Galore

by Michael Crummey

  —In what?

  —He was a lunatic, Esther said.—But no one else would help me.

  She pushed her way into lead roles with persistence and one judicious love affair after another. Criss-crossed the continent and left her audiences wet, roses thrown onto stages from Hamburg to Vienna to Paris, booking engagements a year ahead.—Then the voice started to go, she said. She shook her flask of gin and took a long pull.—I guess I should have steered clear of Sapphic love as well.

  There was a man who did Esther wrong, a horny, social-climbing tenor with busy hands who swore his undying love to her. He practised his scales with his face between her legs, those muffled notes rising through her bones to strike in her head like pleasure’s hammer. His father was German, his mother Italian, and he had confused the arts of love and war in his upbringing. He left her for a Frenchwoman with the breasts of a ten-year-old and a five-octave range.

  The salacious detail aroused and appalled Abel. He was sorry to hear such things and hung on every word. Esther’s tone was strangely light when she spoke of the man who discarded her for the bird-breasted soprano, when she ran through the long list of others she’d hurt or been scarred by, the whole merry-go-round of desire and flesh and betrayal and hope. A tinge of regret in her voice, to find herself beyond it all now.

  In July of 1916 the name of a town in France arrived on the shore. Beaumont-Hamel. The desolate numbers whispered back and forth— eight hundred and two members of the Newfoundland Regiment ordered out of their trenches into the muck and wire and relentless machine-gun fire. A morning of blue sky and calm. It took all of half an hour to cut them down as they stuttered toward the German line, chins tucked into their shoulders against the hellish weather. Only sixty-eight men standing to answer roll call the next morning. There were three local boys among the lost and every family on the shore could claim a brother-in-law or nephew or second cousin dead or wounded or missing.

  Hannah came to Selina’s House to sit with Abel, just to watch him breathing across the table. Her mortal son, his eyes and teeth and hands. The numbered hairs of his head.—I never thought, Hannah said, I’d be thanking the Lord you had the consumption.

  It was early afternoon and Esther was already halfways drunk.—Dr. Newman says there’s nothing wrong with him. Once conscription passes the House, she said, they’ll be happy to take Abel as well as anyone.

  —The union won’t ever let a draft pass the House, Hannah said without the conviction she wanted.

  —Why won’t they?

  Hannah made a feeble gesture with her hand.—Mr. Coaker, she said.

  Esther threw her head back to laugh and she cursed the sham union and Coaker who ruled it like God Himself. She cursed the House of Assembly in St. John’s and the war in Europe and then she cursed Europe itself, one country at a time. Abel had never seen her in such a state. She stalked down the hall and clumped upstairs to her room, still cursing.

  —I don’t want you alone here with that woman, Hannah said.—It isn’t proper.

  —You asked me to move in.

  —When you were just a youngster that was, she said.—I never meant for. But she only shook her head.

  Abel went upstairs when his mother left and stood outside Esther’s room, trying to guess if she was awake.—Who’s there? she shouted and he went back down without a word.

  He sat with Jabez Trim’s Bible, copying verses from the Song of Songs awhile. He wandered the servant’s quarters like a prisoner exploring the nooks and crannies of a cell. Shifting furniture, trying mouldings around windows and doors as if he half expected to find some compartment secreted behind. Taking empty bottles from a high shelf to peer down their necks. There was a manila envelope sitting up there, a waterfall of photographs pouring onto his bed when he untied it, 10-by-14 and portraits all, though the focus was rarely on the sitter’s face. It was a catalogue of injury, scars and misshapen limbs and heads swollen twice their natural size. Five wizened faces in a row, old turnips the lot of them though they were dressed in children’s clothes, the incongruous stoop of age in their postures. A bald-headed man and woman who seemed to have no fingernails. There was a young girl he wouldn’t have recognized as his mother except for the web of skin between her fingers, the camera focused on the hands splayed in her lap. A pale stranger with cloudy eyes and a shock of colourless hair, an expression of startled forbearance.

  —You could almost be looking at yourself there, Esther said.

  He turned to see her standing against the door jamb. He didn’t know how long she’d been watching him. She nodded to the picture with her chin.—You’re the spit of your great-grandfather.

  —Who? he asked.

  —The Great White, she said.—Mary Tryphena’s man. Has no one told you a thing about yourself?

  —I guess they haven’t, he said.

  The sheet of paper where he’d copied verses from the Song of Songs was on the bed and she picked it up.—What’s this crazy writing you do? she asked and he told her how he’d found the Bible in Patrick Devine’s library and deciphered it by copying one letter at a time. She said, You’re a queer stick, Abel Devine. She was staring at him with an odd attention he’d never felt the weight of before. She sat next him on the bed.—Have you ever been kissed, Abel? A real kiss?

  —I don’t think so.

  —That man there, Esther said—she pointed to the photograph—is your great-grandfather, Judah Devine his name was. She kissed him then, her mouth slightly open, the sweet and sour of gin on her breath.—He was born out of the belly of a whale down on the landwash, on the Feast of St. Mark. Her mouth again, a hand under his shirt against bare skin.—It was Devine’s Widow cut him free of the whale’s stomach with a fish knife, she said.—She was Mary Tryphena’s grandmother, the widow woman, a witch is what some people said.

  Esther carried on talking a long time, unspooling the family’s tale as she undressed the youngster, navigating the complications of one generation and the next, rowing her way toward them where they lay together in the servant’s quarters of Selina’s House, blood on blood on blood. Abel lying silent through it all, willing to take every word as Gospel as long as her mouth came back to his, as long as her hands.

  She was not drunk. Hadn’t touched a drop since storming out of the kitchen to stew in her bedroom, staring up at the skewed continents. All those young men rotting somewhere in the irredeemable stain that was France. And she’d come downstairs to claim Abel before he was stolen away from her, kneeling over him now to bless his body and the soul it housed. A drunken notion though she was sober. Wanting to keep him safe from the world those few moments.

  They lay nearly naked on the bed afterwards, silent under the weight of what had passed between them. Abel forced himself up on an elbow to look down at her.—Esther, he said, but she placed a finger against his lips. She said, Never tell a woman you love her, Abel.

  He stared, his eyes filming over with tears.

  —It will always sound like a lie, she said.—Better you let a woman figure it out for herself.

  The sound of the front door interrupted them, a woman’s voice calling down the hallway. They could hear the goat complaining as it was forced outside, the clatter of its hoofs on the wooden steps. Abel hustled into his clothes and went through the kitchen to find his mother closing the door on the animal, a bag set at the foot of the stairs.—We’ll want to get that filth cleared out, she said.—You can put my clothes in the room next to Esther’s.

  You’re too late, he wanted to tell her but decided it was best to let her figure it out for herself.

  Eli left the shore the next morning and was gone for months, in St. John’s for sittings of the House or travelling with Coaker to Catalina Harbour where construction was already underway on the union’s base of operations. The entire project was scheduled for completion by the end of 1917, wharves, warehouses and offices, church, school, hotel, shipyard and seal-oil plant and branch railway. Fish stores with 135 feet of frontage and three el
ectric elevators, a cooperage and sail-making room in the loft.

  Most of the design work was done in St. John’s or on-site, but Eli had enough piecework sent Tryphie’s way to keep him fed. Dozens of small projects in the power plant and shipyard and cold-storage plant, telegraphs arriving from the project manager with requests and specs and alterations. Tryphie couldn’t imagine any of it in the real world. The turbines in the power plant required the trenching of a twelve-hundred-foot canal, the installation of a nine-hundred-foot wood-stave pipe that was six feet in diameter and reinforced every six inches with steel bands. He expected the entire enterprise to falter at any moment. But the price of fish stayed at record heights as the war dragged on and the union had an endless supply of cash to keep the fantasy aloft.

  He worked away at the plans in the F.P.U. offices through the summer and into the fall, the complex engineering problems and their clean mathematical solutions a relief from the mess he felt his life had become. Hours passed without a thought to Esther’s condition or Minnie’s lost Connecticut or Eli Devine.

  Levi Sellers was sitting in a chair beside the window when Tryphie looked up from the desk one early December morning. A shiver ran through him at the sight—that box of a head and hawk nose, the mutilated ears hidden under a straggle of grey hair. One side of the face sliding earthward and making a slur of his speech. There was nothing in the fallen world, Tryphie thought, could kill the son of a bitch. Levi nodded toward Coaker’s portrait on the wall.—You don’t mind that one staring down at you all day?

  —What are you doing here?

  —How’s your Esther making out?

  —I’ve got work to do, Mr. Sellers.

  Levi pushed himself to his feet with his cane.—You plan to spend the rest of your days sketching doodads for Eli Devine?

  —I’m considering my options.

  Levi started toward the door, his movements so exaggerated and awkward it was hard to believe he’d come into the room without Tryphie noticing.—My father, he said.—Absalom Sellers. He was your grandfather, did you know that?

  —If you have something in particular you wanted.

  —I’m not going to live forever, is what I mean. And you’re the closest thing to blood I have in this country.

  —Frig off out of it, Levi.

  —I’m willing to sign over the portion of Sellers & Co. by rights is yours.

  Tryphie straightened as much as his humpback allowed.—Out of the goodness of your heart, is it?

  Levi laughed and shook his head.—We need something on your darling Mr. Coaker.

  —We?

  —Myself and others like me. Men with similar interests.

  —Men of your interests, Tryphie said, are too goddamned stunned to see there’s none but Mr. Coaker could put a stop to this now.

  A flicker ran under the mask of Levi’s face, something that made him look nearly human a moment.—I imagine you’re right, he said and then pressed ahead.—We’re after an affidavit that would hold up in court. It won’t even have to be made public, just something to set in front of the man, make him listen to reason.

  —An affidavit saying what exactly?

  —The man’s a sodomite, Tryphie. Everyone knows that.

  Tryphie turned to the desk and leaned over it.

  —One third of what I own, Levi said.—That’s near enough to look after that daughter of yours, and maybe keep your wife from killing you in your sleep some night.

  Tryphie turned to whip a paperweight across the room but Levi was already through the door.

  He went by Selina’s House on his way home that evening, found Hannah alone in the kitchen. They sat at the table with tea and talked briefly about the war and whether Esther was any better or worse.—I had a visit from Levi Sellers today, he told her finally.

  She said, He’s turning into a social creature, that one.

  Tryphie nodded, unsurprised.—What did he offer you, Hannah?

  —A knife, she said and she smiled for just a moment, like the flame of a match lit and shaken out.—Why would he come to us, Tryphie?

  —Only blood can make something like this stick. Otherwise it’s just rumour. Are you going to tell Abel?

  —Tell him what?

  —About his father, maid. Him and Coaker.

  A red spall rose on Hannah’s neck and face.—I got no truck with gossip, she said.

  —The boy’s bound to hear of it sooner or later, he said.

  —Not from me, he won’t, Hannah said.

  Eli didn’t come back to the shore until after Christmas, travelling with Coaker on a winter tour to report on the progress at Port Union and to make a plea for volunteers to the Newfoundland Regiment. There was no sign of an end to the war. The Russians signed an armistice with Germany in November and tens of thousands of German troops were being transported to the Western Front. The regiment suffered heavy losses before Christmas and spent the holiday season licking their wounds in Fressen, waiting for new recruits to join them. Coaker addressed a public meeting in the F.P.U. Hall, the crowd respectful but unenthusiastic, like all the union crowds he’d spoken to. They had barely enough hands to crew the boats as it was and no one outside St. John’s showed any appetite for the war.

  Coaker worked the crowd afterwards, making a more personal pitch for volunteers. Eli stood with Abel and Dr. Newman, the three of them watching Coaker shake hands and plead and cajole.

  —He seems worked up, Newman said.

  —We might have to pull the regiment off the front lines if we don’t shore it up, Eli said.

  —It hardly seems the union’s job to keep the regiment in soldiers.

  —Be hard to hold off conscription if we don’t meet the need with willing bodies.

  The doctor pursed his lips.—And I suppose it does you no service in the House if the union looks like a crowd of shirkers.

  —Perception is half the game, Eli said.

  Coaker came around to them finally and he shook hands with the doctor and the youngster beside him.

  —Mr. Coaker, Abel said.

  —Uncle Will, Coaker corrected him.—You’re looking well, Abel.

  —He’s in the blush of health, Newman said.—A miracle recovery, Mr. Coaker. I’ve never seen the like.

  Coaker nodded and stared at him longer than Abel would have liked. He looked away, waiting for the appraisal to end. Newman excused himself to get back to the hospital and they watched him go, skeletal and stooped under his clothes.

  —What is he, Coaker asked Eli, seventy-five now?

  —Older, I’d say. And looking every inch of it since Bride passed away.

  —Cancer, was it?

  —She didn’t last a month.

  —Is he drinking again?

  —He’s heartbroken, Eli said.—A person’s liable to do anything in that state.

  Abel shifted his feet, feeling again like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation. Eli turned to him and said, Come see us over in the Gut tonight. Be good to catch up on your news.

  The crowds dispersed by mid-afternoon and Abel helped take down the bunting and tables before walking back to Selina’s House. He carted a turn of spruce from the shed as he let himself in the back door, dropping the junks into the woodbox. Hannah was at the stove.—Supper’s almost ready, she said.

  Abel nodded, brushing the bark from his jacket.—I’ll go see if Esther’s hungry.

  —She’s never hungry.

  —I’ll go see, he said.

  He let himself into the gloom of curtained windows, the smell of her sleeping under the sting of frost in the air. He crossed to the bed and laid a hand against her face.—Esther, he said. Abel could hear the clank of cast iron on the stove downstairs, his mother letting him know she was there. They’d all three shared the house more than a year now with Hannah doing what she could to stand between them. Abel was forced to seek Esther out with pretend errands that gave him a few moments alone in her company.—Esther? he said again.

  She muttered s
omething guttural into the mattress. She’d been idly teaching him bits and pieces of all the languages she knew these last months and he’d picked up enough to sort one from another.—Guten Tag, he said and he asked in his broken German if she supper interested in was having?

  Esther turned on the bed, covering her face with her hand.—Did I ever tell you how the widow died? Devine’s Widow?

  —Who was she to me again?

  —She was Mary Tryphena’s grandmother. Your great-great-great-grandmother.

  Abel sat on the edge of the mattress. They hadn’t slept together since the day his mother moved into the house and he’d had to satisfy himself with this, listening to the woman he loved tell him who he was. He suspected she was making most of it up as she went, but there was something intimate and illicit in the telling. As if she was undressing him one item of clothing at a time as she filled out the bare genealogy with courtships and marriages, arguments and feuds and accidents, the myriad circumstances in which his people left the world.—How did the widow die? he asked. Meaning her to know he was hers completely.

  —She lay down, Esther said.—Went to her bed one afternoon and refused to get out of it. She said, I had enough of this. It was Lizzie looked out to her at the end, washed and fed her and brushed out her hair. You’ll be happy enough to see me gone, the widow said to her.

  —And what did Lizzie say?

  —She said, I’ll be happy to think something and not have you know it just looking at me.

  Hannah interrupted from the foot of the stairs to say supper was on the table.

  —Will you eat something? he asked.

  —I’ll be down the once.

  It might be hours before she showed her face, he knew, or she might stay upstairs the rest of the night and he felt a new impatience bloom in his chest. He’d always assumed Esther was telling the stories to make company for his strangeness, to keep him close. But there were moments it seemed she was holding him at bay with the tale, hiding herself behind it. He went to the door and a sudden fear stopped him there. He said, You haven’t had enough have you, Esther?