The Knife Sharpener's Bell

The
K
NIFE
S
HARPENER'S
B
ELL

RHEA TREGEBOV

© Rhea Tregebov, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent
of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency
(Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit
www.accesscopyright.ca
or call toll-free to I-800-893-5777

This is a work of fiction, and some liberties have been taken with time and space. The
characters in the novel are products of the author's imagination, and do not refer to real
people, living or dead.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Tregebov, Rhea, 1953-
The knife sharpener's bell / Rhea Tregebov.

ISBN 978-1-55050-408-8

I. Title.

PS8589.R342K65 2009      C813'.54      C2009-903615-0

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

2517 Victoria Avenue
Regina, Saskatchewan
Canada    S4P 0T2
www.coteaubooks.com

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of its publishing program by:
the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of
Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP),
Association for the Export of Canadian Books and the City of Regina Arts Commission.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Jeanette Block,
and to the memory of Vladlen Furman.

Prologue

My father is wearing a heavy tweed overcoat and a brown wool suit, his best, as he boards the train. Brown tweed cap flecked with green, striped tie. He's smoking his pipe, a narrow tin of tobacco in his breast pocket: Prince Albert in a can. His white apron he's taken off and hung on the peg by the back door of the delicatessen. He's packed two small suitcases – white shirts, clean socks, long underwear.

The train hisses and snorts at the platform. Thirty people to see him off: neighbours, comrades, friends. I'm not yet nine years old. Winnipeg, February 1935 The station is splendid; I've never been in a room this big. I tip my head back and my mouth holds itself open, the vault of my palate repeating the vault above. But when my father moves towards the train, something shifts. I've been everywhere in the room but now I snap into myself.
Say goodbye
, my mother instructs. No. I won't let him go.
Poppa!
I'm taken up and smoke from his pipe wreathes my head. I nuzzle my face into the scratchy wool. There. That's what I want. But he puts me down, tries to settle me back onto the platform. My poppa – who has always found a way to fix things, has always found room for what I need – will not be moved.
I have to go
, he says, his hands smoothing my hair back from my forehead.
You're a big girl now.
And he releases me, turns to the comrades, friends. No. The black body of the train shifts beside me. No. I concentrate. Somewhere above me, my mother is speaking, but I don't hear. In one slight movement I slip by, step up onto the train, over the frightening gap between the platform and the shifting metal body of the train, which will stir at any moment, which will move and sigh and take my father away.

I'm up over the gap, I'm in the strange air of the train. In the flurry of goodbyes, no one has noticed I'm gone. I'll find my poppa's seat. I want something of him – a last trace, a last place, a scent – before the train takes him. I slip along the aisles and spot his name on a paper tag. The car is empty; no one sees as I fit myself beneath his seat, between the two rows of back-to-back benches. It feels good. On the platform they've noticed that I've gone. I hear voices calling me. It doesn't matter. My heart is bumping inside me. It doesn't matter; I won't give up.
Make a wish.
All my body wants to keep my father home, and I will. It's with my body that I'll keep the train from leaving, from taking him away. The voices go by. I'm crouched against the rough fabric at the back of the bench. If they don't find me, the train won't go. My breath is scratchy in my chest, but it doesn't matter. My knees are dirty now from the floor of the train car. I think about dirt and bugs, brush my red plaid pleated skirt. Run my fingers, twisted, up and down, up and down the edges of my red suspenders, my heart getting quieter. There are more voices, but I'm concentrating; I concentrate, shrink into myself so that even I can't find me. Now it's my thumb that runs itself up and down the stiff elastic edge of the suspenders. The shuddering stops. The smoke from the stack diminishes, dies.

Chapter One

Speak when illuminated.
Good advice, even if it does come from a sign above a speaker on an elevator. I was taking it from the one level of the subway to the next, bent on some little chore. I doubt much of my mind was illuminated. I don't like the subway particularly; I walk whenever I can, but one knee was a bit stiff. When the doors opened to the platform, I saw that every surface – floor, stairs, columns, even the trash bins – was covered with words. At that moment, I went dark. I can't say I knew where I was, who I was. I didn't know why I had come into this forest of words and I couldn't understand any of them, couldn't understand the letters they were written in, as if it were some foreign alphabet. A stranger put his hand under my elbow – I must have looked as startled as I felt – and asked me if I was all right. With that touch at my coat sleeve, I understood. They were ads. The station had been papered in words that were intended to make us feel how empty we were so that we would want something. Is this the surface we've become, defaced, an illegible scrawl over everything? That solicitous stranger asking me if I was all right – I don't know.

I got myself home. Got past the beige cardboard packing cases that seem to be taking over my life bit by bit these days, snapped on the television. I do that a lot – leave the set on for company with the volume on mute. Let the images stutter by peripherally as I make dinner or tidy up. Usually I don't pay any mind to it, but this stopped me: their faces, again. As if they were in the very middle of inventing the world, standing on the edge of Eden. Such earnestness as they waved their resolute placards and chanted their chants, sang their songs.
No Blood for Oil.
Children, I thought. You are children. You believe in the world and you don't know what's waiting for you. You don't know what gate will swing shut on you, standing there hoping for Eden. I wasn't sure if I was cursing or blessing them.

So what could I do then but turn up the volume and sit on my bed and listen? Those bright faces, hope cupped in each one, they were ready to give up everything they didn't know they had – just as we had been when we were that ignorant, had that much hope. I say “we” when I shouldn't. I don't think I ever did hope that purely; maybe for myself, but not for the world. I was always standing at the edge of that heaven on earth holding myself back from it. I doubt I ever believed the way Vladimir did, or my parents.