by W. E. Gutman
YOUR WATCH, YOUR COAT
Those who demand and seize don’t know how to offer or let go.
It was curiosity, fed by restlessness -- not nostalgia -- that had drawn my father back to Sighet. He needed to know. Knowledge brought disappointment and sorrow. Resurrected in a flash of surreal lucidity, his childhood, adolescence, the years of toil, dashed hopes and tragedy suddenly compressed into a single moment of hideous irony. The house in which he grew up had been seized by the state and given to a minor Communist Party official in recompense for his zeal. (Five years earlier, that same official, a police informant, had worked with equal zeal on behalf of the Fascist Iron Guard). Tatale and Mamale were gone. So were two younger brothers. Their ashes now fattened some pasture in Germany, Poland or the Ukraine. Diminished by overwhelming losses, Sighet’s Jewish community had first gone into shock. It was now in utter disarray. Frenzied anti-religious ferment and shifting political alliances threatened to extinguish its very soul.
Distraught, anxious to find his “place” in the frigid post-war sun, prodded by survivors, my father had taken a half-hearted stab at local politics and accepted appointment as president of Sighet’s nearly decimated Jewish community. His Quixotic affinity for social causes would soon abate. The “people’s” struggle, he quickly learned, was led by a gang of avaricious thugs intent on getting as fat as the boyars they were committed to oust and dispossess. The communist utopia, he observed, fostered anti-Semitism; it nourished an idiosyncratic blue-collar contempt for erudition and intellectualism; it condoned terror, advocated expropriations, built gulags and took part in disappearances, tortures and summary executions. To his immense chagrin, my father also discovered that many members of the Jewish community had since joined the “Party” and groveled at the feet of the Russian military authorities and their Romanian vassals. Disgust turned to rage when his baby sister, Lilli, the beautiful, lively copper-haired Lilli, freed by the Soviets from the horrors of concentration camp, died on some rural road, murdered by drunken Russian soldiers. He’d protested noisily and threatened to bring the thugs to justice. He’d been betrayed in Paris. He was setting himself up for betrayal in Sighet. It was time to shake the sand out of his shoes and cast a final farewell to the little town that had never really been his. He would never go back.
*
It’s because the term fails to convey the concept it purports to encapsulate that I often get the urge to write “communism” in quotation marks, to read it thus circumscribed in the works of others, as if to accentuate an incongruity. The word is a paragon of vagueness. Overuse, misuse and abuse will do that to words. “Progressives,” “loyalists,” “conservatives,” “liberals” and “independents” know what I mean. It’s not surprising that Marxist doctrinaires, atheists, human rights crusaders, freethinkers, pacifists and people who wear red socks have all been labeled “communists.” In McCarthyist America, artistic non-conformity and a penchant for social justice were unmistakable symptoms of “communism.” Predictably, the latter was considered a far more heinous crime and is still looked with askance by right-wing demagogues. Popular liberation movements aimed at shaking the colonial yoke would be similarly imputed. Opposition to U.S. military intervention in these conflicts, when not spurred by laissez-faire isolationists, was also denounced as “communist-inspired.” John Lennon's stirring pleas for peace at a time of war were reflexively ascribed to “communist leanings.” Had they lived today, Thomas Payne and Henry David Thoreau would be branded communists. In Russia’s new market-oriented economy, a communist is better known as a “loyalist.” A hundred years ago, a loyalist was a czarist. Fifty years ago, a “progressive” was described as a crypto-communist. In capitalist circles, aggressive and daring investment strategies are referred to as “progressive.” Both the Nazis and the communists persecuted Freemasons. The former regarded them as communists; the latter deemed the ancient brotherhood a tool of western imperialism. So much for semantics.
There’s another problem. What passes as communism has perverted the ideals it alleges to represent. It has also betrayed the goals to which it is theoretically committed. In assuming power -- by force -- communists, in true Fascist style, granted themselves rights that they promptly took away from the rank and file. Instead of tending to urgent social issues, such as poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, their crusade quickly became mired in proselytism-by-terror.
Ultimately, the narrow canons at the core of communism's wider philosophical tenets, like those of monotheistic religions, are simply unenforceable. Driven by disciplines and proscriptions that denounce egotism, intolerance and greed -- traits found in abundance in Homo sapiens and indispensable in the preservation of self (and the perpetuation of capitalism) -- communism is hopelessly incompatible with human nature. What the world has witnessed since Marxist theories were first propounded is a travesty wrapped in parody. Under the brutal stewardship of its disciples, communism has failed. History may yet rank this failure (as is the failure of religion to root out evil) as one of the greatest tragedies to befall the family of man.
Given a choice between ideals, and status and self-interest, men will invariably opt for the latter. This is what makes them ungovernable.
*
Growing up in Israel, and later as a journalism student in Paris, I too would toy with communism. Mine was a youthful, romantic longing for social harmony and justice, a paradigm anchored in the naïve belief that collective distribution of goods produced collectively would not only bring the world happiness but also rid it of its torments. I was rebelling against all power and authority like any self-respecting young French secular Jew who’d read the philosophes -- Hobbes, Locke and Saint-Simon. The amassing of personal wealth and the acquisition of corporate fortunes, I agreed then (and still believe today), are achieved through exploitation and lead to an anarchical control of assets that are never evenly shared with the exploited. By the time I became sufficiently acquainted with it, the popular 19th century Saint-Simonean movement had long since degenerated into a quasi-religious sect. It would soon break apart and be promptly consigned to history's bottom drawer as an eccentricity -- which is perhaps what attracted me to it in the first place. As time passed, bloodied countless times in the ceaseless crossfire between ideal and ideology, I would then explore the more utilitarian goals of “Socialism.” I had concluded that communism did not and could not work, except on a small controlled scale, in the disciplined confines of some ancient Essene community or in a modern and self-sufficient monastery. I still recognized in Marxism's muddled stoicism and stridency an unambiguous morality that was hard to dismiss. I would continue to be drawn to the spirit long after the letter, to my immense chagrin, was shredded beyond recognition. I also understood that freedom is achievable -- in very brief spurts -- only after the dissolution of the status quo, but I was not prepared to accept the chaos and the injustices that revolutions leave in their wake. With nowhere to go, I would concede that political power is intrinsically oppressive, whether wielded by the right or the left, by a mercenary elite or a covetous proletariat. To escape pigeonholing, I resolved that conscience would be the fulcrum of my convictions. Mid-course corrections are best made from the middle of the road. I would often stray off the beaten path just to see what lay beyond my field of vision.
*
In Europe in the mid-1950s, I observed post-war communism at work in France and Italy. Neither the petulant Italians nor the irascible French ever fully championed the Kremlin's mandates. Theirs was a homespun version of Marxism, sometimes irreverent, often defiant of their puppeteers in Moscow. Party loyalty was largely contingent on how much tobacco was available, how much bread and red wine was on the table, and whether members could afford small vacation cottages in Brittany or on the Amalfi coast. Enjoyed by the leaders, such perks were largely inaccessible to the rank-and-file. Support for the cause endured so long as the practice of communism was neither ideologically taxing nor an impediment to self-indulgence, a propensity shared wi
th equal gluttony by their “fat-pig” capitalist counterparts.
I would later witness the last gasps of nearly 80 years of communism in the Soviet Union and the evisceration of the Russian spirit. Russians were afflicted with what I characterized, for lack of a better hyperbole, as cancer of the soul. Misconstrued, contaminated and falsified by nearly four generations of hoodlums, goons and charlatans, communism remains everywhere the balm of dreamers and chronic malcontents. In Russia, where there is much to bewail, it still festers with a naïveté bordering on irrationality.
“Things were tough under Stalin and Beria [Stalin’s sinister secret police chief],” said an old-timer bearing a mouthful of gold teeth. “But at least we all had jobs, a roof over our heads, food on the table. There was order. Now we have nothing, except disorder.”
No. What the man endured was the consequence of a collective state of confusion. What he lacked was the courage of his convictions.
It’s difficult to separate a man from his convictions; it’s impossible to impart any if he has none.
*
I always found it a delicious paradox that the well to do, quintessentially upper-middle-class Karl Marx, an unrepentant philanderer and a man not known for high standards of personal hygiene, loathed and disparaged the masses. I also find it a cruel irony that ideals calling for emancipation, egalitarianism and the comradeship of men were transformed on the morrow of the October Revolution into an all-powerful and merciless doctrine of discrimination and repression. Now and then, I also wonder whether another Jew, perhaps an exalted figure such as Jesus -- had he lived today -- could have led mankind to salvation with his own brand of collectivism. I follow such musings to their natural conclusion and rule that the Vatican would have branded him a heretic and excommunicated him, and that CIA-sponsored death-squads, for reasons of “national security,” would have silenced him, as the Romans did two thousand years ago.
Struggling to rub out the indelible, man has invented the eraser. If one can’t tolerate reality one might as well abjure it.
*
Back in Bucharest, and despite my protestations, I was returned to La Maison des Français, the French school I’d attended, on and off, since we’d arrived in Romania in 1944. I recognized some of the children’s faces, but I knew none of the teachers. Madame Alice, a kind and sensible woman who’d endured with saintly patience many of my pranks, was gone. She’d interceded on my behalf when a little girl and I were found, stark naked, studying each other’s anatomical differences in a huge wicker basket at the end of a corridor. Gone also were Monsieur Antoine, the rotund and jovial arts-and-crafts instructor, Mademoiselle Sylvie, a tall, lanky spinster who taught piano and solfège, and Mademoiselle Dina, the friendly principal. All had been removed, I would later learn, for teaching what the state called a “reactionary” curriculum, and replaced by a younger cadre of Romanian teachers eager -- or coerced by circumstance -- to toe the Party line.
I remember taking my seat and glancing briefly around me. Pictures of the Eiffel tower and the Arch of Triumph still adorned the walls. Posters of Notre Dame Cathedral, the Sacré Coeur basilica and Mont Saint Michel abbey had been replaced by austere representations of brawny peasants tilling the earth, sooty-faced laborers operating monstrous smoke-belching machines and burly construction workers perched at dizzying heights atop gleaming iron beams. Everywhere, large reproductions showed stylized male and female titans wielding hammers, sickles, picks, shovels and scythes, their steely gaze focused on some distant point above the horizon, no doubt where the workers’ paradise can be found. Framed inspirational messages called for “HONOR TO THE FATHERLAND,” “SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE,” “DUTY TO THE PARTY.” (Ten years earlier, Picasso had been deemed “decadent” by the Nazis, whose aims were better served by realism and figurative art. Works by Braque, Chagall, Matisse and Van Gogh were also hastily removed from German museums. Some were sold, others destroyed).
“Take this red kerchief and wear it proudly around your neck,” said the teacher in heavy-accented French. “You’re a pioneer now. Class, join me in welcoming your camarade back to his old school.”
The children rose to their feet in a sea of red kerchiefs (the girls also wore large white taffeta bows in their hair), snapped at attention and applauded in measured syncopation like little automatons. Then they dropped back into their seats with military-drill precision and folded their arms upon their desks.
“Now, boys and girls, what are the badges of good citizenship?”
All hands went up except mine.
“Obedience,” said one of the little robots.
“Loyalty,” offered another.
“Honesty,” declared a third.
“Vigilance,” pitched a fourth.
“Très bien,” cheered the teacher. “A good citizen is obedient, dedicated, honest and alert. Good citizenship begins at home and is perfected in school with the help of examples from the past and lessons for the future. When you go home tonight and join your families at the supper table, make sure you listen very carefully -- with vigilance, n’est-ce-pas -- to what everyone is saying. Much can be learned from what grownups tell each other. Tomorrow, in class, we’ll all take turns discussing -- with honesty -- what we heard, won’t we? We must all remember comrade Paul and the valiant example he set for us all.
“Yes, teacher,” the children rallied in perfect unison, pledging devotion and validating their willingness to submit.
“What has Comrade Paul taught us, children?”
“Study hard, love the fatherland, unmask the enemies and expose traitors.”
“Good!” said the teacher with noticeable pride.
I kept quiet. I had nothing to say. I was terribly unhappy to be back in school. The civics exercises bored me. I wasn’t in the least interested in my classmates’ tales and would have just as well kept mine to myself. Coping with my own inner demons, I would rather have whittled the hours away daydreaming or drawing unforgiving caricatures of the teachers.
I also resented having to wear the red kerchief just because twenty other children wore one as well. By the age of nine, I’d already acquired a healthy aversion for uniforms -- and uniformity. Looking like twenty other kids made me feel stupid, unexceptional. Worse, it robbed me of character and individuality. I was determined I would not be reduced to carbon-copy status. Claiming I’d forgotten it at home or lost it, I often challenged the teachers and taxed their patience by failing to wear the kerchief. I’d also resolved to contribute nothing of value during these morning inquests, which I intuitively deemed intrusive and potentially calamitous. After all, “Comrade Paul” was a rat, the Romanian transmutation of a Russian symbol -- Tovarich Pavlik -- and the newest icon in the pantheon of Communist idols.
Paul’s story was an allegory and it was told with the pathos owed the cult status to which he’d been elevated. Once upon a time, it said, a young boy scoured the forest for berries. He was a kind-hearted, honest boy who knew right from wrong. When someone in his family erred, Paul told his teachers (who then told the commissar….) No one in class challenged the accuracy -- or morality -- of Paul’s denunciations. In Romania, like in the rest of communist Eastern Europe, fiction was fact. This idolatry would eventually feed a culture of compliant informants, the lifeblood of a police state, and Comrade Paul’s story became a favorite tool of Romania’s brainwashing apparatus. What the teachers were careful not to say is that Pavlik/Paul was killed by his father and that several members of his family were in turn tried and executed for depriving the fatherland of a snitch.
A few of the kids -- some of them coached no doubt by alert parents, others having heard nothing that could compromise them -- brought to school harmless renderings of banal family chatter. Others picked on their parents’ conversations the way iron filings cling to magnets.
“Dad said that the commies are vulgar thieves.”
“Mom said this country was better off under the king.”
“My uncle said Petru Groza can�
��t be trusted.”
“My aunt said....”
Such candor would have tragic consequences on many families. Dissidents were arrested, fined, dispossessed and imprisoned. Many died from exposure, starvation and exhaustion in hard labor camps. Many more were extra-judicially executed.
I was ready when my turn came. My candor had nearly cost my father his life and I’d since learned the strategic value of a good lie. Acting -- the art of pretense and the science of deceit -- had also become second nature. I enjoyed putting on airs, making up stories; for effect, mainly. I was already enjoying the discomfiture these yarns caused or, better yet, the utter credulity with which they were received.
“What have you for us today?”
I scratched my head, shrugged my shoulders and raised my arms in sham mystification.
“My father spoke about medical things -- vaginas, ovaries, fallopian tubes, ectopic pregnancies. I didn’t understand a word. After that he read the paper and listened to music -- Tchaikovski’s violin concerto. My mother did crossword puzzles and played solitaire. Memmée studied the future in the coffee grounds at the bottom of her cup. I finished my homework and went to bed. What’s a vagina?”
The teacher blushed and squirmed with unease, and quickly changed the subject. I remember being very proud of my performance. A gadfly-in-training, I had drawn my first blood. A predisposition for iconoclasm and incitement would later become manifest in my high-school compositions. The urge to de-mythify, agitate and abash would dominate the bulk of my journalistic output.
This charade went on for a while then stopped. For want of witches, the school suspended the witch-hunt. Elsewhere, Romania’s communist inquisition was now in full swing.
*
One day, La Maison des Français caught fire and went up in smoke. We were all hurriedly escorted down the long marble stairwell and onto the street. The firemen fought valiantly but their efforts were for naught. When the smoke lifted, little remained of the building save its ornate 19th century façade. I never found out what caused the fire but I remember feeling elated. For days, I could be heard singing a French ditty that ended with, “... we’ll burn our books and throw the teachers in the middle of the pyre.” I remember dreaming that it was I who’d set the fire. Remorseful, I would help put it out in my sleep by peeing in bed.