Kanata (40 page)

In his last radio broadcast, he had said that Spain was the opening battle of the world revolution. This was still true, but the revolution would have more than two sides. Why had he come to Spain? To enlist in a cause, to celebrate himself, because he was in love with death. And now he was leaving, another messy divorce.

Before anaesthesia, doctors only did triage. They tried to stem the flow of blood. But with anaesthesia came the leisure of time and doctors became artists. And with artistry came artistic temperaments.
I am an artist
, Bethune thought,
and the role of the artist is to disturb.

2

M
ICHAEL
M
OUNTAIN
H
ORSE,
S
PAIN

The volunteers crossed into the Pyrenees at Perpignan, walking at night in rope-soled canvas shoes on the steep paths. There was no moon, and they held hands like a group of schoolchildren. Michael hadn't been surprised to see Dusty among the volunteers; he recognized a number of men from the On to Ottawa trek, men like himself who were simply drifting, and ended up, finally, in Spain. Some shared Bethune's idealism; others followed the desperate herd. In Canada they would be living in shanties in northern Ontario laying track or following the harvest, or simply starving. It happened. Men without families who expired in alleyways or on roadsides.

“You think it's true what they say?” Dusty asked.

“What do they say?”

“Those fascists see us coming, they'll turn tail.” Michael looked at the weary, hatchet-faced men, arranged in a line, snaking through the Spanish mountains. All of them were over thirty, quite a few over forty.

“I wouldn't count on it.”

“We put the scare into them Regina cops. We got Bennett voted out of office. I'll tell you one thing, those Spanish women, they got a treat coming.”

Michael marvelled at Dusty's ability to see himself as victorious, a necessary gift, perhaps, the natural defence of the underclass. Without it he'd collapse under the weight of his bad luck. Maybe Michael wasn't so different, lured to Spain by the words of a doctor he'd never met and the chance to outrun the Depression.

“I figure I'll stay on after we win,” Dusty said. “Be some Spanish woman's good news. I'll be honest, there ain't much back home. Not just the land that dried up.”

“You going to learn Spanish, Dusty?”

“If it comes to that. Worse things in this life than having a wife who can't talk to you.”

They walked for three nights, then a truck took them to Figueras. From there they went to Barcelona and finally Albacete, the marshalling point for the International Brigades volunteers. While Michael was being processed, veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion returned to the camp: emaciated men with bloodshot eyes. They sat wordlessly among the recruits. Dinner was served and all of them ate chickpeas in olive oil with small sardines and drank a sour wine. When it was dark, a faded reel of Charlie Chaplin's
The Immigrant
was projected onto the
white wall of a funeral parlour and the men watched in silence. The Little Tramp hopped comically in a listing boat and wrestled with a fish. The image was faint, and there were holes in the film that showed up as tiny explosions of light.

B
elchite was a disaster. The Spanish 32nd Brigade had been the advance, but they were depleted after fighting the Moors at Codo. Michael was with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and they hiked through the night, seventeen miles in thick heat. In the dust were thousands of leaflets. Michael picked one up and saw a picture of Franco posed beside Jesus Christ, his unwitting ally.

Belchite was well fortified and the Republicans had only one piece of heavy artillery, operated by a confused volunteer who killed seven of their own men when he incorrectly gauged the range. Their first objective was the church of San Agustín. They tried to cross the exposed plain but were cut down by machine-gun fire. Within an hour, every Lincoln officer had been shot. The survivors scrambled for cover. Michael lay beside a corpse, wedged tightly. His antique Steyr had jammed after the first shot. He recovered a rifle from a fallen Lincoln, a Ross, useless twenty years ago and no better now. They had Remingtons, Mexican Mausers, all manner of outdated rifles coming from a hundred different sources.

Michael crawled along a shallow ditch that smelled of industrial effluent to an abandoned factory. The heavy planks of the floor were stained and the factory smelled pleasantly of olive oil; the wood was imbued with it, the heat drawing it out. Michael was exhausted and slept for a few
hours sitting up, his unreliable gun on his lap. He awoke to see an angled pattern of light on the wall, the afternoon sun coming through the high windows. The heavy scent of oil reminded him of how little he had eaten in two days; his last meal a cup of stew made from cat meat. He drank the last of his water, which was warm and brackish.

To the south two tanks lumbered across the plain, their dust funnelling upward in the wind. Out the east window he could see the church of San Agustín, the fascist centre of operations, its sturdy pink brick pitted with bullet holes. The streets were deserted. He sat down and leaned against the wall and drifted off again, overcome with weariness and hunger. A few minutes later he woke to the vibration of tanks. He looked out the window at the empty plaza. The long snout of the gun suddenly appeared, and the tank emerged onto the plaza, heading for the church. A few children came out and threw stones at it, a Soviet T-26, an alien brute bringing death to their doorstep. It turned abruptly and ploughed through the arched doorway that was too narrow for its bulk. It tore brick from the sides and moved heavily into the church. Michael heard machine-gun fire, and he sprinted across the plaza to the doorway, following the tank's deafening progress.

Inside, the light was dim. The arches held stone cherubs and intricately carved saints. Jesus was stranded on the cross, his beige plaster skin streaked with blood. There was a machine gun set up at the altar and the fascists fired at the tank, tearing up the wooden pews, small puffs of dust as the bullets hit stone. The tank let off a round that blew a hole in the wall, letting in a thick shaft of light. Michael scrambled up the stairs to the organ loft at the rear of the church and crawled along the aisle. The tank fired another round, this
one hitting the altar and taking out their gun. The tank moved awkwardly, turning and hitting the stone pillars. Plaster dust was caught in the shafts of light and looked like fine snow descending. The pews splintered beneath the metal tracks and Bibles were ground to pulp. Michael moved to the front of the church where the remains of the machine-gun crew were splayed. The tank was still swivelling, a blind bull, unsure where to charge. There was a heavy smell of diesel and the sound of steel treads grinding on the stone floor.

In the rooms behind the altar, Michael saw evidence of the rebel effort: maps, a few weapons. He picked up a German pistol and some ammunition and put it in his belt. Against the wall, a painting of the Virgin Mary moved as if in a breeze, wafting sensuously. Michael walked over and pulled the painting aside to find a tunnel. He had heard that the town was filled with them, and the rebels would be escaping through this one now. He didn't follow the tunnel, fearing they might blow it up after they fled through it. The thought of being trapped underground was a horror he couldn't contemplate.

The tank lurched toward the opening it had made. More brick spilled, tumbling in small avalanches, pink dust hanging in the air. Michael followed the tank out into the plaza, then turned down a narrow street, walking past the shuttered windows. One of the houses had a hole in it and he could see the remnants of normal life inside, a wooden table, a chair. In the doorway was a starving burro tethered by a rope.

He was exhausted and went into the house and sat on the wooden chair. He felt hollow, and drifted in and out of consciousness. He woke to music followed by machine-gun
fire. Then more music—was he dreaming this? He heard a few snatches of a speech in Spanish delivered over a loudspeaker, then furious grenade explosions. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes and the explosions became louder. A last fascist offensive, perhaps. Michael crept out to the street. A fascist officer suddenly appeared at the corner and threw a grenade. It exploded near the burro and blew a hind leg off that was as brittle as a stick. A piece of shrapnel ripped into Michael's shoulder and he slumped onto the stone and lay there. When he finally got up he felt his head and looked at the blood on his hand. He found a sheet to use as a cursory bandage and a sling. The street was deserted. The remains of the burro were covered in flies. Michael inched along the wall with his gun out. The fascist grenade thrower was lying in the dust, headless, two birds pecking at the spray of blood.

A
temporary hospital had been set up in Belchite in what had been someone's home. After the shrapnel had been taken out by a nurse and the wound cleaned and cauterized, Michael lay in a sweat and thought about lying in Jumping Pound Creek and letting the cold water run over his body. The floor above was a chemist's shop and he walked up the stairs to have his shoulder looked at by a doctor. In the main room a fluoroscope was set up to X-ray the wounded. A group of children sat on the floor staring at it. A man was led in by the doctor and told to take off his shirt. It was Dusty, looking older and thinner than he had in the Pyrenees. He saw Michael and said, “They say maybe I got the pleurisy.” He walked behind the machine and his skeleton suddenly appeared, the bones bluish and grey,
wavering slightly. His head and legs were normal but half of him looked dead, decayed. Suddenly there was less of him. The children sat open-mouthed at this alchemy and one of the girls laughed and quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

3

N
ORMAN
B
ETHUNE,
M
ONTREAL,
1936

“Political democracies are a shell and a sham,” Bethune told his audience. He had surprised himself at how effective a public speaker he was, a bit clumsy at times, but passionate. Mackenzie King had passed a bill banning Canadians from enlisting in foreign wars, a denunciation not just of the Canadian men who were dying in Spain but of democracy itself. A Canadian battalion being formed in Spain bore the name of King's grandfather—the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion—and yet this timid offspring shunned them. History was clogged with irony.

It had been Bethune himself who had helped inspire the Mac-Paps, and his tireless lobbying (some of it self-serving)
for the Republican cause helped draw thirteen hundred Canadian volunteers to Spain. This civil war would divide the world, he argued, but it would help unite Canada by providing it with an international focus. Bethune was the face of all that. A surprise, if a slightly calculated one.

He continued the propaganda effort he had begun in Spain, writing articles and letters, cultivating reporters, showing his film, doing radio broadcasts. He was more huckster than doctor, and there was a danger of becoming the cause. The cause itself was splintering into warring sects, and perhaps Bethune was splintering as well.

Nine thousand people sat in the Mount Royal Arena listening to him, waiting for his words. “What's the matter with England, France, the United States, Canada?” Bethune thundered. “Are they afraid that by supplying arms to the Loyalist forces they'll start a world war? Why, the world war has already
started
. It's democracy against fascism.”

The Allied powers had signed a neutrality agreement that kept them out of the conflict, while Germany and Italy were waging open war on the Spanish people, cementing their strategic interests. Mussolini wanted to make the Mediterranean an Italian lake. If Germany could install a fascist government in Spain, then they would look to France, and all of Europe would fall.

“Fascism has begun to rear its head in Canada,” Bethune said. “No one can stand on the sidelines. No one can afford to be complacent.”