“You haven’t lost both eyes, have you?” Geraldine said.
“Well, since you’re so observant, do you think he feels the same way about her?” Clare said sharply.
“No,” Geraldine pushed a plate of baking soda biscuits across the table. “I suspect he’s interested in someone else.” Geraldine sat down opposite her at the table. “Surely you’ve noticed how he looks at you?”
Clare broke a biscuit in half. “What if Leo is alive?”
Geraldine looked at her impatiently and then, with untoward softness, “Clare, Leo is not alive. Thousands of men went missing. There was just … nothing left of them to find.”
Clare pushed the tears away with the palm of her hand. From the drawing room the slow movement of Schubert’s sonata, Celia’s sweet song-like notes rising over Fred’s quiet measure.
“I can’t see the future anymore,” Clare whispered. In fact it wasn’t just her future that was clouded. Her memories of Leo seemed to burn with a searing light that burned away their shape.
“But you are so much better than you were, compared to …” Geraldine placed her hands on Clare’s.
“Compared to?” Clare pulled her hands free.
“Before.” Geraldine put her hands on her narrow hips. “When you just, just … gave up.”
Clare savagely pushed her broken biscuit across the table. She gave Geraldine a level look. “You’re right. It was easier to give up.” She placed her hands palm down on the table and told Geraldine about her visions. About the laudanum. Even now, as she struggled to express the pull of the drug, she could taste its sweet dark release.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Geraldine whispered. The music moved to sombre tolling. “Oh Lordy, I wish they’d play a ragtime for a change!”
The last notes faded and Celia’s laughter fluttered above Rose’s clapping while the two young women in the kitchen looked each other in the eye.
33
“IT’S NOT LIKE YOU to be on time, Ernie. Looking for something?” Fred watched as Ernie Ryan turned things over on Fred’s bench: blocks, crimps, tweezers. The other glass-makers looked away.
Ernie looked like he had been in the bars; his eyes were puffy and he hadn’t shaved. “I’m missing my small shears.” He picked up one of Fred’s gloves. “Ah, here it is. Some people need to learn to ask before they take things from other people. Like their countries.”
Fred inhaled deep into his gut, the way he’d learned as a boy in Montreal, before he started at the glass factory in Hamilton. “I didn’t take your shears, Ernie, or your country.”
“Well, I’d like to know how my goddamn shears got onto your bench then. I couldn’t help but notice that yours seem to have disappeared.” He held up the shears like a trophy and puffed out his chest, glancing smugly at the other men in the shop. “And as for my country, well some people worry that the Germans plan to take over here, once they’re finished in Europe.”
Ernie picked up a package from Fred’s desk and waved it in the air. “What are you getting in the mail from K. Hellbacher, Germany?”
Fred stepped forward and grabbed at the package.
“Ah, must be pretty important.” Ernie grinned, veering away from him, package held high.
“It’s from Boston, not Germany,” Fred said. “I guess you don’t know your geography.”
“Well, not all our enemies are over there.” Ernie flushed and jerked his thumb in the direction of the harbour.
“Give it back, Ernie,” one of the other glass-makers said evenly.
“Sure.” He spit on Fred’s bench, a gelatinous white knot of mucus, and tossed the package towards Fred, who had to jump sideways to catch it.
“What’s in the package, Fred?” Jack Bell was standing in the shop door.
Fred laid the package down on his bench. “It’s glass, a cryolite tube, from Karl Hellbacher, in Boston. It’s for glass eyes. I thought I would try my hand at making some.”
“And do you plan to practise this art on company time?” Jack said.
“No, I was planning to do that on my own time,” Fred said, wiping Ernie’s spit off his bench with an old rag.
“With company fuel?” Jack said, pulling at his thatch of hair.
“Take the fuel out of my wages, until I can make eyes good enough to sell. There’s a shortage right now and there will be more needed when the men come home. It could be lucrative for the company.”
The older man was thinner than the last time Fred had seen him. He wondered if he was ill. “On your own time. For a month.” Jack hesitated as he turned to leave. “Have you signed the registry for Germans?”
“I’m naturalized. I didn’t think I needed to.”
“Well, we require you do so if you want to continue on at the shop,” Jack said.
34
LEO WOKE MOST NIGHTS, his sheets soaked in sweat. Sometimes he was caught in the Schwimmersand, struggling to keep his head from going under. Other nights he lay face down, suffocating in the open abdomen of the dead soldier, and woke retching, reaching for the bowl Natalie had placed by his bed. On the worst nights he dreamt about Marty, falling through ice on a frozen lake or lying under a collapsed tunnel while Leo tried in vain to pull him out.
He suspected he was listed as missing. The Germans were stretched for manpower. They needed prisoners to work behind the lines. If they reported prisoners as alive they would lose them to prisoner of war camps. Leo wasn’t yet fit for battle but he knew the army would send him back to the front as soon as he was. Or he could remain missing.
One night he woke crying out Marty’s name and found Natalie kneeling by his bedside in her nightgown, holding his shoulders, trying to still his shaking. “Leo, Leo,” she whispered, “vous êtes bien.”
He opened his eyes and tried to speak, but his jaw clenched and he shook uncontrollably. Natalie looked frightened but she stayed by his bedside, holding his shoulders and stroking his hair until the shaking subsided. He did not remember falling back asleep.
In the morning, Natalie appeared at the door. She dropped some items on the bed without looking at Leo, who sat on the bed, wearing only the underwear he had found himself in when he woke from his fever. He picked up the rough cotton shirt and light wool pants Natalie had brought. They were clean, though heavily creased, as if they had been packed away.
“Mon mari,” Natalie said, “same.” She held her hands out in front of her, and patted the air, miming height. “My husband.”
The arms of the shirt were the right length but otherwise it was too big. Leo buttoned it up, anxious to cover his protruding ribs. As he shook out the pants, Natalie turned to leave. He caught her wrist. “Thank you.”
She turned away, her hair falling over her face.
Leo tried to walk but the pain of bearing weight on the leg had made him sink into a chair after a few steps. The bullet was still in his calf, the wound swollen and sore.
The next day he woke to Lucien opening his curtains. The leaves on the linden tree outside the window had opened in the last few days and dappled sunshine fell over the wooden floor. Lucien leaned something against the bed. A cane, freshly carved from pale yellow wood. Then the old man sat down in the chair in the corner, as if to wait, looking out the window, sucking his teeth.
The cane made walking only slightly less painful. But Lucien looked so eager to see him use his gift that Leo walked out of the bedroom and into the main part of the house, for the first time since he had trailed blood through it. The main room was whitewashed like his room. Two small windows on either side of the front door opened into the yard between the house and the barn. Below one of the windows were a wooden table and four chairs; on the back wall, a stone hearth. A pair of woollen stockings and two undershirts hung on a line strung from the ceiling. On one side of the hearth a partly opened doorway led to another room. A double bed was pushed into the corner and a mattress lay against the opposite wall.
In the mornings Lucien milked the cow. After a breakfast of br
ead and cheese, sometimes an egg, if either of the two chickens behind the house had decided to lay, Lucien walked to the field, just over a rise, past the barn. This morning he took a small stoneware jar from a shelf near the table. He opened it, peered inside, shook it a couple of times, and poured its contents into one of his jacket pockets. “Les pois,” he said. “Et les haricots. Enfin.” He had saved the seeds carefully all winter and waited to plant until there was no chance of losing them to a late frost.
Natalie threw some linden flowers and beech buds into the kettle, the tea that had replaced black tea early in the war. Leo hadn’t had coffee since last Christmas. He suspected at the time that it was mostly chicory but the extra sugar and cream rations made it a treat.
LEO TOOK OVER the milking. In the half-lit early morning he and Natalie moved around each other in the tiny kitchen. She started the fire for heating water and he rinsed the milk pail, put on the boots and coat she had given him, and limped on his cane to the barn.
One morning he forgot the pail. He turned when he was halfway across the yard to find her watching him. She passed him the pail with tears in her eyes.
When he returned she was washing clothes in a metal basin in the sink. He poured the milk into jars.
“Mon mari, Armand, il est mort,” she said, still scrubbing, her back to him.
He stopped pouring.
“Verdun.”
Leo had been in training in England at the time. He’d heard the French suffered badly. “Je suis désolé,” he said.
She turned to him, drying her hands on her apron, then she turned and motioned for him to follow her to the bedroom. The mattress on the floor, stuffed with wool, held the shape of Natalie’s body. She had given up her bed for Leo.
She led him to a simple oak dresser with a curved front. On the dresser were two framed photos. One must have been Lucien’s wedding photo. He stood straight in a black suit, some kind of wildflower in his lapel, beside a woman in a white, tight-waisted dress. Natalie had inherited her dark hair and eyes, her narrow nose and sharp chin.
The other one was one of Natalie and a young man seated on a divan. She was holding a child of about two, a plump girl with pale curls. Leo picked up the photo to look at it more closely.
“Marthe,” Natalie said, tears tracking down her cheeks. “Elle est morte aussi. Last year. Typhoïde.”
“She was very pretty,” Leo said, “si jolie.” He put one hand on her shoulder. With his other hand he wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Oui.” Natalie turned away. She took a pair of Lucien’s pants from a hook by the double bed.
“Your bed,” Leo said, pointing to the mattress on the floor.
She looked at him.
“I,” he pointed at himself, “will sleep here,” he pointed at the bed.
“Ah, non, non. Sometime Papa, he need me in the night. And,” she looked away, “sometime you need me in the night. It is mieux comme ça.”
She reached for another photo, face down on the dresser, and handed it to Leo. “I wash your pants. It is wet. It is Marty?”
Leo looked at the photo of Clare. Her face, creased by three years in his pocket, was water-stained now. “No. This is Clare.”
“Votre femme?”
“Fiancée,” he said, searching the faded face of the photograph. A rush of shame. What would Clare think of him? Not missing. Hiding. When he thought of returning to his regiment the air left his lungs. He broke into a clammy sweat and first his hands, then his legs began to shake. He ground his teeth until they ached. He tried to hide these episodes but Natalie somehow always knew when they were coming. She made him sit and stayed with him until they subsided.
“Clair, it is a French mot,” she said now, her dark eyes searching his face.
“Yes, I suppose it is. Our word is almost the same, clear. Like glass. Or …” he wanted to teach her, “clearly … to think clearly,” he tapped his head. “Or to see clearly,” he touched the corner of his eye.
Natalie glanced out the window past Leo. Lucien was walking over the rise.
When he got to the house, the old man poured a glass of apple brandy. He went straight to the fire and sat down heavily, his pant cuffs riding up his swollen ankles. When his chin dropped to his chest, Natalie drew the glass of brandy out of his hand.
OVER THE NEXT DAYS, Leo started going to the fields with Lucien, their slow paces perfectly matched. Leo helped pick rocks and weeds. He began sawing up an old apple tree on the field’s edge, which had fallen during the winter.
One afternoon the men returned to find Natalie sitting at the table with an older couple, a ruddy-faced woman wearing a faded print headscarf and a man with large hands, which lay on the table in front of him, partly curled like a pair of discarded leather gloves. Leo looked uneasily at Natalie but the couple got up and kissed Lucien on both cheeks.
Lucien poured them all brandy and Leo sat down next to Natalie. She turned to him, “Our neighbours, voisins.” Leo had been teaching her more English and she had been helping him with his French. “Claudette and Hugo.” The couple nodded at Leo. Leo extended his hand awkwardly. The woman took it but quickly withdrew her own hand. The man’s hand engulfed Leo’s.
“I tell them all. How you escape. And I shoot you.” Natalie held up her hands as if she was holding a rifle and laughed.
The couple looked down with concern at Leo’s leg. He patted it, smiled, and shrugged.
Natalie looked at him seriously. “There are Germans to the south. But they say the British are also near. I ask Claudette and Hugo to help, to say nothing.”
Leo’s heart was racing. Natalie patted his hand. “I tell them you can’t fight and Lucien need you for the wheat.” She turned to her father, “Le blé.” Lucien smiled broadly.
35
ARTHUR LISMER WAVED A LETTER at Fred. “Something for you arrived this morning.”
The envelope was cream-coloured. The City of Toronto’s coat of arms printed in green on the back flap. Fred slipped it in his jacket pocket.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Lismer said.
Fred had learned as a boy not to betray his emotions. He worked to keep his face from showing his disappointment.
Lismer considered him thoughtfully. The other students were filing in, hanging up coats, taking their seats.
“You mustn’t be afraid of rejection,” Lismer said quietly and then, turning to the class as a whole, “Mastering rejection is as important as mastering the tools of our craft.”
The students looked at him with tired eyes. They were a scruffy bunch, men who had just come from their day’s work in the yards, hoping to improve their prospects, men killing time, awaiting military postings, returned soldiers looking for something they could do despite a missing leg.
“Every man is born an artist but it takes training and perseverance to gain skill. It can take years of practice. Your first work will not be your best work. But if you let rejection defeat you it may be your last. Now,” Lismer turned his green gaze on Fred, “perhaps you can share the contents of your letter with the class.”
Fred opened the envelope and unfolded the one piece of paper:
Dear Mr. Baker,
The City of Toronto is pleased to inform you that your submission for a stained glass window in the council chambers has been accepted. The architectural design board has requested two more designs from you to consider for the corridor leading to the chambers. Their request is that the three windows form a complementary set. Let us know as soon as possible if you are interested in our proposal. Specific measurements will follow. Please find financial details below.
The man beside Fred, a muscular die caster from the ruined foundry, slapped him on the back. “Good on you!”
The rest broke into scattered applause.
“Congratulations,” Lismer said, then winking at the group, “The City already let me know that Fred had the commission.” Lismer turned serious. “I hope you will all take Mr. Baker’s success personally
. Each of you is part of something greater than your own work here. You’re living proof that art is not the exclusive right of a privileged few. It should infuse all of our lives and all of the objects we live with. These principles of design you are learning are the foundation of all the arts.”
A middle-aged man, trailing sawdust, burst through the door.
“Sorry, Mr. Lismer.” He hurried to his bench at the back of the room.
A set of crutches leaning against the stool beside him clattered to the floor.
Fred folded the letter back into the envelope and slipped it into his pocket, fingers shaking. They were going to pay him twelve dollars for the first design and ten more for each of the other two. He took a deep breath, picked up his pencil, and began to draw.
THE SMELL OF SOUP POTS and fried meat drifted from open windows. All the schools and most businesses had reopened. The streets were quiet other than the sound of hammers still ringing up from Richmond, where housing was being built on the ground cleared by the explosion. Every day brought less evidence of wreckage, collapsed buildings cleared, the last bodies found and reburied. The city was ushering the injured, the lost and confused, the orphaned and grieving back into its private rooms.
The young soldier at the gate of the citadel took Fred’s identification papers and studied them with the officiousness of someone who has little formal power, handing them back to him nonchalantly. He pointed him to a nearby building.
The sign taped to the frosted glass of the door on the second floor said Office of Registry, Foreign Citizens.
A middle-aged man in a military uniform sat behind an oak desk. There were two chairs occupied by women, one with a child on her lap. Four other men stood with listless patience, their jackets slung over their arms.
The soldier looked up as Fred approached with his papers. The older man glanced at them without reading them. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”
The soldier was a reserve, someone too old to go to France. He looked rested and well-fed. His uniform was impeccable. Probably his wife kept it brushed and sewed the buttons on.
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