Our Animal Hearts

by Dania Tomlinson

  “No,” I said.

  “You’ll never leave here if you don’t find a husband.”

  “Who says I wish to leave?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Who will you marry?”

  I shrugged. Outside, Viktor unloaded peach boxes from the horse cart. I could see the shape of his muscles through his thin shirt.

  “Iris, you can’t marry a work hand,” he said. I ignored him and spread some peach jelly on my bread. “And you won’t inherit the orchard either.”

  I looked up. “I’m the eldest.”

  “You’re a woman.”

  “But you don’t even want it.”

  “I’ll sell it. It may be worth something someday. You need to look out for yourself. I don’t want to have to take care of you. Cousin Peter, he’s a bit older, but he is the heir to—”

  I let my fork drop to my plate with a clang. “I’m not going to England, Jacob, and that’s final.”

  Jacob shrugged. “Viktor’s a flirt.”

  “What?”

  “I saw you at the festival, falling all over him like a hussy. Everyone watching. You need to be more careful. You’ll cause a scandal.”

  I scraped my chair back and left Jacob with the dishes on the table.

  The next week, while Jacob and my father packed their trunks and prepared to leave, Llewelyna stayed in her room. My father had asked feebly if I would come along, but Llewelyna had worn him down and he didn’t push the issue once I refused him again. He knew I had to stay with her.

  As Yuri and Viktor loaded the trunks onto the Rosamond, I hugged my father and Jacob goodbye. The wooden siren had wide-open eyes painted atop her lids. She appeared foreboding and afraid. It was late afternoon and there were a number of people on the wharf, waiting to board or load and unload goods. Above the hustle and bustle there came a shrill call from the forest behind. Everyone turned to look. To our collective horror, tripping over roots and rocks and dressed in only her pink robe, Llewelyna thrashed through the bushes towards us. With every step, her bare white legs flashed out the slip in her robe. None of us wanted to watch and many of those on the wharf looked away, as if there was something more interesting out in the distance, at the centre of the lake.

  “Noah, please,” she sobbed, finally performing the hysterics I had wanted from her before. She could hardly speak. There were scratches all over her arms and a tear in her robe. Her bare feet were dirty. Jacob took a few steps away as if being a little more distant allowed him the perspective to watch his family with the judgment of an outsider. When Llewelyna reached my father she fell to her knees and whispered, but it was useless in that quiet. Everyone could hear.

  “I told you I…” She had to catch her breath. “And our son. I saw it. Before my very eyes, I swear to you. It’s the end of everything.”

  Jacob bowed his head and took off his hat as if he had just realized he was in a church or graveyard. My father squatted down to her level. There were tears at the insides of his eyes. He took Llewelyna’s head in his hands. “I believe you,” he said. “I do. I believe that you have seen these things. But you understand I must go.” They stared at one another for a long moment, as if the rest of the gaping world had fallen away. Tears streamed down Llewelyna’s face. “I must,” he said again. He kissed her and stood, wiping his face with his handkerchief. He placed his hand on Jacob’s head, ruffled his red hair as he would when Jacob was a boy, and they walked towards the Rosamond.

  I helped Llewelyna up. Even heavy with despair, she weighed nothing at all.

  16

  A few weeks after my father and Jacob left for England, Yuri invited me to take a walk with him to the lake. We sat on a grey quilt on the shore, close to where Llewelyna and I had left the woman who had crawled out of the lake. Apples covered the beach. A crate had tipped over the edge of a lakeboat the day before and the current had carried the apples gently to the shore. They were still fresh and hardly bruised. Yuri polished us a few and gathered them in the tails of his shirt. We ate them, the juice dripping down our chins.

  “Look there,” Yuri whispered. He pointed down the shore behind me. Two whitetail deer bowed to lap up the lake, a fawn and doe. The speckles on the fawn’s back glowed in the long shadows of the trees. Its spindly legs nearly buckled beneath it. At Yuri’s voice, the deer spun towards us: ears wide and long and glowing pink in the light of the setting sun. We stayed still until the deer turned, cautiously, back towards the lake and drank. Yuri raised a hand to my back. His callused fingers snagged the lace of my collar. I pretended not to feel a thing.

  When the sky went black we lay down on the blanket and gazed up at the stars. I kept looking around to see if Viktor was going to leap out of the bushes to scare us as he usually did. I touched my lips at the memory of his body pressed against mine as we danced. We had made several attempts to meet in secret, but something always interrupted our plans. Before my birthday we had planned to meet at the cliffs, and I had arrived at the agreed-upon time and waited there for hours. When I realized he wasn’t going to come, the thrill of our meeting cooled and was quickly replaced by my terror of the invisible world around me. I felt my way back home through the blue darkness with only the burning heads of balsamroots to guide me. I had expected Viktor to come find me and apologize with some excuse, as he usually did, but weeks had gone by without my hearing from him. Like a fool, I thought that agreeing to meet Yuri might make Viktor jealous.

  “I wonder what would have happened,” Yuri said, “if Henry hadn’t found us that time we ran away together.”

  I laughed. “We’d have been that jaguar’s lunch.”

  “Jaguar?”

  “Cougar, I mean.”

  From the corner of my vision I could see Yuri watching me carefully. “Maybe we would have made it to Oyama. Maybe we’d still be there now.”

  “Look,” I said. A star flashed across the sky, and then another.

  “Iris?” he whispered, his eyes still on me.

  “What?” I kept looking at the sky. “You’re missing it. Look, another.”

  Yuri swallowed audibly. “I think, I love you.” I turned to him. “I think I’ve always loved you,” he said. His bottom lip trembled.

  “Yuri, I—”

  “Please don’t say anything. It would only embarrass me. I just want you to know. So that whatever decision you may make…”

  “Decision?”

  “Well, I know now you’re looking for a…I just couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t—”

  “Yuri—”

  “Please,” he said, halting me. “I know I don’t deserve you. I don’t have much money, but I work hard and I would take care of you.” He pushed himself up on his elbows. He looked out towards the water. “I just want you to know that.” A muscle at his jaw pulsed. I didn’t know what to say. We watched the sky spark in silence. “No matter what, I would never leave you like that.”

  His words struck a tender chord I didn’t know I had. I bolted upright. In truth, to see Llewelyna abandoned by my father in such a distressed state had terrified me. I thought seeing her desperation might make him stay. And yet I was defensive of my father, and resentful of any judgment Yuri might have to offer.

  “You don’t understand a thing,” I said. I picked up a rock from the shore beside me and whipped it at the lake.

  “It’s true, I don’t.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry.”

  His docility irritated me. I stood and slipped on my shoes. “You know what else you are right about, Yuri Wasik?” My cheeks burned, tears beaded the insides of my eyes. “You do not deserve me. You don’t now and you never will.”

  “Iris…” He reached for my arm but I slapped his hand away. I turned from the lake and ran into the shadows of the forest. I was sure Yuri would chase after me. I heard coyotes yip, far away at first and then closer. Once I was a ways from the shore, there wer
e footsteps, but they came from the direction I was going rather than where I had left Yuri. The white eyes of the orphan thief blinked at me. Her black hair and dark skin made her difficult to see, but her jewellery caught the scant starlight. She reached her hand out towards me, bangles ringing, as if I might place a coin in her palm. I realized then we were surrounded by yellow-eyed coyotes. I could feel the breath of one against my ankle. I looked down and the coyote licked my leg. When I looked up again the orphan thief was gone. As if this were their signal, the coyotes leapt into motion and disappeared into the forest, their yips growing fainter and fainter.

  After that, I saw the orphan thief more often around our orchard. I asked Henry about her once. “Many have been killed or chased from their land,” he said. “Families are separated. Children are forced into white people schools. She’s probably a runaway.”

  * * *

  Llewelyna’s neglected garden was thick with blindweed and poppies. Some days she walked through it, a shawl over her shoulders, Saint Francis trailing behind her. Other days she had me bring out a chair from the kitchen so she could smoke and read. Mary returned to help with the housework. She moved about the house like a shadow. Although Llewelyna told her she didn’t blame her for what she did, slipping the crushed pills into her water, it was clear that Mary’s conscience was still uneasy.

  Although we hadn’t spoken for weeks, I continued to watch for Viktor in the orchard. The waiting only made my desire for him more desperate. I imagined that I could feel his eyes on me, taking in the shape of my legs through my cotton dress or my bust pushing up at the collar where I had undone a button or two. It took everything I had to keep myself from chasing after him. One day I saw him headed towards the house while the rest of the pickers were working at the far end of the orchard. I walked along the path to the well with the hope he would follow me there. I thrilled when I heard his footsteps quicken in my direction.

  “Iris,” he whispered. I turned. He gave his crooked grin. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you in private.” I gestured for him to follow me. As I bent down to the pump my skin tingled with the anticipation of his touch. “I need to ask you a favour,” he said behind me. My back stiffened. I turned and let the water pour into the bucket. He looked boyish, bursting with excitement.

  “Azami and I have been seeing each other again.” His smile was bold and naive. “Could you tell Mother you’ve sent me to Vernon for some errand? We’re going to meet tonight after work.” Water slipped into my shoes. “You’ve overflowed your bucket,” Viktor said, grinning. I halted the pump and glanced at my reflection in the clear water. A ghost. I turned back to him. “You’ll do it?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Viktor kissed me on the cheek before he ran back into the orchard.

  From then on, he and Azami met regularly once again. I couldn’t bear to see them slip away together. Azami would wait for Viktor at the edge of the forest, and when she saw him coming towards her through the orchard her face opened up in a joy so pure and transparent I wanted to shatter it.

  Yuri and I avoided one another. He knew too much and I couldn’t stand the way he looked at me, his eyes needy and sad. I kept to the house and helped Mary take care of Llewelyna.

  There had already been talk around Winteridge about the assassination of an archduke in a faraway place. I had no idea what this event could have to do with us. Then it was whispered that the Russian army was mobilizing, and Germany had declared war on France and Belgium. And then, a month later, we were at war, too.

  Peach-picking came to a halt. The men sat around and spouted their opinions and argued in a flurry of languages, while Yuri read out the newspaper…Germany sweeps through neutral Belgium…Flanders under fire. Viktor translated into Ukrainian for Taras, and a picker relayed the news in Japanese. Yuri and I still wouldn’t look at one another directly, though the excitement in Europe eased our personal discomfort.

  A recruitment office appeared one day on the wharf next to the packinghouse. The officers who manned it stayed at the Pearl Hotel. These men wore stiff peak caps and olive uniforms with tight collars and gold buttons up the front. When they weren’t manning the office they smoked on the patio of the Pearl and drank well into the night.

  Taras and some men from our orchard went to the office to enlist. The Japanese workers were denied and told this wasn’t their war. Similarly, Taras was led out of the office. He screamed in his furious accent: “East Galicia. East, damn you. Ukrainian, you idiots.” Yuri and Viktor relayed Taras’s spectacle to me while they smoked on my porch.

  “But how will we enlist if we can’t state our names?” Yuri asked.

  “We won’t use our names,” Viktor said. “We don’t need them.”

  “Whose name will we use?”

  “Wilson. Mother’s maiden name. It’s a good English-sounding name.”

  “Surely they’ll know,” I said.

  “They have nothing to check against. There hasn’t been a census in Winteridge for a few years, and since then there have been so many new settlers, and all the Japs. There’s no clear record.”

  “Take Mother’s name? That’s absurd. Father won’t like that.”

  “Well, hen, do you have a better idea? If we are any kind of men, we need to be there, whatever it takes.”

  Yuri sucked hard at his cigarette.

  “If they don’t want you fighting, then why enlist?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine the orchard without them.

  “They think we’re the enemy,” Viktor said. “Part of Galicia is under Austro-Hungarian rule. They don’t realize the east sides with Russia if it sides at all. But the Japs aren’t fond of Russia, of course. It’s all very complicated. Father has always told the pickers he was from Hungary. And now Hungary is the enemy.”

  “I thought he was Ukrainian,” I said.

  “He is. But you see, the Ukraine doesn’t exist. It’s a people split in two. Besides all that, little hen and I are Canadian.” He elbowed Yuri. “And so we must fight. It’s our duty.”

  “Then why lie about your name?” I asked.

  “The Wasik name will have been blacklisted now,” Yuri said and stubbed his cigarette onto the porch with his thumb.

  “I just wonder why you should go in the first place.”

  “Well you see, Your Highness, like I said, it’s the only thing for a man to do.” Viktor flexed his muscles in mock pose. “Any man who doesn’t fight for his country is a pansy.” His words were directed at Yuri. Yuri gazed out towards the orchard. The branches drooped, heavy with ripened peaches. I wondered if I should mention that our harvest was beginning to fall from the trees and if the men didn’t get back to work everything would go to waste, but it didn’t seem like the right moment.

  “It’s a mistake for them to deny the Japs,” Viktor went on. “They’ve just as much right to prove their citizenship as anyone else. It doesn’t settle well.”

  “Who will care for the orchard?” Yuri said, echoing my concern.

  Viktor took Yuri’s head in his hands in a gesture that was embarrassingly intimate, as if he might kiss his brother square on the lips. Yuri’s cheeks reddened and I had the urge to look away.

  “Listen to me, hen. You want to grow old in these trees? You want to turn out just like Father? This is all life has for us, you understand? This is our chance to escape. We’ll get to see places we never would otherwise.” He released Yuri’s face and spread his arms above his head like the perfect picture of Atlas. I imagined him shouldering the globe from Henry’s library. “We’ll see Europe, Asia, maybe even Father’s Ukraine.”

  There was a bang from inside my house. Saint Francis shrieked. I left Viktor and Yuri on the porch and ran upstairs. The sound had come from my parents’ room, the room Llewelyna refused to sleep in. Saint Francis squawked and flapped his wings on the bed. Llewelyna was frantic, her face pink and eyes narrow and sharp. She didn’t seem to notice me enter behind her. She took her jewellery box, full of gifts my father had broug
ht her from his travels overseas, and emptied it out the window.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you, Iris.” She opened a compartment in the jewellery box that hadn’t opened on its own, scooped a strand of pearls from it, and tossed it through the window. “They won’t be back. It’s the end as we know it.” Once she had emptied the jewellery box with the spinning girl inside of it, she dropped it out the window. “All this, every single thing, is meaningless. Nothingness.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Llewelyna gestured to a crumpled letter on the bed. I recognized my father’s large, emphatic writing. The letter was brief. Its few lines announced my father and Jacob were joining the British armed forces and would be sent to France any day. It was dated two weeks prior.

  Llewelyna opened the drawers of her vanity and spilled out more of her fine things, all gifts from my father: shawls, dinner gloves, silk nylons. I looked out the window at her belongings scattered in the lilac bushes below. “He thought his absence could be replaced with this…this trash,” she said. Viktor, Yuri, and a few other pickers stood around the pile and looked up, curious. Llewelyna tossed an emerald green dress out the window. It snagged on the side of the house and hung there.

  “They’ll be back,” I said to her.

  Llewelyna raised a hand to her tangled hair as if something ached there. She closed her eyes. “Everyone thinks this war will pass in a couple of months. Your father treats it as a vacation. ‘It’ll be good for Jacob to see some of the world,’ he says. ‘Gain experience.’ It’s idiotic. This world they imagine is unreachable. Idealized. A place they’ll never set foot on. It doesn’t exist.” She opened the closet and reached up to the highest shelf. She pulled down a wooden box and took the lid off. Inside were photographs and letters. She went to throw them out the window, but I caught her wrist. Her arm vibrated against my strength. She looked up at me.

  “Stop,” I said.

  Later that day I went to collect her things from the bushes, but they were gone. I looked for the thief amongst the pickers, but there was no one around for me to glare at. The green dress still hung snagged on the side of the house, too high for me to bring down. It hung there for years. I often mistook the dress for someone scaling our house, Rapunzel stuck mid-escape. Eventually the sun and rain dulled the emerald fabric beige, and birds and other rodents tore it to shreds and furnished their homes with strips of it.