Fall on Your Knees (12 page)

James doesn’t dwell on it. He feels sorry for the thing, but it’s just as well not to have another mouth to feed. And Materia has bounced back remarkably. Like a heifer. He tries not to think it. Trouble is, she still looks pregnant. She’ll be slim again by the time I get back from the war.

But Materia will look pregnant from now on. People will always assume she’s six or seven months. This will come in handy.

James joins the 94th Victoria Regiment Argyll Highlanders. His captain speaks Gaelic, as does eighty per cent of the unit. James volunteers immediately for overseas duty, glad of any training that gets him away from home. Bayonet fighting at the Wellington Barracks in Halifax: rushing at bags bleeding sand, “under and up, ladies, under and up! You’re caught in his ribcage!” A British sergeant teaches them how to dig immaculate trenches, neatly sandbagged: “Not too deep, lads, we ain’t stopping long!” — just long enough for a bit of a kip, then it’s over the top with the Hun on the run. James is among the older men there. He doesn’t fraternize, he doesn’t care about King George nor does he have anything against the Kaiser. He counts the days till he’s overseas. “Under and up, ladies, under and up!”

Fifty years of European peace have generated exuberance on all sides. A lot of horses stand ready to gallop across Europe in two directions. Cape Breton has joined up in droves, despite the fact that over the past twenty-five years the Canadian army has spent more time guarding the property of the Dominion Coal Company than it has fighting. But the recruiters have been eloquent — “poor little Belgium, the blood-thirsty Boche” — the mines have been slow and what boy doesn’t long to be a soldier? The fact that friends will get to serve side by side is also very persuasive — whole towns in the same stretch of trench. Everyone is afraid that “she’ll be all over by Christmas”. James hopes the war will last two years. That way Kathleen will be old enough to leave home when he returns. If he returns.

James finishes basic training and takes up home defence duties. All through the fall, he and the rest of the 94th patrol the coast in a state of frustrated suspense, terribly worried lest the war should end before they get over there. They become known as the blueberry soldiers, because there’s not a lot else for them to do besides pick blueberries and keep their eyes peeled for a German ghost ship. James eats at home, but sleeps with two other soldiers in a shack on the beach at Lingan. Ready, Aye, Ready.

Eventually, James is transferred to the Cape Breton Highlanders 85th Overseas Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He is issued a Ross rifle. It’s a good thing there’s a knife attached to its barrel — no one knows yet just how far the Ross rifle’s efficiency in a field of North American rabbits outstrips its performance in European mud. Along with sixty-five pounds of kit, James is also issued a khaki tunic, a leather battle kilt, a blond and black horsehair sporran, a dress kilt of bright Macdonald tartan and a beret with a red tassel. The Germans will be sure to see him coming. And with the regimental pipers first over the top, the Germans will be sure to hear them. Bagpipes have a liquefying effect on the bowels of the enemy, and bare knees in battle strike the fear of the fanatical. The Germans will come to call the Highland regiments
“die Damen von Hölle”
— the ladies from hell.

Finally, one day in December 1914, James stands in the drive while Taylor heaves his duffel bag into the buggy waiting to take him to the docks in Sydney. It’s snowing and James feels the unaccustomed bite of winter on his knees. He knows he is in the proud dress of his ancestors but he sorely misses his trousers. Materia can’t help but think how handsome he looks. James pats them all on the head. Frances tickles his knee, Mercedes offers him her soggy cookie, Kathleen throws her arms around him, can’t stop herself crying, she never cries, she’s not a sissy. She clings, he tries to disengage.

“Be a good soldier now, look after your mother.”

“No!”

“That’s enough now, shshsh….”

But she runs to the house, ramming open the door — Daddy, my daddy is going away, he might be killed, or drowned before he even gets there — up the stairs two at a time — and he’s leaving me here with this horrible woman! Into her room, avoiding the mirror, slamming the door, locking it.

“G’bye fellas, say a prayer for your old dad.”

He knows Materia will pray, she’ll pray her fool head off.

He’s right, she does. She prays so hard that her head really does seem to get a little wobbly. She prays he’ll be killed quickly and painlessly in Flanders.

Over Here

With James gone, Materia comes to life. She takes pleasure in her little ones — Mercedes is such a good girl and Frances is a clown. Kathleen keeps up a life of her own, staying late at school to train with Sister Saint Cecilia or to practise with the choir, solos of course. When she’s home she’s impossible, but at least she’s out of harm’s way,
inshallah
.

What to feed her is a constant conundrum. Nothing satisfies. She rolls her eyes, sighs ostentatiously, flounces from the room. Materia falls back on James’s old standby of toasted cheese, slicing it daintily into four, placing it before her,
“SaHteyn
.”

“Mother! English, please.”

Kathleen, Mercedes and Frances share the impression that their mother doesn’t speak much English. This didn’t used to be true, but it has come somewhat to pass simply because Materia doesn’t speak English much. For with whom would she converse in English? Not her husband. And Mrs Luvovitz has always been mercifully undemanding of Materia in that regard, their friendship having revolved around food, children, the old Yiddish songbook. Materia has been content just to sit at Mrs Luvovitz’s kitchen table and listen to the older woman hold forth on what’s what.

Prepositions were the first to fall away, then adverbs crumbled, along with whole clauses, until Materia was left with only the most stolid verbs and nouns.

The difference between Kathleen and the younger girls is that Materia speaks plenty with Mercedes and Frances — although she has lost some of her mother tongue too, through disuse, all but the indelible language of her own earliest memories. Thus Materia and her two younger daughters speak the Arabic of children — of food, endearments and story-telling.
Ya aa’yni, te’berine
.

Mercedes and Frances understand that Arabic is something just between them and Mumma. There are many Arabic-speakers in Cape Breton by now, but the little sisters think they and their mother are the only ones, outside the mysterious population of that far-off place called the Old Country. A place better than any on earth, but a place you are nonetheless lucky to have escaped,

“Why?”

“Because of the Turks.”

“Oh.”

A place where everyone speaks the Piper girls’ private at-home language right out in the open, and everyone looks like their mother.

“Tell us about the Old Country again, Mumma.”

On the kitchen cot, before Kathleen gets home, they sink into Materia’s soft body, which provides a pillow for each head, her plushy smell of fresh wet bread and oil, a pot of
bezzella
and
roz
with lamb on the stove, the lid buzzing sleepily. Outside, the winter drizzle blurs the window.

“Lebanon is the most beautiful place in the world. There are gentle breezes, it’s always warm there. The buildings are white, they sparkle in the sun like diamonds and the sea is crystal-blue. Lebanon is the Pearl of the Orient. And Beirut, where I was born, is the Paris of the Middle East.”

“Can we go live there?”

“No.” You were lucky to be born on this damp grey rock in the Atlantic, beautiful in its own mournful way.

“Because of the Turks?”

“Yes.”

This island, familiar to famished Irish and gnarly-kneed Scots who had been replaced by sheep in their Old Country.

“Mumma, what’s Turkish delight?”

“It’s nasty.”

“Oh.”

Cape Breton Island is not a pearl — scratch anywhere and you’ll find coal — but someday, millions of years from now, it may be a diamond. Cape Breton Diamond.

“Mumma, tell us about Jitdy and Sitdy again.”

“Your
jitdy
was my daddy. He and my mother, your
sitdy
, came here with nothing and they worked very hard. They had many children and they prospered.”

“Why didn’t they stay?”

“They missed the Old Country.”

“Someday we’ll go see them, eh.”

“When you’re a grown woman with children of your own, you can go there.”

“Mumma, tell us about the good Muslin lady again.”

“Muslim.”

“Muslim.”

“She was a good woman. Her name was Mahmoud. Many years ago, when your
jitdy
was a baby, the Turks came to his village in the Old Country. They were looking for Christian babies to kill. The Mahmoud woman took your
jitdy
and put him among her own children. When the Turks came to the door and said, ‘Are there any Christian babies here?’ she said, ‘No! All these children are my own.’ And to convince them, she put your
jitdy
to her own breast and suckled him. The Turks went away. When he grew up, your
jitdy
took the Muslim lady’s name out of gratitude. Even though he was really a Christian.”

“Oh…. Mumma, can we see the picture?”

And Materia gets out the picture of her and James in front of the painted Roman arch from that long-ago day at Wheeler’s Photographic. Mercedes and Frances pore over the photo: when Mumma and Daddy were young. In Frances’s mind, the arch leads sometimes to the Old Country, sometimes to The War.

“When’s Daddy coming home?”

“Soon. We must pray.”

Materia has heard from her sister, Camille. Camille waited outside the Mahmoud kitchen door for the Jewish butcher to finish his weekly cup of tea with her mother. When he came out, Camille handed him a flat square parcel. She asked him to give it to Materia and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away. Benny passed it on to Mrs Luvovitz, who gave it to Materia. Materia cried when she opened the gift. An Arabic record. Its paper cover bore a water-colour of Beirut by night. She looked inside eagerly for a note — half-expecting the childish printing of years ago, smiling at the memory even as it hurt her heart; my little Camille, “you’re the prettiest of all of us,
ya Helwi.”
But there was only a scrap of brown paper and the words, “I’m married now.”

At least once a week, Materia takes the record from the hope chest, carries Kathleen’s gramophone down to the kitchen and winds it up. She aims the brass bloom and places the needle on the spinning wax:

First the antechamber of snowy static, airlock to another world, then … open sesame: The
deerbeki
beats rhythm, ankle bells and finger cymbals prance in, the
oud
alights and tiptoes, a woodwind uncoils, legless ancestor of the Highland bagpipe, rising reedy to undulate over thick strings thrumming now in unison. It all weaves and pulses into a spongy mesh for the female voice to penetrate — no words yet, a moan between joy and lament; the orchestra suspends itself below, trembling up at the voice, licorice, liquid, luring, “dance with me before I make love to you later, later, soon”.

Materia gets up and dances the
dabke
. Her mother taught her this dance, and Materia has taught Frances and Mercedes. The
dabke
is a continuous series of small lilting steps in quarter-swirls which sway your hips, laze your shoulders back and forth and breeze your arms like treetops over your head. Your hands are supple seaweed, waving on unresisting wrists, encircling, grazing, flirting with each other.

This dance works best if you are buxom but anyone can do it, it’s that kind of dance. And although officially a man is supposed to lead a line of pretty girls, the
dabke
is for everyone. At weddings, at baptisms, with children, grandmothers, anyone. That’s why the eyes are so important. Because the whole point of the
dabke
is to get up and do it in the centre of the gathering, where you acknowledge everyone until you pick out the person you will invite into the dance. Then you lower your arms towards them, hands still weaving to the music, and you lure that person until they get up and join you because they can’t refuse. Then they become the centre.

The
dabke
is all about hips and breeze whereas, if you find yourself at a
ceilidh
, Celtic step-dancing is all about feet and knees. Both can be danced in a kitchen by anyone.

The
dabke
is a big favourite with Frances and Mercedes. They’ll do it as long as Materia can hold up, which, in these early days, is a long time. She teaches them a whole bunch of Arabic songs, as well as the way to wail them while dancing. The trick is that the dancing and singing are unrepeatable. Once you know this, you’re ready to start learning.

When the precious record wears out, Frances innovates with a comb and wax paper to approximate the reeds and strings. Far from thinking it a sacrilege, Materia considers it ingenious, and it is.

Put the shell to your ear. You can hear the Mediterranean. Open the hope chest. You can smell the Old Country.

Holy Angels

Perhaps her requirements were too great, or her indulgence for human weakness too small, for her attempts to form a friendship had always ended in disappointment
.

CLAUDIA, BY A.L.O.E
.

Sister Saint Monica’s class is decorated with a map of the world, a chart of a volcano in cross-section, a collection of fossils and a colour print of her namesake. It hangs above the blackboard. In it, Saint Monica holds a book open on her lap, but she is not reading; she is gazing off, seemingly unaware of another pair of eyes peering up from the book itself, one on each page.