Deafening

by Frances Itani

  “Maybe. I don’t think about every single thing I do.” She had not considered that.

  They entered the path and Jim leaned forward and scooped a handful of red and yellow leaves from the ground and threw them at her. Several landed in her hair.

  “Feel them crackle,” he said. “Drag your feet. They make an autumn sound like no other.”

  She didn’t tell him that for years she had played in leaves, gathered them, helped the small boys at school as they filled their hand carts on the grounds. Before she left home to live at the school, Mamo had often brought her here. They had scraped their feet through the leaves. But no one had ever told her that leaves made a sound like no other.

  Well then, what sound like no other?

  “When they first fall, there’s a softness. The shoe pushes into them—shoosh-shoosh—with each step.”

  She saw the sound on his lips, was not certain enough to try.

  “But when the leaves are brittle and dry and the shoe breaks them into pieces, cracklings can be heard. Many cracklings. All at the same time.”

  “Cracklings?” She laughed at the word.

  It was her laugh he loved the most. The sound of an inward sigh.

  And the way she murmured when she was sitting by herself. A murmur that sounded like a softly sung I see, I see.

  And her hands, the way they shaped language.

  And the way she said his name. He sometimes asked her to say it, and he listened, and wanted her to say it again. It came out as a clipped “Ch” that joined the “m” with scarcely a vowel sound between. Chim.

  He picked at bits of broken leaf and tugged them along the strands of her red hair. He had never known that hair could be so soft and thick at the same time. They continued without speaking and stopped at the far edge of the woods where the path came out on the other side. A split-rail fence began where the path ended. She took his picture there, as he leaned against the fence. When he was permitted to move, he tapped his fingers against the wooden rail. There was more to tell about sound.

  But she had pulled inside. Sound was outside of her and all around. She knew that.

  “Tell me in words,” she said. “That will be enough. I will put the rest together by myself.”

  His arm pressed against hers as they sat in the second row of Naylor’s Theatre. He was wearing his uniform. It was a brownish colour, khaki, scratchy and thick. She had seen hundreds like it when she worked in Belleville, when soldiers marched past the school. And on the streets, and at the station when trains went through. She pressed her arm back against his and they held the tension like that, allowing it to flow between them. Their days and nights together kept them close. There was little time left.

  She removed her hat as the program requested and placed it on her lap just as the light was dimmed and raised up to the centre dome. The Women’s Patriotic League was responsible for Friday-night entertainments. This week there were musical solos, recitations, a speech by a visiting colonel from Belleville, and several tableaus. Jim had bought the tickets and made sure they were seated close to the front so that Grania could see the colour and movement of the performances, the dramatic stillness of the tableaus.

  There were four of these: The Execution of Lady Jane Grey; Good-Bye Daddy—a soldier leaving his daughter and son—a tableau Grania did not like to watch, though the audience around her was enthusiastic. An Autumn Girl was the third; and the final was The Allies. Grania recognized the town girls, and some of the young men. She studied each extravagant, motionless pose. No lips to read. Women around her clapped their hands fervently. Grania was as motionless as the figures on the stage.

  During the mandolin player’s performance, she felt nothing, but she watched his strumming hand. It was during the piano solo that music began to enter her feet through the pine floor. She was certain she had the rhythm of the vibrations; she concentrated hard. Jim reached across in the dark and lifted her hand towards him. He traced a fingertip around the edges of her palm for several moments and she sat, motionless, scarcely breathing. She was afraid she would make a noise with her throat. They were surrounded by people on both sides, in front and behind. In that crowded place, every seat taken, Jim rested the back of her hand against one of his, and with the other he silently placed a word in her palm. She felt the flush in her cheeks. She did not see the scene change, not until the lights became brighter and the colonel stood on the stage to give the address.

  Everyone knew that the real reason for the concert was to step up the drive for recruitment. When the colonel spoke, Grania could not see his lips. She understood nothing. She knew that the event was the tip of a persuasive wave rolling across the country, gathering available young men and sending them to fight for Mother England. She watched people cheer around her.

  Kenan was gone. Their childhood friend, Orryn, had left the year before, at the beginning of the war, and was now a lieutenant. Grew’s son, Richard, a private, had been one of the first in town to sign up; he, too, had gone the previous year. Grew had apprenticed Richard to be a barber like himself, but Richard had been one of the early soldiers who’d first travelled to Valcartier. After that, he had embarked on one of the thirty-two ships that transported the First Contingent to Plymouth. In the barbershop window on Main Street, Grew proudly displayed a postcard Richard had sent, showing the names of all thirty-two ships. An arrow pointed to “my ship”—the Royal Edward, the third ship down the centre column.

  Grew had been the piano player tonight. Sometimes he played for the moving pictures, too. His long legs had been tucked awkwardly, his tall body bent to the keys. Grania wondered, with his son in France, what Grew thought of tonight’s show of patriotism. Richard had already seen action. Whatever his feelings, Grew did not let anyone know.

  When the crowd finally spilled out onto the boardwalk in front of the theatre, Grania put on her hat again, and firmly took Jim’s arm. Husband, she said to herself. Husband. There had been several other uniformed men in the audience. People outside were shaking Jim’s hand, wishing him luck. She caught a glimpse of Cora, but quickly turned away from the inquisitive stare. She had thought of Cora not so long ago. The day Jim’s uniform was issued, he’d walked away from the tower apartment in the morning wearing his brown trousers—his civilian clothes—for the last time. But the sharp creases in his trousers had been pressed the wrong way, down the sides. Jim had always pressed his own until that one pair. Grania had not been taught that in sewing class at school—not while she was doing fancy work—but she had wanted to surprise him. He’d held up the trousers and laughed and, despite Grania’s objections, pulled them on anyway. Her cheeks had burned with humiliation—what if Cora were to see?—but Jim hadn’t minded at all. He walked out the door with the creases down the sides of his pants and, when he’d come back, he was wearing his uniform.

  He was humming again as they walked along the street, his fingers tapping against one trouser leg. Grania thought of all the words she had spelled to herself that way, tapping against the side of her skirt. She laughed aloud, thinking of the two of them tapping different messages. Jim’s message was always music. Her tapped words were a kind of music, too. Music for the upset or alone.

  “What are you humming?” she said. “Which tune?” She watched his lips for the answer. His face looked as though he’d been caught out.

  He stopped. “Mandolin solo,” he said. “I can’t get it out of my mind. I recognized it, but I can’t think of the name.”

  He took her hand and tugged her across the street and they walked back up the east side of the boardwalk, in the direction away from the apartment. She did not know where he was taking her, but she didn’t protest. He knew about the path, the one that led to the bay at this end of town, by the old burned-out pier. He laughed and pulled away from her, and stepped off the boardwalk, disappearing into darkness. For a moment she stood still, looking into the black space where he’d vanished. She and Tress had walked here in the early dusk during the summer months
, fireflies blinking around them, a galaxy of flitting lanterns forming and reforming the shape of light.

  She waited for a flicker of movement from Jim. When it did not come, she stepped down and walked forward, unafraid. She was not afraid of the dark when he was inside it with her.

  A low remnant of the abandoned pier jutted harmlessly into the bay, its upright timbers black with age. The dugout where she had once played with Tress and Orryn and Kenan was beneath—collapsed perhaps, or even filled in. Now, there were cement sides, and squared-off timbers with wide spaces between. These led to a slightly lower cement platform at the end of the timbers, and this stopped abruptly over water.

  Jim was in the shadows. There was a moon, but it had slipped behind a cloud. He stepped in front of her but she was not startled. This time, she was the one who led the way, walking with surety from the end of the path to the place where there was a toehold in the crumbling cement side. She found the notch easily and, despite the weight of her jacket, despite the skirt, which she tugged up to enable her to climb, she pulled herself up quickly. She was already shifting along the edge of one timber before Jim, behind, had found the notch for his boot. She pointed, and he hoisted himself up. She stayed low, inching her way along the beam. When she reached the end she stepped down to the platform and looked back to see Jim at full height, walking effortlessly along one of the beams. Foolish, she thought. A cloud of insects could dart in from the bay and flit into his face and he could lose his balance on the narrow surface. If he falls, he’ll disappear.

  But it was too late in the season for clouds of insects. And he was steady. She sat with her feet dangling over the edge of the platform and watched while he extended his arms to the side and walked back and forth, balancing, testing, as if he were a tightrope walker warming up before a performance. She thought of the strongmen in black slippered toes, the moustachioed men of the underwear page of Mr. Eaton’s catalogue, their narrow legs and agile pointed feet. Into and out of darkness, Jim vanished and reappeared. It was the way things had happened between them. He had come from away and had entered her life and now he was in uniform and he would have to leave. But he had promised to return.

  He walked out of the dark again and dropped down beside her. A breeze was coming up and she received it against her skin. The moon was uncovered now. She inhaled softly, wondering if her breathing could be heard. She wondered if Jim had ever been so still that he made no noise outside of himself. As if to answer her unspoken thought, he circled her waist with his arm and they sat in perfect stillness. She rested her hand on his thigh, amazed at her own behaviour, the ease of doing this. He lifted her hand and examined it under the moonlight.

  She made no sign. She was aware of the water below, of weeds entwined in the beams, of the rotting wood scent of the timbers. Jim was close, fixed and solid beside her. This was the man who loved her. This was the man she loved.

  His hair had been cut short and she reached up and rubbed the bristles at the back of his neck. He took her hand again but this time it was she who explored his palm and his long, slender fingers, each one pulsing beneath her own.

  “Tell me,” she said. Chim. Her voice. The breeze was rippling the water below them and she wanted to know what he knew. “Tell me if there is sound when the waves move fast.”

  His fist knocked forward at the wrist, into the air—the sign she’d taught him for yes. He shifted so that he could partly face her, and he moved closer so that she could see his lips in the moonlight. “But waves make a different sound when they roll into shore.”

  “Tell.”

  “Not loud. Not in the bay. More like lapping. The way a dog drinks from its dish. Like Carlow.”

  She laughed, thinking of how she had shouted vowels at Carlow. Now he spent most of his hours in Father’s office, lying on an old rug made from rags that Mamo had contributed for his comfort.

  “At the sea,” Jim said, and she watched for the words, “the waves are bigger.”

  “Sound?”

  “Big sound.”

  “How big?”

  “A steady under-roar.”

  “Under—?” She thought she saw underwear and laughed to herself.

  He heard the sound; it was like a sigh, and he laughed, too. “I made up the word. Roar. Under-roar. Second noise under the first. When the white-tips roll in, they are never alone. They merge and cross”—Jim’s hands and arms were fluid, criss-crossing in the air—“and when you think they will crash, they slip up over the beach with no fuss at all.”

  “No fuss.”

  “In a north wind, it’s different.” He knew the sign for different and he made it now, separating his crossed index fingers out into the darkness. “Everything speeds up. And there is wind. Not dangerous—unless there’s a storm. If the wind is low, the ocean makes a flat sound, a slap.” He slapped one hand against the other. “The biggest noise is the roar. One day I stood on the dunes and the roar was so big I had to adjust to the sound before I could go down to walk on the beach. At first I thought it was from one of the new aeroplanes.” He pointed to the sky.

  “I stood on dunes,” she said. She was straining to see his lips. “At the Sandbanks on Lake Ontario. The year we graduated, we had lunch there—a special school outing. We went in autos and drove through Picton on the way. Fry and I wanted to swim in the big lake but we were dressed up and no one brought bathing suits. If we had been alone we might have gone into the water without them.”

  But they wouldn’t. Not in daytime. Maybe at night. But she and Fry would never have been there at night. Instead, they walked along the dune formations with the other girls, and followed the contours of the lake and the wide beach of sand.

  She pulled into silence until Jim nudged her.

  “I want to go to the ocean,” she said. “To see that big sound.”

  His fist nodded forward again. His finger pointed to his lips. It was dark; she couldn’t keep up; it was impossible to see the words. Time to go back. They climbed down and worked their way along the path to Main Street. This time, Jim led the way, one hand behind him so that she could follow by grasping his wrist. They were silent as they crossed the empty street. Naylor’s doors were closed now; the theatre was dark. They walked quickly, the rest of the way to the post office. Neither tried to speak or sign. Grania kept her head down. Jim did not look at her, all the way back to the tower. They went round to the side door and climbed the stairs. When they reached the landing at the top, they let themselves into the apartment, and they stood there, and clung to each other.

  In the hour before his train departed from Belleville, after the men marched to the station and answered the roll and joined their families to say goodbye, Grania’s body began to clench, a knot working its way inside. The band that had marched to the station platform continued to play and she felt the beat of the drums inside her. She looked around at the crowd, at the forced smiles, and felt the excitement of many people pressed together.

  Her glance took in the glimmering rails, the string of boxcars diverted to the siding, waiting for the troop train to pass through. Water was dripping through the floor of one of the freight cars as if a block of ice was melting inside, and the dirt below was spotted and dark. Bits of coal were strewn along the edge of the tracks. The troop train seemed unusually large, threateningly close. Grania gave Jim the lunch she had made and he somehow managed to tuck the cloth bag that held it under a strap at the top of his bulging kit. Neither of them spoke. He took her hand and held it firmly inside his own and she felt only the pressure of his skin on hers.

  Don’t let go. The war is close. The war is closing in.

  Against her will, a part of her was shutting down. It was happening to him, too. He is leaving before it’s time to go. And though she hated what was happening to both of them, she knew that in the same way he was pulling away, she was pulling back, searching for the safe place inside herself. If she could find it, she would stay there until he returned.

  But the thrill
of being part of this moment could not be denied. Jim and all of these men were leaving to serve their country. Many of the soldiers were laughing, and Grania saw them calling out to one another. Jim was grinning now, and made his way through bodies that were pushing forward. Before he stepped up to the coach, he half-turned on the platform and searched until he saw her in the crowd. Hands and arms were waving all around. People clutched small Union Jacks. Parcels changed hands; photographs were pressed to palms; food was passed through the open windows—box lunches and containers of tea. So many men were leaning from the framed arches of the coach windows, it appeared that they would be squeezed back outside again. Hands and elbows were propped against sills and holding tight. A large number 5 was chalked on the vertical boards of the coach directly in front of Grania, the one into which Jim had disappeared.

  He was heading east for more training and was to be attached to a field ambulance unit as a reinforcement. After that he would head for the coast where he would sail. He did not know his destination, the name of his ship, the date it would sail or when it would land.

  She was unaware of her fingers tapping against the side of her coat. The crowd was pushing again, and once more she was forced to edge forward. Jim made his way down the aisle to the right; she watched his profile appear and disappear from window to window until he found a seat for himself near the end, on the far side of the coach. He dropped his bag and came back to a centre window, leaning from behind. The men were three and four deep, hanging over the sill. Jim searched the crowd again until he was certain they had eye contact. His right hand reached to the left side of his chest and he made her name-sign, the private G between finger and thumb, plucking at the tunic that covered his heart. He grinned, and dropped his arms to his sides. She thought of the way he had looked when she’d first seen him in the bandage room at school, his arms hanging down as if they were loose in their sockets. She could see the soldiers on both sides of him shouting and calling out. Someone said something to Jim and he looked to the right before replying, but she did not see his words. He looked back to her and this time he did not turn away. The train began to pull out slowly, heading east, and then it picked up speed.