A Drop of Rain Page 8

  What a freaking, gutless, lying, cheating idiot!

  I am not worthy of the animal kingdom.

  Mary

  The Baby in the Blanket

  Many days and nights there is a loud and terrible sound. The air raid siren. When the siren wails, everyone is supposed to run for the underground shelter, if they can.

  The shelter is like a big basement. All the neighbours hide down there when the enemy airplanes drop bombs.

  Anyway, one neighbour who usually runs with us is a young woman. She is a friend of Agnes, my grown-up sister. When the siren wails, this young woman carries her baby in a blanket as she runs.

  Another neighbour is an old woman—a grandmother like I am now. When the siren wails, the old woman carries a suitcase as she runs. And she runs away from the shelter, towards our house! She always does this!

  “Madame, you’re running the wrong way!” shouts my brother.

  But the silly granny ignores his warning and keeps on running the wrong way.

  She thinks she will be safe in our house, which is big and strong, but she is wrong. No house is safe from the bombs. We know people who were killed in their pyjamas in their beds. They didn’t hear the siren and went on sleeping.

  Anyway, the planes are coming closer. We can hear their terrible roar.

  Down into the shelter we run. Down under the ground to be safe from the bombs.

  Then we are sitting with our neighbours in the dark shelter. We are listening to the thud, thud, thud of the bombs exploding. We are safe, but what will happen to the old woman up above? What will we see when the airplanes are gone, and we return to our house? Maybe we won’t even have a house.

  Suddenly in the dark beside us, the young woman with the baby in the blanket screams.

  “My baby!” she screams. “It’s not here! The blanket is empty! I dropped my baby! My baby! My baby! My baby!”

  The young woman screams and screams.

  “Hush!” say the neighbours. “Please be quiet, madame.”

  “Hush!” says Mommy taking the young woman in her arms. “There’s nothing to be done.”

  Finally the whining of the planes and the thudding of the bombs are finished. We can go home, if we have a home.

  Mommy keeps one arm tightly around the young woman, who can hardly walk. Grandpa takes me firmly by one hand and Elizabeth firmly by the other hand. Johnny walks behind Mommy, and we walk behind him. Slowly, we mount the steps.

  What waits above? Fire, fire all around. Heaps of broken cement and bricks where a building stood. A man with his arms and legs blown away. He is still alive. His head and trunk are flip-flopping like a mechanical toy.

  You think we children never see such things? Ha! We see plenty! We even see other children blown up. Sometimes there are landmines. Sometimes they are in the shape of a can, or a bar of soap, or a doll lying on the road. Of course, children will kick or pick up such things without thinking. Then, boom! There is nothing left of that child except bloody pieces.

  Anyway, Grandpa puts his arms around Elizabeth and me. He holds us tightly. My brother bolts ahead. He does not listen when Mommy shouts, “No, Johnny! Come back!”

  I close my eyes. I let Grandpa lead me along. Grandpa is almost carrying me, even though I am walking. I have seen enough.

  “Look!” Johnny shouts. “Our house is still here! The old woman is all right, and so is the baby!”

  I lean into Grandpa. I stay under his arm. He keeps holding me tightly.

  But I open my eyes to look.

  The old woman is sitting on our doorstep. She is cradling the baby in her arms. The old woman and baby are completely unharmed! Not a bruise or a scratch!

  The young woman snatches her baby. She clutches it closely. It begins to cry.

  “No harm done,” says the old woman cheerfully. “The baby is hungry. That’s all.”

  And Mommy, Grandpa, Johnny and I, and all the neighbours who have gathered around, begin to laugh. We laugh and laugh.

  Elizabeth doesn’t laugh. She is always serious these days. She just stands there and watches the rest of us laugh. Mommy sees this. Mommy goes and puts her arms around Elizabeth.

  Then Johnny asks the old woman: “Madame, why do you always run the wrong way with your suitcase? What’s in the suitcase? Clothing? Documents? Gold?”

  “There’s nothing in the suitcase,” replies the old woman, flinging it open for all to see.

  And Mommy, Grandpa, my brother, and I, and all the neighbours, laugh some more.

  And so it goes, the war. Sometimes I see the night sky lit up like a Christmas tree, with explosions and fire. Once I see a dog with a medicine bag strapped to its back, crawling on its belly under the bullets to reach a wounded man. The man takes a bandage from the medicine bag, and then the dog crawls away.

  My Daddy and all of my uncles—Mommy’s big, strong brothers—were killed in that terrible World War. They died in battles far away from home. They died in France. In Africa. But somehow, Mommy, Grandpa, my brother, my sisters and I survived.

  Still, we too lost our home.

  Eva

  As Hanna lies dying in my house, hundreds of kilometres from her little rented room in the centre of Montreal, she watches the play of light and shadows on the wall. I watch too, when I can, in a few snatched moments of companionable silence. Sometimes the light is still. The light looks like veins on the back of a hand, or rivers seen from far above, seen by a bird or a mountain goat. Sometimes the shadows stream like water or flame. Sometimes the shadows are still. The shadows look like a huge rough cross, or like the ears of a small animal watching from a corner.

  Watching the play of light and shadows, Hanna says she remembers her childhood in Poland. In this clean and pleasant room, with green plants, she begins to remember the good things. It is quiet here, without the constant ambulance and police sirens of a big city. She can even hear birds. Without moving her head, or leaving her bed, she can also watch the trees outside the window. The trees turn from green, to red and yellow, to black and white.

  There is nothing more for doctors to do, except to ease the pain with drugs. My English Canadian doctor provides the little pills. Hanna takes the weakest dosage possible. She has not taken a single one of the morphine pills the doctor prescribed.

  She prefers agonizing pain to a mind unclear.

  I am afraid she might take a whole bottle of morphine pills, so I do not leave the bottle within her reach.

  Am I cowardly? Rationally, I agree with Hanna that, if one is of sound mind, one should be able to choose when and how to end one’s own life. Yet I do not want to be accused of murder. And I might be so accused, if I left a bottle of morphine pills near her, and she swallowed them all. Furthermore, I am emotionally unable to accept Hanna’s argument that she should die now, so as not to be a further burden on me, so as to die with dignity. I am afraid that she is still alive for some divine reason.

  As well as watching the wall, Hanna watches the door. The door is where people come from. Naomi and I come a few times a day, and a nurse comes once a day. The nurses wash her, or massage her feet, or change the bedding, or talk to me. Many days I need more help than Hanna does. I am distraught about Hanna wanting to die. I think I have been distraught in varying degrees for several years.

  The nurses are of many nationalities, but none are Polish. All speak English well. Many understand the unusual situation in this home turned hospice.

  “She does not want to live any longer,” I say to a nurse. “She says this treatment is inhumane. She does not want to become more and more helpless. She believes in euthanasia. She pleaded with the doctor to end her life quickly. Of course, he said he couldn’t do it.”

  Hanna says she wants to die, yet when the doctor in Montreal told her she would die within a few months, her face wilted like a flower in a sudden frost.

  If you were awake in the night when the frost came, and if you could see in the dark, you would see what her face looked like.

&nb
sp; “She turned her back on life several years ago,” I explain to the nurse. “She lost the will to live when she lost so many people she loved. The same thing happened to her mother. Her mother died at the same age and for the same reason—a broken heart.”

  She likes to lie alone in her room. When someone comes to her room, she searches the face. What does she search for? Understanding? Love? Her eyes look like the ethereal essence of six million flowers, so delicate is their expression.

  What does she find on the faces? In the other eyes? Fear? Anger? Arrogance? Confusion? Boredom? All the things that people feel. Other people’s feelings press upon her. People—the doctor, the nurses, the hospice volunteers, a sister and a niece—are so needy. They need so much from her. She needs nothing from them.

  She is like a blessed relic, this wreck of a human being. Each person who encounters her receives from her a true mirror of himself or herself. Receives what he or she needs to learn. The sister is steadied, the niece is teased gently, a nurse is encouraged.

  Are all the dying so helpful in their helplessness? Certainly not all of them can be as extraordinarily strong in spirit as Hanna.

  I told Joe once that I feel as though I am witnessing a slow crucifixion. He said that the same notion has occurred to him. He’s going to look up a poem by W.H. Auden he once read. The poem is about how, as Christ was crucified, dogs went on living their “doggy lives.”

  Joe is astoundingly well read in the humanities. Yet he is never pedantic. He says he’s a “seeker.” I could not have a more thoughtful, loving, dear companion.

  I believe that Hanna’s life has enormous significance. I feel as though I should get the details down, in case, like the apostles, I let decades pass before I write down the whole story. I am a most inadequate apostle.

  Joe

  Must reread W.H. Auden. I promised Eva that I would find one particular poem of his, but I could not find it in my anthology of modern verse. I’ll have to borrow his collected poems from the library. I did find Auden’s “September 1, 1939”. Liked it just as much as ever.

  I have been immersed in a book John Van der V. loaned me: Quiet Heroes: True Stories of the Rescue of Jews by Christians in Nazi-Occupied Holland.

  The book is by a Jewish-Canadian psychiatrist, André Stein. Stein interviewed some of the few Dutch people who assisted Jews during World War II. Most Dutch people did not assist. Most of Holland’s Jews died.

  Stein seems to find little that distinguishes those who helped from those who did not.

  I wish I could ask my father whether our family hid Jews. What’s the use of being half Dutch if I know little about Dutch culture and history?

  Eva says I should go to Holland for a visit. Going to Poland changed her life, she says. I’d like to go to my grandparents’ village.

  I asked Eva if she’d go with me. She got vague and said, “Maybe later.”

  I told her Naomi’s never going to fully accept me, and that’s that. Naomi is waiting for her knight-in-shining-armour father.

  Eva got upset and pleaded with me not to be angry. She said she can’t choose me over her daughter and dying sister. Of course, I told her I understand. And I do.

  There are some advantages to being the fifty-something veteran of two failed marriages and a victorious battle with the bottle.

  Eva threw her arms around me like I was some kind of hero.

  Sometimes I think it is easier to be a true hero in war time. Selfless acts are wrung from you, because the circumstances are extraordinary.

  Those of us who have known only peace easily degenerate into idle wilfulness. We consider ourselves first. We do not accept the existence of higher moral imperatives.

  Unless, of course, we’re religious.

  Week Eight

  Naomi

  Saturday, October 30, 1999

  When I went to work this morning, I was excited about designing an outfit for my singing act. I finally told Sarah that I love to sing and play music, and she invited me to audition for her band. Her band needs an extra act for a Christmas gig they’re doing. Mary and I were going to make a pattern for my outfit tonight after work. Mary was going to come for dinner at my place, visit with Hanna and help me with the pattern.

  I’ve had two lessons on Mary’s landlady’s sewing machine, and I’m going to buy my own second-hand sewing machine when I save enough money. I’m making so little money with this job, I’ll never save up enough to go somewhere warm at Christmas anyway. And who would I go with? Sarah’s family is supposedly going to Florida, but I don’t want to go with them and listen to their arguing. Besides, they haven’t invited me. Anyway, they might not go now.

  As it turned out, Mary and I didn’t make the pattern for my outfit. Mary was very tired and upset. She just wanted to go to her room and rest after work. Then she wanted to go to the Saturday-evening mass.

  The new, young director of the Rec Plex hired two men to clean full time at night. Then the director reduced Mary and the other full-time, day-time woman cleaner to part-time. The women are supposed to work about three-quarters time. But they still have to do the same amount of work as before! And they no longer receive benefits like dental insurance or sick leave!

  The director says that Mary and the other woman will do less work. He says that he has “reorganized” the work. But Mary says that the director does not know what the work is really like. She says the director never consulted her. He only did calculations on paper. I suspect that the director did not consult Mary, because he could not understand her English. The director probably doesn’t know Mary was a doctor. He doesn’t seem to notice that she does a super job of cleaning.

  I told Mary that I would quit my job in protest of this obvious discrimination against women, and that she should quit too. She said I shouldn’t quit, because this is my first job ever104 and good experience. She said she’s not quitting because she won’t be able to find another job.

  To show Mary that I care about what happens to her, I walked over to her place after supper and went with her to her church. I have never been to a Catholic mass before. Mom always says that I should make up my own mind about religion. She feels that the quarter of me that is Jewish is very important, but so are the three-quarters that are Catholic.

  Mom admires the Polish pope, and she is proud of the Catholic tradition, but she disagrees with the church about a lot of things, like divorce. She is also skeptical about the Virgin birth, which she says is a myth. But she says that myth is not necessarily bad.

  Mom and Joe watched a TV series where an American journalist named Bill Moyers interviewed a professor named Joseph Campbell. Campbell writes books about myth. Mom and Joe had long discussions at the dinner table about how myth should not mean “lie”, as it does so often in modern society, but another way of seeing the truth.

  Joe said: “Myth is an effective way of encoding truth in so-called primitive societies.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

  Mary doesn’t discuss her religion. She really believes it. Yet she knows a lot about modern science because she is a doctor. While she was kneeling, praying, singing and going up to the front for communion, I was sitting in the pew beside her. I did not move or make a sound; I only watched. The most interesting thing for me was the procession at the beginning and end of the mass, when the priests entered and exited carrying this huge cross that could be seen above the assembled worshippers. The procession with the cross was eerie and beautiful. It was like time travelling, like journeying back through centuries of Christianity.

  I think Mary really believes because of everything she has been through, and everything she is still going through. She also believes because, as a doctor, she knows that faith, even more than music, helps in hard times.

  Here is what Poland: A Tourist Guide said about the Warsaw Uprising: “The Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, and continued 63 days, every underground organization in the city joining in the battle. Some 22,000 underground soldiers and 180,000 civil
ians were killed. Afterwards, the Nazis deported all the remaining population and proceeded with the systematic destruction of the city.” Those were truly hard times for the Polish people.

  Another thing I liked about the mass I went to with Mary was the music. There was a choir with all young people, accompanied by a piano and guitars. Even the conductor was young and good looking. I wish I could belong to that choir. But I’d probably have to be a member of the Catholic church. Maybe there’s another choir in Mapleville that I could join. In a choir you don’t have to be ravishingly beautiful or amazingly talented.

  Tomorrow is Hallowe’en. Mary says there is nothing like our North American October 31 in Poland. In Poland, November 1 is All Saints’ Day. This is a very holy, serious day when everybody goes to the cemetery to honour the dead.

  I showed Mr. Dunlop the stories I have so far from Mary. He said I should find some other people to interview also, because I need a “wider perspective”. Mom gave me the name of a Polish Jewish woman at the college who would be “happy” to be interviewed by me. I was jolted by something this woman said. I hadn’t realized that a lot of Polish people were and are anti-Semitic. I think my mother idealizes Poland when she talks to me about it.

  What a Polish Jewish woman said when she was interviewed by Naomi at the college where she teaches English:

  I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Krakow, Poland. During and after the war, my mother disguised herself as a Christian. After the war, she left Krakow and went to Wroclaw. She had become convinced that her sister had died in a Krakow hospital because anti-Semitic Polish doctors would not give her medicine. My mother had been settled in an apartment in Wroclaw for a several months when a Polish Catholic priest dropped in and remarked that there were no Christian symbols on the walls.