Deafening

by Frances Itani

  Grania knew what that meant. Words couched the actions, even though everyone knew what went on behind the family’s closed doors. And now, here was another woman, discouraged, defeated, her glance darting back to the doorway. She had stopped crying but she hadn’t stopped being afraid.

  Mamo had already gone to bed, but Mother came through the passageway and talked to the woman, whom she knew slightly. An hour later, Bernard walked her to her brother’s home, where she insisted on going.

  They had all been upset by this, and Grania and Mother had gone to bed very late. Now they would have to move quickly to make up time.

  Grania left her bed unmade, and washed and dressed quickly, coughing several times, trying to clear her throat. Before going to see if Mother was dressed and ready, she paused to glance out the window. There seemed to be a high wind. She looked up to the sky, and a V of geese crossed her vision, a ragged, uncertain formation overhead. The flock was followed by a second, more orderly V. If she hadn’t looked up, she’d have missed both. One more season coming to an end. The day before, Mamo had announced that the birds would be heading south early; her bones could tell. Grania thought again of the woman with the bruised cheek the night before, and of the fear—not only that the woman had felt but that Grania and Mother had felt, too. Before they’d finally gone to bed, Mother had stopped Grania outside her room, speaking carefully so that Grania could read her lips.

  “In all the years your father and I have been together,” she said, “he never raised a hand to me in anger.” And then she added, “But I’ve lost his attention, and it is partly my own fault.” Grania, taken by surprise, had nothing to answer, but Mother turned abruptly anyway and went into her room, alone. Grania thought for a long time about what Mother had said.

  Grania now looked at her reflection in the oval mirror and tried to steady herself. There were shadows under the eyes that stared back. Her skin was pale, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed this the day before. Had she looked like this when she was in Toronto? Tress hadn’t said anything. She hurried out of the room. Mother was on her way downstairs and Grania caught up, and they quickened their steps. Mother took her arm, leaning a little. They turned on the lights in the hotel kitchen and set to work.

  By the time Grania was free again, it was twenty minutes before noon. She had not told Mother about her sore throat, but there had been no need. Mother had noticed her paleness right away. But there had been only a quick comment; they’d worked hard all morning, passing each other in the kitchen and dining room. Now, Mother wanted her to write up new menus, complaining that the old ones were stained and spattered, that the job had been put off too many times. It was Grania’s careful printing she wanted on the new ones. “Do something while you’re sitting,” she said. “Take one of the old menus with you.” When Grania nodded and was about to leave the room, Mother stopped her and put both hands on her shoulders. “You look as if you need more sleep,” she said. “Maybe you’re coming down with something.”

  But Grania wanted to go out; she wanted to get away from the stifling air that was constricting her throat. She would do the menus later in the afternoon, when she went to sit near Bernard in the lobby. She knew the menu by heart and would not need an old one beside her to start anew: Fried Eggs and Back Bacon; Hot Porridge and Currant Scones; Aggie’s Special Soup; Hot Pot and Irish Soda Bread; Chicken Pie; Upside-Down Cake. On Thursdays, Custard, or Raisin and Apple Pie. On Fridays, Panned Fish—Pickerel or Trout. Canned fish, too—Salmon Loaf. On Sundays, Roast Beef with Pan Roast Potatoes.

  She returned to the house and looked out the back window. Father was outside now, speaking with Jack Conlin, who was chewing tobacco. The horse breaker was there, too. He was holding fittings in one hand and a whip in the other, although, by reputation, he rarely used the whip. Grania had her first look at Father’s new horse. It was nervous in the paddock, as if it knew that some outrage or defeat was about to take place.

  Funnels of dust were whirling near the doors of the shed. Older boys from town leaned into the fence in a semicircle, waiting. Two younger boys were sitting on the top rail, their caps tilted in the attitudes of the older men. Other friends of Father came in from the Mill Street side and fastened the gate behind them. They stood back, a few feet away from the inside paddock.

  Grania knew that if Mother looked out a window and saw her leaving, she would be sure to try to stop her. Still, there was so much hullabaloo in the backyard, she didn’t concern herself with Mother. The noon steamer would be docking shortly and Mother would be attending to dinner and the first course. Grania would not be missed.

  She wasn’t sure where Mother kept her ruby salve, so she went to the small pantry, took an opened jar of beets from the shelf and dabbed a drop of purple juice onto each cheekbone. That would fix the paleness. She rubbed the drops vigorously into her skin. Mother could easily see through deception; she always did. She could see through shadow and beet juice and pallor—but Mother was not in the house.

  Grania looked towards the back window as she left the pantry and saw moving paws—Carlow, scrabbling to get in. She was alone, then. Mamo must be next door, and Bernard, too. She let Carlow in and he settled on the floor and watched her. She leaned over to pat him, feeling dizzy as she did. She went to get Jim’s brown jacket, and left by the side door, shutting it carefully behind her. She wondered if she would be too warm, but the wind gave a quick reply in gusts off the bay. Her legs wobbled as she moved in the direction of shore, heading west towards the woods where she and Mamo had always walked. She glanced at the station and the wharf on the left, and passed the coal shed farther on. A rawness scraped at her throat, and pain dug into her chest like a spade. She began to unbutton the jacket but, just as suddenly, she became cold again and tightened its folds around her. She walked past the Jamieson twins and watched the motion of their arms as they threw a ball between them. Things that move…The ball swerved wildly in the wind and veered in a wayward arc. It blurred out of sight just as Grania’s legs almost gave out. She believed, momentarily, that she had been struck. But that could not be—there was the ball in mid-air, between the twins again.

  She thought of the letter she had received from Fry the day before. Fry had received her postcard from Toronto. She wrote that the new epidemic had struck hard at the school. They were doing their best to keep it out, and most children had been given the vaccine. Several had become ill on Monday. By Tuesday, four dormitories were filled with sick children. At the time she was writing, six. There’d been no point in moving children over to the school hospital—except for the serious cases.

  Most have mild form of that influenza, but one girl has pneumonia. Everyone is tired, this is just beginning. It must run the course, Dr. Whalen says. I think school will stop mail coming and going. No parcels allowed from home. Children are not permitted to leave grounds and teachers are asked not to receive visitors at home. Picture shows and schools in city close one by one. Some people on streets of Belleville are wearing masks.

  But some good things happen. Apples are growing. Nothing keeps the trees—four thousand this year—from being loaded with fruit! Yesterday evening, I was tired but walked through orchard with Colin and picked a bushel myself. Colin helps farm boys when he can.

  Other news at school—naming of cows occupies the children. So far they have chosen Molly, Roos, Mrs. Gordon and Snow Queen. And—no surprise—there are more rumours that the sign language will be phased out. We predicted, remember? Soon there will be no positions for deaf teachers. Superintendent says Oral Method is the future—now we copy United States. Some teachers already discourage use of sign. Who can believe that deaf children will stop creating language with their hands? It’s as natural as air we breathe. If children are not permitted—in dorms, in classrooms, when they are out to play—they will be dull children and we will all be sorry. Already, we hear of children being punished for using sign.

  Grania had read the letter twice. She stood still now as she though
t of what her friend had written, and she steadied herself again. Her hand was tapping against her skirt. Leaves were falling as if they were weighted, but just before they touched the ground the wind caught them and tossed them up again. The air was spinning with reds and golds and browns. In a few weeks every tree would be bare. Invisible gusts off the bay rattled at her clothing, and grains of dirt pelted her face. She choked as she inhaled. In a moment of panic, she thought she might fall to her knees.

  There is something amiss.

  She faltered, but as she reached the edge of the woods, her legs were steady again. Her vision blurred. Just before she entered the path that was partly hidden by trees, she looked over the water and saw the noon steamer moving up through the bay. In a soundless world, black clouds puffed out of the smokestack and were grabbed by a wind that thinned them to wisps of grey. In five minutes, a crowd would tumble onto the wharf—sightseers out for a fall excursion, visiting both sides of the bay. They would disembark and cross the road and pack the dining room where Bernard would at this moment be moving between tables as swiftly as his body would allow without breaking into a run. Mrs. Brant would be sagging into a kitchen chair, reaching for a saving cup of tea now that the main work was done. Mother would be calling out commands, making a last check. Pulling her apron over her head and folding it across the step stool. She would stride to the desk in the lobby and her hand would lift the bell. Not that the overnight guests needed prompting. Most of them returned because of the cooking. In the evenings they hovered at the bottom of the stairs, a restless clump, awaiting the signal for supper. Every one of them knew the story of Sir Wilfrid Laurier who had once left his campaign train, crossed the street and entered the hotel to have a bowl of Mother’s soup. Every one of the guests knew that Sir Wilfrid had paid high compliment as he left.

  Grania could not remember what she was doing here. She was on the path but had no recollection of entering the woods. She tilted her head to look up to the tip of the highest tree and saw that it was bent in the direction of the town. A good fall wind.

  The wind howls, but not the leaves.

  She imagined the sound of wind around her. It all depends, Jim had told her.

  She searched the sky as if there might be howling to see. Would Tress say she was silly? Would she make the crazy sign because Grania was trying to see the sound of the wind? No, Tress would not do that. But Tress had played; Tress had entered the old nighttime language, with no rope between.

  Grania stepped forward again and this time she went down, holding the half crouch that caught her, surprised by her legs crumpling so completely. She tried to push herself up from the earth with both hands but she couldn’t rise. It was easier to stay crouched in the leaf-filled hollow between criss-crossed roots. She had a momentary thought that no one but Carlow knew she had gone out.

  She closed her eyes and pictured Jim. Each time a letter was placed in her hands there was a belief in the merging of their lives. But after each letter had been read and added to its bundle—a fourth bundle now, for 1918—she had to fight the fading of that belief. She knew how small she was in world events, how small her town, how small her country. And how big the war. The Kaiser punished everyone by continuing to fight. Jim had been gone for three years. Every day, when she opened the papers, she could not keep her body from lurching towards the lists of wounded and dead. So many boys from surrounding farms and towns and cities were gone forever.

  At the time of his last letter, Jim had been behind the lines. But the day he wrote the letter, he was preparing his kit: We’ve been ordered to turn in one blanket. That meant the unit was moving again. Now the papers were filled with more news of the push forward. “The Hun is on the Run,” one headline had stated.

  Of course there might be no letters at all. It was what everyone feared but no one said. One of Uncle Am’s friends who’d worked at the sash and door factory had received a telegram and letters. Even after being notified of his son’s death, he received two more letters—one written the evening the boy was to go up the line, the other written the morning he died. It was a horror, Uncle Am said. His friend wanted the letters but dreaded the missives from his dead son as much as he had dreaded the imaginary telegram before it arrived. Deeply regret inform you…To make matters worse, letters sent overseas by the boys’ parents had begun to come back, “Killed in action” stamped across each envelope. These arrived weeks after the boy was in his grave. “At least he has a grave,” Uncle Am had said. “Not like Grew’s son, lost and buried in clay and mud. At least the boy had a decent Christian burial.”

  Grania’s vision blurred and she pressed her hands to her cheeks as if contact with her own skin might affirm her presence. She thought of Mother’s beet juice as she sank—this time she went all the way down. She thought, My skirt will be filthy. She thought, I’m cold. A pain shot through her ribcage and for a moment she could not take a breath. She rolled, feeling the leaves shift beneath her. She tried to sit upright, knowing that if she could not get up she would choke. She struggled with the button on the collar of Jim’s jacket and tried to force it open. She pushed herself up on her hands and knees and began to crawl, her skirt and stockings scraping dirt. In her urgency to reach the clearing she kept her mind focussed so that she could stay on the path. She felt a gurgling sensation on one side of her chest, and in disbelief she lifted a hand and pressed it beneath her left breast. At the same time, she said, Bubbles. How can there be bubbles in my chest? Fluid tilted up and over her tongue and spilled onto her hand, which was now bright red. She tried to pull forward the last few feet but sank to the earth, face down. Air moved in and out, past the gurgling in her mouth.

  Chapter 19

  If we could decapitate a singer in the midst of a song…the beauty of the voice would be gone, and you would simply have a reed-like effect.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  “Do you ever wonder about your breaking point?” said Irish. “What it might be?”

  They were off for a few hours and were leaning back against the wall, their cups filled with tea. They were in a tiny shack they had built from salvage, behind a tile factory in Bourlon that had been battered to pieces. In the past few days they’d been in Cagnicourt, Queant, Inchy, across the canal bank to the old German front line, and then ordered back to the Inchy side again. They were badly shelled Friday night, and relocated again on Saturday. Everything was speeded up, moving fast, the Canadians fighting alongside the British. Irish had heard that the French and Americans had taken eighteen thousand prisoners. The Hindenburg line was gradually being cleared. The positions won reached the outskirts of Cambrai, an important road and railroad centre. Between shifts, Jim had gone to the top of Bourlon Ridge to get a view of Cambrai and the surrounding towns.

  During the fighting, every road leading to the front had been crammed with guns, tanks, motor machine-gun units, infantry, cavalry, engineering supplies, cooks’ wagons, water carts. All night Saturday, at the Advanced Dressing Station, stretcher bearers had transferred cases from horse ambulance to motor ambulance. Two hundred stretcher cases came in, and one hundred walking. The men were fighting hard. More than fifteen thousand casualties had been evacuated in six days. As wounded men were loaded onto trains, empty cars returned carrying dressings, blankets, more and more stretchers. Flat cars and French boxcars with layered stretchers inserted into their sides were used constantly. The Red Cross was right on the heels of the army, making daily deliveries and supplying comforts for the wounded.

  Despite the high number of casualties, the advance was continuing. The clearing of the battlefields and the treatment and evacuation of the wounded were taking place as if every man was an essential unit of a massive, oiled machine that was beyond the reckoning of any one part of it. Regimental Aid Post, Advanced Dressing Station, Collecting Point, Main Dressing Station, Clearing Station, Depot. Everyone knew his place, where to collect, where to carry, where to report. The locations changed as divisions rolled forward or replaced one
another. The wounded were moved back by stretcher, by strong arms and shoulders, by wheeled stretcher if the roads allowed, by wide-gauge rail, truck, horse-drawn wagon and motor ambulance.

  Jim was staring at Irish. They had talked about everything else, but not about breaking points. Irish had Clare’s picture out of his pocket and was running his thumb over its surface. Jim patted his own pocket over Grania’s photo.

  “Every man thinks about his breaking point,” Jim said, after a silence. Time lag, he thought. The moment between utterance and understanding. Or between understanding and utterance.

  Irish did not interrupt. He was waiting. He tucked Clare’s picture back into his tunic.

  “You’ve seen the boys leave their senses, Irish. Gone over the edge.”

  “But do you feel it lurking?” Irish was insistent. “In the air beside you, or creeping up behind? Especially here. Things are moving so fast we can scarcely keep up.”

  “It keeps us off balance,” said Jim. “So much movement, the speed of things.”

  “That’s what I mean. Things are off balance.”

  “Off balance might be a good thing, who knows? I don’t trust a fellow who believes he has everything under control. For me, off balance is real, a companion that travels close. I might be surprised by something, I might not.”

  “You’re canny, Jimmy boy. Canny will get you through.”

  “Canny? I don’t think so. But I do things. I take measures—to hold things at bay.” He hadn’t intended to say this.

  “Measures? What measures?” Irish was pushing, laughing a little, the gap showing between his teeth. They’d been together for three years and he hadn’t heard this.