The Communist's Daughter (33 page)

Comrade Mao Tse-tung
Chairman of the Central Soviet Government

Esteemed Chairman,

While the writings contained herein represent personal histories that may be of interest to certain family members of Doctor Bethune, this committee has found that they cannot be used to serve the People in their struggle against the Japanese Imperialist invaders or the Nationalist Kuomintang Army. It must be stressed that, although the Doctor's personal efforts in the Border Regions of Shensi and Hopei provinces were exemplary and highly beneficial to the Communist cause, it is also clear that certain of his actions and beliefs can be viewed as less than exemplary of and likely harmful to the Communist ideal, as it is so clearly and inspiringly detailed in the Chairman's own political writings. It is the considered opinion of this committee, consisting of the undersigned, that Doctor Bethune's value as a symbol of the rightness of this struggle would be significantly reduced if these writings came to light. It is recommended, therefore, that these seven envelopes remain untranslated from the original and sealed for the interim and that they be reopened and considered for translation only at the conclusion of a Communist victory, at such time as Doctor Bethune's importance as an international symbol of China's Marxist-Leninist Revolution is past and the historical and personal value of this memoir becomes its primary interest.

The various belongings of Doctor Bethune also recovered—including personal articles such as toiletries, the memoir herein recorded, and clothing, thirteen books and pamphlets, one painting of a girl (perhaps the seagull-child) and numerous drawings, one Remington 5 portable typewriter, seven maps (personally annotated) and various other medical and political pamphlets and treatises—may be examined by a separate committee regarding their propagandistic and/or historical value. It is recommended that if no appropriate committee can be formed at this time all articles be kept for a later date.

In conclusion, the committee finds that only with significant editing and rewriting will the Bethune memoir be suitable for translation and printing for wide-scale distribution. It is advisable that these documents remain sealed until that time. However, given the revolutionary and international importance of Doctor Bethune's life, a brief, more idealized biography or political eulogy of the subject might prove extremely beneficial to the present war effort, and find continuity in the larger canon of the Chairman's political and philosophical writings.

With comradely salutations,

Lu Ting-yi,
Director of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Yan'an

Major Szu Ping Ti,
translator, Propaganda Department, CCP

Lieutenant Tung Yueh-ch'ien,
interpreter for Dr. Bethune, Eighth Route Army

Zhou Erfu,
Lu Hsun Academy of Literature and Arts

Jean Ewen,
surgical nurse, Fung Yiu King Hospital, Hong Kong

While the central character
in this novel is based on the Canadian doctor who served in Spain and China in the 1930s, the aesthetic concerns of storytelling often outweighed the more standard historical versions of the Bethune story. The same must be said of the other characters in this novel. They are based only loosely on actual characters who passed through Bethune's life or, in some cases, are completely imagined. The character of Kajsa von Rothman, however, is not my invention. Very little is known of her but for the suspicions that she inspired in Republican wartime Madrid. A 1937 government report makes it clear that von Rothman was officially suspect, and that her intimate relationship with Bethune, a high-profile Communist, was cause for concern. On January 4, 1937, all members of Bethune's staff at the Vergara Street address, including Bethune himself, were taken into custody for questioning. One of these men, an Austrian by the name of Harturg, is said to have been executed. Bethune and von Rothman were both released. Despite his great accomplishments in Spain, Bethune left that country under a dark cloud. Von Rothman's fate is not known.

I would like to
acknowledge the support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council, the staff at the Toronto Reference Library and the generosity of Beatrice Monti della Corte of the Santa Maddalena Foundation.

Lines from “Sunday Morning” and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” are reprinted from
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a Division of Random House.

The newspaper clipping describing the re-taking of Teruel is as reported in
The Manchester Guardian,
January 8, 1938.

Author Biography

An Interview with Dennis Bock

An Excerpt from
Olympia

An Excerpt from
The Ash Garden

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Raised in Oakville, Ontario,
Dennis Bock is one of five children born to German parents. His mother and father are both craftspeople: she, a weaver; he, a carpenter. The family lived near Lake Ontario, and Bock remembers his father building a sailboat in their basement, an experience that later influenced his short story collection,
Olympia.

There were few English-language books in his childhood home, so becoming a writer wasn't Bock's original career choice. As a boy, he dreamed of being a marine biologist. During high school, however, he got caught up in the magic of
Gulliver's Travels.
“It was the first book I read with the understanding that someone's mind had put all those words together—that someone's imagination had constructed something that didn't exist before.”

After studying English and philosophy for three years at the University of Western Ontario, Bock set off for Spain. Wanderlust, he says, took him there. “Spain was the setting of some of my favourite stories and novels. I had a preconceived, literary notion of what it would look like. Of course, it was totally different.” He also wanted to experience dislocation and immigration, “to break down my elements.” While living in Madrid, Bock taught English as a foreign language and wrote short fiction. Though he returned to Canada to complete his degree, after graduating he was drawn back to Spain where, for the next four years, he continued to teach English and work on his writing.

In 1993, his talent and efforts were rewarded. One of his stories, “The Wedding,” was published in
Canadian Fiction Magazine
and named as an honorable mention in
Best American Short Stories
the next year. In 1994, Bock returned to Canada and served as the editor of
Blood and Aphorisms
magazine. Four years later, “The Wedding” became the first story in his collection
Olympia
(1998), a series of related tales about a German-Canadian family. The title story was selected for the 1997
Journey Prize Anthology,
and
Olympia
won the Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best first collection of stories by a Canadian author and the British Betty Trask Award.
The Globe and Mail
and the
Toronto Star
both named
Olympia
a Notable Book of 1998.

Bock's first novel,
The Ash Garden (200I)
—first tentatively titled “A Man of Principle”—began as a book about an atomic scientist. The plot evolved to follow the parallel lives of two people intimately connected to that watershed moment when the first atomic bomb was detonated over Japan—one, a victim of that day, and the other, a nuclear physicist.
The Ash Garden
became a #1 national bestseller and won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the Drummer General's Award. It was shortlisted for the prestigious 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Amazon.ca/
Books in Canada
First Novel Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean Region).
The Globe and Mail
named it a Best Book of the Year.

The Communist's Daughter
(2006), Bock's second novel, also received high critical acclaim. Donna Seaman of
Booklist
wrote,

After imaginatively considering the freighted legacy of Hiroshima in
The Ash Garden,
Canadian writer Bock continues his profound inquiry into the morass of war in a beautifully measured yet deeply felt portrayal of a battlefield surgeon. . . . Reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson's
Gilead
(2004) in
gravitas
and lyricism, Bock's novel about a man who means to do good in the world, steadfastly faces death and reveres the planet's beauty is a study in sorrow, courage and mystery. As Bock's hero unflinchingly parses our insistence on war and our caring more about ideas than life, he also, even amid horror, celebrates “the rapturous wonder of being alive.”

As a reader, Bock appreciates books that ask tough questions; therefore, when he writes, he is committed to tackling what he calls Big Challenges. His published works thus far—
Olympia, The Ash Garden
and
The Communist's Daughter
—reflect this determination.

Bock lives with his wife and two sons in Toronto, Ontario, where he is currently working on his fourth Big Challenge. Visit the author at
www.dennisbock.ca.

In a 2001
Quill & Quire
interview, you stated, “It would be sad not to take on a big subject. I'm not taken in by books that don't.” What aspects of writing about Norman Bethune's life and times “took you in”?

Bethune's is a story of great political triumphs and bitter personal failures. How was he to strike the balance between public service and private commitment? In a way he reminds me of Anton Boll, a character from
The Ash Garden.
He, too, is a brilliant man whose gifts lead him to walk the fine line between ethics and morality. What is the right thing to do? This is a conflict that must be resolved in Bethune's life, and his ability to do so (or not) gives his life story a heightened sense of urgency. It's also one that offers great range and depth for a novelist interested in how his characters live their lives.

Why does such moral complexity appeal to you?

I love a good mystery, but not in the conventional sense of that word: the mystery of right behaviour, moral choice, responsible action. I'm put off by novels that pretend to answer the questions they raise. There can't be answers—not sincere or meaningful answers—to the questions of moral action raised in a great book. A serious writer, in my mind, attempts to expose the flipside to any commonly held belief. It's a shell game of sorts, with each shell containing—or seemingly so—the seed of truth. Point to it with anything resembling conviction or certainty and you will be proven wrong.

That being said, a novel isn't a game. It doesn't try to cause the reader to stumble, but in resisting an easy answer to justify a character's choices, readers may find themselves in the confusing position of simultaneously loving and hating characters, their choices, their beliefs. For me, a novel is at its best when it brings contradiction to the surface of a character's life and when those contradictions are highlighted by a dramatic conflict between characters. In exposing those contradictions by the right positioning of character, setting and drama, you approach the heart of what it is to be human. There is in this world, instead of the simple black-and-white universe of poorly imagined fiction, an infinite variety of greys.

What is the biggest issue for an author in writing a novel about such a well-known figure?

A lot of people know who Bethune was and might take issue with the fact that certain key events or characters in my novel divert from the known record. Bethune did not have children, for example. Anyone who knows anything about the Bethune story knows that. But my novel doesn't start with the historical record. It starts with a hypothetical, a notion that came to me when, much to my surprise, I discovered that Bethune had an affair in Madrid with a woman suspected of harbouring Fascist sympathies, a woman who was maybe even a spy. That's what got it going for me. That was too good to ignore. The irony of a devout, internationally known Communist sleeping with the enemy, and the resulting crisis, was begging to be explored.

Why did you choose to depart from historical fact in creating a daughter for Bethune?

Every novel set in its historical time and place must diverge from fact to some degree. Simply choosing to begin your story on your hero's birthday and not on the weekend of his first kiss invokes the novelist's creativity, decision-making and editorial position. What interests a novelist is what works for the book, not the historical record.

I began to wonder what would happen if Bethune had left a daughter behind in Spain. Entirely possible, I thought. As I wrote deeper into the story, this possibility became—for me—probable, and then, little by little, I became convinced of it. But only in the world of my novel, and only according to this narrative and this voice. The Bethune I created
does
have a daughter. It all starts with the “what if” scenario. Move forward with that. When the reader agrees to come along on the journey, the balance of power shifts from the historian to the novelist; and within the narrative there can be no greater truth than that of the speaker, who is, in this case, the man who would know.

The novel I had to write necessarily included a daughter with whom Bethune could share his secrets. Without her as his muse he would have remained one-dimensionally heroic. In other words, he wouldn't have been interesting to me, or believable to the reader. There is an aesthetic truth and purity that a writer strives to achieve in his writing, and only in pursuing the fictional narrative can that purity be achieved.

Did the epistolary form call to you immediately or was it the result of some experimentation?

Chiefly, I was interested in getting Bethune's voice, and this meshed nicely with the central motivation in the story: namely, a father's attempt to connect with his daughter. I could have written the novel in the third person. It would have been a good story. But for me, the interest—and the challenge—lay in creating the voice of a man desperate to explain himself. Obfuscation, indirect truths, outright lies—they are all within Bethune's repertoire, not to mention a fair bit of raging and, in the end, a sort of out-of-body delirium. A first-person narrative gives the writer and the reader direct access to Bethune's thoughts, whether they be concise or muddled. We feel closer to him, whatever the case. We know
how
he's thinking as well as
what
he's thinking. With a flawed, or unreliable, narrator the story becomes more intricate, more layered, and the line separating the “truth” from the emotional priorities of the character becomes blurred. With a narrator as interested in his legacy as Bethune is, and so interested in offering his truth, there could be no other choice.

What differences did you encounter between writing a novel such as this, based on a real person, and writing
The Ash Garden
?

When you're working with completely imagined characters, there's nothing to look to outside of your narrative world. If you're lucky, you'll find something like the suntan lotion episode in
The Ash Garden
and make a connection between that small anecdote and the larger ideas in the novel.

Whenever I came to a tough spot while writing
The Communist's Daughter,
I was always able to refer to the historical record. What did Bethune do after Spain? He showed his film in North America. So, you take your character to Toronto or New York. Knowing elements as basic as when and where helped me get back on track long enough to find the Bethune I was looking for—the non-historical Bethune. In this way, using a historical character for a novel is less dangerous because you can always look back to what the biographers have to say on the matter, mix that a little with your imagination and voice, and off you go.

What research provided the basis for this novel?

I read only Bethune's collected writings and a couple of his biographies to help put him in the right place at the right time. After that, I worked on his voice, and the closer I got to what I hoped was the right voice for him, the more the narrative picked up.

I also read other novels very selectively while writing this one. I always seem to do that when I'm working on something. If a novel doesn't address some issue I'm struggling with in my own work, some technical matter like structure and pacing, a question of voice, use of image, whatever, I'll put it down pretty quickly. I became an architect nosing through the great cathedrals of Europe. One cathedral I visited frequently was
True History of the Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey.

How do you approach the writing process generally?

As a writer, I am a firm believer in serendipity, in accident and chance. Some things just happen. Some images occur. They insist. They reoccur. Suddenly you have a motif on your hands. Then you look at what you've got laid out before you, and you ask, Could I use this? Can I turn this into something significant, meaningful, even powerful? There's a lot of alchemy that happens right in front of you as you write. I believe that artists must possess an inner sense of aesthetic balance, just as musicians have an “ear” for their music, to help them deal with the accidental nature of creating art. That's why I create so many drafts when I write; then, when I feel the time is right, I start sifting.

In terms of efficiency, I'm probably the most wasteful writer there is. I edit a lot. I generate hundreds of thousands of words, then go back for the cull. I see the assembling of the big mess of words in the earlier stages of the novel as the search for the right block of marble in the quarry. Only after you get your hands on the right block can you start chipping away inch by inch. Hopefully, with a couple tons of crumbling, excess marble at your feet, you get your little, perfect, six-pound statue to show for it, gleaming and smooth, as if it existed in that block of stone all along and you were the only one able to see it.

You chose to emphasize Bethune's time in Spain during the Civil War and in China during the Communist Revolution. Why?

Well, on the one hand, it's during these two wars that Bethune's emotional battle begins and ends. It's in Spain that he enters into the relationship with Kajsa, the mother of his daughter and a possible spy; and in China he has to deal with the consequences of that relationship. On one level, it's as straightforward as that. On another level, Bethune is a man at war with himself. We witness the internal struggle, hoping for the emergence of a final defining identity. I don't think a writer could hope for a more interesting background, both historically and metaphorically, than the Spanish and Chinese civil wars, during which both countries struggled with this notion of identity.