Swimmers in Winter Read online

  Life can move so suddenly. The river rises, floods the bridge.

  What remains is all I’m left with now.

  But I haven’t lived this long to be wrecked by what has already been done.

  And if the world has ceased to hear you,

  say to the silent earth: I flow.

  To the rushing water, speak: I am.

  It was at the Silver Lounge that Florence introduced me to Hannah, another singer. Hannah had a range deeper than mine, richer and more open, an alto for sure. No interest in a tambourine, though—I’d have to play that one alone.

  Hannah told us she was new in town and looking for a place to work. She’d sung with a travelling band for a while. When they passed through Hogtown she decided to stay, to see whether she could make a life for herself underground in this dirty, conservative town. She’d lost her own little brother in the fighting overseas and was carrying that grief on her back. Struggled with how heavy it was to bear.

  What I remember most is the flicker of recognition in her solitary eyes. She looked at Florence closely that first night, but not in a searching way, not seeking to know what was in her heart. It was more like she was open to waiting.

  I liked the lines that carved her out. Weary lines, but full of decision, as though she’d chosen to come so far just to be herself.

  Something in me understood why Florence might’ve longed to go with her.

  Florence was doing all the talking, sharp and swift. “So we’ll have a practice next weekend, at eight back here before the bar opens.” She then went silent for a minute, probably thinking about how to arrange it.

  Hannah looked over to me, then back to Florence.

  There was something about Hannah that night that was utterly new to me. I could tell she was distracted, but the attention she rested on each of us felt both gentle and full, and also like something I couldn’t hold.

  Thinking back now, I’d say it felt like she was witnessing us, and wasn’t asking for much more than that.

  I noticed too that Florence’s eyes kept failing to not meet Hannah’s. I knew what it was to fall into someone’s eyes, to weave an alibi full of holes to cover up desire. So I shot Florence a look that said, I’m watching.

  But then Florence touched my shoulder once, twice. A tender gesture that caught me by surprise, as we were rarely light of touch with each other. She said my name before she wheeled away. Was she calling to me, asking that I follow?

  I wished Hannah good night with a stage smile and turned to go.

  “You’re always looking,” I said to Florence when I caught up to her. “Looking for whatever you want.”

  Well, maybe that was true. When we met, I was the only one who caught her eye. But I must’ve known, even then, she had a glance that didn’t rest for long and yet so often seemed like it was ready to be found.

  I wanted her to convince me I could count on her, but she didn’t. The words escaped her.

  But you are mine. That’s what I wanted to hear. We had been fighting plenty, almost to the brink, and I’d begun wondering if she would leave me.

  It just made me fiercer.

  “I bet on nothing,” I leaned in, my voice low and hard with what I knew to be my own hurt. “But I took a chance with you.”

  “Don’t you know the difference between lust and something deeper?”

  “No words,” I told her. “There are no words for this. What you’re doing.”

  She was getting ready to walk out on me, then and there. I knew it. But I also hoped that she expected me to follow.

  Was that love?

  I wanted to think I was still the chance she would take. I waited for her to speak but she didn’t seem to have an answer.

  I recalled the crowd we’d played for that night. All the strangers’ faces. I thought of Florence on stage with me, her profile. I’d tried to hold our melodies well and stay focused, though in one of the songs, I’d begun a wrong verse, the last one, and I had to hastily skip back to the middle of the song. Florence shook her head when it happened, but kept the rise of the chords steady into the chorus. There was some whistling from the audience and laughter. Usually, I appreciated a lively response from the crowd, the way they pulled and hollered at the songs with happiness and abandon, but tonight it troubled me.

  Had Florence really been in love with me?

  Now, looking back, she seems so young.

  We were still standing there, staring at each other, when the front doors burst open and the bar raid began. How many nights had an intrusion like this happened? Too many to count.

  In the space of a breath, Florence spun around and headed for the back exit, her mandolin in its case held aloft like a treasure in her arms. She went without waiting for me, never even seemed to hesitate.

  Shocked, I didn’t think to run right away. Not until an officer grabbed me from behind. Desperately, I bit down hard through the skin of the hand on my shoulder, and when it released its grip, I threw myself toward the back of the club and darted away out the backdoor.

  I was turned inside out with terror. But there’s power in fear, if you channel it through action. I couldn’t feel my feet hitting the pavement. The sirens sliced the air to pieces as we scattered away.

  More than anything, I was worried the police were chasing me, that they were catching up and closing in. I’d been chased before. I ran until my legs hurt worse than the fear in my chest.

  I could still feel where the officer had gripped my shoulder hard enough to bruise. I gulped in the fresh air, and silently spoke a desperate wish to not be seen—pretending at invisibility, the way you do when you feel hunted, even if you’re already down the street and around the corner. Begging at fate to make what scares you disappear.

  The summer we met, after the first time we’d escaped a police raid, Florence had said, “They can’t steal us from ourselves. We’re both still alive. We’re together. So breathe. Come back to yourself.” That was the moment I began to fall for her. But she hadn’t said it especially for me. That was just how Florence lived.

  As I slowed down, I became more aware of my surroundings, those familiar streets of escape. I didn’t want to go home, so instead I went to Allan Gardens, to the place Florence had taken me after that first raid, and those many other nights that followed. Lone figures stood here and there in the park. Some leaned against the tree trunks as if expecting an eventual train, in no hurry, lost in their own thoughts and feelings. Their faces were mostly hidden to me behind branches and leaves, but I knew they watched me pass, then turned the other way, their stolen glances either consoling or indifferent.

  I told myself I was not afraid. I was used to being the outsider, the shadow eater, the night walker.

  As I stepped along the path, I remembered how Florence and I had sat on the grass side by side, the June moon low and all over us in its solitary poses. I remembered wondering what she saw, what she thought of me that first night: the limits of my life so far, all that I hadn’t yet seen and done and known. Would she somehow come to understand me as the police did, see me painted over with the same names that they had for me, as something ugly or sick, as less than human?

  There are strange, panicked tricks our minds play when we’re faced with the question of love. We search out any alibi. We tie ourselves in knots.

  I thought then that if I was going to say something to her, I had to share some shameful truth about me. I had to confess to her the truth of what others thought of me.

  Perhaps it was also that I had a taste for the dramatic, and I wanted her to listen to it.

  But Florence shook her head. She didn’t want to hear my past regrets and my fears in that moment.

  So instead I asked her, “What can I give you?”

  She looked up past the branches to the sky, the moon splashing its light everywhere, the dampness of the night air filling her mouth, her throat, her lungs, as she breathed i
t in slow.

  “What doesn’t hurt so much,” she said.

  Then she turned and looked me all over. I tried to meet her eyes. I don’t know what she saw there, but she smiled unconcerned, with a trace of reassurance. “Whatever you’d like,” she added.

  She turned away again to her own thoughts. A private grin on her lips. There was always a bit of a trickster about Florence, a lust for survival.

  That first night, I’d wished time could slow as I brought her pleasure instead of pain, that she would be no thief with me, that what I gave her wasn’t stolen. I’d wanted her to let me take her in. I’d looked for hope in Florence’s eyes, a balm for the feeling of my own shame. I’d searched for a way to soothe my mind.

  A stirring in the trees nearby startled me from my memories. I needed to keep moving.

  There was no moon to be seen in the sky above, just a dusting of old stars beyond the city’s young, encumbering blaze of electric light.

  I imagined Florence beside me. I thought of how she’d played at the bar: louder, harder, more jubilant in her sound than the rest of the band combined. She played as if she could sense another raid was coming, and that they would try to shut the place down for good.

  I tried to believe that if I looked for Florence, I could find her again.

  Has love been the breathing I have taken for this life? Like most of us, I’ve done so, deeply. But only a few times. In this, we do not have a choice.

  Quiet friend who has come so far,

  feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

  In the noise of their world, where do I go?

  Sometimes great-nephew’s children come in to visit. I try to sing for them, old Auntie Magda singing her ghostly tunes. The littlest one gets up to dance to the melody on feet she just learned to walk with, moving back and forth like she can feel the rhythm that was there with us on stage all those years ago. They laugh, the children in my room. I do love to hear their laughter.

  Their mother, I remembered her name earlier. She visits here, this tiny island of a room, to take the children back so I can rest, scoops the littlest one up. Short haired, soft framed, and I confuse her with my own mother for a minute.

  My mother told me once that I was born waving my fists, a fighter.

  “Like almost every child,” I replied, stubborn.

  “No, you were born a mad one. That was you.”

  Mama, they were fists of joy.

  If she were here now, I would go to her.

  Tell me again where I am in this night of middles, this life I see drifting by. The earliest time curves back to me. The older memories are so strong. The first melody Florence ever taught me. I can still feel what it was like to sing its song.

  “I’ll sing again for you soon,” I tell the children.

  Their mother waves.

  Goodbye, sweet ones.

  I look outside my door as it closes.

  That’s life happening there, Magda. Life unfolding around you. The loudest kind of life. Their noise never stops. It rushes by. But at least you can still hear it happening.

  At least for now, they seem to hear you.

  And if the world has ceased to hear you,

  say to the silent earth: I flow.

  To the rushing water, speak: I am.

  Lately, my surroundings have begun to fall away, their definitions softening. This is something I can’t refuse, no matter how I try. I find less and less to hold onto. My strong prescription glasses don’t change the fact that I’m losing my vision. It is dispersing—the way dreams go, travelling out of reach, out of orbit.

  Tell me where I am tonight.

  Sitting up in this unmade bed. Hips aching, I gently swing my legs to the floor, then gradually lift myself to my feet. Each step is slow and deliberate as I move toward the door.

  What am I doing here?

  There’s a draft in this space. It shivers me—though isn’t it spring yet? My favourite time of year. Shouldn’t the night be mild?

  And what about my thoughts?

  If it’s true what great-nephew says, that I have seen a lot, why should I be surprised at the visions coming now? Why should I refuse the encore if the crowd wants me back? If Florence is waiting, ready to play, fingers suspended?

  Halfway down the hall, the floor moves like a footbridge, shaking with my frail-boned weight to throw me over. Each of us takes ourselves down in the end.

  But I still have a wall to help keep balance as I shuffle, sliding each foot along it. These hips and knees—no touch can soothe now.

  After a few more steps, I’m standing again in front of the full-length closet at the end of the hallway. I’m pulling at the closet door—it only needs a gentle tug to open. Was I just here before? Just a few minutes ago? It’s hard to recall.

  Shall I go back? To a new beginning?

  In the stillness of the night, the creaking of my footsteps on the wooden floorboards announces my returning existence. Is it walking if you move as slow as the moon floating in the sky?

  I rub my eyes, leaning against the wall to hold myself upright, swaying unsteadily for a minute, expecting brightness. Of what? An afternoon sun? But it’s only the dimness of the hallway that I find instead, and down the hall my bedroom with its window.

  Turn back to the room that holds you.

  Let me open up the window here to find a little last air before I wake. Where’s the latch? The window holds the moon, or is it a streetlight? Or the sun rising? I’m not sure which.

  I can see the pale light wavering on the floor in rhythm with another idle dream. For a minute it fades, and then comes back into focus. I blow it a silent kiss, all that is left for me to give.

  What else will know me here, besides the light? Is it song?

  Look what I’ve forgotten.

  I’ll get my old suit of desires from the closet. Lift it from the hanger to put it on. A humble suit but it served me well. I’m ready for the stage now, to sing again for you. Please, quiet friend, hum a little music as I go, to bring me into tune. As I stand here bent and breathing. Just breathing.

  Quiet friend who has come so far,

  feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

  Let this darkness be a bell tower

  and you the bell. As you ring,

  what batters you becomes your strength.

  Move back and forth into the change.

  What is it like, such intensity of pain?

  If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

  In this uncontainable night,

  be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

  the meaning discovered there.

  And if the world has ceased to hear you,

  say to the silent earth: I flow.

  To the rushing water, speak: I am.

  “Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXIX”

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

  Things to Remember

  EVA

  I had a job in that diner before Claudia did. It only seems like she brought everything with her. But I was there first, alone. Day after day in that steaming kitchen, we worked as dishwashers and short-order cooks. We were on our feet for hours, wearing obligatory hairnets and knee-length aprons tied over tank tops and old jeans stained to a fade. Our bare feet squealed across the linoleum floor in fluorescent sneakers from BiWay or Thrifty’s. After a year, those shoes became lace-up combat boots we wore even in summertime. Claudia’s apron usually lay flat against her after she tied it on like armour.

  See how much I remember?

  All I wanted from the future was that it would be different from what I’d already known. I only saw the tasks at hand as things tying me to the present—tethered there, impatient.

  When I knew Claudia better, I told her, “This is what you do on the way to something else. The trick is to always
keep moving. If you look back, be ready for anything.” When no one else was watching, we covered our ears with our hands, elbows angled outward as if to ward off double-fisted blows, keeping our eyes wide open.

  It was a way to both escape the past, and face it down.

  But from the beginning, Claudia had tunnel vision. Her hands were like tools when she worked, adept and precise. Sure, she might have made mistakes, but it was all practice. That’s all it was for her.

  Whenever the other dishwasher went on his endless breaks, I’d watch Claudia move away to stand over the big metal sink basins. She would brace her hips against them and pummel gooey traces and grease streaks of food off the dishes and down the drain. Her fingers gripped the hose, with its steady jet of hot water, like she was holding onto a rope to pull herself up.

  I wanted the focus she had. I wanted to know how it felt to have her attention.

  ◊

  We shared almost every shift.

  “How are you?” I’d ask, not looking, waiting. A question so ordinary it’s easy not to give a real answer. But you need to start somewhere.

  “Doing fine,” she’d say. “Yourself?” Handing me silence above the constant clang and rush of the kitchen.

  For a long time, I knew next to nothing about her. Our conversations were always cut off by a new task, a new order, the entrance of one of the other cooks or a server.

  ◊

  One morning in mid-October, a few of the staff called in sick. Another cook just didn’t show. “I’m ready to quit,” he’d told us the previous week. “I’ve got something better lined up.”

  Fewer of us there meant more work, but also more space, and Claudia took the lead. The manager didn’t notice until mid-morning. He walked into the kitchen and looked around as if he’d lost something, then paused to find us doing prep for the afternoon.