The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel (8 page)

“You’d have killed him?”

“The gun spoke to him and the others with or without your holy ministrations. Let me introduce you to the Front, Lieutenant. It’s a place where men’s lives depend on following orders, or hadn’t you heard?”

Something scrabbled nearby. They both looked down. A plump rat with a sleek coat and a pink, lavender and yellow nose was continuing his inspection of Angus’s haversack, drooping at an angle from its peg. Near the rat’s hindquarters lay a box of pastels, a slot for every color. The pastels were scattered about in half-gnawed crumbs.

“Jesus. What the hell?” Publicover shot an incredulous look at Angus.

“Pastels,” Angus replied calmly.

“
Pastels?
Jesus. Sweet, sweet Jesus. Pastels . . .” Publicover whistled a falling note. “You
are
a madman. And we thought they were sending us an officer.”

“I’ve heard only madmen survive.”

The rat waddled toward them. “Well, that may be true, but I’ll tell you something,” Publicover said slowly, folding his arms. “Ratty doesn’t much care for your chalks.”

Angus folded his arms as well. “Should have brought oils. Or maybe he’d prefer watercolors.”

Publicover snorted out a laugh. The rat, streaked nose quivering, looked up and blinked. “And that,” Publicover said, staring back at it, “might be the only made-up face we’ll see for months.”

Angus squatted down and picked through the chalk crumbs. Only the browns and blacks and a single gray remained intact.

T
HAT EVENING DURING
stand-to, the sky crossed itself with streaks of lavender, yellow and rosy pink over the unhinged earth, over the coiled barbed wire, unexploded shells, rusting equipment left to rot in No Man’s Land—a cratered landscape of ruin. Had his pastels survived, Angus would have been hard-pressed to put them to paper. For in that silken sky above and wounded earth below lay all one needed to know—a knowing so obvious, it hardly needed an artist to expand it into a larger truth.

F
OUR

February 9
^th
, 1917

Snag Harbor, Nova Scotia

A
von Heist, schoolmaster for the combined sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, closed his book and removed his spectacles. He withdrew a perfectly folded, perfectly white handkerchief and rubbed each lens. He refolded the handkerchief, tucked it in his pocket and announced that lessons were over—that he now wished to speak to them about something else. Behind him the chalkboard was clean, the maps loosely rolled. Above the maps, framed portraits of King George and Queen Mary, poorly hung, tilted forward.

Mr. Heist surveyed the faces looking up at him. He rose from his desk and walked to the bank of windows lining the west wall. With his back to the class, he said, “Germany.”

He rocked for a time on his short feet, hands clasped behind his back. Fat flakes of snow drifted past the windows. The class shifted in their seats. The clock ticked a notch closer to
3
:
00
.

“Germany,” Mr. Heist repeated. He unclasped his hands, tugged his black wool vest and turned to the class. “Germany is not one state, but many. We would do well to remember that.”

Simon and Zenus Weagle exchanged puzzled glances.

“Germany, composed of many states, is now a country held hostage by the few.”

Held hostage? Simon sat up.

“This morning, a fight broke out in the schoolyard. Ruffians and hooligans, you know who you are. But that is not important. What
is
important,” Mr. Heist continued with brisk strides back to his desk, “is that during this exchange of fisticuffs there was a good deal of name-calling.
Kraut. Fritz. Hun
. Pejoratives spat out, friend against neighbor. Words said without a thought to their meaning.”

Out came his pencil, rat-a-tat-tat on the desk. He lined it up just so and said, “I’ve decided to use this as an opportunity to inform and educate against the ignorance these words convey. A lesson in tolerance, if you will.”

An ash-covered log in the woodstove plumped softly down to dying embers. The room was growing colder. Mr. Heist took no notice. “Do you know of Mr. Fritze from La Have?” he said. “No? I didn’t think so. A loyal Canadian these many years, a Canadian of German extraction, he was not allowed to enlist. Volunteered and was
refused
. Barred because of his name—a name that evokes the worst sort of bigotry.”

Tim Bethune leaned back in his seat and folded his arms.

“Many among us are of German lineage,” Mr. Heist continued, “as am I. Some of us more recently than others.”

“No kidding,” Robbie McLaren sniggered at Tim.

“Many are descendants of Protestants who came here in the
1750
s to farm and fish at the behest of the British. And why?” Mr. Heist paused. “Nora?”

Nora Church, usually quick with answers, hesitated. “Why are we descended?”

Mr. Heist closed his eyes in pain. “No, not why are we
descendants.
Why did the British invite people, largely from
German
states, to colonize these shores?”

“To make settlements against the Catholics, I mean, the French?”

“Precisely! On both counts. A settlement, a living fortress, if you will, of Protestants in Lunenburg against the French Catholic settlements and French forts. You see how life changes? We were against France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now, at the dawn of the twentieth, we are lined up with her against Germany. Now, where were these German-speaking settlers from, one hundred and sixty years ago?”

Before they could answer, he loosened the strings holding the map of Europe in suspension. It crashed to the floor. Laughter rippled through the room. Simon winced. This was just the sort of thing that happened to Mr. Heist. A scholar among Philistines was how his grandfather described him. With his back to the class, Mr. Heist remained still until the laughter evaporated. “Simon,” he said.

Simon, in charge of maps and chalkboard that day, stepped handily over the outthrust leg of Tim Bethune, collected the map and helped Mr. Heist reassemble it. When it was hung up again, Mr. Heist took up the pointer, whirled around and struck it against Germany. “Teacher’s pet,” Tim hissed as Simon resumed his seat. “Philistine,” Simon retorted, pleased at the flummoxed look the word evoked.

“Another syllable, and we’ll be here until darkness falls.” Mr. Heist raised his brows. “Now, again, where did the German settlers come from?” When no one answered, he struck the map again. “Here. Bavaria, one of the southern states of Germany. From parts of Switzerland and eastern France as well, but it is the German states I’m focused on. Bavaria. Can we say that together?”

“Bah-vaaar-ee-ahh,” the class repeated halfheartedly. It was
3
:
02
. Across the hall, the primary grades were charging out of their classroom.

Daryl Nauss drew a question mark on a scrap of paper.

“And, up here, what do we have? Class?”

Maisie Morin raised her hand. “Prussia,” she said with a flip of her curls.

“Precisely, Maisie. Thank you. Prussia, another German state. Now,” again he clasped his hands behind his back, “make no mistake, the German people have a rich heritage of letters, music, science and philosophy. But the
Prussians
have all along stood for something else.”

He was pacing now. His words came faster. His accent grew thicker. “Prrrussians are part of the old Junker aristocracy—arrogant, unlettered, with aspirations conceived of by the sword!” The pointer slapped the Prussian state on the map. “No less than Visigoths and Vandals before them, the Prussians are against freedom!” Another slap. “Against culture!” Another slap. “Against parl-i-a-mentary government!” A final slap. “And out of this primitive set of mind rose who? Who?” The pointer shot straight up above his balding head and nearly tipped King George sideways. Not missing a beat, Mr. Heist poked the other edge to straighten him. “Well?” he said. The whisper of laughter rippling through the class died a quick death.

“Bismarck?” little Otto Brink, in the second row, responded.

“Otto von Bismarck!
Precisely
! Thank you, Otto. Not to worry over your Christian name.”

Little Otto sat up straighter. Mr. Heist carried on, his voice rising. “Bismarck, whose political genius led him to the highest levels of power. Under him, Germany was not
united
, as we see in our history book.” He held the offending book aloft. The class was mesmerized. The book was wrong?

“Not united”—he slapped the book down, placed his fists on the desk and leaned toward the students, his voice falling to a stage whisper—“but
subdued
.” He straightened up. “Subdued to his iron will! And after? And then? Then he set his sights on the rest of Europe, beginning with . . . ?”

“Alsace and Lorraine!” Simon Peter shouted. They had just covered the Franco-Prussian War.

“Yes! Very good! Took on the weak and corrupt French government in
1870
and won. How could he not? But the Junker Prussians weren’t satisfied, were they? No! Of course not!” His voice rose again. “Intoxicated with success, they took their militaristic aspirations to the high seas, building up their navy to take over the world. Who and what stood in the way?”

“The British navy!” Danny Boer called out.

“The whole British Empire!” came another voice.

“George the Fifth!”

“The Canadian Expeditionary Force!” Zenus yelled. Then there was a rumbling of feet and the beat of hands on desks.

“Yes! Yes!” Avon Heist shouted back at them. He tore off his spectacles and, eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose, as if in gratitude for students so smart. Then he narrowed his eyes at them. “And the peace-loving peoples of Bavaria? The rest of Germany?” he said, waving his spectacles about. “What of them? Held hostage to these monstrous aims! Just as the Allies are protecting your freedoms, so too will they bring freedom to the peoples of Germany! The Kaiser will
fall
and the
Prussians
will be crushed! Not the German people,
the Prussians
!”

Snow was falling hard now. He slowed to the finish. “
Krrraut
and
Hun
,
Bosch
and
Frrritz
! I will not tolerate this intolerance. No, I will not. Fathers and brothers and uncles, some of them Zincks and Zwickers, Kaisers and Heislers, Nausses and Bremners, men of peaceable German heritage from all up and down this province, are this very minute fighting in the Canadian army. And a man named
Fritze
”
—
here he shook his head sadly—“was prevented from going with them.” He let that sink in. “Ostracized!” he said, looking up. “A man as Canadian as you. As Canadian as me, now fifteen years a citizen!” He stretched up a little taller than he was and yanked his vest with two hands. “Class dismissed!”

The students, all twenty-three of them, remained seated for a fleeting second, then pounded out to the cloakroom, winding mufflers around their necks, strapping their books, pulling on hats and coats and bolting out the door. Simon Peter grabbed his jacket and looked back. Mr. Heist was again at the window.

A hard shove and Simon was knocked to the ground. “What’re you going to do about it?” Tim whispered, jerking Simon close. “Eh? Cry to the Kraut?” He let loose a gob of spit into Simon’s ear, laughed and pushed through the door past Zenus, who leaned his head in and told Simon to hurry up for God’s sake, it was freezing out.

Simon scuffed through the snow down Queen Street next to Zenus and behind Maisie’s group of chattering friends. “I’d like to beat that Tim Bethune to a pulp,” he said, rubbing his ear.

“He’s got four inches and forty pounds on you. He’ll be in grade six for the rest of his life. Forget him,” Zenus answered. “Wasn’t that something, though, old Heistmeister ranting on about the Krauts and sounding just like them?”

“Yeah. He’s not, though. He’s Canadian, like us,” Simon said. “That’s the point.” But Simon was still trying to sort it all out. Prussians, Bavarians. Parts of Germany holding other parts hostage. None of this had been said before. “You ever hear about that Mr. Fritze?”