Our Animal Hearts

by Dania Tomlinson

  “Come in for a moment.”

  Once we were at the table in the low light of the lantern she went on:

  “Kenta has proposed,” she said.

  “And what did you say?”

  “That I needed a day to think about it. It hurt him. I could see that.” Azami looked down at her hands, callused and marked with cuts. “He’s a good man. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You should do what you feel is right,” I said.

  “It’s not that simple.” Her eyes rose to meet mine, the black pupils aflame from the lamplight. “I’m pregnant.”

  I looked to her stomach but it was impossible to see beneath all her clothes. I thought of her and Kenta in the greenhouse and my cheeks grew hot.

  “I told Viktor in that first letter. But he never responded. I am afraid he is angry.”

  “Is it Viktor’s?”

  She tilted her head, askance. “Of course.” Her face went hard again, cold.

  “Does Kenta know you are pregnant?”

  She turned away to face the darkness. “He believes it is his own. But if Viktor’s alive and if he—”

  “Does your father know?” I asked, remembering his anger towards her that one time in the orchard when we were just girls. Azami shook her head. The tears ready at the corners of her eyes streamed down her cheeks. She wiped at them with a sleeve.

  “You must act quickly,” I said simply.

  “If we marry, Kenta will inherit my father’s orchard. He’s a good, honourable man,” she said. “I might not get another offer like this. If I say no, and Viktor abandons me…” I handed her a handkerchief. Azami’s face lifted to the dim pulsing light as she blotted the tears beneath her eyes.

  “Do you love him?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Kenta.”

  “I think I could,” she said.

  I smiled, as treacherous as Judas, and promised never to tell anyone what I knew.

  Azami’s marriage to Kenta was announced in the newspaper the next month. I should have written to Yuri of it, but I knew this would mean Viktor’s letters would stop. And so, instead, I picked up my father’s good pen and paper, and I wrote a letter to Viktor. I attempted to copy Azami’s hand, small block letters like from a child’s copybook. I wanted to give Viktor the intimacy he craved. But it came out foolish. I couldn’t capture my emotions in the words. I attempted three times before I gave up.

  * * *

  Every month I took the money our household received for Yuri’s and Viktor’s service to the Wasiks’ cottage. Taras scornfully accepted it and then drank it away. Some nights I woke to him hollering Ukrainian at the darkness.

  One morning I watched from the kitchen as a young soldier holding a clipboard walked up our drive. I wiped my sticky hands on my apron and waited for his dreadful knock on the door.

  “Mrs….”

  “Miss Sparks.”

  “May I speak to the lady of the house, please?”

  “She’s unwell,” I said.

  “I need to speak to…” He looked down at his clipboard. “Mrs. Lew-Wall— Mrs. Sparks. It’s important.”

  I led the man to Llewelyna’s room. She smiled and waved him in as if he were a long-lost friend she had been expecting all this time. Saint Francis nestled deeper into the duvet. On her bedside table the blue fish spun in its jar next to the Mabinogion. I wondered if Mary had found the fish in my room and taken it to her. Llewelyna’s nightgown scooped low at her chest. The officer was obviously unsettled by her appearance. He took off his cap. His black hair was plastered to his head like a helmet. I remained in the doorway.

  “Mrs. Sparks, my condolences that you are unwell.” He spoke to her but faced the peacock at the end of the bed, his eyebrows high on his forehead in wonder. “I’m looking for a man named Taras Wasik.”

  “Taras Wasik,” she repeated. “Never heard of him.” Mary had left our house to give Taras his medicine. She could be back at any moment. “What has this man done?” Llewelyna asked.

  “He’s an enemy of the Allies, ma’am. Aliens of enemy nationality must register with authorities, as stated in the War Measures Act.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “You’re not familiar with the man?”

  “Certainly not. I assure you we will report him if ever we come across him. You have my word.”

  “That would be much appreciated.” The officer nodded and then, after an awkward silence, left the room. I walked him to the front door.

  “Mind if I check that cottage there?” The Wasik house was dark.

  “It’s really not necessary,” I said. “Been vacant for months.”

  “There are some clothes drying on the line. Is someone living there?”

  “Those are my clothes.” In truth they were my clothes. Mary had washed them for me.

  “You dry them way down there?”

  “They get the most breeze closer to the lake.”

  “And over there, some firewood, and it looks like a pair of old shoes.”

  “Sir, many of our workers enlisted and left our orchard in a hurry. The men didn’t have time to clean up or organize their things. Even our harvest spoiled beneath the trees. As my mother said, we promise to let you know if we see anyone or know of any enemies. She gave her word. Please do not offend her by questioning it.”

  He nodded and put his cap back on. “My apologies.”

  As he left our land I saw Mary’s moon face lighten a window in the Wasiks’ cottage, but the officer was looking in the opposite direction.

  The next day there were bruises on Mary’s cheek and up her arms. Her lip was split.

  “What’s happened to you?” I asked.

  She pulled the collar of her dress up around her neck. “Really, it’s none of your concern,” she said, and poured water from the kettle into a teapot.

  “You don’t need to put up with him. You can stay in our house if you—”

  “I won’t leave my husband. I would never.”

  “You’re British. They’re not looking for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “An officer came snooping around here yesterday, looking for Taras.”

  “What do they want with Taras?”

  “He said he’s an enemy to the Allies.”

  “Nonsense,” she said and turned from me to take the tea tray to Llewelyna.

  “Did you bring Llewelyna the blue fish yesterday?” I asked as she was about to ascend the stairs.

  “She asked for it. It calms her.”

  “Please do not go through my things.”

  Mary bowed her head and climbed the stairs without another word.

  I didn’t dare try to take the fish from Llewelyna, but I checked on her regularly. She often clutched the jar against her chest as she read, or gazed into the blue light and watched the fish spin.

  Along with various letters from Jacob, Viktor, and Yuri, every few months Llewelyna and I received a blank postcard: Montreal, Morocco, Spain, France, England. These postcards were the only things that made Llewelyna smile. When I showed her the first one, with the trams and crowded streets of Montreal, she laughed. “The rascal,” she said. “Out to prove it is a vacation.” We both knew the postcards were from Henry.

  18

  That spring the Rosamond, the very same lakeboat that carried all our men away into Llewelyna’s apocalyptic nightmare, returned to deliver one single officer, carrying one single letter. We women, who were left behind, shut ourselves in our homes and observed the uniformed man from behind curtains as he walked dutifully along the road. We all knew a hand-delivered envelope was a very bad sign. There had already been one delivered to the Ebers. The exhalation of each household he passed was almost audible as he neared our drive. I stood at my bedroom window and waited for him. I knew he was headed to our home. It was still early morning, the sky a pale pink. I had woken from a night seizure and my tongue was raw and my limbs tired. The jaguar purred, sprawled on the floor next to my b
ed. It was hard to breathe. I felt as though I had feathers stuffed down deep in my chest. The officer walked up our drive. Mary peered through the curtains of her window and closed them as he passed the Wasiks’ cottage. The man disappeared from my view. I heard the hollow knock at our door.

  I stepped over the jaguar and started down the stairs. I could hear her pad down behind me. I held the railing tight to keep my balance. The house spun, pulled me into some central, empty space. The jaguar stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She was timid of Llewelyna.

  In the kitchen, the floor shifted and slanted beneath my feet. I ran my fingers along the walls, the cupboards, and nearly nudged a teacup off the counter. Every step felt heavier and harder than the last. The knock at the door resounded inside me like a heartbeat. I entered the dining room. Llewelyna was at the table. She had somehow made it down all of those stairs on her own. She was visible to the officer who watched her curiously through the window by the door and continued knocking. It wasn’t until I stood in front of her that I saw the paring knife on the table before her.

  “It’s your father,” she said simply. “I saw it.” She stared into the grain of the table. Her fingers felt for the handle of the knife.

  “Llewelyna…” I began, easing my way towards her. She stood, took hold of the knife. “Llewelyna, please.” She walked into the kitchen and began slicing a carrot on the cutting board. I exhaled, and let the man in.

  “Miss?” he said, his chin vibrating. He was young, only a few years older than me. “I regret—”

  “Out!” my mother yelled from the kitchen behind me.

  “I regret—”

  “Get out!” She turned to us. “I said, out!” She held the carrot like a knife and took a threatening step towards the door. The young officer dropped the letter. She threw the carrot and it flew out the door and bounced off the porch. The officer ran down our drive and walked briskly towards the dock, where he embarked for the next town to perform his role in the nightmares of other mothers, sisters, and daughters.

  Llewelyna returned to the cutting board and chopped steadily. There was a pile of carrots on the counter beside her. Mary had brought out the bundle from the cellar the day before. I picked up the envelope and read the dead words, then I threw the letter into the stove, as if fire might make the words untrue.

  The thump of the knife on the cutting board echoed through the house. Hours seemed to pass while I lay on my bed upstairs staring at the corner where the rosebud-patterned paper peeled from the wall. The jaguar and I watched a bud loosen, unravel, and fall open into a brassy blossom. Its petals fell from the wall and dried immediately along the baseboards. I swept the petals up in a tight fist and squeezed, and when I opened my hand there was only a layer of fine dust. I blew the specks into nothingness.

  When I went back downstairs Llewelyna was looking out the window behind the sink. The knife was still in her hand. Carrot moons covered the floor at her feet. She turned, smiled at me. “An owl,” she said. “Old Blodeuwedd, the poor girl.”

  * * *

  While Llewelyna slept her sadness away, I watched the bare branches of the peach trees swell with yellow buds that unravelled into green and then pink flowers, thinner and more delicate than silk. When the wind blew the petals away, the leaves of the trees became thick and lush and the green stone fruit could hardly be seen until the sun transformed them into its own blushing, velvet-skinned children. That summer I did not pluck a single peach although they grew enormous, ballooned, their clefts deep-set, and ripened to the exact colour of sunset. The swollen, heavy fruit pulled the branches to the ground until they dropped, finally, into the long grass like dead stars. The leaves turned yellow and then orange and then one morning they were gone. The long, cold winter better resembled our grief.

  Although we kept it dim and cool inside our house, we could not keep spring from returning. Once more the peach trees were speckled with pink blossoms and grew lush. I could not bear to watch another season pass by, the ripe fruit left to fall and rot in the grass. Instead I let the orchard consume my days. I wore an old pair of my father’s trousers and raked up all the old, rotten fruit left from last season. I trimmed and pruned the trees just as I had seen Taras and Viktor do one hundred times. By the end of the summer the peaches were swollen and made the branches sag. I could only manage to pick one tree a day. The peaches grew far too quickly; I couldn’t keep up on my own, so one day I went door to door collecting workers—women who had been locked up in their houses all season living off rationed scraps—and offered them jobs on our orchard. I would pay them at first with what money I could scavenge and the small pile I had collected in the coffee tin beneath my bed when I worked for Taras.

  The blue sky reflected in the window on the door to Grace Bell’s house. I could hear King Edward VII whining in the backyard. Mrs. Bell appeared at the window of the door and an arrow of geese crossed between us on the glass. She opened the door slowly, as if careful to not disturb someone sleeping inside. She had a pair of knitting needles and a whorl of grey wool in one hand.

  “Mrs. Bell, it’s good to see you.”

  King Edward barked furiously now. She gave a thin smile and yelled at the dog to be quiet. “How are you?” she said. Her face was worn and colourless except for the violet skin beneath her eyes.

  “I’m well.”

  “I’m so sorry about your father, I meant to come by, but I just…”

  “It was a kind thought. And you, do you have news from Mr. Bell?”

  She brightened slightly and exhaled as if she had been holding her breath. “I received a letter yesterday.” She felt for her apron pocket. “Phillip was about to be sent to the front. The letter is a month old. I have a bad feeling.”

  “I’m sure he’s all right.” I smiled in a way I hoped was reassuring.

  “Just trying to keep my hands busy.” She held up the wool. “Do my bit and all, though I’m a miserable knitter. Feel sorry for the lad that ends up with these socks.”

  I admired her knitting, full of gaps and cinched too tight in places. “Every bit helps, they say. But I’m here today to see if you’d like a job.”

  “A job?”

  “On our orchard. You see, the harvest is just wasting away again. But with some help we could pick enough fruit to send off to Vernon and Kelowna. We could even make preserves to ship over to our men.”

  Mrs. Bell was looking past my head towards the lake. “They’ve come back.”

  “Excuse me?” I turned to see what she was looking at.

  “The geese. They’ve returned as if nothing has changed.”

  The geese descended to the shore behind the trees and rustled amongst the rocks, honking joyously. I turned back to Mrs. Bell. Her eyes shifted, saw me again.

  “I plan to start tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll give a wage. Not much at first, but once we begin selling…” Mrs. Bell was already closing the door. “Wear trousers if you decide to come,” I said.

  She opened the door a crack and peered out. “Wear what?”

  “You’ll need to wear trousers to climb the ladders. Mr. Bell must have left some around,” I said. Mrs. Bell closed the door.

  I got up early the next morning to get the extra picking ladders from the shed and clear the bins of leaves and the spiders and rodents that had made their winter homes in the corners. The first of the women to arrive was Juliet Pearl. Juliet was tall and broad-shouldered with long curly brown hair she wore on the top of her head in a tight bun. Since the war, business at the Pearl Hotel had slowed. Mr. Pearl had to let go of the cook and the maid they had employed during the summers. The recruiting officers had kept Juliet busy cooking and cleaning for a time, but once they departed the Pearl was forced to close.

  I knew Seamus Pearl had been ill in the past. Juliet and I had attended the country school together for a short time when we were small, before Llewelyna pulled me out entirely and sent me off with Henry. Juliet had arrived at school with her hair braided neatly down her back.
And I had wondered how Mr. Pearl executed such a perfect braid with his callused, arthritic fingers. Then Juliet’s hair came loose when she took off her overcoat, and from the desk behind, I watched her raise her arms above her head and blindly twist her fingers through her hair. When Juliet was eight, her father had a stroke and she was forced to leave school to care for him and help him with the Pearl.

  As a little girl Juliet had been quiet. And as a woman she was still quiet, but in a way that made you realize she knew something you didn’t. Her mother had died when Juliet was only an infant. Llewelyna once told me that while pregnant with Jacob, she and Juliet’s mother had compared their growing bellies. Juliet’s mother had a complicated birth and had to be taken to the Vernon hospital. A few months later Mr. Pearl returned with only the little girl swaddled in his arms. Despite his advanced age, he raised Juliet on his own and stubbornly refused help from the eager women in Winteridge.

  Llewelyna said the death of Juliet’s mother had disturbed her terribly. She held the outcomes of their births in each fist, weighing them like stones. “It could have been me,” she had said, again and again, with almost a sense of yearning.

  The day before, when I had stopped by the Pearl to collect workers, Juliet had been feeding her father soup straight from the pot. Despite the warm summer day, he was dressed in a wool sweater and had a blanket draped over his legs. I watched Juliet through the windows in the living room as she put the pot down on the side table and wiped her hands on her apron before coming to the door. Seamus Pearl had always been an old man to me, but these days he looked ancient.

  “We’ve nothing to trade,” she said as she opened the door and glanced at my jar of peaches.

  I handed it to her. “A gift,” I said.

  “What for?” She took it tenuously.

  “I need help on the orchard. I’ll pay. If you’d like to join us, we begin tomorrow. Sunrise.”

  Juliet had thrust her chin up then and I knew I could expect her on the orchard the next day.