A Drop of Rain Read online

  Look at my red, swollen hands! My bulging knuckles! Those big, industrial metal buckets must weigh fifteen kilograms when they’re full of water. Some days, I couldn’t believe I could lift them.

  I myself weigh only fifty kilograms!

  “You’re as skinny as a beanpole!” the old fellow said where I rented a room.

  “You look like a pregnant cow!” I said to him.

  He was angry, but his wife and I laughed. They were not so bad, the old couple. They were kind. Certainly, I preferred to live with them rather than with drunkards in a rooming house.

  When I first left my brother’s home in the country, I lived in a rooming house in Mapleville. The owner of the house was well off, but he never cleaned the place. The hallways smelled of urine. Many of the tenants drank. One of them came after me with a knife as I returned from work.

  “Do you love me?” he asked, waving the knife. “Do you love me?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, “I love you very much!”

  Then I jumped inside my room, shut the door and locked it. The next day I phoned my brother and told him what had happened.

  My brother came as quickly as he could. He helped me find this other place with the old couple. I was safe with them, and I had companionship.

  I am shocked by how many people in Canada suffer from untreated psychiatric problems. I see many such problems here, even among young children.

  This is a very harsh society, a frontier society—the “Wild West”.

  If there were a war here, the entire society would need psychiatric care.

  Eva

  In the spring, I shall scatter the purified remains of Hanna’s bones deep in the forest in a beautiful, lofty place. The remains are tiny, crystalline boulders. Seeds.

  Joe

  I shared a subdued Christmas dinner with Eva, Naomi, Mary and Anne. No festivities or extras, due to Hanna’s death being so recent.

  Eva has been too close to despair for too long. She has been blocking out her feelings with her overachiever activities. Mary says I should try to get Eva outdoors as much as possible. Fresh air and exercise. Fine with me.

  Curtis’s father did not come through with money for a car. The big California deal fell through. Curtis does not seem to mind. He is glad his father has more time to talk now. Curtis has good values.

  Curtis has moved back in with his mother for the winter. She seems more reasonable now.

  Curtis and I will still see each other, of course. I enjoy our conversations. He is a thinker. And of course we share an interest in the visual arts. We didn’t visit the Toronto art galleries together, as we planned, but one day we will.

  Before Christmas, Curtis caught a bus, went down to Toronto and bought me a very decent weather vane and mercury barometer as Christmas gifts from him and Naomi.

  Eva gave me a hydrometer, so I’m all set up.

  Looking forward to a blissful week of weather watching and puttering in the dark room.

  Week Seventeen

  Naomi

  Friday, December 31, 1999

  Yesterday we had a “memorial celebration” for Hanna in the living room of our house. Mom said it wasn’t a funeral. It was an “unscripted, private gathering”.

  Mary and Anne just listened. Mom read some poems she found among Hanna’s papers. I read the words I wrote after Hanna died. Joe and Curtis read some comments they had written about Hanna. Finally, we all listened to a performance of music called “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”, created in the 1970s by a Polish composer called Henryk Gorecki. Mary had told Joe about this symphony, so he bought a tape of it in Toronto.

  Everything that everyone read was charged with emotion. I was amazed by how deeply everyone had been affected by Hanna, even though Hanna was mostly just a silent and invisible presence in the house for the past four months.

  The “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” is stunning. It is for instruments and human voices. I have never heard anything so original, pure, simple and powerful. Like prayer. Like a universal light radiating out of enormous and terrible darkness.

  Joe found some notes about the symphony on the Internet. He read them to us before he started the tape. The notes said that the symphony belongs to a type of music called “Spiritual Minimalism”, and that it “commemorates the holocaust of Auschwitz”. The symphony is also about the “central source of poetic power” and the “theme of motherhood”.

  We were all silent for a long time after the music stopped. Then we slowly began to talk.

  We realized that we have all been keeping diaries, and that we have been telling many things to the diaries instead of to each other. When I was talking about my diary, I mentioned “The Blind Man’s Song”. I even sang them the song, accompanying myself on the piano. Everyone said the song was “wonderful.” Joe said that I should be “composing music as well as joining a choir.”

  We’re not having a party for New Year’s Eve. Anne and Mary are staying home and phoning their family in Poland. Joe, Curtis, Mom and I are having dinner together at Joe’s place. (Joe and Curtis are cooking dinner for us and washing the dishes afterwards!) Then Joe and Mom are watching the millenium celebrations around the world on Joe’s TV. Joe is going to tape all the celebrations, so Anne and Mary can see them later if they want to. Mary especially wants to see the Polish pope addressing the world from a balcony at the Vatican.

  Curtis and I are going downtown to watch the free entertainment at Mapleville City Hall. We’ll take in all the acts—the jugglers, singers, fireworks, etc. If there’s a group of singers I like, or maybe a choir, I’m going to try to join it next year. We’ll also skate on the rink outside City Hall. We’ll have fun.

  This morning while I was tidying my room, I started to feel a new song coming. I wrote down the words quickly. Then I started to think about the music. The music wouldn’t come right away, so I am leaving that part for another day. Here are the words.

  The Voices Blend

  The voices blend

  as we few send

  our love

  to the whole wide world.

  We sing together,

  we live together,

  we love one other.

  Yes we do.

  Sweet harmony,

  we call on thee

  to ease the world’s struggles

  and pain.

  Gentle love

  shining above

  come down

  and show us the way.

  Mom came down to my room not long after I wrote the above. She sat on my bed and asked me how I liked the “celebration” for Hanna. I told her I liked it a lot. I knew that she already knew this, and that she just wanted to talk.

  “I want you to know that, even when I am very busy, I love you and think about you,” Mom said. “Hanna once told me that the people you meet are the most important thing in life, and she was right. You are the most important thing in my life.”

  “I know how important Joe is to you,” I said. “And I think you should marry him. I know you want to.”

  “It’s too soon,” Mom said.

  “Wait until summer, then,” I said. “Get married and then go trucking with Joe for a few months. I won’t mind. I like Joe. He can never be my father, but he is my friend. And in the summer I’ll be with Grandma and Curtis. You have to enjoy life. You take things too seriously. Not that you shouldn’t be serious about the death of your sister. . . .”

  “I’m still waking up frequently at night,” Mom said. “I have felt Hanna’s spirit standing beside my bed several times.”

  “I felt the presence of Hanna’s spirit during our memorial celebration,” I said.

  Mom nodded but couldn’t speak.

  “Do you think Hanna is glad that Mary is here?” I asked.

  “Yes. Very glad. She knows that Mary will take good care of us,” Mom said. “She’s already taking good care of us. There is a miracle in each of her stories!”

  Then Mom looked at the framed poem on my wall: “Song for
Naomi”.

  “I am upset that your ‘Blind Man’s Song’ is so sad,” said Mom. “It’s very well done, of course. But it’s very sad. Very . . . negative.”

  “Lots of people have sadness inside them at certain times of their life,” I said. “That’s normal. Curtis’s drawing of the fallen bird is sad, but he’s not depressed all the time. He’s positive and creative. He just felt sympathy for the bird. And gratitude for what the bird had brought him. As for me, I was writing a new song today. A positive song. It isn’t finished yet.”

  “Have I been a terrible mother?” Mom blurted suddenly.

  “No,” I said, feeling sort of embarrassed. “You’ve been working incredibly hard, plus you’ve had a lot of stress. The head nurse said you coped remarkably well. Remember?”

  “Yes,” said Mom. “That nurse was especially nice. After Hanna died, when she came to pick up the nursing equipment, she hugged me. I met another one of the nurses downtown a few days ago. She hugged me too.”

  “Well, there you go,” I said. “They must approve of you.”

  “Do you think so?” said Mom. “Or are they just trying to comfort me?”

  “Probably they approve of you, and they are trying to comfort you,” I said, and I hugged her too. I gave her a great big hug.

  As I held her, Mom started crying, so I started crying too.

  We cried for a long time.

  We also held each other for a long time, and rocked gently back and forth.

  “So many tears,” said Mom finally, grabbing a tissue from the box beside my bed, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

  “So many drops of rain,” I said, taking a tissue for myself and doing the same.

  “ ‘A drop of rain . . . that is not too acid . . . without any importance,’ ” began Mom.

  “ ‘Which by chance . . . reflects the universe,’ ” I finished.

  We smiled shyly at each other.

  Curtis

  The private celebration that Naomi’s family held for her aunt impressed me. It was unique. It was emotional, but not hysterical. The music Joe brought expressed hope. It also dealt with the problem of evil. To me, the music said that evil can and must be overcome.

  In my painting of the wolf pack in the primeval forest at dawn, I don’t include the dimension of evil, because man is not present. I think that in identifying with nature I have been shunning the evil I perceived in mankind.

  One must fight evil, not flee it.

  One must fight evil with good.

  Luckily for me, art is good.

  Mark

  Warsaw, December 31, 1999

  Dear Naomi,

  Thank you for sending me your history project. I have read it with interest.

  I apologize for not writing you before today. Please allow me to tell you a little about myself.

  The struggle of the Solidarity movement to liberate Poland from the Soviet regime occupied me fully until about 1995, when Lech Walesa was largely discredited as a leader. During all those years, I was working as a translator for Solidarity.

  In effect, I was working for the liberation of my country.

  Today I earn a very good living by translating American books into Polish, or dubbing American films and television programs.

  Let me also tell you a little about my family.

  My father, B.I. Janasiewicz (1909-1982), was a journalist of some distinction. Unfortunately, my father felt he had to compromise his integrity to keep his family fed.

  Initially my father joined the communist party because he believed in the party’s goals. Subsequently he became disillusioned with party corruption. But he could not withdraw from the party without losing his power and influence.

  My mother, born Irena Warszawska (1916-1981), was also a journalist before the war. In the postwar period, however, she stayed at home and devoted herself to the gentler pursuit of translating literary texts from French into Polish.

  She also indulged in the hopefully pleasant task of caring for my father and me, her second and only surviving son.

  My parents fell in love when my father’s Catholic family hid my Jewish mother in their apartment during the war, saving her life. My parents had their first son in 1943, not long before the Ghetto Uprising. That son died during the war. I was born in 1957.

  Naomi, perhaps you can be proud of me. I am at least a man who, for fifteen years in the prime of his life, followed his conscience and tried to change the world for the better.

  I am also a man who now, in mid-life, would like to try to make amends for wrongs he committed long ago.

  Perhaps it is not too late for you and me to become acquainted. What do you say? Can you forgive me? Are you willing?

  I send you and your mother my best wishes.

  Yours truly,

  Mark Janasiewicz

  Eva

  This evening I am going to accept Joe’s proposal of marriage. Naomi thinks I should. Time stopped when Hanna became ill. Soon time must begin again.

  Joe

  It is the eve of a new year, new century, and new millenium.

  I hope the human race has learned from the mistakes of the past.

  I hope I have too.

  Heather Kirk has written newspaper and magazine articles, radio scripts, poetry and fiction. She has also taught for many years at universities and colleges.

  Heather grew up in Oakville, Ontario, and studied English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, the University of Toronto and York University. She now lives with her husband and dog in Barrie, Ontario.

  Heather has been interested in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union since she was a teenager. She lived and worked in Poland between 1977 and 1979, and she has Polish friends still today. Poland has informed and inspired the writing of both the novels which she has published with Napoleon, Warsaw Spring and A Drop of Rain.