be bothered by the noise. There had been an article not long ago in The Canadian about printing presses owned and operated by deaf persons—there were five in the west, and two in Toronto. Fry’s parents still lived in Toronto and would be happy to have her there, but for Grania it would mean that her friend would be more distant. As it was, they visited back and forth as much as they could. The last time Grania had taken the train to Belleville was to accompany Mamo, who needed a new coat. She and Mamo had met Fry, and they all had tea together on Front Street.

  Colin knows former student who did enlist. Last spring, do you remember we were proud when Owen visited school? He wore Red Cross badge on his sleeve. Now he is corporal and we think he left Exhibition Grounds in Toronto to work in diet kitchen in military hospital. Teachers here say he will never be sent overseas. But Owen’s success makes Colin hope. And it is not first time Colin is rejected.

  If we were allowed, we could do more. You and I could work for Empire. With our Home Nursing training we could help look after sick and wounded when boys come back to Canada. Instead, we volunteer, and knit pneumonia jackets and knee caps. I don’t think we are welcome in factories, either, where women our age work now, when many speaking boys are overseas. I am not feeling sorry, Grania, but something else happened to Colin and that discouraged me.

  Grania set aside the last page of Fry’s letter, feeling discouraged herself. She had not received a letter from Jim for three weeks. The letters from England arrived in clumps on this side of the ocean, too, and not necessarily in order. Everything depended on the ships.

  At least Jim was still in England the last time he’d written. He said he was training, and anxious to get across the Channel. It was worse for Tress, whose letters from Kenan were now sent from Somewhere in France.

  Grania picked up the “Locals” page that Fry had torn from the school newspaper and enclosed with her letter. The paper arrived by mail twice a month, but Fry, knowing how Grania loved to read what the children wrote, always had Colin bring home an early copy. She sent the “Locals” page ahead, even though Grania’s subscription copy followed a day or two later.

  This week, the children at the school were preoccupied with the fire in Ottawa. Disaster would never stop being a main attraction.

  We heard that the Parliament Building in Ottawa was burned last week. It was thought that the Germans set it on fire but we were mistaken. Sir Wilfrid and Lady Laurier had invited some ladies to a party; they heard that the Parliament Building was on fire and Sir Wilfrid got an auto to ride there. When Sir Robert Borden heard of the fire, he ran to see it without his hat and coat, so he lost them.

  Some entries were about war.

  There are a lot of wounded soldiers. Some men have their legs off, and some have one or two arms which have been blown off by shells or something else.

  My Aunt has two sons at the war. They have gone to France and she is alone at home. Poor Aunt! Her sons are feeling fine and not worrying about the future, so my Aunt is trying to look on the bright side and will leave them in her Heavenly Father’s hands, knowing that He doeth all things well.

  Our principal came to the chapel where we were watching the magic lantern show. He carried an Edison phonograph and played some music but I could not hear it because I am a deaf girl. The hearing people enjoyed the music very much. They looked pleased.

  Last month we asked if we could have a carnival. We made funny clothes. I dressed in a plain dress and went as a suffragette—votes for women, you know.

  Grania turned the page and read one of Cedric’s items.

  Deaf and speechless, Jaime, the 6-year-old son of the King and Queen of Spain, finds his greatest pleasure in a moving picture theatre, which has been built in the royal palace for his amusement. Despite his affliction, the 6-
year-old princeling is a bright and merry little boy. He is to be taken soon to the French Institute for the Deaf and Dumb at Paris, but the physicians hold out little hope of the restoration of his faculties.

  She folded the tear sheet and put it away. She picked up the last page of Fry’s letter and read it to the end. It was sometimes like this with Jim’s letters. She had to brace herself to get through them at one sitting.

  Tuesday after work, Colin walked to city and crossed footbridge over Moira. He was going to Front Street on errand for Cedric when two women he never saw before rushed up. They were speaking at same time and he could not lip read more than few words. They pinned white feather to his overcoat and marched off. He came home humiliated. For an hour he was upset and paced up and down before he told me. He said he pulled the feather off and threw it on road and came home. Cedric’s errand is still not done. This happened day after Colin tried to join up one more time.

  Grania was certain that one of the words Colin had read from the lips of the two women had been coward. Her own Aunt Minna, in a letter to Mother, had written from Toronto saying that some women—women who had no sons, or whose husbands were too old to serve—were marching up and down the streets as if they’d been appointed by God, calling out to young men suspected of being indoors and safe behind the walls of their parents’ homes: “Come out, young cowards! Come out and sign up!”

  She thought about Colin, deaf at birth, born to deaf parents, tall and fit-looking with his strong body, his wavy fair hair parted almost in the middle. He would have looked carefree enough as he walked along the Belleville street. Who could know, or even imagine from outward appearance, how many times he had tried to slip past recruiting officers and medical examiners? Colin, with his hands shoved deep down into his pockets, had always made an effort to fit in. But there was something so deliberate about his stance, it succeeded only in drawing attention. When he was confronted on the street, he must have wondered what was happening, what the two women could want from him. The realization would have come when he had seen the white feather, shame and anger burning his cheeks.