by Alan Cumyn
There is only time for famished kissing. I send my hands beneath her skirts only to have them slapped down even as her own are tugging at my seams and buttons. Her groans are noises of frustration. She circles me for a while, then rushes off clutching her papers again. My brain, my limbs are faint with fatigue and hunger, but this too is a hunger demanding to be fed.
Our longest stretch together could not be more than seven or eight minutes. If we are seen I might be shot, Henrike disgraced. But months pass in quiet safety.
She always leaves first. Sometimes, at night, I stare at the rough and darkened planks of the barracks ceiling and hold my fingertips to my face to try to smell the aching want from her skin.
“Get up!” Margaret steams, and I look at her, startled. The air is hotter than a boiled bath, and I can feel the sweat rotting my joints. I try to see up, up where I know the little space should be — the window to stars or snow or night or day. But the window isn’t there.
“You’re sleeping your life away!” Margaret says. She is all in black, in mourning. For Witherspoon?
“He’ll still be dead no matter what I do,” I say. I feel as if I’m breathing through sopping canvas. Even Margaret is sweating. She takes a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and mops her brow and cheeks.
An alarm clangs and Collins rushes past us in a German uniform except for his boots — he still has on his fannigan wooden clogs. They make a horrible clacking on the floor. Margaret pulls at my arm.
“If it wasn’t for you, he would have been all right!” she says. “Now get out of bed!”
I am waiting for Agony to follow after Collins, for the dogs and the guards. Suddenly I can hear them, a mob smashing at the barracks door.
“Jesus!”
I sat up and looked around. Awake now, blinking, breathing like a sprinter.
I saw Lillian’s slumped form beside me. She’d kicked all the covers onto the far corner of our sagging bed. It was stifling hot, even with the one miserable bedroom window thrown wide open. The air smelled of rot and sweating bodies. On the ceiling ghostly little clusters of loose paint flakes were waiting to snow on us in the middle of summer. Time and time again we’d scraped them off, only to find them replaced within a few days by more moulting flakes. The landlord would not paint, and I couldn’t spare the money — not for decoration, when there was barely enough for food and the rent for this horrible flat.
Lillian turned over uneasily. She was in her lightest summer nightdress. I thought of nudging her awake, of trying to stir up the night air.
But I didn’t move. I closed my eyes to picture Margaret again. Margaret without Collins, without Witherspoon and Agony and the rest. Just Margaret on her own, in the skin, if I could manage it. But all I saw was Dorothy’s face, her large eyes, the slim taper of her fingers.
What was that joke she had come up with this morning? She was bursting to tell it: how the police raided a brothel last night not far from where she lives and found a Catholic priest, the fire chief and the attorney general. “The police ask the men, ‘What have you got to say for yourselves?’ She put on her deepest voice.
“And the priest says to the police, ‘Several of these women have sinned and I have been taking their confessions.’
“And the fire chief says to the police, ‘The room in the back is poorly ventilated and poses a significant risk.’
“And the attorney general says to the police, ‘I thought you guys weren’t booked in here till Wednesday!’”
Her laughter sounded across the building. I thought about how she blew smoke out the side of her mouth and looked away so often when she was talking, only to turn back with those grappling eyes. I thought about how a woman will build up in your mind and body, settle in like an illness you want to have.
The baby started to cry. I got up quickly, relieved for the distraction. The air was even worse by the baby’s bed. He was glistening with sweat in the silvery light, tossing and moaning in his sleep.
“Michael.” As I carried him onto the fire escape for fresher air he nuzzled his tiny face against my chest and moved his lips in a semi-conscious search for his mother’s breast. It must have been two or three in the morning. The street below was deathly still. A yellow dog ran across it, sniffing at something I couldn’t see, and the breeze blew a few paper bits this way and that without conviction. The whole city had settled into silence. But the air was fresh and almost cool compared to what was trapped inside our tenement rooms.
Michael stayed cuddled in my arms, and in our own ways we studied the middle of the night. I found myself singing a silly old marching song.
Wash me in the water
That you washed your dirty daughter
And I shall be whiter
Than the whitewash on the wall.
Lillian came out then. She’d wrapped her robe tightly around her and looked at me suspiciously.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to breathe,” I said.
“Were you singing? It’s the middle of the night.”
She turned around then and disappeared into the gloom.
I stayed where I was and looked again at the street. A few dusty-leaved trees waved ghostly fingers in the desultory gusts of wind, and the yellow dog was making his way back towards us with something dark in his mouth, pulled from the garbage no doubt.
“Some nights like this,” I whispered to my boy, “I looked out at eternity. Some nights in battle everything would fall still, and the birds would sing — nightingales — their beautiful,gentle, high-pitched little love songs. And starlings would swoop underneath the moon, and it seemed that if anything could last forever, this would. This peace.”
The baby buried his warm face in my shoulder.
“Are you coming?” Lillian called. She sounded fed up. How could I blame her? This was no way to live, packed in a squalid little box, afraid of every little expense, of every sniffle. I stood and adjusted Michael on my shoulder, then stepped back into the stuffy air. When I eased the child into his crib he yawned and balled his fists and rolled over, his face pushed into the pillow.
In the bedroom I settled myself as lightly as possible beside Lillian’s still, tight body. For some minutes I listened to her breathing, which was slow and deep but mostly an act. When I brushed my hand against her backside she tensed.
I know how you feel, I thought, but I could not say the words.
I withdrew my hand and lay as still as possible, trying not to look at the murky paint flakes on the ceiling.
“Ramsay, do you think you could carry a box of files to my apartment for me? It’s only a couple of blocks away, on Stanley,” Dorothy said to me.
We were well into August now and I’d finished for the day, a very nice portrait, I thought, of a young woman in the act of taking off a swimsuit in front of a mirror and surveying the red damage of sunburn on her lovely shoulders and arms. The box in question was covering most of Dorothy’s desk. She was getting ready to close the office when David came stumbling through the door of his studio. He wiped a rag over his sweating face.
He always seemed to sweat when he painted.
“I can certainly take a box for you, my dear!” David said. “I’m just heading your way, I believe.”
Paint smears decorated his red, puffy cheek. He turned to me. “Have you seen the young one, Ramsay? What’s her name?”
“You mean Rebecca Childes,” Dorothy said.
“Rebecca Childes! Rebecca Childes!” David sang. “Her body is the closest approximation to heaven I have ever seen. And you can quote me, my dear!”
“You say that nearly every day, David,” Dorothy replied.
Then the size of the box registered with him, and suddenly his back was feeling unreliable, and he announced that he was not finished with Rebecca Childes after all. To me in a stage whisper he said, “She should pay you for this box-hauling time. She’ll have you scrubbing her kitchen floor next, and fixing her windows.”
“David, you go
fix your own windows!” she said.
I lifted the box. It was heavy enough that I wondered if my elbow could manage it.
“Can I trust you to lock up, David?” Dorothy asked.
“Of course. Just let me steal the profits first!” He disappeared again behind the door. I caught a glimpse of his Miss Childes, a statuesque redhead sitting in a black slip, sipping from a coffee cup that she rested on her lap.
I carried the box along the hall and down the stairs, then out onto the busy sidewalk. The city had been baking for weeks. I was in shirt sleeves, and I had loosened my tie and wore my hat pushed high on my head. It was not as muggy as many late afternoons in a Montreal summer, but the sidewalks radiated heat and the traffic on the street moved sluggishly, like camels in the desert.
Dorothy was a fast walker, her tiny legs scissoring in high-heeled shoes. Under my load I had to push to keep up with her, and I began to regret the assignment. Within a few minutes sweat was stinging my eyes. Up the hill we marched, then we turned into her building and climbed five hard flights. When we finally reached her door my chest was heaving and my arms screamed for release.
“I am so grateful to you. You’re wonderfully strong,” she said, and before she slid her key in the door she touched my shoulder with her hand.
I carried the box into the apartment and willed myself to let it down slowly onto the table, rather than drop it. When it was down I rubbed my arms and flexed my fingers to revive the circulation.
“I hope that wasn’t too awful?” she said, in her slightly mocking way. “Can I pour you a drink?”
“Some water would be fine, thank you.”
“How about a real drink?”
I stayed with the water and watched her pour out two fingers of scotch for herself, which she downed with a quick, convulsive tip of the glass. Her face was newly flushed and her eyes shone.
“I wonder, while you’re here, if you could look at a shelf for me in the other room?” She pointed to what I could plainly see was her bedroom. She looked as if she was trying to fight off waves of embarrassment.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Something’s loose,” she said nervously. She didn’t move towards the bedroom but remained with the glass in her hand, staring at me.
It’s an extraordinary thing when a woman shows her desire. I felt as though, without moving, she’d taken several steps towards me. My breathing was still ragged from the lifting.
“Is it . . . fastened properly?”
“I’m not sure that it is.” Her eyes did not flicker away.
I’m a married man, I imagined myself reminding her, though the words didn’t emerge. I moved towards her and she stayed exactly where she was: wary, open, holding her breath.
I didn’t know what I was going to do. She tilted her head as I got closer. I ducked mine and stepped past her into the bedroom, then scanned the walls idiotically, looking for a loose shelf. She did not follow me right away, but paused to pour herself another drink. I wished I’d taken one as well.
The bed was in a far corner, single, with a plain white cover. The drapes were beige, masculine. But a pretty writing desk under the window looked delicate and finely wrought. The only bookshelf ran along the wall to the left of the desk. I strode over to it, happy to have some sort of purpose, and tried rattling it, but the wall fasteners were solid.
When I turned around she was sitting behind me on the bed, her legs swinging gently. She leaned back on her right arm and sipped more of her drink. Her hair was loose on her shoulders.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said without looking at her.
For several seconds those were the only words that hung between us.
“It’s all right,” she said finally. She pulled at my hand until
I looked at her. “I don’t make a habit of this, if that’s what you think.”
“No, I —”
“Shut up a second. I know you’re married. But you’ve kind of snuck up on me, Ramsay Crome. These are such sad times. Now you know where I live.”
She let go of my hand and downed her drink.
“The lady has just told you how she feels. You should thank her and leave it at that, and I will see you at work tomorrow.”
I could hardly move towards the door.
But — “Thank you,” I managed.
I walked home almost drunkenly, the heat of the early evening oiling my limbs. It seemed the earth itself had tilted. But cars chugged down the streets in their same old oblivious way, and men and women continued to walk the lanes, and the stores that still remained open advertised their wares at rock-bottom prices.
I was dizzy with the nearness of so many sharp edges.
I mounted the rickety iron stairs to our old flat, newly disgusted with the poverty and grime of the neighbourhood, with the stench of rotting garbage from the bins behind the building, with the shabby windows and the grubby door that stuck in the heat, and with the dark gloom within those walls which was the best that a middle-aged fannigan could afford.
“Long day?” Lillian said when she saw me. She was clutching Michael to her chest, and the tiny kitchen smelled of boiling potatoes. I kissed them both quickly.
“I need to wash up. I’m afraid I’m filthy. I walked in the heat.”
“Was something wrong with the trolley car?”
“Everything was so slow,” I said vaguely, then splashed water on my face from the basin. I imagined guilt reeking from my pores. But all I could see in her face was what had been there for a long time already: the slow, grey fatigue of living poor in the city, the shadows lining her eyes as if it were forever December.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“Nothing special. An advert for shoes.”
I walked into the other cursedly tiny room, happy to escape for a moment any further conversation. The newspaper lay folded on the rickety excuse for a side table. As I opened it the mail fell out and on the floor.
A manila envelope, addressed to me, had a fancy seal on it. I looked at it without curiosity, then my eye fell on the newspaper again. Six “workless men” had been arrested and hundreds more tear-gassed for protesting the shutdown of their plant. Communists were believed to be behind the agitation . . .
I opened the envelope in irritation and then had to concentrate fully to process the words. Dear Mr. Crome, it said. Further to your application for war reparations due to alleged mistreatment by Germany during your incarceration there 3 June 1916 to your release at Dover 18 November 1918. . .
A cheque fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and looked at it in amazement.
You have been awarded the sum of $500 in compensation towards your claim, plus 5% p.a. dated from 10 January, 1920, the date upon which, under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany undertook to pay and assume a contractual obligation to make good the damage caused during the war.
The cheque was for almost nine hundred dollars.
“Ramsay, are you all right?”
When I looked at Lillian — she was holding a plate of cabbage and potatoes for me, with one tiny sausage — the room swam in tears.
“We’re getting out of these damn rooms,” was all I could say.
Fourteen
Old McGillis’s farm in Mireille had long since been sold, and he was living now with Maisie Campbell down the way, tending her cows, straightening her fence posts, and trying to stay out of range of her preaching. But another property opened up not too far from the former family land. It was mostly woodlot and there was no house, but it came with a meadow and a promise of being a place on this earth for a man to stretch his arms. And it came too with the sight of old childhood hills to bring the blood back to my young wife’s cheeks and plenty of country air to fill my baby’s lungs.
I broke the ground myself. With a team of lads from the local farms we dug the shallow foundation and framed out the walls and roof of the house. I knew nothing about construction except what made sense. Most of the men had built barns. W
hile the roughest of the work was being completed, Lillian, Michael and I lived in a big canvas tent down in the meadow. It was on the soft grass of the meadow that the boy learned to walk and where his incessant runny nose cleared up.
We started to build in late August. By October I had to return to work in the city, and for the next few months I logged full days in the office and then worked into the night on the property, setting down the roof shingles, framing in the rooms, laying in the plumbing and wiring, finishing the walls, fashioning and hanging doors. Young Michael would quietly root and play beside me and had to be watched, of course, among the stray nails and boards, the sharp tools lying around.
For days on end it rained. The tent was cold and smelled of must and did little against the chilly wind, but Michael only grew stronger, and Lillian too began to revive. She was like a plant kept too long in a dark corner but now returned to fresh soil and air and light. Her face shone in a way it hadn’t in the dust and grime of Montreal, and she brought her own strong will and farm sense to fashioning a good life out of disruption and chaos. She chose the plot and broke the soil for what would be the garden and fed us with soups and stews and bread and turned us out in clean clothes, ironed dry despite the rain.
And at night in our cots her embrace was warmer than it had ever been before. Often we would sleep together on one cot, entwined in a single bed roll, our legs interlaced as we snuggled warm against the deepening cold of the night. I would wake up in the darkness with my limbs stiff and numb but not daring to move, wishing only to prolong the feeling of breathing together, of having our hearts beat out the same drum song.
“I’ll be a little sad when we’re finished,” Lillian said to me. We were on our knees fitting boards. Sawdust covered her hair and lit on her eyelashes like a butterfly’s wing dust.
“Aren’t you looking forward to having our own room and waking up not chilled to the bone every morning?”
