The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (65 page)

Valdmanis was especially well-connected in Germany, where we spent two full weeks, but that, I told myself, was only natural, since, by his own admission, he had spent most of the war there, where he had been sent, as he put it, for “defying the Nazis” while in German-occupied Latvia.

This, I knew, was not the whole truth. He had been chief public prosecutor and director-general of justice in occupied Latvia. He assured me his duties had not entailed what such titles might lead one to believe.

On Valdmanis’s instructions, I frequently pointed out to the Germans that their country was much like Newfoundland, in a state of transition and rebuilding, and I told them they had better rebuild it fast before they were overrun by the Communists.

We negotiated with Alfred Krupp, the steel magnate, to set up a mill in Newfoundland. As Krupp had been jailed by the Allies since 1945 for war crimes, this proved difficult and, as Fielding wrote in her column, “might have been impossible if not for the invaluable A.V., who spent an entire day acting as go-between for Krupp and Smallwood, running messages back and forth between our hotel and the prison where Herr Krupp is being held.”

At times, the junket took on an almost surreal quality. In Bavaria, on the lawn of some penniless aristocrat, we were treated to a command performance by a troupe of ballet dancers; when the dancers left the lawn, a display of fireworks began while somewhere offstage a choir half-sang, half-recited a heavily accented version of the “Ode to Newfoundland”: “As luft our fodders, so ve luff/vere vonce dey stoot, ve stant. / Our prayers ve raise to heaven abuff, / Got guard thee, Newfoundland.” Later, by way of justifying my promise to give our host for this event a large “loan” to start up some business in Newfoundland, I told the Newfoundland legislature that he was “a great figure in industry” who, though he had “no money in actual dollars,” had in his house “two-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of famous paintings.”

It is all there, in that phrase. Not half a million dollars’ worth of paintings, but two-quarters of a million dollars, as if two of anything were better than one of anything else. “Famous” paintings, that was important, too; that had helped carry the day, in my mind. The mere fact that he owned something whose quality and value were acknowledged outside of Newfoundland made him a worthwhile risk.

“Newfoundland,” I had said, before becoming a confederate, “can be one of the great small nations of the earth.” That oxymoron, “great small,” seems to me now to sum up my view of Newfoundland quite well. Fielding once devoted a column to my habit of using the construction, “one of the great small … of the world.” She quoted me as having said that the
Telegram
was one of the great small papers of the world. She reported, accurately, that I had pledged to make the newly established Memorial University one of the great small universities in the world. She said I said that the Long Range Mountains were among the great small mountains in the world, that Churchill Falls was among the great small wonders of the world, that the Humber River was one of the great small rivers in the world.

She wrote:

In one of the great small hours of the morning, it occurred to me that our forests were among the great small woods in the world, as is our premier one of the great Smallwoods in the world, not to mention one of the great small Smallwoods in the world, for which we ought to reward him with one of the great small dogs of the world, a Pekingese, perhaps.

I boasted often of how I had met with Truman, been photographed with Gandhi and shaken Churchill’s hand. “Those are great men,” I said to my audiences in an almost chastening tone, “great men” seeming to imply that they were great in a way that neither they nor I could ever hope to be by virtue of our being Newfoundlanders. I acted as if, for a Newfoundlander, there was no greater accomplishment than to be judged by some great man to be a credit to your people.

I never addressed Valdmanis directly as anything but “Doctor,” and Valdmanis never called me anything except “my premier.” This formality was never dropped. Even when we talked among ourselves, it was “Doctor” and “my premier.”

I was infatuated, not so much with Valdmanis, as with the man he was impersonating, who had all those qualities that I felt the lack of in myself — worldliness, sophistication, business savvy, education, culture, taste, refinement.

In Zurich, I wound up, because of some sort of a mix-up in reservations, having to share a hotel room with Valdmanis.

Field Day, May 6, 1951

Rather than saddle the Newfoundland tax-payer with the cost of two, we all ride in the same Mercedes. We stay only at the best hotels, but it is also true that only the best hotels have beds big enough to sleep three.

Mr. Smallwood and Mr. Valdmanis are of sufficiently modest stature that there is plenty of room for me between their feet and the foot of the bed, where I lie crosswise, my journalistic objectivity inviolate.

As for your premier and your director-general of economic development, dear reader, they will often lie awake, late into the night, side by side in their pyjamas, their hands behind their heads, talking, planning strategies, devising schemes. To think that their most masterful of which to date may have had their origins in pillow talk!

“We will dot Conception Bay with factories,” your premier said the other night. I, too, lay there, listening, wondering if perhaps I had misjudged them.

They are a lively, fun-loving pair who betimes will wile away the hours playing “pedals,” a Latvian children’s game in which two participants lying flat on their backs at opposite ends of a bed, with their hands behind their heads, place the soles of their bare feet together and “pedal” each other like bicycles, the object of the game being to pedal one’s opponent off the bed, though my premier and the Latvian are so evenly matched that neither can budge the other and they pedal themselves into a state of mutual exhaustion, then fall asleep.

I was, after seeing this column, no longer able to keep up the pretence of having invited Fielding along in the hope that she would see the light.

“I am familiar with most of the great newspapers of the world,” I said to Fielding when a copy of the column was sent to me, “and I can tell you with certainty that none of them would publish this sort of drivel. Two men and a woman in one bed, two men playing ‘bicycles’ or something, what is that supposed to mean? It is the worst sort of trash.…”

Valdmanis managed to calm me down somewhat.

“My premier is tired, Miss Fielding,” he said. “This has been a long trip, a great strain on all of us.”

It became an even greater strain as more of Fielding’s columns began to arrive. For the first time since I had hired him, I berated Valdmanis for committing “a blunder of monumental proportions.”

“My premier,” he said, “you must trust me. I cannot explain to you now, but it will soon become obvious to you why it was necessary to invite Miss Fielding along. I cannot tell you now. Most of it I will never be able to tell you, for it will be best if you do not know.”

“You’re doing things without my authorization?” I said.

“You must trust me, my premier,” he said. “There are things that must be done that you are better off not authorizing.”

“Something had better come of this,” I said. “Something worthwhile, something worth the stupid risks that we are taking.”

“There are no risks for you,” he said. I threw up my hands and we spoke no more about it.

Field Day, May 21, 1951: The Foot of the Bed, Room 346, Hotel Hamburg

I have taken to writing my columns at night, while lying in bed. At this moment, my premier and the Latvian are sound asleep, tired out as usual from playing “pedals.” Tonight’s bout was yet another stalemate, though it ended in some animosity when the Latvian accused Mr. Smallwood of cheating by removing his hands from the back of his head, which Mr. Smallwood admitted to doing, though only long enough, he said, to adjust his glasses, which were slipping off.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Latvian. “You used your hands.” Mr. Smallwood’s plea that pedals is a Latvian game,
the rules of which he is still learning and couldn’t possibly know as well as someone who grew up playing it, fell on deaf ears, however, and the Latvian told him that next time, he would be disqualified. They went to sleep in a pout and one can only hope that for the sake of Newfoundland, they make up in the morning.

Valdmanis could not keep up with the pace I set. I was energized by sheer rage, unable to look at Fielding, though I knew that it was out of the question to send her home at this point, that if we did we would look ridiculous. Fielding would not have been able to keep up the pace either, but she was free to beg off whenever she wished and spent a fair amount of time alone in her hotel rooms, recuperating from, or laying the groundwork for, hangovers or writing her columns while Valdmanis and I continued our endless rounds of meetings and official functions, often leaving at eight in the morning and not returning to our rooms until midnight.

In Hamburg, during our second trip to Germany, while the three of us were riding in the backseat of a gleaming chauffeur-driven burgundy Mercedes, which I assured Fielding was not being paid for by the people of Newfoundland, Valdmanis, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, seemed on the verge of hyperventilation.

“My premier, I cannot continue,” he said. “Don’t you ever get tired? Don’t you ever need to rest?”

“Not much,” I said. “That is what comes from clean living, Dr. Valdmanis. I do not smoke, I do not drink” — I looked meaningfully at Fielding, who looked away — “I do not chase women.”

Valdmanis advised me to play my mock “trump card” a few days before we left for home. Throughout the trip, I had, at Valdmanis’s suggestion, been promising Fielding a “scoop” and finally I told her what it was.

Field Day, May 25, 1951: The Foot of the Bed, Room 346, Hotel Hamburg

Never was their pedalling more vigorous than it was last night. It was all I could do to keep from being bounced right off the bed. I held on to one of the bedposts and watched with astonishment the blur of their four ever-accelerating legs.

“My premier, I cannot continue,” A. V. protested at last. “I cannot, I am winded, I must rest.”

“I’ve beaten him at his own game,” said the premier gleefully, not even breathing hard as the Latvian flopped down exhausted on his pillow. “I have out-pedalled a Latvian. There are not many who can make that claim. That is what comes from clean living. I do not smoke. I do not drink. I do not chase women. I am easily able to outrun those who chase me.”

His hands still behind his head, he stretched out full-length, showing off his five-foot-six-inch pin-stripe-pyjamaed form to best advantage. He eyed me craftily, the lights from the chandelier reflecting in his glasses, the thick black rims of which had never seemed more becoming.

“I will give you something to write about, Miss Fielding,” he said. He chuckled when I told him I was shocked. “I will give you something you can really sink your teeth into.”

“What?” I said.

“An election,” he said.

“A WHAT?” I said.

“An election,” he said, “an election. You know what an election is, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course I do,” I said. “I thought you said — but never mind.”

“I’m calling an election as soon as we get back to Newfoundland,” he said. “I just decided it, right here in bed. I can’t tell you the date yet, but you can say in your column that
I’m calling an election as soon as we get home. How’s that for a scoop?”

A. V. was overjoyed. “You will win by a landslide, my premier,” he said. “You cannot lose. You will never lose. You will win this election, and the next one, and the next one after that. Our partnership will last forever. Together, we will make Newfoundland great. We will, we will, we will.” He stood up on the bed and began jumping up and down, spinning around in mid-air. Mr. Smallwood lay there, smiling, regarding reflectively his size-six feet, which he wiggled back and forth.

We flew back to Newfoundland.

Fielding’s Condensed
      
History of Newfoundland

Chapter Thirty-Two:

THE HERMIT

We here present the last and most ambitious of Robert Hayman’s rhymes, “The Hermit,” in which a fisherman of Bristol’s Hope, relieved of his possessions by the pirate Peter Easton, addresses that now absent personage and, because of his misfortune, meditates on Newfoundland and casts upon the island and all its inhabitants an everlasting curse — then runs away.

Easton, bastard, plundering whore,
You sank my boat, you burned my store.
“But look ye on the bright side now,
Men there are worse off than thou,”
You said as you did sail away.
If such there be for them I pray.
“I leave and leave you with your life,
I leave and with me leaves your wife.
To her ’tis nothing new, I’m told.
She has with all your friends made bold,
And all the men from down the shore
And back again, and many more.”
My friends did swear this was a lie
And some of them with me did cry,
And swore that they would miss her, too,
“As much, or even more, than you.”
“I never will see her again.
She’s gone with Easton and his men,”
I said to them who laughed at me
“But you at rest will never be.
Smallpox and scurvy, wind and cold,
Because of these you’ll ne’er grow old.
Red men, pirates, storms, starvation:
Death will seem like consolation.
Now on your heads this curse I place,
On you and yours and all your race
And those of other races, too.
Who sets foot here the day will rue.”
I then strode off into the wood,
The Hope behind me left for good,
And by myself from then did live,
To those back home no thought did give.
I slept according to the sun,
And for a spear forswore my gun,
And tried to live as Red Men did,
Though from the Red Men too I hid.
My days in solitude I spent,
My nights the same, inside my tent.
I lay there in my little room,
Upon my thoughts a cast of gloom.
“This land should not have settled been,
Its shores should have remained unseen.
Its woods should not have been traversed
Not e’en by those who got here first.
They’ll soon be gone, the ochre-men
Who number fewer now than when
John Cabot landed on the Cape
Or on them old John Guy did gape.”
I then did drowse and close my eyes
Of Red Men dreamed and their demise.
Whereas the Hopers still did come
And plagued though by my curse their sum
Despite the French and English crown,
Did ne’er to nothing dwindle down.
I stirred and soon was wide awake,
Too late discovered my mistake.
When on the Hope the curse I hung,
It was my own death knell I rung.
I, like the Red Men, soon would be
Consigned unto eternity.
I wished this Newfoundland could be
Unlooked at except by me,
And when I died looked at by none.
Then out of time this place would run.
The land again would be the same
As before the people came.
It would not be empty, lonely
Or forlorn. It simply would not be.