Deafening

  From the porthole window, Grania watched the formation of peaks and troughs and rippled waves. Her ocean field was now entirely white. At four in the afternoon a cutter went by on the road in front, and after that there was no activity at all. The mail managed to get through in the late morning and had been fetched by Patrick. The storm had swooped in from the northwest and down the length of the bay. After supper, no sooner had the snow stopped falling than it was followed by freezing rain, a layer of bluish-white that locked on to doorsteps and encrusted the verandas of the town.

  Was it possible that Jim lived outside in weather like this? It was. Sometimes he slept in lofts or huts, or on shelves in barns, or in billets, or on beds of straw. There hadn’t been much news since Passchendaele in the fall, but the papers now boasted that Canadians were bravely holding parts of the line. Grania had no idea of Jim’s location. The last letter she received—stamped with the censor’s stamp—had been written five weeks earlier, at the end of January, and said only that the Ambulance boys were rotated in and out of the line and that she was not to worry.

  Rest periods, he wrote, mean continuous parades and inspections. They are determined to keep us busy, but there is a more relaxed atmosphere behind the lines, and some evenings there are even concerts and entertainments. Last night there were skits, and a kazoo band.

  One night, he wrote from a French village where he slept on a chicken-wire mattress, nine men to a tiny room of three-tiered bunks. He had to sit on the floor to write the letter, he said, the page propped against his knees. He’d spent Christmas behind the lines at a small farm. He and Irish and seven others pooled their money to buy sausages and pork and gave them to the woman of the farm, who cooked up the meat for their Christmas dinner.

  All the boys call her Mother because she is so good to everyone. At Christmas we were given cigarettes and tobacco, an orange each, and some filberts. We shared these with the woman’s family. Some of the boys had no trouble getting their hands on a bit of rum for our celebration.

  Grania thought of her own Christmas. There had been no guests at the hotel for four days, which meant that everyone had a rest from work. Tress, still living at home then, had hung a wreath outside the front door. In early December, Bernard and Patrick decorated a small tree in the lobby. Mother wanted a tree in the house, too, and it was put up later, Christmas week, in the far corner of the parlour. In the town, celebrations were subdued; it was the fourth Christmas of the war. Grania sent homemade chocolates to Kay and her young son, and asked Bernard to deliver them. She was sure she did not imagine Bernard’s quick agreement to have an excuse to visit Kay.

  On the twenty-fifth, the family sat down to Christmas goose, and everyone joined hands around the table for grace. Mother said a prayer that Kenan would soon be home from England and another special prayer that Jim would be kept safe.

  Father brought out a bottle of brandy and added some to the carrot and raisin pudding, and everyone drank a small toast at the end of the meal. Mamo had knitted gifts for everyone: for Grania, a woollen hat with a turned-up rim, in cornflower blue; for Tress a shawl in her favourite rose colour. Patrick had La Grippe during the holidays, and coughed continuously. Grania tried to stay out of his way because she was still vulnerable to infections, especially at this time of year.

  Fry and Colin had stayed in Belleville to help out at the school because more members of the staff had left to join up. Fry wrote that they’d taken the children to Griffins Theatre to see a moving picture that starred Charlie Chaplin, and the children laughed throughout the entire picture. Colin had helped the students to decorate the chapel blackboards with Christmas scenes.

  Cedric wrote his usual pre-Christmas notes in the December newspapers, and Grania read these in her room.

  PARENTS: Read This!

  Do you want your child to have a merry and happy Christmas? If so, make sure that your presents are sent in good time for the distribution of boxes on Christmas morning. It would save us a great deal of trouble and anxiety if they all arrived before the 20th. If sent later, they are apt not to get out here in time. We will do all we can to make your child happy on that day. If he does not share in the joys of the occasion it will be your fault.

  Among presents for girls, don’t fail to include plenty of hair ribbons. These are always in demand, as are also handkerchiefs. Other useful presents are kimonos, bedroom slippers, rubbers, over-stockings, mittens, toques, aprons, scarves and collars of lace. Both boys and girls are always anxious to have skates, so don’t overlook these if your child has not already got a pair. Don’t send jam, fruit or catsup in glass bottles. Every year we get one box or more in which such things have been sent, but which got broken on the way, often to the ruin or injury of other things. The children get as much of such things here as is good for them.

  Grania had spent every Christmas of her childhood at the Belleville school, from the time she was nine years old. In some ways, she missed those frantic days filled with expectation. So much excitement in the morning when the children were wakened at five-thirty and taken to the main sitting room of each residence to see the tall trees decorated with strung popcorn, and ropes of silver tinsel, and crocheted cone baskets, and tiny angels with cheesecloth wings. Then, after breakfast, no matter if the weather was disagreeable, the Roman Catholic and Anglican pupils were walked to church in the city, escorted by several of their teachers. Everyone bundled up and followed one another in a long line. At the churches, the deaf children were brought to the front. Sometimes they signed a carol or a prayer for the rest of the congregation, and sometimes they watched the congregation sing. After church, they were marched back to the school and into the chapel to see the Christmas address given by their superintendent, and then, finally, restlessly, they sat on benches before a platform that had been erected in the large sewing room of the main building. Every year, the platform was piled high with presents sent from the children’s homes. Every year, too, Father had sent a box of toques and mittens to the school—especially for the poorer children.

  Some of the girls and boys brought their own hand sleighs—an easy way to carry parcels back to the dormitories for opening. It was only after she had become a senior that Grania understood that every box sent from home had been opened before Christmas. She had been called upon to help the assistant matron fumigate all clothing that had been sent, and each item had to be put back in its rightful place in its Christmas box.

  This year, in the January paper, Cedric followed up in his usual style: “We are sorry that the parents were not here to take a walk through the dormitories after the boxes were opened. Such sights are not often seen. The beds were littered with every kind of goody, while mechanical toys of all kinds were running over the floors. These did not last long, most of them being junk before the day was out.”

  At home, all during the season, Tress had been preoccupied with the thought of Kenan returning. Now, she was gone. Although she was only ten minutes away, Grania missed her. She missed her the way she had when she first went away to school. She tried to shake the old feeling of loss but it slipped easily back into place. She was glad for her sister, glad that Kenan was home, glad they had a home to live in. Tress walked back three times a week to work during the midday meal in the dining room, but Grania, standing alone at the window in the upstairs room of their parents’ home, felt as if she had been snagged by a net.

  Locked in the compound. Tell Dulcie to run for help.

  Was the house more silent now, with Tress gone? Was there more silence between their parents? Grania did not have to hear silence to know about it. Father had let Bernard take over more responsibility for the business of the hotel, but he himself was remote, staying in his office most of the time. He frequently went out in the evenings, and Grania had several times smelled alcohol when he returned.

  As for Mother, Grania wondered if she felt alone, the way Grania did, without her husband. It would not be possible to talk to Mother about this.

  At l
east Mamo was here. Mamo was always here. Sometimes, after dinner, she and Grania sat in the parlour and Grania read short items to her from the town paper. Mamo now had what she called “old eyes.”

  Before Kenan arrived home at the end of January, Grania had stayed overnight with Tress a few times in the small house, sleeping in the bed with her upstairs. But Grania was needed early in the morning to help; it was easier for Mother if she remained home. And now, Tress and Kenan needed privacy. The family had been so happy to see him, to welcome him back. But Kenan had not spoken. He could use one arm and both legs. For the past five weeks he had not left the narrow house at the far end of the street. Not once.

  Grania had not gone to Belleville with Tress to meet him, but Mother and Father had. They had been at the station to greet him and to bring him the rest of the way. When Grania first saw him after he arrived in Deseronto, she was ashamed of her reaction. Except for the fact that he was sitting beside Tress, she would not have recognized him. The young man who sat before her was smaller than the Kenan who had left in 1915. Diminished. His face was partially bandaged when he first came home, but now the bandages were off. The rest of his face, the undamaged half, was terribly pale. His dead arm hung from the shoulder, a loose limb. Grania did not know if she had made a sound when she first saw him. She did not know if Tress had either, or what Tress had said. Now, Tress and Kenan were at home, working things out.

  As Grania considered this, she wondered if she had made up her own part about being a married woman. A woman who had once lived with a man for a short time. Had she not, since her husband had left, gone right back to her old home, her old room, only to sleep in her old childhood bed?

  When Jim comes home, she said to herself…but that was where things became vague. She had no idea when that might be or where they might go. Some future time connected to events unseen and far away. Others were in charge of determining outcomes that affected her life and Jim’s. Chim. Thinking his name made her feel alone and unconnected. Everyone has lost something in this war, she thought. We have waited so long, and we have all lost something.

  She stood at her bedroom window and peered out. In all of the winter whiteness, perhaps silence was everywhere. She would ask Mamo. Beneath the window she saw undisturbed snow in the street, and a glistening over the new layer of ice. When snow covered the earth, did it also absorb sound? She felt safe during snowstorms, although this was something she could not have explained. Perhaps hearing and deaf people were joined in the same way for a brief time in a silent world. But logic told her that movement, even in snow, must surely make sound; that the layer of ice would alter the silence. And this year there was much snow and ice—there’d been no January thaw, no February melt. Fry had written from Belleville to say that the city was worried about the possibility of spring flooding and that ice was dangerously jammed in the Moira River.

  But it had been a good winter for skating—at the school rinks in Belleville, and on the rink cleared on the Bay of Quinte here in Deseronto as well. Grania had been out skating several afternoons. One Saturday, she persuaded Kay to join her. To her surprise, Kay had agreed to come, and had even permitted herself to laugh. They had both laughed, and enjoyed themselves. For a fleeting moment, Kay’s eyes and cheeks had taken on the old secretive glow.

  Grania smelled a new fire downstairs. This meant that Father was back from his office, a rare evening when he would be in the house. He continued to receive updated notices about what alcohol he was permitted to stock and how he was permitted to serve it, but business had been slow since Christmas. A worker he had recently hired had left for the war. The woman who worked part time doing ironing in the laundry had left, too; she moved to a factory because it paid higher wages.

  The smell of burning wood was stronger now. Father would have turned on the lamp in the parlour so he could read in his corner chair. If he wanted company, the door would be open.

  Grania decided to go downstairs to join him. When her hand touched the bedroom door, she felt the vibration, the hit-hit of the broken shutter clattering against the outside of the house. The wind had shifted and was blowing from land instead of from the bay. Many nights, she had fallen asleep to the hit of the shutter, the pattern of her breathing taking up the whim and rhythm of the wind. Just as she reached the bottom stair and pushed aside the curtain, Mother came out of the kitchen, leafing through a cookbook as she, too, walked towards the parlour. Grania recognized the picture of the schooner on the brownish cover. Inside the cover were the words, “Eat fresh fish. Save the meat for our Fighting Men.”

  Everything was war, even the cookbooks. This one had been sent a year ago by the Naval Service in Ottawa and had been used in the hotel kitchen ever since. A year ago, Mother could buy round steak for eighteen cents a pound. Tonight they’d eaten creamed canned salmon. Tomorrow, there might be salmon fritters or salmon loaf. Some hotel visitors did not like fish, though it had always been served on Fridays—several other days in the week now, too. She thought of the food at school: fresh bread, fish on Fridays, as much milk as a child desires at every meal, no tea or coffee to pupils under twelve.

  Before she went to the parlour, Grania stopped to peek around the kitchen door. Patrick was at the table doing his homework, and she gave him a quick wave. Stay in school, she thought. Don’t run away to Kingston to sign up. If you go, you’ll break our hearts.

  The paper train had arrived, as if to spite the storm. Father had carried some of the papers over from the hotel and was reading The Mail and Empire, his eyelid drooping so that he looked half-asleep as he read. Grania sat in an armchair across from Mother and began to sift through pages of the Intelligencer and the Deseronto Post. The “War in Review” was a regular feature she scanned every evening. She looked through the current list of complaints: the shortage of paper; the gasless Sunday; the meatless weekday; war flour; war bread; sugarless candy; more fish; at times, no coal. She was sick of war. Sick of papers filled with rumour, speculation, opinion, every word written by people who were themselves safe. War was a nightmare they were trapped inside. Yet some people in town—some who had no one in the war—managed to turn their backs and carry on.

  She, too, wanted to turn her back, if only to get through each day. One recent letter she’d had from Jim had been like a document of dark history that had no connection with her at all; reading it made her realize more than ever how her own life was suspended. He had been gone for two and a half years, and the war showed no sign of being over. Every event reported was worse than the last—except Vimy Ridge, almost a year ago. That had been good news. A great Canadian victory. But rejoicing was bittersweet when thousands of boys went down. No one who lost a husband or son, a brother or father, was jumping for joy after Vimy—despite what was written in the papers.

  Jim had been at Vimy. He had written about the mixed mood after the victory. The burial parties and stretcher bearers had followed the advancing troops and there was a good deal of sorrow, as well as elation, during those heady days.

  The one flicker of spontaneity Grania had detected in the recent dark letter of Jim’s had been about finding a can of green beans. Not like brown beans we always have, he wrote, as if that had been the most exciting event of the week. In the same letter, he described the winter sky. When she read the letter, she felt that she could be sitting on a plank beside him in a farmer’s yard, looking up at sullen clouds and leaden light. But she would not have heard the sound.

  At times, the ground shudders beneath our boots. The air vibrates. Sometimes there is a whistling noise before an explosion. And then, all is silent.

  Those sentences had not been censored.

  Mamo came in and adjusted her rocker near the fireplace. Her eyes looked tired—her old eyes. She wore spectacles ordered from Mr. Eaton, but she was not able to read as much as she used to. Grania could not remember the last time the four of them had sat together like this in the parlour. And Carlow, too, was present, asleep near Father’s chair.

&
nbsp; Some people never used their parlours—not Aunt Maggie and Uncle Am, except when her uncle climbed the ladder to oil the tower clock or adjust its hands. Not Bompa Jack, at the farm. Bompa Jack’s parlour had two doors, but the doors were kept curtained and closed. The last time they were open was for Great-Aunt Martha’s wake. Here at home, the parlour was used all the time. Often by Mamo, sometimes by Mother, sometimes by Grania. When Father was in the house, it meant that Bernard was looking after things next door.

  If only Bernard would speak to Kay. If he didn’t, someone else would. Bernard was kind-hearted. The home-stayer. And Father was pleased that Bernard liked the hotel business and planned to stick with it. The temperance laws were not going to last forever.

  The only person missing from home this evening was Tress. Grania tried to think of what Tress and Kenan might be doing on a snowy evening like this in their tiny house. Tress had revealed little about how they were managing. Kenan was adjusting, the family said to one another. He did not go out. He and Tress were getting used to the changes.

  Mamo visited every Sunday when the weather and the footing allowed, walking slowly because of her arthritis, sitting with Kenan for an hour in the afternoon, talking to him about family news. But Kenan never replied. Kenan’s uncle had come once, but stood awkwardly beside Kenan’s chair and left shortly afterwards, telling Tress to send for him if she needed help. When Grania visited, she and Tress spoke and signed. If Kenan was in the room, he watched and listened, but he did not join in.

  The only thing Tress had told Grania was something Grania had not expected to hear—nor could she have imagined. When she was told, she wanted to take Tress in her arms and protect her. But Tress had told her in a controlled way, watching her face to see her reaction. Kenan must not be blamed.