Deafening

by Frances Itani

“You know. A chant under the breath, a line from a song.”

  “Tell me.”

  Tell. Jim thought of Grania.

  “Sometimes I say—fast—to myself:

  Infirtaris,

  Inoaknonis,

  Inmudeelsis,

  Inclaynonis.”

  Irish laughed so hard he could scarcely speak. “Tell me again.”

  Jim repeated the verse, faster this time. “It’s supposed to sound like Latin. My grandmother taught me. She said it came from the time of Henry VI. It’s nonsense. But it helps if I say it in the noise of the guns, when we’re trying to get a carry out of a tight spot.” Another pause. “Something else, too.”

  “What might that be?” This time, Irish looked as if he did not plan to be surprised.

  “The boys,” Jim said. “The ones who are terrified. They’ve never accepted war. What war is. The ones who do, it seems to me, know they’re prepared to die. That doesn’t mean they think about death, or dwell on it. You know how they hate talking about this stuff. They accept. But some just can’t. You’ve seen them, Irish, crying for their mothers, holding their hands over their ears.”

  “More than I care to think of.”

  “I can’t be the only one who notices that the ones preoccupied with dying are the first to be killed. Always looking over their shoulder. It’s better to carry on. Know our tiny job in the order of things, and get it done. That way, we’ll all get home sooner.”

  He thought of the boys he’d taken back to the Self-Inflicteds. They were kept together in one spot as if they had measles or some other communicable disease. Some died for it.

  They had finished their tea, but Irish reached for the last mouthful in the cold cup.

  “Don’t, Irish, it’s bad luck to leave it sit and then drink the last bit.” He tried to take the tin cup from his friend’s hand, but it was too late. Irish gulped it down, laughing. Jim was sorry he’d spoken.

  Evan came into the shack with Finner. Ahead, Cambrai was burning. And anything else Fritz could put a flame to. The two men had carried in boards to fix up the place. Evan had also brought a scarred tabletop—a slab of wood two feet by two—and propped it low on heaps of fractured tiles until it rested evenly. They all sat on the floor, one on each side of the square, admiring; it gave them immense pleasure. Evan laid some bacon on top of the slab, for morning. He’d been scrounging. Evan was harder now. The tic in his cheek was there, but he was harder. And he was never still. Jim thought of him as the most restless man he’d ever known.

  Finner threw an extra blanket into the already cramped corner of the shack. They had done everything they could to make the place comfortable, even though they’d probably be leaving in the morning.

  Finner was upset about the cook. He lined up his complaints. The meat at supper had turned, and had a bad taste. There was to be no hot breakfast in the morning—rations only. The food gave him stomach pains. He went on and on about the cook.

  “Never mind the grousing,” said Irish. “It’s no use. There’s probably nothing else the man can do. He’ll make us a good porridge when he can. We’re off for the evening, so let’s try to enjoy ourselves. Anyway, Finner, when you point a finger at someone, remember that three fingers are pointing back at you.”

  Finner looked down at his hand, pointed a finger at Irish, and laughed.

  As it turned out, they were roused in the early hours of the night, long before morning. They grabbed up their belongings, took the bacon with them, abandoned their lean-to shack and their tabletop and headed into the woods. They had just settled themselves into a former German trench—recently evacuated—when severe bombing started up, all around the area they’d just left. Fritz had not finished fighting yet.

  It was pitch dark but the sky was alive with explosions. No one spoke; they wouldn’t be heard anyway. They wrapped blankets around themselves and leaned back. Irish was asleep in an instant. But in the first lull, the sergeant came to find them and told them that several men had been caught out and were wounded. He needed a few of the boys to go out and see if there was anyone they could bring in. Another bearer party would be coming up behind. Jim grabbed a stretcher and woke Irish. But now Irish was grumbling.

  Evan and Finner were behind, and veered to the left to search a separate area. Jim and Irish split off to the right. The ground rumbled underfoot and then everything was still. Jim saw two bodies close together, far ahead, in front of the ruins of a shattered building. He pointed, but Irish had already seen. They headed there directly, stumbling over uneven ground. When they reached the two men, they saw right away that the one on his back was dead. The dead man’s right arm was bent at the elbow, hand open, as if waiting for a ball to drop from the sky. The other soldier had a deep injury to his thigh, but he couldn’t move by himself. Irish tore open a dressing; Jim watched his friend’s big hand lay it gently over the wound. Irish looked up then and gave the signal. They lifted the boy onto the stretcher and started off in the direction of the newly designated dressing station.

  “This will get you a Blighty, lad.” Irish told the boy. “Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll have you with the doctor in minutes.”

  Jim was in the lead. His body assumed the old rhythm. With Irish in step behind, the weight of the soldier was even between them. They had done this so often, so many thousands of times, the added burden was like part of their own body weight. We’ve turned down promotions, Jim told himself. So we can keep doing this, get the boys to safety, stay together as a team. He thought he saw something move, up close, and he came to a halt, feeling Irish make the adjustment behind. Things that move…There was a shout. It was Irish. And a sudden sound that forced Jim to close his eyes—only for an instant—and then there was a whoosh, a rushing sound, and something louder, an explosion that rocked him forward and sent him flying off both feet. He took a step in the air, even as his hands released the grips of the stretcher. He shouted, and reached behind himself to regrip the handles that had been harshly yanked away as he was hurled forward.

  He tried to get up; his body was in tremors; his spine was hunched and would not or could not straighten. The shock had entered him as a physical blow, and it vibrated his chest until he believed his heart would explode. Debris had cascaded upward and was now falling back to earth in slow motion, as if taking time to rearrange itself. He looked behind him. The sky lit up and he could see all around the circle of undulating land, as if he were standing in an open field on his grandfather’s farm.

  “Irish!” he shouted. “Irish! Where the hell are you?”

  He straightened, all the way up, and fell again to his hands and knees. Fragments of wood from the stretcher entered his night vision: a triangular piece of torn canvas, flesh, soft pieces of something scattered in a perfect circle like the sky overhead.

  “Where?” he shouted.

  But there was nothing. Irish and the boy had disappeared.

  There was nothing to put into his hands.

  The noise started up again. Or maybe it hadn’t stopped and was only now re-entering his ears. His hands groped a three-foot radius on the ground around him, his palms connecting. “Bone,” his voice said, slowly and deliberately, and he began to name each object that his hand felt and his eyes could see. “Strap, sleeve, button, finger.” For his right hand had clamped around a wide and thick finger.

  He stared at it, unbelieving, through the dark. He shouted, and shook out his hands and jumped up, staggering back. He rubbed his hands against his trousers, scrubbing, scrubbing, and shook them out again. The sky lit up briefly. He looked down at his own feet and willed them to move. Boots, legs and arms were studded with dirt and blood. He saw out of his peripheral vision another stretcher, one that had been propped against a broken wall, abandoned, he didn’t know why. Why would anyone abandon a stretcher here? It seemed odd, out of place. A furrow in the ground tripped him but he regained his balance. “Stretcher,” he said. “Casing, lantern, rifle.” For there in front of him was a signaller�
��s lantern on the ground, and beside it an upside-down rifle, its bayonet stuck in the dirt. Someone wounded must have been picked up here, the rifle left behind.

  He had no plan. He kept his body tall, ramrod straight. He kept walking and walking and tripped over a German sandbag that had burst and he entered a trench to the right of the one he and Irish had recently left. He walked past two men he did not recognize, tripped over one of Fritz’s fire steps that now faced the wrong direction, kept going, turned a sharp angle to the left, and continued. The trench seemed unusually low. Instinctively, he ducked, head down, his training kicking in, though there was no danger here. He did not pause as he passed another soldier and a voice said, “You all right, mate?” Something about his face must have jarred the man because the soldier looked at him and then quickly away.

  Jim did not alter his pace; he looked past the man and kept on. A two-foot remnant of earth, a crest more solid than its surrounds, rose in front of his feet and he stepped around it and headed towards the place in the woods from which he and Irish had come. Stumps were pointing to the sky in silhouette; he noted these as he kept on, always heading back. He heard another voice, his own voice, reciting, singing now, at the top of his lungs in body-racking sobs: “IN FIR TAR IS IN OAK NON IS IN MUD EELS IS IN CLAY NON IS…”

  An officer stopped him. Clamped a hand firmly on one shoulder. Forced him to stand face to face.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Hold on a minute. What’s your name?”

  Jim looked at him. Lieutenant, vertical scar, right cheek, old wound. Someone he knows?

  “My name?”

  “Name.” Gently now. The man’s voice.

  Jim’s mind scrabbling. Hold on. Hold on tight.

  Chim. Better. Better now.

  “My name is Chim, sir. Jim.”

  “All right, Jim. Get yourself back to the dressing station. They’ll take care of you there. You can get back to your unit from there, too.”

  Chapter 20

  The Influenza epidemic continues unabated. Its ravages are not confined to this city or Province or even to Canada, and cable reports indicate that it is rapidly spreading over the civilized world. It has baffled medical skill to an unusual extent and has claimed more victims perhaps than any other epidemic in a score of years.

  How to Fight: Avoid crowds, coughs and cowards but fear neither germs nor Germans. Keep the system in good order, take plenty of exercise in the fresh air and practice cleanliness. Remember, a clean mouth, a clean skin, and clean bowels are a protecting armour against disease. To keep the liver and bowels regular and to carry away the poisons within, it is best to take a vegetable pill every other day, sugar-coated, made up of May-apple, aloes, jalap, to be had at most drug stores, known as Dr. Pierce’s Pleasant Pellets.

  The Napanee Express

  Thunder, in her body. The way the shadows moved across the curtain, the storm must be far off. A half-light morning. If she could somehow raise herself, push away the bedclothes. She looked at the walls and tried to attach her gaze to a familiar object: bureau, wardrobe, washstand, jug. No framed daffodils. The mirror with the reed trim was gone, leaving a faded oval shadow. In place of the mirror, a small wooden cross, hanging from a nail. One of the hall tables was at the end of the bed. Why? And why enamel plates on its surface? She tried to answer her own questions but words scattered in her head as if they had never been joined in thought. She tried to move one foot but the foot was heavy. Legs were heavy, too, ankle to knee. There was a bucket on the floor beside her. A slight turn of her head and she saw what was inside: a ragged cloth spattered with red. The smell—menthol, garlic, onion—what? The odour was coming from her.

  At the side window, shadow and light. The blind was pulled down as far as the sash but the zigzag crack let in a jagged glow. She thought of Tress. They had spied on the travelling ladies who’d sat on the upper veranda next door. She forced herself to focus. The bed across the room was empty. She remembered, then. Tress moved out before Kenan came home. She closed her eyes and sent a silent message. Maybe Tress would come back and take the stench away, open the window wide, help her. Help.

  She moved her hands over the cloth that covered her chest and realized what she had not known before. She was weighted with poultice—wet and stinking. The door opened just as she scraped the soggy layer from her chest and dropped it into the bucket. Mildred, wife of Dr. Clark, with her frayed nurse’s bag and her wide, knowing smile, entered the room. Stepping out from behind her, Tress rushed past and kneeled at the side of the bed. Mother, her grey hair pulled back in a bun, stood in the doorway. Her expression was anxious, uncertain. As if forbidden, she moved neither forward nor back.

  Tress’s lips were the first to move. “You’ve been in and out of sleep.” She dragged her fingertips up the length of the opposite arm. Long time. She lifted Grania’s hand, held it gently, began to rub her wrist, her dry dry skin.

  “Fever,” she said. “High. Very high. For nine days. I was not allowed to come to the room. You’ve been sick for three weeks.”

  Mildred opened the brown leather bag and lifted out thermometer, drinking tube, green soap, two thick masks—one of which she tied on. She handed the other to Tress and told her to wear it. Mother, who had stayed back until now, crossed the room to the front window. She raised the inside pane and propped it with the stick that rested on the sill. The blind got away from her and flapped upward, and Grania winced in pain as light shot into and behind her eyes. The blind was tugged down again. Mother left the room, pulling the door shut behind her. She tried to smile at Grania as she went out but her face was taut. Grania saw the attempt at the smile and thought, Sorrow. But Mother was gone. Replaced by shadow and light.

  Mildred and Tress were speaking behind lumpy masks that smelled like turpentine and disinfectant. They looked as if they were chewing behind the cloth, chins bobbing. A faraway part of Grania wanted to laugh but she could not laugh. Glances were exchanged above her. What? They did not seem to understand that she wanted to rest her eyes and her aching chest and her weary weary head.

  Tress reached for Grania’s hand once more and rubbed with the same soft pressure. Her fingers seemed to be saying, Don’t slip back. Stay with us.

  Mildred pointed to the bucket, pulled down the bedclothes, peeled off the remaining layers of poultice under Grania’s back. Thermometer under the tongue. Mildred’s blue eyes, close and calm. Grania had known these eyes, the face behind the mask, since she was a child.

  The thermometer was withdrawn and examined while Tress accepted a jug of hot water from arms at the door. The blankets were removed from the bed and Grania was covered with a large flannel before she was rolled and turned and washed, Tress propping her from behind. The odours were taken from her, peeled like layers of old skin. She’d been soaking in foul oils, herbs, onion, she didn’t know what. She coughed, and her lungs filled with a heaviness so terrible she laboured to get one breath in, one breath out. Mildred’s chin moved behind the mask and she and Tress exchanged glances again. Mildred rubbed a wet cloth over Grania’s temples. Tress nodded and made the sign for sit, for chair. Grania felt Mildred’s strong arms pull her forward. The room swayed, circled, swayed again. She knew that if she were moved she would lose consciousness. But she felt Mildred’s will steady her on the edge of the bed.

  A fresh gown was slipped over her head, and as it was tugged down over her nose she tried to inhale, to pull the clean scent of it inside her. Then, both feet were on the floor. Tress and Mildred were on either side and Grania was lifted, half dragged, to a chair by the window. This puzzled her for a moment because it was Mamo’s rocker, her heavy arm rocker, brought up from the veranda. There was confusion over seasons. One season or another, Grania had no recollection of it being carried into the room. Someone had been sitting, rocking, maybe sleeping in Tress’s empty bed, watching over her at night. Mamo?

  Grania looked towards the window, eyes squinting. She wanted to banish the heaviness, to have her body somehow drif
t outside. She wanted to feel the padding of leaves underfoot. If she could walk the shore, enter the woods—had she fallen? A flicker of memory. The shoe pushes into the leaves, shoosh shoosh. First, she would have to know what was going on. It was difficult to keep her eyes open. She tried to think things through, but her head was in a muddle and she was too tired to ask.

  Tress’s eyes stared above the mask that pouched over her cheekbones. Grania watched Mildred strip the bed, roll the pillow cloths into a ball and remove a strip of rubber sheeting. Mildred had begun to hurry—or did it only seem that way because Grania’s vision had slowed? Mildred must have other patients to visit.

  Tress stirred a teaspoon of aspirin powder until it dissolved in water, and she waited while Grania gargled and rinsed the back of her throat. The two women lifted her into the newly made bed and tucked the blankets under her chin. Grania closed her eyes. Jim, she thought, for the first time since she’d been awake. Chim.

  She remembered nothing more until she woke and saw that darkness had slipped behind the blind. Once more the stench slid into the room and lay beside her. She wondered if this might be Death, if Death were in her bed. She’d been harshly wakened from the most wonderful dream about an orange, its juice squeezed onto her tongue. Every drop made her stronger. She looked around her and saw a jagged crack of light but did not know if time had elapsed or if anyone had come into the room for twelve hours, or twenty-four, or forty-eight. Sometimes a shadow sat in Mamo’s chair; sometimes the chair was empty. Someone rocked, or the chair tipped back and forth by itself. There was a faint scent of Canada Bouquet. She opened her eyes and saw Father. Another time, Bompa Jack stood over her. There’s still a good leg on the cook. He would find a new husband for his sister Martha. Everyone was laughing. But no, Great-Aunt Martha was gone. Died in the spring. A year ago? Two? Bompa Jack walked to the door, paused, looked back. Was the bedroom door open or closed? Grania saw a flash of metal before he disappeared.