My concern is for you, Maggie, and I will be more than happy to see you when we meet again—perhaps in Oswego, perhaps in Toronto when steamer traffic resumes. I do want you to know that Lukas was able to hold Hanora in his arms before he moved away in the fall. He adores and loves the child, as he does you. As difficult as this has been for both of you, I believe he understands your decision.
I, too, am trying to understand, now that I know the entire story. I try to understand what you are going through, knowing that Am was unable to accept the child as his own. You tell me that you stay with him because of what you both had, because of what you were together in the past, because of what you both lost. Tragedy, it seems, is measured out in unequal parts among us. I know that your heart must be broken yet again.
If, whenever you travel to Toronto, you meet with Lukas, I will probably never know. Perhaps your life in Oswego has settled into a bearable pattern, with your sister near and with Am having found work. You must create something new for yourself, Maggie, and I hope you will continue to sing. I hope that you will find a way to carry on, and that music and song will always be included in your life.
I will continue to see Hanora as often as I can. I have passed on the locket to Tress, and she understands that it is to be given to the baby when she is older. She understands that she is to tell Hanora the locket arrived with her at birth, a gift from her birth mother. Someday, who knows, Hanora may own her life story.
Tress and Kenan will send their own news. I know you will destroy this and all of my letters as they arrive, as we agreed. I wish I were there to help support you, Maggie. But we will meet soon. My house and the workroom are completely filled with boarders, and I shall have some income to spare for travel.
Several of us have worked at keeping the choral society going, now that Lukas has moved away. And though we had no New Year’s concert last evening, we hope to prepare a spring performance. A new music director will eventually be found.
I’ll end this letter now, and will go directly to the piano, which has found its way back to my dining room. I will play something peaceful and beautiful by Chopin, and I will think of you.
Write again soon, my friend.
With love,
Zel
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following important books (among many) contributed to my knowledge of the period: Winning the Second Battle: Canadian Veterans and the Return to Civilian Life, 1915–1930 by Desmond Morton and Glenn Wright; Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan; Letters of a Canadian Stretcher Bearer edited by Anna Chapin Ray; Testament of Experience by Vera Brittain; Melodies and Memories by Nellie Melba; A History of Music in Canada, 1534–1914 by Helmut Kallmann. I’m grateful to have had access to the few surviving issues of the 1919 Deseronto Post, as well as an issue of The Napanee Express. CBC audio recordings of First World War soldiers were helpful (at Library and Archives Canada).
The epigraph is from a poem by Helen Humphreys: “For Jackie, Who Will Never Read This” in Anthem, published by Brick Books, 1999, used with permission.
The four lines from the poem about “War and Love” are cited from a yearbook in the Deseronto Archives and date to 1858, perhaps earlier. The choral adaptation of “Annabelle Lee” is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee.”
The great Australian diva Nellie Melba sang for the Heliconian Club, founded in Toronto in 1909, but not at the present Heliconian Hall, which was purchased by the club in 1923 and renovated. The club met elsewhere until acquiring the present building, a former church in Yorkville.
The sausage story (about Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba) is recorded in several places, including on the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum: www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/e/enrico-caruso/.
THANKS TO: Jackie Kaiser, always supportive friend and agent; my good friend Phyllis Bruce, who listened to my ideas about this story and encouraged me from its beginnings; Jennifer Lambert at HarperCollins, for her enthusiasm, editorial suggestions and follow-up; managing editor, the truly professional Noelle Zitzer, who never lets me down; art director Alan Jones; copy editor Janice Weaver; the informed, innovative and exemplary Amanda Hill at Deseronto Archives, for professional help with historical references, and for responding in detail to my questions about 1919 Deseronto; Norman Takeuchi; Marion Takeuchi; Cathie Vick; Howie Wheatley; Ann Moore; Yehudi Wyner; Terry Flynn; Jack Granatstein, for pointing me in the direction of post-war books; Margaret McCoy (Soprano) and Mary Gordon (Alto), for agreeing to meet with me to discuss their love of singing; Matthew Larkin; Jordan de Souza; the Ottawa Choral Society, for permitting me to sit in on rehearsals; Barbara Clubb, for making arrangements for me to visit the Bytown Voices. A huge thanks to Eric Friesen, for meeting me in a café off Highway 401 and helping to plan the concert. Thanks to the late Barbara Adams, born 1913, who recounted stories of her early life on PEI’s north shore; also to her son, Don Adams, of Sea View. The first sanatorium in PEI was at Emyvale, built in 1915 and closed 1922 (http://www.lung.ca/tb/tbhistory/people/dalton.html).
Tuberculosis, a major problem for returning soldiers across Canada, during and at the end of the Great War, remained an issue well into the 1960s, when I worked at a sanatorium in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Québec. The incidence of tuberculosis decreased for a time, but it has again become a global concern.
Love and thanks to: my daughter, Samantha Leiko Itani, for proofing; my son, Russell Satoshi Itani, Flautist, for advice about music; Aileen Jane Itani, Soprano—who sang in my office, sang in my dining room, sang to me over the phone, and responded to my barrage of questions about “voice” while I created Maggie; Dorothy Mitts; Joel Oliver, for jumping on the ice on the Bay of Quinte with me, and for skating photos and prints found in antique stores and flea markets; Larry Scanlan, my shadow-skater, who gets out there every week on Kingston winter ice and has the words to describe. I must also acknowledge here extended family members who have discussed with me the sad facts of infant and child mortality in our own early pioneer families—proof of which becomes all too real when one visits old graveyards across this country.
Finally, I thank Sally Hawks, who insisted.
About the Author
FRANCES ITANI has written sixteen books. Her novels include Requiem, chosen by the Washington Post as one of the top fiction titles for 2012; Remembering the Bones, published internationally and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; and the #1 bestseller Deafening, which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, selected for CBC’s Canada Reads and published in seventeen territories. A Member of the Order of Canada and a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prize, Itani lives in Ottawa.
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PRAISE FOR FRANCES ITANI
“Frances Itani is an artist who understands what to include and what to leave out, when to whisper and when to shout…. Utterly absorbing.” —Newsday
“The subtlety of Itani’s writing is nothing short of remarkable…. Her voice is pitch perfect…. Itani is unquestionably a prodigious talent.” —Toronto Star
“Itani’s writing is clear-headed and sure-handed; her strong characters will not leave you.” —Charles Frazier
“Small moments assume lyrical dimensions and significance, and here is where Itani’s true gift lies.” —The New York Times
PRAISE FOR DEAFENING
“There are scenes in Deafening which will never be forgotten…. A remarkable accomplishment.” —Alistair MacLeod
“Some books just demand the adjective ‘wonderful.’ This is one of them.”
—The Times (London)
“There’s not a single false gesture in Deafening. … There are passages here so beautiful that we can’t help straining to hear more.”
—Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
“Brilliantly lucid and masterfully sustained…. De
afening has the integrity of an achieved artistic vision, the kind of power that is generally associated with the gracious, crystalline prose of Grace Paley, the flagrantly good, good lines of Robert Lowell and W.H. Auden’s poetry.” —Kaye Gibbons
ALSO BY FRANCES ITANI
FICTION
Requiem
Listen!
Missing
Remembering the Bones
Poached Egg on Toast
Deafening
Leaning, Leaning over Water
Man Without Face
Pack Ice
Truth or Lies
POETRY
A Season of Mourning
Rentee Bay
No Other Lodgings
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Best Friend Trouble
Linger by the Sea
Credits
Cover design: Skating Night, 1919. National Photo Co.
Courtesy of Shorpy.com
Author photo: Norman Takeuchi
Copyright
Tell
Copyright © 2014 by Itani Writes Inc.
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EPUB Edition JULY 2014 ISBN 9781443406949
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST EDITION
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