Kanata (45 page)

He read Ezekiel 31 at breakfast, the cutting down of the lofty cedar that tried to rise so high above all the others. Perhaps this was mankind. The bomb would lay waste to all life, a modern version of the Flood … “for they are all given over to death, to the nether world among mortal men, with those who go down to the Pit.”

King wondered if War Secretary Stimson was being seduced by the imperial notion of a Pax Atomica. Of course the U.S. would need to control the world's supply of fissionable material. The Russians wanted Libya and Tripolitania because it would give them access to the uranium deposits in the Belgian Congo. Canada was supplying the U.S. with uranium from the Eldorado Mines at Great Bear Lake. The U.S. government had first ordered 8 tons of uranium for the Manhattan Project. The next order was for 60 tons. Then 350 tons, and now 500 tons.

The alliance between Canada and America still troubled King. The Americans had built the Alaska Highway, a project that Canada couldn't have managed on its own. Still, they had access through the Canadian north and some claim to it now. The relationship was always going to be a question of balancing friendship and imperialism. At any rate, the complicity between the two countries was cemented with this atomic project, whatever it led to.

The uranium was refined in Canada, then shipped to New Mexico, where the scientists were working around the clock to build the bomb. King had heard that Eldorado was falling behind in its orders. The project had already cost two billion dollars and caused some awkward political contortions. Just look at Oppenheimer. If he wasn't a Communist he was the
next best thing. But he was a genius, and one always forgives genius in wartime.

Oppenheimer said that no demonstration would be sufficiently spectacular to guarantee the primitive awe the weapon deserved; for that they would need a city. Yet General Eisenhower was lobbying hard not to use it. An irony: the communist scientist in favour of the bomb, the Republican general against it. Eisenhower was against dropping the bomb for two reasons: It was unnecessary, the Japanese were going to surrender anyway; and it would make a terrible mark in history, a black smudge beside America's name. Perhaps he was right, or perhaps as a general he disliked the idea that all he had dedicated his life to was suddenly null. Five thousand years of discipline and sacrifice, armies clashing with their steel, that bloody tradition that became noble in the retelling. The military become superfluous in one nineteen-kiloton flash; war now the domain of science and politics.

Oppenheimer had been seduced by its awful promise, the pure and instant physics: a fiery centre that produced a ring of black smoke, the fireball extinguished in a flash and the smoke rising up—24,000 feet in four seconds—a miraculous growth that grew to 36,000 feet in another few seconds, a plume of white, black, yellow, and red that punched through the clouds with the greatest force the world had seen.

The bomb was to deter the Russians as much as finish the Japanese, King mused. Already they had to look to the next war.

4

N
UREMBERG,
1946

Mackenzie King sat in the gallery that looked down on the dock. Ribbentrop and Goering were the last to come in and they sat beside one another. To think these men had brought such destruction upon themselves, their country, and the world. King felt something for them; they had come under the spell of the devil, who wasn't here to answer for his evil. The German lawyer was plodding to the point of stupidity. Perhaps this was part of the plan: to arrange for them to be defended by a simpleton reading endless affidavits.

Goering seemed half his former size, diminished in every way. Ribbentrop was taking notes, weary looking, an old man suddenly, a shadow. He was planning to write his memoirs, King had heard, and there would be several
volumes, everything done on the monumental Nazi scale. Surely he knew he would be executed. Did these men know of the burning flesh in the ovens, children clawing at the doors? Who can see inside their souls? Apparently a psychiatrist was trying to do just that. King doubted he would have much luck. He had met these men in the guise of gentlemen (von Neurath was educated at Oxford) and they had presided over hell on earth. Such was the devil's power of disguise. Hitler was a false god, Germany itself a false idol, and now the Germans were like Job, destined to live “in desolate cities, in houses which no man should inhabit, which were destined to become heaps of ruins … he will not escape from darkness, his emptiness will be his recompense.”

The tour of the prisons had been dismal. That nauseating odour. And there was Hess in his cell, eyes burning like coal, possibly mad. King had spoken with him several years ago, but it was impossible to tell if he remembered him. He stared like a zoo animal, like those bison that had been sent to Berlin. The exhibits were ghastly beyond belief; using human skin to make shoes. If there was anything to be gained from all this, King thought, it was that there would be a newfound embrace of divinity in the world. What was in doubt will become accepted belief. The scriptures will become literal truth, the world will evolve to a higher plane, and there will be a Second Coming. King had been told of a medium that did materialization, which seemed somehow dreadful: to behold your dead mother (in the dress she was buried in? In a gossamer gown?). But it was said to be beautiful; it must be where the conception of angels came from.

It was a moral universe; if you let Christ out of your life, Satan rushed in. This was clear.

In King's vision that morning, a Mother Superior stood beside him. He was holding a roll of paper under his arm. Perhaps new commandments—King picked to be Moses, a manifesto to keep mankind from destroying itself in the twentieth century.

Goering looked up from the dock and met his gaze briefly, and King was relieved when he turned away.

G
oering sat in his cell toying with the copper cartridge, which gleamed dully in the prison light. He had enjoyed sparring with the prosecutors. Ribbentrop hadn't had the will to respond to them with any vigour. He hadn't the will for much. As foreign minister he had been weak and indecisive, and in the witness box he gave the impression that he would fall apart at any minute. Goering recalled his first meeting in Dortmund when he declared that in the future he would be the only man in Prussia to bear responsibility, that every bullet fired from a police pistol was his bullet, and if that was murder, then it was his murder. A convenient moral loophole, and so many ran to embrace it. This, he mused, was the beginning of empire.

Hitler was gone, dead in the bunker. The people loved him, no one would doubt that. They fought with loyalty, selfsacrifice, and courage even though they didn't want war. The
Volk
never want war, this is understood. They hunger for leadership and complain when they have it.

Blood will tell.

Had it been Himmler who dreamed up the medical experiments? Such a tedious mind. A buffoon whose suicide was welcomed by all. Yet another shirking of his responsibility. And Ley too, hanging himself in his cell. So he wouldn't be
hanged by England! Ley had tied the curtain to the toilet handle and then around his neck and stuffed his own stockings in his mouth to die choking over the toilet. He couldn't have contrived a more ignominious end. Another weakminded fool in the dock, facing the smugness of the English. Ley was no doubt dying for a drink. Perhaps he died for a drink. A squalid drunk (and possibly a Jew—his last name, Goering had heard, was actually Lev). And who are the English? They should be German, their kings are German. Isolated on that soggy island, they lost their German soul, a race of pale shopkeepers counting change for the world. Where is their empire? Its remnants in that damp food turned to shit and used to fertilize the precious gardens.

If the Nazis committed atrocities (and of this, he had no knowledge, and what did it matter if he did—Hitler was his conscience), the Communists were inhuman, following a barbaric ideology. The delusion that all men are equal. What Russian peasant living in his thirteenth-century filth was his equal? Barbaric Asiatics communing with goats. Their kings, too, were German, or at least educated here.
Communism is a disease, not an ideology,
he thought,
and I am proud, yes, this is true, proud that I created the first concentration camps—they were for the Communists. Let them be equal there!

Of course you needed a sensible wife for this work. Hitler lacked one, perhaps a critical failing. There were two Hitlers. The Hitler of the French campaign was charming and genial. The Hitler of the Russian campaign was suspicious, tense, and violent. Perhaps he possessed the madness he was accused of. Who can be sure? When there is nothing left to connect us to this world, what are we?

There was a darkness at the edge of Goering's dreams, if they were dreams. He was afraid to sleep. Who can sleep
when they will be hanged at dawn? Those last hours so precious. There had been no thoughts of justice. Justice is a luxury during revolution, everyone knows this. Whenever things go badly, we have democracy.

Something moved at the edge of his consciousness, some shape, large and undefined. It lumbered, then disappeared.

Hitler was sent by God to save Germany, of that there was no doubt. How shall I give expression, O my Führer, to what is in our hearts? How shall I find words to express your deeds? Has there ever been a mortal as beloved as you, my Führer? Was there ever belief as strong as the belief in your mission!

In the camps for Russian prisoners he had heard they had begun to eat each other.

How had the story gone? His father had told it to him as a child. The man with twelve children has another that he cannot care for. Unlucky thirteen. In desperation, he goes into the woods (the place of refuge and fear for the German consciousness, and for this they must thank the clever Grimms) and there he meets God, who says He will take care of the baby. But the man refuses. “You give to the rich and starve the poor,” the man says. “I don't want you as a godfather.” He continues walking and comes upon Death, who says, “Give him to me. I will raise him. I will teach him. I will protect him. Who is better able to protect him than me?”

What else was in the woods? An ogre, or perhaps that was another story. The boy is given to Death, and Death is true to his word—he protects him. And the boy grows up and becomes a doctor, and Death says to him, “If you see me standing at the head of the patient, then you may cure him. But if I am standing at his feet, then he is finished and I must claim him.” The boy finds a beautiful woman who is gravely
ill, and he sees Death standing at her feet. She is finished! And who can bear the death of the beautiful? Certainly not literature. But the doctor turns her around so her head is before Death. He is fooled and she is cured! This was always his favourite part of the story. To outwit Death! But Death learns of the deception and grows angry and leads his godson to a cavern, a dark cave filled with tiny points of light. And he leaves him there, and each light is a human life and each light quietly disappears. And of course this story is true.

Goering separated the copper cartridge carefully and held it up. The sun was breaking over the scaffold. Ribbentrop had gone bravely, a surprise. His last words had been, “I wish peace to the world.” It was impossible to know if he was being ironic, this minor aristocrat. Ribbentrop had the moral consistency of spoiled fruit. Himmler had taken the coward's road, and Ley, even the Führer. But Ribbentrop marched to the gallows without pause or tears (they should have hanged his wife) and left those words, whatever they meant.

Goering swallowed the fine grains that were contained in the cartridge, welcoming the faint bitter taste of almonds, welcoming the consuming heat (was this purgatory already?), welcoming even the nausea and searing pain in his head as his nervous system fought for the oxygen that was no longer there. He convulsed horribly, like a marionette whose strings were being pulled by a madman. O Pinocchio.

5

M
ICHAEL
M
OUNTAIN
H
ORSE,
A
LBERTA,
1948