Kanata (41 page)

He had toured the country, selling the Republican cause, raising $1,000 in the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, $1,800 in Winnipeg. The Depression could be felt at some of these events; in Sudbury, seven hundred people gave a total of $22.40. Sometimes he gave four speeches a day. As for his
own plans, Spain worked better as an ideal: He wouldn't go back. His recall to Canada was tinged with disgrace in certain circles, though he was still a hero in the newspapers.

He had gone to San Francisco and Los Angeles with his film and his speech. There was a fundraising dinner in the home of Robert Oppenheimer, a nervous man with a birdlike skull who flittered around the room in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Joe Dallet's widow, Kitty Harrison, was there, as were other Communists. Oppenheimer pressed them for donations. He was giving generously himself, Bethune had been told, a man of inherited wealth, the perfect Communist.

Bethune's suit was cheap and his shirt unpressed. Where was the dandy that had gone to Spain? His bourgeois self finally gone. Perhaps this was penance. A vow of poverty, though there was no need to make promises; poverty would find
him
. His hair was thinning and grey, and he was almost gaunt. Yet there was something in him the crowd wanted; and who was not seduced by the attention of a crowd? As a boy he had gotten his father's attention at dinner with subtle blasphemies. His father was an Old Testament table thumper, and when Bethune questioned the Resurrection (Maybe Jesus wasn't really dead; did you ever think of that?) his father rose and undid his belt in a single, practised motion.

“The Empire is simply blocks of gold scattered throughout the world,” Bethune told his audience. “And the coronation of George VI is just an advertising stunt for the next war. We'll be asked to go over there and fight for the Empire. And we'll fight. But we have to know what we're fighting for. Peace, that is the only thing to fight for.”

4

M
ACKENZIE
K
ING,
L
ONDON,
1937

Prime Minister Mackenzie King went to London to attend the coronation of George VI, the shy, stuttering, dutiful man who found himself King of England after Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry an American divorcee. God knew what Edward's problems were, King thought, though certainly an alarming lack of duty was one of them. In these times of utter desolation, with fascism following like the plough behind the horse, a moment in history requiring moral leadership, Edward had run off with an American. By most accounts, a useless man.

After the magnificent ceremony, King went to the British College of Psychic Science and arranged for a medium. He
had woken up with a vision of his mother sitting at a piano—the large one she had owned—and it seemed as if she was communicating through music. Was the message about Italy? Another country to keep an eye on.

The medium was a greyish, nondescript person (so many of them seemed neutral in appearance, perhaps a necessary trait for their work, their own personalities sublimated to clear the passage for those calling from beyond). She saw dark forces with King at the centre. How is it that I am in this position? he wondered. There are abler men. But there must be purpose to this. Mother and Father in their humble, good lives were filled with the Holy Spirit and my life is the result. When men are truly great they reflect the Holy Family—the saintly Mary and humble Joseph, and their son, the spirit of God upon him the source of all power. Each of us, King thought, must be a little Christ.

The seance offered little illumination. She said his father's voice was clearer than any she had ever received, that he knelt and wept before God, overjoyed that his son was now leading the nation. His mother sent her love. We bring back those who have left us, King thought, so that we might move upward.

His conversation with Laurier was short.

—Wilfrid, what do you see?

—Clouds gathering.

—Will there be refuge?

—Birds scatter before a storm. You must stand.

Stand where?
King thought reflexively. Could the dead read his thoughts? He hadn't the courage to ask. The state of man. Such a paltry vessel for God's work.

In the evening he wrote in his journal, the obsessive history that he attended to each night, a version that concealed and revealed in equal measure, like all histories.

L
ondon's greyness was soothing, a complex, comforting palette. It had been a surprise to get a call from the Germans, to be invited to lunch with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to the Court of St. James. When King arrived at the German embassy, he was shown in by a crisp young man. The embassy was marred by modernism, a stark, angled interior filled with functional geometric furniture. The modern instinct seemed to be to squeeze the life out of all it touched. There was just the three of them for lunch, Ribbentrop, his wife, and King. Ribbentrop had a thin-lipped smile and bright eyes, a man verging on handsome with an aura of weakness that his wife compensated for. She assessed King as she assessed all men, calculating the degree and nature of his vanity and how to exploit it.

Ribbentrop told King that he knew Canada. “I worked for your railway. This is a surprise to you, I am sure. I lived in Ottawa, a very stable city. I have great love for Canada's order and expanse.” In this knowledge he saw a bond. Of course, the bond was greater than he thought. King told him he had been born in Berlin, Ontario (since renamed after Lord Kitchener, another casualty of the war), that he had been raised among those of German descent, could even speak a little of the language.

“Excellent, excellent,” Ribbentrop said in that German way. “Germany has so few friends these days, Herr King. It would be to everyone's joy if you come to Berlin to visit with Hitler. If there is a world leader who can understand this misunderstood man, surely it is you.” Ribbentrop licked his thin lips and glanced at his stern wife, as if for approval. “There are only two paths, friendship or war, and if there is war, it will be the end of civilization.”

I
n his hotel King tried the “little table” as he was now calling it. He had become adept at table rapping, a way of summoning the departed without the services—or logistics—of a medium. It was a tedious exercise, as the answers had to be laboriously spelled out (one rap for A, two for B, and so on), but he had decided to avoid mediums. If news of his spiritualism were to get out, it would cause him political damage. What would the Conservatives say? That King has chosen Julius Caesar as foreign minister and Genghis Khan as minister of defence. And the papers. He could see the headlines:
KING'S NEW CABINET: ONLY THE DEAD NEED APPLY
, or some such. He was unable to raise his mother or his historic and beloved grandfather Mackenzie. He was finally able to summon Laurier, working his way slowly through his sometimes garbled replies. King would occasionally lose count (was it sixteen or seventeen raps, a P or a Q?).

—Wilfrid. War threatens once more. Are our memories so short? Who can forget the horror of the last one?

You have a sole (role) Mackenzie You qust (m?) walk cautiously weigh every vord (word) You will find yourself at the centre of mankinds darkness(est) hour Much rebinds (depends? reminds?) you.

—Wilfrid, whatever do you mean?

The lattice grows holy (??) Steak (speak) cautiously.

—I'm concerned about the German soul.

Flake well anod (?).

King asked once more but there was only silence from beyond, meaningless groupings of letters, Wilfrid off somewhere. King needed more information and surely Laurier would provide it in his own good time.

B
erlin shone. King remembered mourning the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I when he was thirteen, the streets draped in black bunting, flags at half-mast, bells tolling at the Lutheran church. He had marched from Central School to St. Peter's and sat through the service honouring a German who lay dead thousands of miles away. His father, he recalled, wept manfully, a single tear rolling onto his starched shirt. Five hundred people crying in the spartan gloom of the church.

It was a pleasant evening and King walked through Berlin. He had grown stouter, he noticed, and was easily fatigued; walking was a necessary tonic. The city was vaguely familiar, and he sought out Kaiserin Augusta Strasse, where he had stayed as a graduate student. A line of women stretched before him, evenly spaced, soberly dressed, each adopting the same air of coincidence. As he approached the first, she attempted a tight-lipped smile that failed to disguise a dark tooth.

“Would you like to attend a party, Herr Doktor?” she asked in German. He remembered a little of the language, had laboured over German texts as a graduate student, even read the odd speech in German when he returned to Berlin, Ontario, expressing his love and understanding for the Germans in his riding.

“Party,” King restated dully.

“I will be your party,” she said with that smile.

King recalled the prostitute in Toronto. Velma, she had said her name was. Her thin cotton shift had faded blue flowers on it and her shoes were painted an unsuccessful red. Had he stopped then in a spirit of Victorian concern, to help Velma out of her wretched trade? He hadn't prevented her from disrobing in her tired room on
Madison. He sat on the edge of the small bed as she lifted the dress over her head. She sat on the bed beside him and he took her hand and stared into her pocked face. “What has led you here, my child?” he asked, his body at war, an animal straining within, straining against the sociologist, his first trade. What was it they called sociology—the whore of the humanities—it will be whatever you want it to be. It was what his enemies said about King himself. Two whores. But Velma wasn't interested in sociology, and she took his hand and pressed it between her legs and King recoiled from the soft dampness as if it was fire. He moved quickly and awkwardly out of her room and down the dark staircase, holding his hand as if it had been burned. He was on Bloor Street before he realized he was still holding it.

King looked at this parade of Germans, not the parade Ribbentrop wanted to show the visiting leader surely, not the handsome lines of blond youth gleaming like the future. He didn't need to respond to this German girl. She was already looking past him down the avenue, seeking less ambivalent custom.

H
e woke early, his dream lingering (they are not
dreams
, his dear dead mother had counselled, but
visions
). This time he was standing with his mother, arguing with her as they waited for a train. Mother was pleading for him to love her, and there was an unpleasant and unfamiliar tenor to her insistence. What could this mean? The train, clearly, was his journey through life. But his mother's behaviour? Her love was unselfish and spiritual. It must mean, he mused as he dressed (noting with some alarm his ample flesh, a
melancholy thing, piled like sandbags against a flood), that she was making it clear to him—at the age of sixty-two—that carnal love was wrong, that it separated one from the divine and spiritual. His various alliances with women, whether the well-meaning matches presented by friends or his rare forays into the streets, were a mistake.

O
ver a pleasant, though overly large German breakfast, he read Joshua. At ten-thirty he met with Hermann Goering, who greeted him in a white general's uniform, the black belts crossing its spotless expanse. Goering's head was well formed, his mouth a bit wide, perhaps. He had recently banned all Roman Catholic newspapers in Germany—not an entirely bad idea, King thought.

“I must thank you for the bison,” Goering said heartily, ushering King to his seat. “This was most generous.” King's government had sent six bison for the Berlin zoo.

“Yes, they are wonderful beasts.”

“I would like sometime to go to your Rocky Mountains to shoot one,” Goering said. “You are a hunter?”

King smiled. “No. But please come at my invitation. It would be wonderful.” It occurred to King that there was, in fact, no bison hunting. There weren't many left and most of those were in protected areas. He could offer elk or bear if it came to it.

“I noticed the theatres last night while out walking, General Goering. Dozens, it seems. You have an enviably vital culture.”

“When I hear the word ‘culture,' Herr King, I reach for my Browning.” Goering smiled his improbable smile.

King was unaware that this line came, in fact, from a
German play. It was one Goering was fond of quoting, and it was usually greeted with laughter or agreement, either one an acceptable response.

Germany wanted raw materials, Goering told him. Canada was eager to trade, King thought, and its raw materials were abundant, but to what purpose would the Germans put that material in these days of rearmament? “In the last session of Parliament, Herr General,” King said carefully, “I had to ask for an increase in the military budget. It wasn't what I wanted to do. But there is fear among the Canadian people. Fear of another Great War.”