Deafening

by Frances Itani

  What she could not know was that, downstairs, a fourteen-inch Quarantine card had been fastened to the parlour window for the past three weeks. Nor could she know that the hotel had been closed and that passengers had not been allowed to detrain or disembark in the town. From her bed Grania could not see the black crêpe nailed to the front door below. Nor could she read in the town paper: “All that was mortal of this beloved mother, mother-in-law and grandmother was laid to rest in Deseronto cemetery. The attendance at the funeral as well as the floral offerings indicate the esteem of a large number of citizens.”

  Mamo’s illness and death had been swift. Unfortunate victim of the Influenza epidemic. Her grave had been dug through brown and brittle grass and hardening earth. The surrounding trees were bare of leaves. “Loved and loved us dearly” had been carved on a dull flat stone that had been erected only two days before. The grave, as she requested, was on the side of the hill, high above the grey-green waters of the bay that for half her lifetime had reminded her of a soft shore in the beautiful land called Ireland.

  Grania woke with no more energy than she’d had the day before. Day? Week? She could smell kerosene that had been poured into the drains of the house and though the odour made her gag, she recognized what it was. She tried to pull herself to a sitting position but ended up rolling onto her side, looking helplessly towards the door. One arm hung over the mattress.

  Someone will come.

  She stared at the door as if her will alone could force a body to enter. She looked at her dangling hand, which, of its own accord, flipped over, palm up, and made the sign for die. Well, then, there it was. Her hand had done this without any help from her.

  Fragments of a dream burst through her consciousness. She and Jim had been standing together on the ice of a pond. Death was with them, but was waiting in dark water below. Jim tried to help Grania to shore, but each time they moved, the ice cracked underfoot. She managed a step but the ice shivered and dissolved and she felt herself slip under. She opened her eyes to darkness and held her breath, and stayed down where it was deep. The water pressed on her from above.

  Someone was reaching for her, pulling her up, and she clung to the bank, half in and half out of water. When she looked back she saw that Jim’s legs, body and shoulders had disappeared. His face, above water, showed confusion, helplessness. He scrambled to get a finger-hold in drifting ice and pulled himself forward and tried to flip his body up and over the edge. He tried again. Grania, now safe on the bank, willed him to her side. She willed him to safety.

  The family believed that she was out of danger. She read this on their faces when they came to the room. They no longer wore masks. Mother, Mildred, Tress came and went, holding fluid to her lips and changing her sheets and gown. She barely saw who was there. She knew that no one else saw Death, that she was the only one aware of its presence, lurking close.

  Death was waiting for her to break, she knew that. Beneath the covers, one of her fists snapped downward and made half the sign for break, for broken. A picture of Bridie, at school, came into her head. Young Bridie with the heart-shaped face, the irrepressible grin. The rapid hands that refused to be interrupted. Don’t break my talk, she used to say to the other girls. When I make story, don’t break my talk.

  Tress walked into the room and Grania lurched into the present, distancing herself from the figure that hovered boldly at the end of the bed. Tress looked as if she had just faced punishing cold; her cheeks were red from the walk along Main. She rubbed her hands together and warmed them before helping Grania to wash and change into a clean gown. She handed Grania a cup of juice. While her sister’s back was turned, Grania looked at the cup and then over to Death. Memory bubbled up, the Sunday book close to the surface. Here, said the Mexican. Drink this. Grania could kill Death. She could put poison in her cup and offer to share.

  Tress faced her again. Sorrows of her own. Everyone who came into the room carried sorrow. Tress’s cupped hands pulled down through air, the sign for now. Her lips said, “I want you to walk to the chair.”

  Grania turned her head away and refused to read Tress’s hands or her lips. She did not want to be encompassed by Tress’s energy or her sorrow.

  But Tress would not be put off. She fluttered her hand in front of Grania’s face to get her attention. “Mildred said you have to get up every day from now on. Dr. Clark said so, too.” She added this as if to give weight to the order. She pointed to the empty rocker.

  Grania’s legs trembled as she leaned into her sister and took uncertain steps. Death turned a shoulder in disdain as they passed. She dropped into the chair and tried to catch her breath. Surely her breathing was loud enough to be heard. If so, Tress was not letting on.

  Grania cast a sideways glance and shuddered. If Tress would stay in the room, she might not sink back. But Kenan needed Tress at home. She couldn’t ask. She deliberately turned her attention to her sister, forcing herself to speak. Her voice was jagged in her throat.

  “Tell me what month it is.”

  Tress nodded. Her lips and one hand formed November. She flicked a finger from the back of her wrist to show time. “I was up before five. Kenan still has trouble sleeping. When he gets up, I get up too.” Two fingers popped off the opposite palm—get up. She slipped a strip of sheeting under Grania’s arms and knotted it behind the chair to keep her upright while she made the bed. Even so, Grania slumped uncomfortably.

  “Kenan?”

  But Tress did not want to talk about Kenan. Was there still anger inside her sorrow? Grania saw no trace of it. Well, then, what about Bompa Jack? She wanted to ask if he’d been in the room.

  What is real and what is not? asked Dulcie.

  “Bompa Jack,” she said. “Was he here? When I was sick?”

  Unexpectedly, a quick grin across Tress’s face. “You saw him? You saw the gun?”

  Had she misunderstood? Had she missed a word? No, she couldn’t have, because Tress was miming a rifle held, a trigger pulled.

  “Gun?”

  “He came to town when he learned how sick you were. He brought the rifle from the farm—the one he used when he shot the wolf. He laid the rifle on the floor under your bed—it had to be lengthwise.” Tress drew a finger up the length of one arm. “He insisted that the steel of the barrel would draw out the fever. No one was allowed to argue. He brought eggs, too. He wanted to mix them raw with homemade whisky for you to drink, but Father said no. Mother shouted when he came with the gun. Maybe she thought he would shoot you.”

  Grania laughed for the first time since before she had sunk to her knees in the woods. At the sound, Death recoiled in the corner.

  “What else?”

  “Uncle Am sneaked up one afternoon and stuck an ace of diamonds in your shoe. Left shoe. He said it wouldn’t work in the right.”

  “Shoe?” Thumbs rose and fell. Arms weak. Which?

  “Black, two-strap. From the closet. He put the shoe under your bed, beside the gun.”

  Grania nodded and glanced towards the closet door. She was creating pictures.

  “The enamel plates? Did I dream those?”

  “They were brought up from the warming oven in the kitchen when you were clapped—chest and back. Mamo did that…” A flicker. Something. Tress’s face. She continued. “Everyone had a remedy.”

  “Mamo?”

  A pause. “Has a cold. Won’t come to the room while you’re recovering.” Tress stepped behind her quickly, to adjust the sheeting.

  “The mirror. Why is it gone?” Grania pointed to the oval shadow on the wall, the cross that hung in its place. Someone had prayed.

  Tress, in front of her again.

  Something to hide, something to tell. Once more, Tress turned away.

  “Tell.” The childhood demand. Tell me at once, said Dulcie.

  “Your hair, Graw.” Tress came back, and leaned over her.

  Grania raised a hand to her scalp.

  So much effort to lift an arm.

 
How could she not have known? Her scalp was soft and bare. There was no hair, none at all. Her fingers ran back and forth over her head until her arm tired, and she lowered her hand to her lap.

  “Bring the mirror. The one you gave me when I went to school. It’s in the top drawer.”

  She was too weak to hold it, but Tress propped it up while Grania stared at a thin face and bloodshot eyes and the bony outlines of a scalp.

  “It will grow back.” Tress’s lips were insistent. “Everyone says so. Mildred. Even Dr. Clark.”

  Grania lay back against the pillows and stared at the rectangle of window above Tress’s old bed. The curtains had been fastened back now that she was able to bear the light. Except for Death at its post, Grania was completely alone.

  She remembered Mother coming in and sitting on the bed and telling her she’d been talking to herself and could be heard through the wall at night. Although Grania was surprised, she didn’t care. I hardly ever sleep, she thought. I lie in bed and dead men march through my dreams. Dead men who will never come back. I think of Grew, and Kay, and wives and babies and fathers and mothers who are left to grieve. I think of all of these.

  She dared to think of Jim. She had forbidden the family to write to him to say that she’d been ill. He must not know. She did not want him to worry. He had to stay focussed and keep himself alive. She brazenly brought the picture of him into her mind. His leanness, his earnest face under the brown hair, his muscular back, his long arms, his slender fingers and hands. During her illness she had not had to fight off the daily fear that the boy from the telegraph office might come to the front door. Before that, every time she walked through the hall she tried not to look in the direction of the street in case a silhouette could be seen on the other side of the glass. When the boy did come, she hadn’t been there to see. Tress had received the telegram about Kenan and had read it before Grania even knew it had been delivered.

  She thought about the nights she had lain in the dormitory at school during her first year away from home. The countless times her lips raced through the chants: Don’t let me live here forever. Don’t let me be an orphan. Let me go home again. Father told her to name her fears boldly in the dark.

  Don’t let Chim die.

  She had not seen her husband for three years. If he were here now, she would have something new to tell him about being deaf. Something she had not known before. That when she had been so sick, her body had been deaf all over. He would want to know about that.

  Through the upper part of the window she looked at the flat line of sky, more white than blue. She was sorry that from here she could not see the bay. The branches of the single tree outside were bare and motionless. She had forgotten what month it was; she would have to ask again. As she lay in her bed and stared at the tree, a hawk dropped like a miracle from the sky and rested on the branch closest to the window. She held her breath. The long tail, the grey markings were inches away from the glass. For a moment, she and the hawk were still. Then, in a flick, it was gone.

  She turned her head and made an attempt to pull in deep breaths. She coughed and tried to exercise her lungs. Orders from Mildred. Expand your lungs. This is the most important thing to do. She thought of Jim and vowed to gather, bargain, summon whatever was needed to get well. She did not glance in Death’s direction. She willed herself to cough again. She expanded her lungs, and expanded them again. She tried to cough some more.

  Chapter 21

  I am lost without him. I sincerely hope it ends soon for me…I feel I would just as soon be pushing up daisies as living like a gopher in this place, with all my dear friends gone.

  Letter from the Front

  Never before had he talked to the dead. Now, the only real conversations he had were with Irish. With the living, he was silent. The replacement had arrived, his new partner, a decent boy who’d come directly from training in England. His name was Hirtle, and he was from Nova Scotia. He tried to tell Jim about his girl in England, his friends who had joined up and where they were and what had happened to them all. But Jim did not want these bursts of intimacy. He did not want to be unfriendly; he did not want to get to know anyone new, exchange stories or backgrounds. The promotion was offered again and, this time, Jim accepted.

  “Do you remember cracking hickory nuts?” he said to Irish. “Do you remember how plentiful they were? That first fall I stayed with Uncle Alex, we had a sackful to bury. We collected the blackened husks after the frost, and if they didn’t come down on their own, we climbed the tree and tapped the branches to help them along. There were trees all along the fenceline. If the husks didn’t crack open then, they did after another good frost, once they were in the ground. Before winter, we dug them up and put them in the root cellar. Uncle Alex asked me to take some to Dr. Whalen, and I did.

  “In the winter, we spilled out a heap of them on the floor in front of the stove. Placed them one by one on a two-foot section of rail someone had given Uncle Alex—a railroad man—and we cracked them with the shaker. Aunt Jean placed a piece of oilcloth under the rail to catch the shells, but no matter how careful we were, bits and pieces scattered around the kitchen floor.”

  He paused, thinking of the nutmeats inside each cool brown shell.

  “There was a hickory tree on every farm, Irish. You must have grown up with them all around.” He stared at nothing, tried to keep the conversation going.

  “Cambrai was taken on the ninth. The Canadians, the Royal Naval Division to the south, everyone was so strong. The Australian infantry fought their last; they captured Montbrehain on the fifth, before they handed over to the Americans. Cases poured into the dressing stations in our area on the eleventh—Canadians and Imperials—so many, we had to call other sections to help. By the twentieth I was in a truck, driving through Douai.

  “Fritz has not treated the civilians well, Irish. As we move forward we see people who are horribly undernourished and thin. The young men were taken away. I saw two girls who might have been twelve and thirteen, digging a grave. A man’s body was on the ground beside them. I heard the shovels hitting earth, grating against rock. A stray dog ran down a path, its ribs showing. Stash would have whistled for it, made it his pet. I passed the scene in a moment, but the sound of the shovels stayed in my ears all day. And the look in the girls’ eyes—I knew they would not stop until they’d dug the space they needed.

  “We receive great welcomes in the villages and towns. But Fritz has been looting as he retreats. Even roadside niches are bereft of statues. The engineers are busiest of all; every bridge has been blown up along the way. There are booby traps, too, and warnings of poisoned wells. But the billets get better and better as we move forward. Our dressing stations are treating civilians now—I was embarrassed at first, because most who come in are women. I’m no longer embarrassed—they are only needy and hungry and in want of medicine and care.”

  Jim did not say aloud what he was also thinking. How one night after a fourteen-hour shift he lay on a stretcher and tried to sleep and realized only then that he had not thought of Irish the entire day. He had forgotten his friend in the midst of chaos and responsibility and fatigue. He had lain there, staring into the dark, feeling a uselessness that was mixed with betrayal and shame for being alive.

  “Next stop for the Canadians and the Imperials may be Mons, Irish. The end of the fighting is near. Five weeks. If you could have managed five more weeks. I have already written to Clare. I sent the letter to the address you gave me. I’ll visit your parents, and I’ll visit Clare, too, if I ever get home.”

  Chapter 22

  11/11/18: France: Canadian Corps 0645 aaa Hostilities will cease at 11 hours on November 11th aaa Troops will stand fast on the line reached at that hour which will be reported to Corps HQ aaa Defensive precautions will be maintained aaa There will be no intercourse of any Description with the enemy aaa Further instructions follow.

  Grania was pulling herself to a sitting position when Tress, pale and excited, and waving a
newspaper, burst through the door. “Come to the window, Graw. You must,” she said. “I’ll help.” She ran to the bedside, but Grania insisted on getting up by herself.

  A crowd had gathered on the steps of the hotel. Men and women were on the veranda and even more were walking down the middle of the road. Everyone was waving and laughing. Children at the edges of the crowd were striking pots and pans with sticks and wooden spoons. Grania watched rhythmic hands rise and fall. Some of the arms were shaking handbells. Automobiles draped in flags were driven up and down the road. Occupants waved their hats in their hands and people jumped out of the way. Two figures in an open car were dressed like Charlie Chaplin, each with a brush moustache. They waved their Charlie Chaplin sticks and pointed them to the sky. Grania recognized Mr. McClelland, the town baker, his stern face opened in laughter. And she saw Cora, watching everything, her lips moving non-stop. A man on a splendid white horse rode up the edge of the street, just below the boardwalk. He turned and rode back. Was this the horse of one of her Irish great-uncles, ridden in the July parade?

  Bernard was downstairs on their own veranda, talking to several people. Men were shaking hands and hugging the women in the street. There was a glimpse of Mother in a black dress below, and then she was gone.

  Grania’s heart was beating quickly. “What?”

  “The war. It’s over. News started to come in by wire at three this morning. The Kaiser has run away. The noise is unbearable outside. I came as soon as I could. Kenan is at home, trying to see from an upstairs window.”

  Grania looked down at the Ottawa paper that Tress had thrust at her and which she had dropped to the floor. An oversized headline read “PEACE!” and below that: “WORLD WAR ENDS; ARMISTICE SIGNED; KAISER IS OUT; REVOLUTION GROWS.”

  “Father?”

  “Out there somewhere, in the street. Jack Conlin closed the post office and rushed here to get him. Bernard said he would stay at the hotel to keep an eye on things.”