The Communist's Daughter Page 6

  “Maybe I’m just worn down,” she said.

  “I think that’s it.”

  “I’m dizzy a lot. Spells.”

  “Headaches?”

  “No,” she said.

  I checked her. I knelt down before her and looked into her eyes. They were not so different from those I looked into a hundred times a day.

  “Exhaustion,” I said. “Stress. Tell me if it gets worse.”

  *

  That night we were awakened in the dark by the sound of a single rifle shot, not very far off. Perhaps a block up the street. We lay together, silently, listening, waiting for the night’s emptiness to return. I wasn’t able to sleep after that and I just kept waiting, but there was no second shot. I rose from the bed and sat in the dark beside the half-finished portrait near the window. I rolled a pinch of tobacco into the small yellow paper and smoked and looked down at the street below, waiting for someone to pass. She didn’t speak but watched me watch the empty street. I wondered what had made her say that, about her not remembering why she’d come. She couldn’t mean it. You know why you’re here, I thought, but I didn’t say that.

  Instead I began to talk about my life.

  Your mother said nothing, asked nothing. She lay staring up at the ceiling. When I stopped talking I sat and listened to her breathing and studied her eyes and the lonely silhouette of her body curled under the blanket. It was cold in the room. I didn’t need her to explain.

  I slipped back into the bed and felt her hands. The morning brought its first pale shadows to the window and the room began to expand and take shape, and the magic of the world was swallowed up by the light of morning.

  What was it that I felt with your mother in our small room at the Hotel Santander? What did I begin to feel? Again and again wed awaken together deep in the night. It was as if we had become other people and re-entered the world at a different angle, a perfect tilt that helped correct for the terrors we both knew. We became, each for the first time in our lives, ourselves. One night, after weeks of this, your mother surprised me.

  She said, “Sometimes I am afraid to sleep.”

  “I’m afraid of more than that,” I said.

  “Death?” she said.

  “I am not afraid of dying. That will be easier than the part that comes before it.”

  She watched me. “I said ‘death’ not ‘dying.’”

  “No,” I said.

  The blanket moved slightly. Cigarette smoke rose silently in the dark. I sat without moving.

  “I am afraid that I’m more than I can be. More than I’m able to be. Alone with you I am no longer the man I’m supposed to be.”

  “You’re much more than that.”

  “No, I’m like a little boy, an insecure snot-nosed brat. I’m scared senseless.”

  “A little boy who will grow up to be a great man.

  “He doesn’t know that yet. The boy is still afraid of his father’s thrashings. Displeasing those around him. Of failing. And it’s only you who reminds him of this. You remind him that he must make himself new every morning.”

  She sat upright and placed her bare feet on the floor. She reached over and took the lit cigarette from my fingers. She looked at it, then inhaled. She leaned forward, I thought to kiss me, but instead she brought the cigarette close to my skin. She held it there, embracing me. I felt the ember hovering above my neck.

  “Are you afraid now?”

  “No.”

  “This is real,” she whispered. “Are you afraid now?”

  “No.”

  She sat back on the bed. “Of course not.” She raised the ember to her own neck. “But you are afraid for others. See? You flinched. Is it as a doctor that you’re afraid for me? Or as a man?”

  “It’s the same thing,” I said.

  “Just like the boy and the man are one and the same.” She nodded. “This is who you are. That’s what I know about you.”

  *

  High summer. The fighting in these hills continues. Our lack of supplies is perhaps our greatest gift to the Japanese. That and the shortage of properly trained medical staff. I have begun producing surgical drawings here in my free time. (What free time is that? I should ask myself.) “Surgical Fixation of Complex Femur Fractures” is my latest. We’re getting a lot of these, you see. One drawing is worth ten demonstrations, and in a place like this, where language is a complicating barrier, it’s a shame I didn’t begin using these drawings much sooner. Presently I shall start in on “Surgical Fixation of Bilateral Lower Leg Fractures.” I have found it difficult to avoid smudging the drawings and must take greater care. It helps to draw with a cloth between the forearm and paper. We shall see how that goes.

  *

  I have mentioned the fact that we saw a fair number of journalists at the clinic. Well, the filmmakers Kline and Karpathi were among them, though they weren’t exactly journalists but, I suppose, propagandists. They proposed making a documentary about the clinic that could be used to raise money. One afternoon I made time for them. They told me they wanted to employ a strategy of contrasts, that they wanted something beautiful and uplifting, something that would bring the message home to people who knew little or nothing about the struggle over there. They needed my help, they said, because I was representative of the sort of international solidarity that was required. Once it was done, someone would take the film around North America, raising awareness and donations. They wanted a roller coaster of emotions, they said. A beautiful landscape. An orphaned child sifting through rubble. Some shocking contrast. A collage of images that would mould a political aesthetic and present an undeniable truth regarding the oppressors, Good and Evil, Us and Them. Nothing chronological, nothing like a “News of the World” trailer at the front end of a Clark Gable picture. They thought that beginning with an image of a painting by the great Goya might position the film correctly, allowing one fine moment of beauty and horror to stand for all that is noble and depraved in man.

  That was what they talked to me about that afternoon: the struggle for man’s dignity in the face of death. And then the reversal: a painting flipped on its side as it was walked out of the Prado, then a victim carried on a stretcher from a bombed building. It didn’t take much to convince me. Karpathi followed us around Madrid and up into the hills for more than three weeks. Synchronous sound shooting proved too difficult, but the music and commentary could be added later.

  *

  One morning your mother sat leafing through a month-old issue of LIFE magazine. She looked over her shoulder at where I was straightening my jacket in the mirror, preparing to leave. “Will you take me with you?” she said.

  This was a week or so after the bombing raid on Cuatro Caminos. I looked at her reflection. “To sit in a car all day long?”

  I’d told her the night before that Sorensen and I would be driving out that day to the Guadalajara front to take a look at some roads and bridges and deliver ten pint bottles of preserved blood.

  She said, “I am suffocating in this city.”

  “It’s not such a good idea. It’s dangerous.”

  She turned back to her magazine. I thought that was the end of it.

  “What about your work?”

  “It will not miss me today,” she said.

  I crossed to the window, raised the blind and watched the street below. She seemed uninterested now. This part of the city had largely escaped the bombing runs of the past months. The Italian fliers had concentrated their efforts on the working-class neighbourhoods. Here, near the heart of the banking centre, they’d been more careful, though bombs still flew out of the sky with frightening randomness. You couldn’t walk far in any direction without coming across towering heaps of rubble, but along San Jerónimo Street the buildings stood untouched. A bright winter sun shone down over the canyon of dirty white and beige buildings. Th
e street below was busy.

  Under an hour later, near ten o’clock, we collected Sorensen and Calebras at the clinic. They each gave me a puzzled look when they saw Kajsa. Though Sorensen said nothing, I knew he was annoyed. In France that November I had put my foot down regarding Moran Scott, a friend of Hazen Sise, our driver and utility man, who’d wanted to cross the border back into Spain with us. This lady friend of his had wanted to come along. I’d let Sise and Scott know that we were not a taxi service, fact one. And fact two: I was not willing to assume the responsibility of delivering a civilian through hostile territory. In any case, his reservations about Kajsa’s presence were of no concern to me.

  Dr. Calebras was another matter. As we prepared to leave, he’d been looking over his shoulder, waiting for Kajsa to step away. “Doctor,” he said, finally.

  Sorensen came over to translate. “He thinks you’re taking liberties not entitled to you. He thinks the woman should stay. She doesn’t belong on such a trip. He says she’s a liability.”

  “Tell him I have taken his protest under consideration. Tell him we leave in five minutes. With or without him.”

  Neither he nor Sorensen spoke as we loaded the vehicle with supplies: a lunch of bread, cheese and omelettes prepared for us by our cook, Maria, a lady from the neighbourhood; the Leica IIIa, given to the unit by the Syndicate of Spanish Photographers; three tin boxes of medical supplies; and the pint bottles of blood, packed in a wire basket and ice. Finally, nearing eleven o’clock, we set out. Alcalá de Henares is just forty miles east of Madrid and we arrived in under an hour, then recorded the state of the roads and bridges leading into town.

  Kajsa and I waited near the car while Sorensen walked upriver to get a photograph of the eastern side of the bridge. Calebras sat in the back seat, beside the packed blood. It was a cold day, bright, with few clouds in the sharp sky. The river was shallow at this point, only a foot or two at its deepest, but the bank was so broad and muddy that it would prove next to impossible to cross in our vehicle if the bridge were to suffer damage. We watched him walk upstream along the bank. I turned to my notebook and jotted down the travel time from Madrid. This information would prove critical for future operations along the front line. I hollered over to Sorensen that he should get the bridge from the west, as well. He walked downriver and another twenty-five yards beyond the bridge, took the shot, then started back, found a path and came up onto the road.

  “We don’t need this, Beth,” he said. “I think you should talk to Calebras.”

  I smiled, then rapped the hood with my knuckles. “Leave it alone. Get in.”

  We drove through Alcalá de Henares, stopping to assess the condition of the bridge leading out to the Guadalajara road. On the open road we made good time, averaging sixty miles per hour. Calebras sat in the back silently watching the view, bouncing with the packed blood. The road was still in excellent shape. It was paved, very unlike the irregular Burgos road, but there were plenty of bumps he could feel back there. Kajsa looked splendid sitting between me and Sorensen. Sorensen was a very serious man at the wheel and didn’t once take his eyes off the road. The Leica sat on the dash. The flat landscape rolled by. Some stone outbuildings, not much more than shacks, could be seen now and again, but very little else on these lovely, unbroken plains. A Spanish farmer did not live on or own the land he farmed but arrived to it as a factory worker might. He worked it but received no profit from it, only subsistence, and in effect was an indentured slave. You could drive for hours through groves of olive or corn or wheat fields and see not a single farmhouse, only stone fences or outbuildings where someone kept his tools. This was a system as old as time.

  Fifty miles north, the Guadarrama range was capped by late-winter snows. Soon we came upon a slow-moving convoy of gasoline trucks, supply wagons and carts pulled by automobiles and donkeys. Sorensen was forced to drive on the shoulder of the road. Shortly after that we saw a long line of transport trucks loaded with Republican soldiers, their bayonets fixed, staring off to those same, unchanging mountains. A significant mobilization seemed to be in progress. I counted fifteen personnel transports, and each one cheered us as we sped past. Blow the horn, I told Sorensen, let them know we’re here. As we passed we heard various languages as the International Brigades called to us. Their shouts grew more enthusiastic when Kajsa leaned over my lap and out the window. I held her by the belt. When we heard German, and saw these men’s helmets, I knew they were the shock troops of the Thaelmann Battalion, Socialists, Communists and anarchists who’d escaped their own country to fight against Fascism here in Spain. The men waved and thrust their weapons in the air and hollered and blew kisses at Kajsa.

  “How wonderful!” she cried, tucking her head back in the compartment, the rapturous curl in her bangs leaping in the wind. “Oh, those boys are marvellous, aren’t they? Each and every one of them. It’s impossible to lose. Say it, Calebras, your country can’t lose when all the world is here! Germans, Poles, Yugoslavs!”

  “Even a Swede!” I said.

  He nodded and smiled thinly at her with an evident disgust that I couldn’t understand. Minutes later there appeared a large cloud of dust on the horizon. This was the reason for the troops’ enthusiasm and confidence. As we approached from behind we saw the column, still unsure as to what it was we were witnessing, and the first of a long line of tanks came into view. We felt the ground rumbling beneath our car and the air filled with the roar and smell of diesel engines. They were Soviet T-26s. That is a very impressive machine to see right before your eyes, I can tell you, and a very terrible one, too. We sped past, honking. Kajsa took up the Leica from the dashboard, leaned out the window, waving, and then started snapping. She cheered and hollered into the din and we drove on, knowing nothing of how this moment had changed our lives forever.

  *

  Today I performed a double amputation. A land mine took this boy’s legs out from under him. He may have been twenty years old. Unfortunately not such a rare occurrence in these parts. But today I considered what an obscenely apt metaphor a minefield is, and by that I mean its ability to surge up from the unknown to grab hold and twist. Isn’t this so much the case of our past, our hidden lives? Well, not always hidden, sometimes simply discarded or forgotten. This poor boy, his legs blown apart, and me above him looking over my white mask to see an inkling of the hidden banalities in my own life. Perhaps I’m just too tired. Surely he needed no such lessons in the metaphysics of life. An honest man has no discarded memories, none worth dredging up. Metaphors are gratuitous out here, of that I’m sure. I was ashamed. I took from him what was left of his legs, turned away and began with the next boy. There were six more, just like him, waiting.

  *

  This has got me to thinking of a number of failures in my life. By which I mean my own failures that have affected people I’ve known.

  The need to make good use of myself in the world first came under fire when I was eighteen years old. That may still be young enough to appeal to the inexperience of youth as some sort of defence for my actions, but I know that’s no excuse and will therefore show you due respect and not use it here.

  It was the winter I was taken on as a schoolteacher in northern Ontario, and through this posting I met someone I will do my best to tell you about. Through him you will see why I might fairly characterize this entire episode as a failure, one that started small, in that schoolhouse north of Toronto, and ended in tragedy on a dark battlefield in Belgium. You will see why it keeps coming back to me, and why it’s something I need to tell you. It is something a man does not forget.

  This happened in the small town of Edgely, during the bitter January of 1908 or 1909. The youthful minds I found waiting for me there seemed as harsh and ignorant as that cruel weather. From the very beginning I was thwarted, vexed, deceived, chuckled at, abused, ignored, tried, hounded, belittled and tested. Until one morning I awoke from my slumber. I remember the day with
particular clarity. I’d just begun a class on prime numbers when I was greeted with a series of spitballs. I turned quickly. A buckle of laughter rose from the back row. These were restless children, I knew, but here a line had been crossed. I felt the laughter spread forward until the whole room—that is to say the entire schoolhouse—was wetting itself with laughter (pardon the expression). I stood stricken, dumbfounded and burning with anger. When I asked who was responsible there was, of course, no response. I asked a second time. The laughter retreated like an ocean tide to the back rows and there it stalled. “Hands on desks now,” I ordered, then slowly walked down the aisle examining each boy, his hands and funereal smirk. As I approached the back of the class, where the laughter had both started and ended, a foot caught me. Up and over I went, tumbling to the boards. Another howl of laughter rained down over me. Cursing now, I rose to my feet and with great eagerness pulled up the guilty boy, or who I thought was the most likely culprit, by the collar. I very nearly lifted him out of his shoes as I held him against the back wall of the classroom. His eyes suggested that I had gained his undivided attention. Three times his head hit the wall and three times his yellowy eyes rolled over like broken egg yolks. I would surely have continued, for my anger felt quite intoxicating, but something came over me—common sense, most likely.