Free The Communist's Daughter by Dennis Bock Page 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