Mad Hope

by Heather Birrell

  ‘Did you ever think, Father?'

  ‘Of course I thought, I just couldn’t let my thoughts stray too far from the reality of the situation.’

  ‘Right. But did you not ever think about the larger picture? Of the web of consequences you created by perpetrating Ceauşescu ’s schemes?’

  ‘No, we did not think in those terms, Maria.’

  ‘In those terms,’ she had shot back. ‘They are not terms, they are the truth, they are what happened! My God, it was like something out of a horror movie, or the Bible – women boiling roots or shoving them up themselves, babies left to rot on the riverbank – and those orphanages! You were there, you were complicit. You knew. You knew about everything and you forced women to have babies they didn’t want and couldn’t care for.’

  ‘Not always,’ he had replied. It was a lukewarm response he knew would incense her further. ‘You’d be interested to hear about the frogs, I believe.’

  ‘Why do you speak like that, like a professor in a TV show? I’m your daughter, for Chrissakes!’

  He suspected she might hang up, but he pressed on. ‘Ceauşescu had the frogs imported in droves in aid of his pronatalist policies. You see, back then, they didn’t have the technology we have today. So, instead of women peeing on those little plastic wands, they had to inject a female subject’s urine into the frog to determine if she was knocked up.’

  Maria was, of course, alarmed by this. ‘But how ... ?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Vasile. ‘How did they know? What symptoms did the frog display? Well, the pregnancy hormones in the human pee would make the frog produce eggs within twenty-four hours. And the beauty was that the frog remained alive and could be used again.’

  ‘So they didn’t kill them,’ Maria said, relieved.

  ‘Well, no,’ Vasile replied. ‘They merely enslaved them and worked them to death.’

  ‘Why?’ Maria sounded tired, unimpressed.

  ‘Because the big C wanted everyone to have more children. So he enforced it with menstrual police and doctors who were conscripted to ensure ladies made babies. Sex was procreational, not recreational.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Maria muttered. ‘You were a doctor, Dad. It was your duty to heal. And instead, you helped take away their freedom, their choice.’

  ‘The frogs or the people?’ Vasile said. His tone was facetious. He should have stayed silent, but his daughter’s dismay goaded him somehow, made him ache for battle. It was because he knew she was right; he had been cowardly.

  Caterina was the courageous one. They told the children she had been called away to care for an ailing aunt. It was like a fairy tale: abandoned children, parents with selfish ulterior motives, old women – witches – with potions and spells designed to solve problems, grant wishes. And absent mothers.

  How lucky he was to have her!

  When they first started dating he had almost lost her to a poet. But the poet was poor. And he has these fatty little fingers, Maria had confided to Vasile, laughing. I could not bear for him to touch me with those fingers. She drew her own fingers across his cheek. We will be happy, Vasile. Because she was beautiful and stalwart, he believed her.

  ‘The heart is pretty central,’ he told his students. ‘It is located behind the forelegs. The thin tissue around it is the pericardium.'

  Maria had inherited her mother’s sense of responsibility and irreverence. He had watched her playing with Marcel when they were children, building elaborate kingdoms out of toilet-paper rolls, twigs and scraps of fabric. Like all children, she was a fan of the riddle: Cineşade pe perete şi-are numai o ureche? she asked her brother, again and again. Who’s on the wall and has only one ear? It was Ceauşescu, of course, a portrait in every classroom of the shoemaker who made good, one ear hidden by the angle of the shot, a grey slab of hair.

  ‘Is my frog sick, sir? It has these yellow wormy things … ’ It was Laura, a young woman of limited intellect, often distracted and easily, dramatically offended.

  Vasile shook his head. ‘No, those are the fat bodies. They allow your frog to store fat and survive its winter hibernation.’

  ‘Oh,’ Laura said. ‘Gross.’ And: ‘I didn’t know frogs hibernated.’

  Vasile nodded; he would return to hibernation. For now, the spleen, the kidneys, the lungs – all were awaiting discovery! The lungs especially were a surprise.

  ‘But sir, they’re so small!’

  ‘Because they breathe through their skin, idiot!’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘That’s so cool.’

  ‘It is and it isn’t. Cool,’ Vasile said. ‘It makes them very sensitive. Like a canary in a coal mine.’ The students looked at him blankly. ‘I mean, they’re the first to feel environmental upsets. They’re the first to suffer.’

  Several students looked up at him, nodded. His time was running out, they would have to begin cleanup soon.

  ‘For example, scientists are pretty sure the chrytid fungus was responsible for wiping out the golden toad of Costa Rica and the majority of harlequin frogs in the tropical forests. As the fungus is a skin disease, and frogs breathe through their skin … Well, you can see the difficulty, can’t you? Weirdly, it also disoriented the poor creatures, forced them out of their comfort zones. Nocturnal species began taking noontime strolls, river frogs were found high in the treetops far from home. It turned their world upside down,’ Vasile said.

  The students began to gather their books, anticipating the bell. Just as well; he wasn’t quite sure how to continue.

  Vasile spent the last period of the day, his prep, tidying up the remains of the frogs. The formaldehyde made them rubbery, toy-like. It was absurd, but he felt a sense of the funerary, an air of pomp. His own mother had had an expensive and elaborate funeral in Romania, the tributes and rituals of a dignitary’s wife. She too had been pumped full of embalming fluid so that her skin, when touched, possessed none of the comforting pouchy looseness he remembered. The tautness of her was repellent, quite literally. He felt his fingers bounce off her when he tried to stroke her hand. He said, Goodbye, Mama, as was expected of him, and then cried counterfeit tears, so much forged grief. He cried not at the loss but at the strangeness of her preservation, the unnatural tilt of her head under the badly coiffed wig.

  The frog parts had to be disposed of. He was living in a culture of compartmentalization – there were bins, colour-coded, for his waste, for everybody’s waste. But what to do with used pickled frog? There was a special company charged with picking up these bits and pieces, finding a place for them. He did not want to know how they did it; it was their job, they should be grateful, no, for such a job? It was a job that could exist only in a world of privilege, of opportunity. He sealed the parts up in a large plastic paint-can-like container and stacked the remains on a shelf in the office. The waste pickup was not until the following Wednesday, but the parts would not smell. He sat down at the lab bench to wait for Naadiya.

  She did not knock this time, simply opened the classroom door and waltzed in. Vasile was momentarily, strangely offended by her gall, her sense of entitlement. Then she smiled at him, shyly. Ah, it was merely bravado then. He forgave her. She perched herself on one of the tall stools at the front of the room. He got up and walked towards her, greeted her.

  ‘Hello, Naadiya.’

  ‘Hi! Hello, Mr. Dinescu.’ She waved a little wave, quickly, like a duck waving.

  He stopped a metre away from the stool, unsure of where to go. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Are you ... How are you feeling?’

  She sat up straighter on the stool. ‘Good. I feel good.’

  And she looked good. He could see it now, a new luminosity. But it was not useful to romanticize. ‘No morning sickness?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Nope.’ She rocked back
on the stool, balancing.

  ‘No!’ Vasile shouted. ‘No! You mustn’t do that, you could fall, you could ... ’

  Naadiya brought the stool back to earth.

  ‘I googled some clinics for you,’ he said. He had been amazed at the cluster, the constellation of stars that had popped up on the map. Here in Toronto, there were buildings, nondescript and functional, wherein it was possible for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. Nobody talked about it, but it happened calmly, quickly, perhaps heart-rendingly. Maybe it was better nobody talked about it. Perhaps it was the real measure of a civilized society. A form of internal, truly domestic peacekeeping. A necessary exit strategy. The clinics were everywhere, dotted along the subway line like the white pebbles left by Hansel. They would glow, he supposed, in the moonlight.

  ‘Yeah,’ Naadiya said. ‘I found them too.’ She looked like she was losing interest! In him? In her predicament? Vasile took a step away from her. He was frightened at how much he wanted her to need him.

  ‘What’s malignant hyperthermia? They asked me if my family has a history of it.’ Naadiya started to lift the stool from the ground again, bracing herself with her arms against the lab bench, then stopped.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s a reaction to anesthesia.’

  ‘Okay,’ Naadiya said, shrugging. She dismounted and began making her way to the back of the room, towards the rabbit hutch. Once there, she crouched down, wove her fingers through the wire, and brought her face close to the cage.

  ‘Naadiya?’ Vasile said. He walked towards her. He was shocked – again – and somewhat hurt.

  ‘It’s next Monday.’ She spoke to the rabbits, happily, buoyed by the fact of it. ‘I need someone to drive me to the appointment.’

  ‘I will drive you,’ Vasile said, but already his brain was scurrying for alibis. Why would he be driving a young Muslim girl – his student! – into the downtown core, after school hours?

  Naadiya seemed oblivious to this quandary. She cooed and hummed to the rabbits. ‘Bye, bye.’ She blew the rabbits a kiss. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I just have to go now. I have to pick up my sister.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vasile. ‘Yes. See you Monday.’ He returned to his desk as she made her way to the door.

  The next day at lunch Vasile met the veveriţă next to the microwave again.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Spice today?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Fish – brain food. But not too many carbs. They weigh you down.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vasile. ‘You don’t want to be weighed down.’

  Christine looked miffed. Perhaps she heard the serving of secret sarcasm he had hidden in his reply. He couldn’t help it. He found her relentless cheerleading quality disturbing. He detected in it the root of some small fascism. Not that there was much value in a wholesale dismissal of the possibility of change – why live at all if hope was an impossibility?

  ‘I mean, sometimes it’s good to feel weighed down, grounded, y’know? But sometimes too light is bad, because then you just float away on your own little cloud. We need interconnectedness and an equitable environment in which to learn and grow.’

  Vasile sighed deeply. The veveriţă seemed momentarily aware of the speed and desperation in her chattering. She stopped.

  ‘Have you signed up for any extracurriculars yet?’ She removed her food from the microwave, stirred it with a folding spoon she had pulled from her bag. The bag looked to be a cross between some sort of camping gear and a briefcase.

  Vasile watched her snap the spoon back into its compact shape. Sometimes he didn’t think he was made for this new world; often he wondered if he was made for the world at all. Extracurriculars! How would the veveriţă have responded to Naadiya’s predicament? There was no doubt a rubric one could apply to this situation, protocols, a whole troop of professionals to summon and implicate … He imagined an announcement on the PA: Monday’s after-school activity will be a lesson in freedom and responsibility, biology and ethics. Do not miss the shuttle – we are leaving at 3:30 sharp! He hated himself for thinking this way. The veveriţă was staring at him.

  ‘Are you okay, Mr. D – I mean Vasile, are you okay?’

  Oh, she was young, and still not used to calling adults by their first names, an uncomfortable informality. It was endearing. Perhaps she was not a squirrel but a young bird, a nervous fledgling.

  ‘I’m okay, Christine, just tired.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘This is a pretty tiring job.’ The coiled energy of her stance seemed to suggest the opposite. ‘You hang in there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Vasile said.

  ‘Here, let me get your food.’ She reached up, opened the door of the microwave and passed the plate down to him. It was lamb and potatoes that Caterina had cooked the night before.

  Once again – it was recurring, like a tic or a cough –Vasile realized how much he loved his wife. ‘Thanks,’ he said. A wave of general goodwill overtook him. ‘Have a great afternoon!’

  On Monday after school, Vasile and Naadiya drove together to the appointment, hurtling silently, like escaped lovers, eastward along the Gardiner Expressway. Just past Sunnyside Beach she began to weep, great soul-shaking sobs that seemed too large, somehow too … mature for her delicate frame. Was it the sight of the waves, the great sky, the glinting of the sun, an alchemy of light that prompted the outburst? Or was it Vasile’s fatherly profile, intent on the traffic, stationed beside her? How could he ever know? How could anyone ever know anything about anyone? Vasile felt himself sliding into an unboundaried despair. Fiica mea dragă, my darling daughter. You ask me what I remember of that awful, ill-lit time and perhaps you will be shocked at my answer. But more than anything, I remember the frogs. I dream them in their many incarnations and contortions. I weep for them the way I cannot for the women, for the babies born half-formed or badly loved. The frogs were exhausted, the women pissed more blood than urine, but we did not stop. Not one of us stopped for long enough to look at the frogs or to look at each other. A man in uniform was breathing down my neck and I was so very afraid.

  ‘Do you want me to turn around?’ He spoke into the windshield, quietly.

  Naadiya shook her head in the periphery. No. No, no, no, no, no.

  Caterina had been sentenced to six years for the abortion she had procured. It would have been less had she given up the name of the woman who sold her the tubing, the saline solution. She worked like a peasant in the fields as punishment and toed the party line with an admirably authentic meekness. There is a hole in my heart, she told him. I must hold my children again. They wept together, heads bowed and touching over an unstable metal table, a guard, buttoned snugly into his uniform, peering at them with lustful curiosity and spite. Caterina’s sentence was shortened to eighteen months and she returned to them, her body and spirit taut with what she had endured.

  Vasile checked for Naadiya in her home form the following morning but she was absent. He searched for her in the hallways superstitiously, as if anticipating an apparition. But she did not appear. His gut clenched in fear. At every bell he hurried to the staff washroom, voided his bowels, then returned to class, empty and shaken.

  In the last period of the day Vasile had only to administer a test to his Grade 12 students, a task that required him to look stern and stalk back and forth between rows periodically. He had just begun this invigilating when there was a knock at the door. The knock was authoritative and clear; it frightened him. Irony: to survive Ceauşescu only to be apprehended by the bureaucrats of the Toronto District School Board. His students waited for him to answer the knock. He strode over to the door, his trembling hands hidden in his pockets. It was Naadiya, looking tired but hardy. He stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. He heard the deliberate coughing, subtle rustlings as he left. Some students would cheat;
it was human nature.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Naadiya, her arms wrapped around herself.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘You should be in class.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘I mean, you are all right?’

  'Yes,’ she said. She reached up to touch her hijab. Then she unclipped the barrette holding it in place.

  Vasile had a moment of panic – the scarf would fall! They had already shared too much; he did not want to see her hair. But the scarf did not fall. Naadiya tucked it into place efficiently; the barrette had been insurance only. She held it out to him.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else.’

  ‘Oh,’ Vasile said. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ He took the barrette and slipped it into his pocket. ‘My students are writing a test,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I have Ms. Foster. She’s totally gonna freak when she books – I mean notices – how long I took. So, bye.’

  ‘Bye,’ said Vasile, and closed the door.

  There was a murmur and a subtle rearrangement – of desks and dispositions – when he re-entered the classroom, but it was not long before his presence restored the students’ focus. They rotated their wrists like athletes, scratched at their scalps unselfconsciously, looked up – not at him, but at some elusive pattern: scientific etymology, formulae, classifications and recipes designed to help us understand the earth and its organisms. At the back of the classroom, the rabbits rooted around in their cage, nosed the air and each other. Vasile Dinescu was not an observant man, yet there was a residue of religion in him. He took a deep breath and allowed the air to fill his lungs, his abdomen, his limbs and his head. He began to float, his body hoisted aloft by loss and yearning. He began to pray. ‘Doamne iartă-ne,’ he said. God forgive us! ‘Broaştele!’ The frogs! He sent the prayer up into the ether, into the atmosphere, the atoms of water that created the clouds ... He exhaled. Then he turned back to his students, some of whom were beginning to crane restlessly away from their concentration. He checked his watch and confirmed with the noisy wall clock. ‘Time’s up,’ he said.