Deafening

by Frances Itani

  My Love

  I have ten days’ leave. The bandstand you see on the card is on the Upper Leas. After every eight songs and marches, they play “Nearer My God to Thee.” It must be what the people want. There are some who have nothing more to do during daytime hours than stroll through the streets and walkways. In Radnor Park I watched model yacht races. Some sails are as tall as I am. The water is cold but there is a beach and enough hardy people to swim and play around shore. Sometimes I walk to the pier and watch the small turbine steamers as they prepare to leave. The water does not have a big sound. I sat on the pier and thought of you. I met a New Zealand boy who is also on leave. His name is Kirkpatrick and he’s from a place called Palmerston North. He was with the ANZACs in Gallipoli and has interesting stories to tell. His unit is now in France.

  I’ll mail this at the local Post. Enclosed is a souvenir. I think of you always.

  Believe me, I will be coming home.

  All my love, Chim

  That was all.

  Grania removed a second sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it to find a square of white silk, its edges expertly sewn in matching thread. Two stemmed flowers in shades of pink and mauve were embroidered into the lower corner. These were surrounded by pale green leaves, and tied with a silk knot. The stitching along the inside border was a continuous beaded pattern. In and around the flowers were the hand-embroidered words: “With All My Love.”

  She held the handkerchief and thought of Jim’s hands, his long fingers touching the silk before he made his purchase. She looked again at the picture on the card and tried to imagine this place where he had taken his leave. If she had been with him, she could have seen what he had seen. She could have tucked in against his side as they walked arm in arm, inhaled the grainy air of Folkestone, watched as he described the sound of the dark waves.

  But the envelope had been sent weeks ago. Jim would not be safe in England at all. Not now. He would have returned to France before the envelope was even on board the ship that carried it across the ocean.

  She raised the silk and pressed it to the soft spot below her ribcage, the spot at the centre. The place of the onset of breath before it becomes song. She held it there and did not move.

  She looked up suddenly, self-consciously, remembering that she was not alone. But Bernard had slipped away and was in his tiny office behind the desk. Her body was still. She sat there for a long time, until two guests came down the stairs, men who tipped their hats in her direction and greeted her before they went out the main door and into the street.

  The letter Jim did not send was written in his head while he lay staring at the ceiling from his bed in Folkestone. His photo of Grania was on the bedside table. He lay between clean sheets. When he’d first felt them against his skin, it was as if old memory had touched his body from a forgotten place. There was an eerie darkness in the room and in the town. No lights showed in the streets outside. Images took turns showing themselves to his mind while he lay there, as if a lantern show were in progress, projecting one picture after another, with no one at the controls.

  There is a feeling, without my partner, of being unprotected, even here in England. So far, Irish and I have been untouched, though we’ve had our share of close calls. Some of the new boys try to stay near us when they hear how long we’ve been out, especially the ones sent up as replacements. Irish and I know that it is not a matter of luck. Evan always says, “If it is written,” and I am beginning to believe this myself.

  Irish will be next for leave, when I return. He is worried that Fritz will interfere before he can gather his belongings. It’s the way I felt the last few days before I got away. It is natural to expect something to interfere, to see ourselves pinned there forever.

  Things have been difficult, but no one seems to question the higher-ups. When Fritz lets loose the mustard gas it saturates everything it touches. The boys suffer terribly. We try to help but can do nothing but stand by. The skin bubbles up and some boys go blind or drown in their own froth and secretions—slow strangulating deaths, no place left for air. We try our best to get the boys out of danger. We are compelled to wear masks ourselves and there is a good deal of stumbling as we go. There is constant worry that the patients’ masks will slip or be pulled off during a carry. To be inside the mask is suffocating. You feel a tightness in the chest, as if there is no breath to take. Some of the boys rip off the mask when they think they are out of danger, but they end up suffering more for doing so.

  The day before I left I carried a boy from Belleville, though I didn’t know his name. He recognized me when we did the lift and lowered him to the stretcher—there were four of us. “You used to work with Dr. Whalen,” he said, “in Belleville. Will you get a message to my mother? Will you look her up when this is over and tell her I tried my best to play the game well?” Irish cut in. “You’ll be home to tell her yourself, lad. No more about that.” We started out, a shoulder lift, and walked back, a mile and a half. Just before we got him to the dressing station I thought rain had begun and then I realized that only my collar and one shoulder were wet. The boy’s blood had seeped right through the canvas. He might have died shortly after we started out, or along the way. We’ll never know. I spoke to him and he didn’t answer; we stopped to check and had to leave him by the roadside so we could go back for the living. A burial party picked him up the next day. I made inquiries and found out who he was; I’ll write to his mother. At least he’ll have a known grave—unlike the boys who are out there rotting on top of the soil, their entrails filled with gas, their faces gnawed by rats.

  A few days before that, a number of wounded boys Irish and I carried to safety—after terrible exertion—were killed by shells at the very place we’d set them down. The loading place. Two shells landed, one after the other, both direct hits. The injured boys had been so hopeful of getting to Blighty. One of the boys wept, knowing his war was over. He was in much pain but was not even concerned about losing his leg. Another boy we carried wanted out so badly, he injected gasoline into his own knee. We took him to the collecting point but because he was removed to the separate place for Self-Inflicteds, he survived.

  I crossed to England by hospital ship—I should not have done so, but my friend Wullie in Étaples somehow arranged it. I spent a night with him and was able to avoid the leave camp in Boulogne. The day after my visit, Number 1 General was preparing to evacuate large numbers of wounded. All activity took place in the dark. The ship’s deck was covered with stretchers. A boy moaned pitifully through the night. I don’t know why but that one boy’s pain bothered me more than dozens of wounded lying on the battlefield, crying out. The nursing sisters changed dressings the entire way across the Channel, going from one boy to the next. I offered to help, to hold supplies, to give sips of water, and they were glad of the extra hands. One of the lads working the hospital ship told me with satisfaction that during last year’s steady flow of injured from the Somme, a mile of surgical gauze was used every day at Number 1 Hospital alone. The boys who kept track, he said, were rolling gauze in their sleep.

  The Channel was quiet; more than one ship made its way across in the dark. Wullie told me that there have been months when Number 1 General has sent three thousand casualties to England. After Vimy, more than five thousand. Sometimes the wounded are held at the coast near Le Havre for days because Fritz lies in wait in the Channel.

  In the little time I was at the coast, I was taken around and shown parts of the hospital. There are many buildings and huts and tents, and a bugler on duty for fire call. Gasoline drums are painted black and red, and are placed outside the tents for rubbish. Wullie gave me a new razor and a bar of soap for my kit, and took me to the canteen as his guest. Everyone was good to me. I had deloused before leaving my own billet and had my certificates and passes tucked away, but I had another bath in Étaples at a bathhouse along the road. I even managed another change of underwear—the second since starting out.

  The quiet in
Folkestone is disturbing. I had my pass stamped, and obtained permission to alter my plans. I do not wish to go to London. It would not be possible to walk into a theatre, to witness a lighthearted show.

  At night I hear the guns across the water. It’s as if only the guns give permission to drop off to sleep. One day you told me—we were sitting on the blue blanket—you told me about the way understanding for you is sometimes delayed. I know more about that now. More about the gap between what happens and what is understood. What is there and what is not. So much tries to make entry; so much is determined to invade. Sound knocks us over, blocks all thought, seeps into the body like deadly gas, seeps into everything around until there is no rift or fissure left unfilled.

  It is difficult to be here, wondering about my friends.

  The first thing I did in the hotel was draw a bath and sit in it for hours, adding hot water as I soaked. I must have dropped off to sleep; I woke, talking to myself. Most of the boys go directly to London to take in the shows, but they, too, return to empty rooms. Sometimes they meet a girl and she will go back to the hotel with them, if the hotel allows it. I have heard them joking. But the diseases add up. We have sent thousands of boys for treatment to the place they laughingly call Pecker Hill. They laugh, but the gonorrhea and the syphilis are not laughable diseases.

  This town is hilly and steep. There are shelters above shore, and narrow wooden steps that bring one down to walkways beside the sea. I strode out of town at a fast pace for thirty minutes, and back again at the same pace. Towns are close together all along the coast. My fourth day here, I met a boy from New Zealand. I wrote to you about him. We go round together during the day, and he tells me about where he has been. He was injured, a gunshot wound above the knee, during the Gallipoli campaign but recovered after months in hospital and is back at the job again. He lost many close friends in that campaign.

  Soldiers from training camps nearby take a turn on the promenade, and we do the same. Today in a restaurant I picked up a knife and fork and stared at my hands and wondered what to do. I asked myself why people did not shout when I put the fork to my mouth. No one made a grab for food. Every day, afternoon tea is served on the terrace, another life. Kirkpatrick and I walked to the six-and-a-half shop, but our tea cost more than six and a half. It makes no difference. I see now that no civilized person would understand how we live. It would be pointless to try to explain. No one would believe. Over there is a life invented by and known only to ourselves.

  Chapter 14

  In after days when a mother says of a son, a wife of a husband, a sister of a brother, a daughter of a father, that he fell in the Great War, what feeling will be aroused in the hearer? Sympathy? Not so much, perhaps, but rather a sense of being in the presence of one who has had a great honour conferred upon her—the honour of having had a dear one brave enough to go forth to fight for his country. It is just as pleasant and grand a thing to die for Canada and the British Empire today as it was for Rome in the brave days of old.

  The Canadian

  Was she the only one who was angry?

  She stood in the laundry at the back of the house, in the midst of steam and swirling odours of ammonia and soap. The laundry was a room of square tubs and mangles, of puddles on the uneven floor. Old cake tins were turned upside down over irons on the stove. Above the laundry tubs, Mother’s Receipt for Clean Clothes was tacked to the wall. Mother made the soap and bottled it herself, trusting the job to no one.

  Grania gathered up an armful of linens. Sheets and pillowcases were to be changed in the bedrooms of the house today, and she had promised to start the job. She noticed movement in her peripheral vision and looked out the back window into the eyes of Carlow. His hind legs were on the stoop, his front paws scrabbling at the glass and the outer sill. He was letting her know that she was alone in the house; he always knew when everyone but Grania was next door at the hotel. It was the only time he put his paws up to the window, instead of barking, to be let in.

  She opened the laundry door. “Smart old dog,” she said as he passed. He moved stiffly, his back end waddling side to side as he walked away from the hall and towards the passageway. She called after him, “YEW,” and smiled to herself, and watched one ear perk up as he kept on.

  Carlow wasn’t angry.

  Mother was always tired these days. But the more everyone pitched in to lighten the work load, the harder she worked. There were days—with everyone moving about inside—when the house seemed to shrink, as if it could not possibly contain the entire family. At other times it was large and empty—as it was now, with Grania there alone.

  Father was staying in his office more and more at the hotel. Sometimes, in the evening, he had a supper tray brought from the kitchen, and he ate alone. Bernard was gradually taking over the day-to-day affairs of the hotel, working in his own tiny office. Grania knew that Father was concerned about the business, especially after the passing of the Temperance Act the year before. There had been problems ever since, and many hotels in the province had had to close or had been auctioned off. At first, the ones that did stay open had to obey strict controls to keep their licences—hours were shortened, regulations tightened. Sometimes men from the town came to the hotel late at night, looking for liquor or beer, but they were turned away. Bernard had told Grania about that. Father had begun to go out at night, too, sometimes several nights a week. If Mother knew where he went, she didn’t say. Grania had walked into the parlour one afternoon and had seen angry words between her parents, but they stopped speaking when they saw her, and Father turned and went back through the passageway. There could be a huge fight one room away and Grania would have no way of knowing.

  She asked Tress if she had noticed anything between their parents, but Tress—ever Grania’s source of family information—replied that she knew nothing about that. Still, Grania wondered. She realized that she rarely saw her parents in the same room together any more. Not that they had ever been outwardly demonstrative. She remembered them only as hard-working. But they never seemed to reach for each other, or touch. Not in front of anyone. Surely, she thought, surely at night. But she had been away at school many years, and when she’d returned for the summer holidays, she had been wrapped up in her own excitement at coming home. Perhaps there had been more changes than she’d ever thought about, during the years she’d been away.

  There were changes in the town, too. Camps Rathbun and Mohawk, on the outskirts, were busy and thriving in the good-weather months because flyers continued to be trained. That brought business to the town. But the big mill had closed and its employees had gone elsewhere to look for work. Married employees moved their families out of town. The population was shrinking. The nearby lumber supply had dried up; the Rathbuns had not floated logs down the Moira for a decade. Many of the smaller industries had shut down, too.

  Sometimes the hotel rooms were full, sometimes there were no guests for several days at a time. But Mother’s cooking kept the dining room busy, especially at midday and for weekend meals.

  Tress worked in the dining room along with the rest of the family, but she didn’t want to hear news of the war and did her best to ignore the papers. She worked for the Red Cross twice a week, saw her friends, and looked forward only to the day when Kenan would be home. Mail from Kenan came as often as mail from Jim.

  Grania carried the linen upstairs and stripped the beds, one after another, wondering if there would be mail this afternoon. At the breakfast table, she had accidentally knocked a spoon to the floor and Mamo had looked up straightaway. “Drop a spoon, receive a letter,” her lips said, and they’d all laughed. Grania had plucked up three more spoons and dropped those, too. The crash didn’t bother her. Mamo shook her head and said, “That won’t work, Grania. It can’t be intentional.”

  They were all waiting. Waiting for mail, waiting for the temperance laws to change, waiting for the fighting to end. Everyone had been hopeful in April, when the Americans entered the war. But the war still w
asn’t over and now American lives were being lost, too. It was difficult to think of the war in any other way except loss. Aunt Annie had sent a letter from Rochester to tell the family that her eldest son had joined up and had left with the 1st Infantry Division. He’d arrived in France before July but she did not know his whereabouts now.

  We live inside a feeling of terrible necessity, Grania thought. The war marches on and no one speaks of it ending. The Kaiser refuses to stop the flow of blood until his army is defeated. Until, until. She went to the hall to get linen from the table where she had dumped it, and carried sheets to her room and dropped them on her bed, and she pressed her hands to her ears as if, by doing so, she would silence the flow of her own thoughts.

  She allowed herself to think of Jim’s departure. He had climbed into the coach and looked for her in the crowd and leaned over the backs of the others in a train that overflowed with grinning, cheering boys, some so young they were barely out of school. They, and the trainloads of boys that followed, came from towns and cities and hamlets and villages all over Ontario, from western Canada and from the north. Long after they reached England, weeks later—shipping dates were kept secret for security reasons—there were photographs in the papers of boys pressed against ships’ railings as they began their journey across the sea to replace the boys who had preceded them. Sometimes, Grania cut out and saved newspaper clippings or photos, and stored them in the drawer of her closet where her catalogue family had once lived. Unlike Tress, Grania read the papers. She read every word she could find.

  In the late afternoons and evenings, when things were quiet between hotel kitchen and dining room, she still sat in the lobby near Bernard while he went about his work. Bernard’s presence was comforting, even though the two of them looked up only now and again to exchange glances. Grew still came by, too, after working in the barbershop, knowing that Father had so many papers delivered to the hotel—Toronto papers, the Intelligencer from Belleville, the Citizen from Ottawa, community papers from town and from Napanee. At times, especially when there were few overnight guests, Grania and Grew were the only two in the lobby, sitting across the room from each other, reading about the war.