Читать книгу Cover Before Striking - Priscila Uppal - Страница 8

Wine Stains: Pour lots of salt onto the stain, dunk into cold water, and rub out.

Inside Tonio are two dreams: fire and water. His wife, Magdala, helps lift his large back away from the bed, holds him across the armpits to prop up his pillow, then slowly releases him. He recovers like a blade of grass. Looking out the window, he can see his undershirts and sheets on the line in the backyard, wooden pins marking the days he has survived in the trenches, all flags of white. “I surrender,” he wants to tell his dreams. “I surrender.” But still the shirts and sheets are hung.

Morning is roll call. Magdala peels off his shirt, throws it in her plastic basket. Then she pulls down the blankets, exposing legs limp like useless, splintered crutches, his olive skin wan and yellow without sun. She pats his thighs, meaning he should attempt to rise a little so she can slip off his underwear, flipping it quickly inside out and back again to examine it for stains. Into the same basket they go, whether or not there are any. A washed pair then appears, white cotton with an elastic waistband, a thin stripe of blue or black across the top. He doesn’t watch, can’t look down there without shaking. The only time he mentions it is if the band has caught on any hair.

This morning Tonio was dreaming before the sun hit his face. Shielding his eyes, he still saw Magdala opening the door, already dressed and working. “Papa,” she said. “Time to get up.” The sun denies him of his dreams, though he’s been trying to embrace them, keep himself in the dream’s arms so it will end. He wants to know how everything turns out, what happens after the fire and water rush over him. Magdala inspects the sheets for stains, tucking in stray sides as she does so, and leans in as she kisses him on the forehead to smell for sweat. This morning she doesn’t need to change the sheets. Maybe later. She checks three times a day, more if he screams.

There are bombs inside Tonio’s body: little bombs that go off randomly but persistently in twos or threes. Hot, hot, hot, they shoot up his arms and down his legs like burns, smelling like sulfur, stinging his nostrils. Tonio feels like he’s had his hand on a hot stove for the last six years. And then there are the tides. Ones that swell inside his throat and want to rush out onto the bed, others that stir and churn inside his stomach as if a drain were plugged. They steam inside him, pound against his veins, pour out of his body. Every entry a spout. “Move on,” he tells the tides. “Keep marching and you’ll overtake them.” Tonio knows the tides and the bombs are a part of him, and yet they are also enemies, trying to silence him, making it difficult for him to speak his words or tell his dreams. They don’t want to be detected. Masters of camouflage.

“There are bombs, Magda.” He wants to tell her more, but the small dish is in front of him and Magdala has put a plastic spoon in his right hand.

“The war is over, Tony. You’re at home.” She walks over to the window on the left side of his bed and opens the blinds. The sun rushes against her face, turning her into an outline. Tonio would rather the blinds were shut. It’s harder to fall asleep in the afternoons with the sun in his face and his eyes are too sore to read anymore. Because the blinds are cracked, even when shut the few missing rungs allow for light and the sight of his laundry waving in the breeze, his empty shirt sleeves helpless.

Tonio slams his hand down on the bed, trying to pound out his words. He starts to cough and Magdala rubs his back, procures a handkerchief, and holds it in front of his mouth to catch the spit. “The doctor is coming tomorrow, Papa.” He shakes his head and coughs harder. Magdala rests her basket, sighing as her body relieves itself of the burden of the weight, and calmly waits for the fit to pass. Sometimes she hums, trying to soothe him, or, if his eyes are open, smiles to show him she’s not worried. He tries to focus on the photographs hung on the right wall, pictures of the girls and Magdala when she was younger, recently arrived in Toronto, in front of the new house. Tonio, with hand gestures and broken English, had asked one of the neighbours, now he can’t remember which, to take the photograph for them. The camera was also new. It was a time of new things. Rosa would be born in less than a year. Teresa three years later.

“No more doc —” Two bombs explode up Tonio’s arms. His head slams against Madgala. She holds her face, biting her lip to hold in the pain. “Okay, Tony,” she says. “No more doctors. It’s easier on the children.”

Tonio’s fire abates and he hands her back the damp handkerchief. She throws it in the basket and places a white one on the nightstand. He feels small in the room, in the king-size bed, as if he’s been shrinking. He remembers when he was first brought in here, for good, he was sure the room didn’t have enough air, that he wouldn’t be able to get used to the cramped space. But, over the years, the room has become a whole land, a settler’s field he has lost the strength to plough, and he anticipates that soon he will be reaped, shucked into a wooden barrel, and delivered elsewhere. He starts to eat, the hot porridge massaging his gums. Magdala leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

One day Tonio might like to sleep with the window open, maybe dream about wind, but he can’t reach. The one time he tried, Magdala caught him, screamed, and he lost his balance and fell on the floor. It took both girls to lift him back on the bed. “Don’t move, Papa. You could hurt yourself,” they warned him.

He asked, “What do I do if there’s a fire?”

“There’s no fire, Papa,” they said.

He tried to tell them, waving his fingers frantically through the air in circles like smoke.

“Hold his hands down,” Magdala told the girls. “He might hit himself.” And they obeyed, strapping him down on the bed, unaware of his melting skin.

Tonio can hear the rumble of the washing machine through the vents, its starts and stops, the regular burbling of the wash cycle. He imagines his clothes, their stains, drowning in the water, spitting out into the basin. Before, they had talked about moving him to the basement. Fewer stairs, and Magdala spent most of her day down there doing chores. They could be closer. She could reach him earlier if needed. And he would have a window at ground level to call her when she was outside. “We could make it nice, Tony. I could hire someone to move all the furniture and put down a carpet.”

He protested. “Too much work for you, Mamma. You have enough to do already.” But there were days he wished he would wake up and find himself down there in the basement, listening to the washing machine, dreaming of thunder and hot rains and bleached white sheets spinning.

In many of his dreams, Tonio’s crawling in the garden, pushing down the lines of wooden stakes with his arthritic hands, his feet dragging behind in the dirt like heavy luggage. He can hear the push of the water and smell the pull of the smoke; this is when the dreams combine. To his left are all the fabrics hung on the line, motionless without wind, necklines drooped like people in prayer. The endless days he struggles in and out of those lines stand erect. “I surrender,” he tries to say, but can’t get the words out; he tries, but has to keep his mouth shut against the smoke, his eyebrows starting to burn. He can feel each individual hair parting. The neighbours, the ones he remembers from years ago, the Italian couple with the large van and the three boys, yes, it was the man who had taken the photograph for them the day they moved in, are in their backyard, drinking or walking, the boys playing ball or running under a sprinkler, yelling in English mixed with Italian. He can barely understand either, but he knows basic words. “Water!” he yells, but no one hears him. They are busy playing and talking, and no one sees him crawling on the ground. The last time he had the dream, he got farther and started to dig in the garden with his hands, pulling up cold, black soil. Maybe if I plant myself upside down and perfectly straight, like a carrot, he thought, it will all be over. He would have figured it out. He had been digging, holding his breath to keep out the elements, when the sun peeled open his eyes this morning.

Magdala returns with a letter, places it on his nightstand beside the handkerchief, smiling, her cheeks cracked with deep lines. “A letter, Papa, from Portugal. I’ll read it to you later.” Tonio nods, pleased to see her smiling, the ribbons of white hair twirled into a bun, reminding him of the flowers she wore on their wedding day.

“You’re such a good woman, Magda.” She pauses to scan his face, then kisses his forehead. Tonio feels sealed by her lips, to be opened later when she has the time to sit and love him. He knows she skips parts of the letters, probably when they ask about his health. He can tell. She pretends she can’t make out the handwriting, that, out of practice, it takes her longer each time to make out the Portuguese, and then she flips the page behind the envelope. Sometimes she says, “Oh, this part isn’t interesting to you. It’s just a recipe.” Sometimes she says nothing and hides her eyes.

“You should send your recipe for stains,” he tells her, nodding his head vigorously as he usually does when he praises her. “They always come out.” When the laundry comes back, he is often amazed by the clean slate in front of him, tells himself today, today, there will be no need for any more. Today they will stay white …

Tonio wakes again to Magdala’s voice rolling across her tongue and teeth like waves in their old speech, the letter held up in front of her reading glasses. “… the weather’s hot … Mamma … drinks three jugs of water a day and goes back and forth to the washroom all night … isn’t that funny, Tony?”

He nods, gives her a little chuckle, and sips the glass of wine she brought him, content she let him have some in the afternoon to help him sleep. He tries to make it last, hoping if he takes his time it won’t flood his body, but already he can feel his toes filling up with fluid. He wants to tell his wife about the water dreams, how the water spreads over him like a thick wet blanket and he sinks. Wants to tell her how it feels not to breathe anymore. He wonders what her mamma dreams of, if she tells her daughter, if that is the part she skipped over in the letter. Tonio has never met anyone underneath the water in his dreams before, but maybe he hasn’t been looking. Maybe they could meet, touch hands, get out of the dream together.

“What a big garden they have again back home,” Magdala says, eyeglasses on her lap, face turned towards the window.

“You make the best zucchini.”

“It’s been a good year, Papa,” she sighs. “They grew big and firm. Maybe next year will be a good year, too.”

“You did it, Magda.” Tonio nods vigorously and starts coughing. Magdala jumps off her stool and shoves the letter and envelope into the pocket of her apron. Silent, she hands over a fresh handkerchief, waits to see how bad the fit will be, then walks to the other side of the bed to shut the blinds, the missing slats like empty spaces in an old smile.

“I was crawling in the dirt and …”

“Tony, the war is over.”

No, he tries to tell her, no, no. He can’t get it out; only the coughs. The fire swells in his lungs. Tonio wants to build himself a shelter in the garden, beside the zucchini, the firm and large vessels almost as tall as the stakes, wants to become one of them, wrapped in tough wax, plucked ripe. He has a plan, wants to tell Magdala he has a plan, if only he could just finish his dream uninterrupted. If only he could have wind, maybe the sheets would move and someone would see he has already surrendered. When things move, people notice them, he thinks. Let me dig my hole.

Magdala picks up the plastic meal tray and turns to leave. “You need anything, Papa?”

“A hole in the dirt.”

Madgala stops at the door, her back to Tonio. “Don’t say that Tony, please …” She closes it behind her.

Tonio wants to see the girls today, but knows that he won’t. He said too much and said it all wrong, and he curses the dreams that keep his words away, hoarding them, shoving them deeper inside his body. The little bombs are like my words, he thinks, shooting inside all hot, fiery, and useless, poking me in the ribs and thighs, making me feel but not tell. Rosa and Teresa. He wants to see them. They are good girls to their papa, but Teresa’s too pretty and Rosa knows about the dreams. He can tell. She dreams, too, but he doesn’t know what she dreams of, and neither of them could ever find the right words to share them. She always says, “Sweet dreams, Papa. Sweet ones today,” and Tonio wants to take her in his arms and kiss her, even though she is too big, and sometimes he can’t control his hands so the girls aren’t supposed to touch him in case they get hit. So, instead, they wave to each other, nod, and once in a while Rosa combs his hair. Tonio tells Magdala what to say to them, especially if he thinks they’re in trouble. He tells her to warn Teresa about boys and Rosa about crossing the street. “Teach Rosa how to do things for herself,” he says. “Soon you’ll need her.” And Magdala has been teaching her all about the chores. She’s a good woman. She knows about these things.

Tonio never sees the girls in the dreams, but thinks that sometimes they can see him from the window. Maybe they want to see what he’ll do, if he can make it, and when he thinks this, he can feel their eyes on him like rays. Sometimes the girls hang the shirts on the line for their mamma. They help out, see the stains, wash them out. All have been passed the recipe. They know the things he can’t help doing. Know about the laundry. Some days he can smell the sting of all that salt as they pass by his door. But he doesn’t see their hands in his dreams, rubbing out his shirts and sheets, cold under the water. The hands that need to work are his own. He is the one in charge of getting out.

Good shirts, all white and strong, no holes. Tonio holds on to the one he is wearing, stripping the front off his wine-sweaty chest, crunching his hands into fists. Pulling, rocking on the bed, he tries to rip it. The top, he notices, has a stronger stitch than the bottom, so he switches his mode of attack, yanking the cloth down and up, until his fingernails hurt and he can’t catch his breath. The shirt is swollen but undefeated, and he is coughing hard again. Rosa knocks. By the height of the sound, he can tell that she is using her leg to hit against the wood.

“Papa? Papa? You need Mamma?”

He waves her away, but the door is between them. Alone. He wants to be alone. Alone with his white shirt. But he can hear Rosa’s uneven walk shuffling down the hallway, and soon she is calling for Mamma, Mamma. Magdala charges in, shutting the door on Rosa.

Tonio starts to cry.

“Have you had an accident? Don’t cry, Papa. I can wash the sheets.” Nodding, he lets her lift his frame, bend him, and turn him sideways until all the corners of the sheets are untucked. Then a hard tug and a quick smell, her nose like a small animal’s. Opening the door, she then hands the sheets to Rosa, the white middle stained yellow, the left corner red. Rosa trudges downstairs and Tonio knows she will start the rigourous rubbing before placing the sheets in the washer. He also knows he won’t be given any more wine to sip.

Tonio holds out his arm. He wants to touch Magdala, tell her everything is fine, that she doesn’t understand, the dream will end soon. Wants to feel her strong cheeks, bury himself in the grey ribbons of her hair. She walks over, kisses him on the forehead, wipes away her own sweat underneath her nose. Upset that he has failed to keep everything white once again, he turns his head on his pillow and pretends to fall asleep. Magdala gives the rest of the room a quick inspection, checks the wastebasket, then the four corners, lingering for a moment on the photographs on the wall as if deciding whether or not to move them, then exits, shutting the door. Tonio stares out the cracked blinds to the garden, wonders where all the fire and water will go, what they will take with them. One day, perhaps soon, in his fits of coughing, he’ll know, and rid himself of both dreams.