A Drop of Rain Page 6

  But I keep quiet and still, because he told me to. Grandpa picked me to come with him because I look so harmless. “Your mother is too angry, and Elizabeth is too beautiful, and Johnny is too mischievous,” said Grandpa, “so you’ll do for today.”

  As Grandpa is wiping his mouth and putting the bottle back inside his jacket, the leader of the soldiers comes up to him.

  “Good day to you, sir!” says Grandpa very loudly in German. I know some words of German too, because now I hear that language almost every day. Grandpa understands lots of German words. He speaks the enemies’ language almost as well as they do themselves.

  Grandpa sounds very friendly when he speaks to the leader of the enemy soldiers. I think that is odd, because at home he doesn’t sound at all friendly when he talks about the Nazis. But I keep quiet and still, because Grandpa told me to.

  “Care for a drink?” Grandpa asks the leader. “Pure one hundred per cent Polish vodka. First class.”

  “Where did you get that?” asks the leader, yanking the bottle from Grandpa’s hand. He’s a big blonde man in a grey uniform.

  “Bought it in the village,” says Grandpa with a shrug. I know Grandpa isn’t telling the truth, because I saw Grandpa filling the bottle this morning from a barrel he hid in the barn. But I keep quiet and still, like Grandpa told me to.

  The cows don’t keep quiet. They moo loudly, swat flies and make cow pies. They wish they were munching happily in a grassy field, instead of waiting hungrily on a dirt road.

  “Good?” asks Grandpa as the leader takes a drink. “You can have the whole bottle.”

  “You know we’d take it anyway,” says the leader, wiping his mouth and handing the bottle to another soldier.

  Even though the leader shares the bottle with the other soldiers, he’s not nice. He shoves Grandpa against the gate. Then he feels in all Grandpa’s pockets for more bottles or for a gun.

  “Sorry, can’t help you,” shrugs Grandpa. “No more vodka. No more nothing. But I tell you what.”

  “What, old man?” asks the leader.

  “I see you need somebody to take care of your cows. I’ll take care of them for you until you come back,” says Grandpa. “I’ve got hay in my barn and a good big pasture. I can’t feed people with hay and grass, but I can feed your cows, and I can milk them. I’ve got nothing else to do, and my granddaughter can help. Those cows look as though they need milking right now.”

  “How do you know we’ve been ordered away and need someone to take care of our cows?” asks the leader, shoving Grandpa against the gate again.

  “I just guessed,” shrugs Grandpa. “I see how hard you’re driving those cows. Marching is not good for milk cows. You must be a city fellow, or you’d know that.”

  The leader lets Grandpa go.

  “All right, old man,” the leader says. “We’ll leave the cows with you for a week, until we return. But they’d better be here when we get back, and they’d better be fattened up nicely on your hay and grass. Or else that scrawny little granddaughter of yours is chopped-up chicken feed.”

  And here the leader raises his pistol and aims it at my heart. I stay quiet and still, like Grandpa told me to.

  Those enemy soldiers leave their herd of cows with Grandpa and me. There are almost thirty cows! Too many for just our little barn and pasture, so we share them with the whole village! One cow for every family!

  Grandpa is the boss of the cows, and the whole village takes very good care of them. Not for a week, but for several months. And do you know how much milk, sour cream and butter you can get from thirty cows? Enough for a whole village!

  The whole village shares bowls, pails and separators, as well as cows. A separator is a machine that divides the cream from the milk.

  And do you know how much cheese you can make from so much milk? Enough for a whole village!

  Grandpa makes huge rounds of Swiss cheese. He pours the liquid cheese into wooden forms. Then he hangs the forms for a long time to ripen. When the cheese is ripe, he puts wax around it.

  In front of enemy soldiers, Grandpa pretends he is stupid, but he is not. He knows how to do lots of things.

  The whole village eats that cheese all winter. And is it ever good!

  Eva

  The beginnings of the paralysis appeared last spring, in early June. By the time I arrived during the July 1st holiday, the little rented room was a sea of soiled tissue paper, half-eaten food, newspapers and clothing. Hanna’s sinking ship was the narrow bed from which she rose only to shuffle to the sink, the hot plate, the washroom across the hall, or the convenience store across the street.

  There had been no telephone for several months. She couldn’t afford the expense. That’s why I had not known. There had been no communication. She could not walk to the phone booth on the corner. Stamps were too expensive. Anyway, she had nothing to say.

  White, fluffy, cottony bedding for seeds from the poplar tree outside the window had begun to pile up on the window sill and drift into the room. Insects had built a castle on the ripped screen that had been removed for repairs and left leaning against a wall.

  I insisted that she see a doctor. Why? She knew she was going to die. She hadn’t seen a doctor in four years, since the lump had risen in her breast. What was the use of fighting the disease? “Fighting the disease” is an absurd expression. Let death come. She was ready.

  The world was too evil, she felt. She had lived through Nazism, communism and then capitalism. Any system could be evil if people made it so. Her two “adopted sons” had found no work. They had died. Now she wanted to die.

  She herself had stopped looking for work when she realized how many young people were feeling hopeless because there were no decent jobs for them. The suicide statistics for young people in Quebec had mobilized her. After seeing the statistics, she set her pride aside and accepted welfare.

  She had a plan.

  The case worker at the welfare office was patronizing. He could not imagine how Hanna felt being forced to beg. Hanna was, after all, an art historian and librarian with years of professional experience. Furthermore, she had computer skills, language skills and practical skills. She’d taken every course available! She was willing to accept any job that wasn’t illegal or immoral! She’d sew. She’d frame pictures. She’d wash dishes, scrub floors or pick fruit. She could not go on accepting financial help from me . . . even if that help barely kept her from starving on the street!

  “You are over fifty years old, madame,” says the case worker. “It is difficult to find work after forty. One is out of date. Then too you are a foreigner. Where are you from? Poland? You have been here only ten years. It is difficult for a foreigner to adjust to Canadian ways. One is out of step.”

  When the lump appeared, she was already a social activist. To herself she justified accepting welfare by actively contributing to the community. She worked with young people, especially students, teaching them to protest, teaching them that the system was wrong. One of her “adopted sons” was a poet. Another directed plays. She assured them that their activities were important.

  “Expressing true feelings is important,” she would tell them. “The single, dissenting voice is important. Pain is meaningful and must be described.”

  Hanna nursed her “adopted sons” as they died from AIDS. At the same time, she continued to help others: the dispossessed and betrayed. Eventually there was no division between herself and her vast, adopted family. For a while, she even lived among young drug addicts in a derelict building condemned for demolition. Strangely, no harm came to her. Or did it?

  After both of her “sons” died, her heart seemed to burst from her chest. When I took her to the hospital, the doctor showed me how the lump in Hanna’s breast had become a large open wound. The raw, diseased flesh looked like the heart itself emerging. Her own pain she had not described.

  I found the following scribbled note in one of Hanna’s boxes.

  Analysis of Canadian Society

&n
bsp; -Blockage of the circulation of information.

  -Crude structure of society.

  -Alienation and dispossession of a great part of the population.

  -Socio-cultural underdevelopment and its consequences.

  -Negative selection process (the misfits and socially unacceptable).

  -Culture, art and literature exist apart from “real life.” The essential role of these elements is not recognized, and society cannot develop harmoniously and structure itself organically.

  I am looking forward to spending Saturday evening with Joe. I need to talk to him. I adore him. He is my rock.

  Joe

  A weekend to myself, except for an evening with Eva on Saturday. Eva showed me some of the handwritten notes she has found among Hanna’s effects. She asked me if I thought Hanna was mentally ill.

  I had to say, yes, at some point Hanna lost her sanity. Latterly, in Montreal, Hanna did crack. But I reminded Eva of the old dictum, “In much madness, sense.”

  I said that Hanna had shown “impressive courage” in her life choices.

  I also said that I think Hanna is quite sane now. “Love has restored her,” I said. And Eva started crying.

  I told Eva that she herself needed a few days of complete rest. Then we watched some videos Eva wanted to see: two French Canadian films called The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, and Jesus of Montreal. They had English subtitles.

  Eva and I agreed that the films validate some of Hanna’s criticisms of Quebec society, and North American society.

  Before I took Eva home, I brewed her a pot of herbal tea to help her get a good night’s sleep.

  I drove aimlessly around the countryside Sunday afternoon, missing Eva, who spent a much needed day in bed. The boys have gone with Jill to visit her parents. I got some decent shots of a front moving through.

  Sunday evening I went through my unread book collection and spent a few hours with Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Marked assignments Monday.

  Week Six

  Naomi

  Saturday, October 16, 1999

  I have been mopping this floor endlessly. I have mopped the entire area around the key desk, the entrance in front of the main reception desk, and the halls between. The mop is enormous. The bucket is enormous. My arms are hurting. My back is hurting. I’m almost finished mopping. Suddenly some kids from my school thunder past like a herd of retro Mickey Mouse Club rejects, tramping mud on my clean floor.

  “Didn’t you see the sign?” I say.

  “What sign?” says Melony Price.

  “Wet Floor,” I say.

  “So sorry, darling,” Melony says, “but we have to walk somewhere. Now don’t go and tell Mr. Dunlop on me.”

  I don’t say anything. I just gape.

  Melony brays to the herd: “She’s an incredible brown noser! You should see the way she sucks up to our history teacher! The poor thing is in love with an old man!”

  When they enter the women’s locker room, I leave the mop and bucket in the middle of the floor and run to the staff room. Mary is there. When she looks at me, I start to cry.

  I sit on the sofa and cry for a long time. Mary sits beside me in a chair waiting silently and watching me with her all-seeing, dark-grey eyes. Then I tell her about the past four years, about Hanna going crazy and my mother always being like a teacher with me and like a panicking kid with Hanna. Mary listens carefully, and when I finish she makes me a mug of hot chocolate and tells me she will visit our house.

  Mary thinks maybe she knows my mother and Hanna from a long time ago in Poland. Anyway, she’d like to talk to somebody besides me and her landlady. Mary didn’t go anywhere for Thanksgiving last weekend. I feel awful that I didn’t ask her to come to our house for dinner on Saturday. But she probably wouldn’t have come anyway. She had dinner by herself, and then she went to church. She couldn’t go to church on Sunday morning, because she was working.

  Mary came for dinner this evening. I knew it was okay to invite her without letting Mom know ahead of time. On Saturday, Mom always tidies our place and cooks a special meal for Joe and me. I’m always allowed to invite someone to join us, but I usually don’t. I thought about inviting Sarah, but I didn’t want her to see how crowded our house is, or how strange Hanna is. Sarah wouldn’t understand. She would be shocked if she saw how our living room is filled with boxes of documents from Hanna’s room in Montreal.

  The documents are reports, pamphlets and newspaper clippings. They are also Hanna’s notes from meetings of the Civil Liberties Association, Native rights groups, students’ rights groups, gay and lesbian rights’ groups, AIDS victim groups, unemployed groups and anti-poverty groups. The boxes aren’t labelled; Mom has not organized them yet. There are also some placards. They are leaning against the living room walls. Here is a sample, translated by me from French: “WE, THE UNEMPLOYED, ARE DEMONSTRATING IN GREAT NUMBERS. WE ARE PROTESTING AGAINST CUTS TO UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE! IT IS NECESSARY TO FIGHT UNEMPLOYMENT, NOT THE VICTIMS OF UNEMPLOYMENT!”

  The woman was obsessed! The only thing Hanna didn’t protest about was Quebec separating from the rest of Canada. Mom says that shows Hanna’s “independence of thought”, because Hanna didn’t think about what everybody else was thinking about. I myself think about global warming sometimes, but I know it’s inevitable. It’s just going to happen. I can’t do anything about it.

  Mary and I finished work at four-thirty p.m. Then Mary went home, had a shower and changed into a pretty, sky-blue dress. Then, on her way to my house, she bought a bouquet of red and white carnations for Hanna (red and white are Poland’s colours), and a box of chocolates for Mom. Mary shook hands with Hanna, Mom and Joe. Then she chatted cheerfully in her awful English. Soon everyone was chatting cheerfully and even laughing.

  Mary knows how to make people relax. Also, by amazing coincidence, Hanna was a patient of Mary’s long ago. They remembered each other well.

  At the dinner table, Mary, Mom, Joe and I talked about all kinds of topics like the weather, teaching, truck driving, cleaning, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last spring, the Kosovar refugees coming to Canada, the Pope’s (fourth? fifth?) visit to Poland last June, Mary’s children and grandchildren, and Anne Murray’s daughter getting anorexia but recovering. We even discussed the fact that in the nineteenth century there used to be a stop on the Underground Railway right here in Mapleville, and local people hid runaway slaves.

  Mary, Mom, Joe and I did all this talking at the kitchen table. This is our only table, because our house is too small for a dining room. Then Mary visited with Hanna, while I did the dishes, and Mom and Joe went to a “long, relaxing” movie. Would you believe Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace? I thought that was for kids! Mom said the movie was too “violent,” but otherwise “fun.”

  Hanna was amazingly talkative while Mary was with her. I could hardly believe how much Hanna said to Mary. And I am sure Hanna had a really nice evening. Mary didn’t talk about anything medical or depressing with Hanna, she just treated her like a normal person and told her stories about her own life now and back in Poland, as she always does.

  Mom’s doctor just barged in last Wednesday, unannounced, in the middle of our dinner, about two weeks after the nurse asked him to come. He just marched in and started talking to Hanna about euthanasia.

  “Theoretically, you can end your life any time by swallowing a bottle of morphine tablets,” the doctor said. “But I can’t authorize that. I understand your philosophy, but the law is the law.” The doctor spoke English too quickly for Hanna to understand. Then he got impatient when he felt that Mom took too long translating what he had said into French. He left after only about ten minutes. Mom was furious with him.

  Curtis

  Got a job at a supermarket to earn money for a car. Dad said on the phone that he will help if I earn half myself.

  So far, Steve is still staying away from us, and Mom is still depressed. It’s good that Mom and I are so busy right now.
We can avoid each other.

  No time to draw or paint this weekend. No time for anything except work and school. Dad didn’t have much time to talk on the phone. He’s got a big new contract.

  Some of the guys who work at the supermarket are morons. All they talk about is how much they drank, how many times they’ve had sex, and how fast they drove their car.

  Luckily, I am an excellent liar.

  Life sucks.

  Mr. Speers said I should try to do well in my academic subjects, not just barely pass. He says he thinks I might be able get a scholarship for art college.

  Sketched stuffed birds last weekend. On Saturday, it was raining by the time I got almost as far as the park on my bike, so I went into the museum. By the time I finished, the sun had come out again. A lot of species from around this area are already extinct. I did a pretty good passenger pigeon.

  Started a cartoon strip called, “Nothing.”

  In the story nothing happens, so I draw nothing.

  The cartoon strip is hilarious.

  Hardy-har-har.

  Mary

  The Water Closet

  One evening during the war there comes a quiet tap, tap, tap on our door. To open your door after dark is dangerous. Many people never do. But Mommy opens the door.

  “Can you hide us in your house?” whispers a shadow.

  “Come in quickly,” says Mommy, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Six men. Jews! We know them by the yellow stars on their shirts. Nazi soldiers are rounding them up like cattle, shooting them, or sending them to death camps. These Jews are good people. They are our neighbours. When I was a little kid, I went to school with their little kids.