Something Was Afoot

008 1986 -1988 Something Was Afoot 

On April 15, 1986, when I heard the news on the radio that Reagan had attacked Libya in retaliation for the Berlin discotheque bombing, I punched the air and shouted, "Yes!" 

That image remains emblazoned on my memory because it captures the person that I had become, 17 years after I had decided that I would flee to Canada rather than submit to the draft and likely be sent to Vietnam. Where was that principled young man now, and what the fuck was he so happy about? Obviously he wasn't thinking of the victims on either side.

I cringe to think of this now 40-year-old wannabe "patriot," who had also taken to wearing pearl-button Western shirts and cowboy boots. I don't like this person now, and I didn't like him then. In a word, he – I – was confused. I would never have admitted it. I had been "against the war," still was and always would be. Yet there I was, fist in the air, thinking, "Finally the US has done something right!"

In retrospect, I can hazard an analysis. Guilt was probably the prime ingredient of the witch's brew that had poisoned me, over the years, just as it poisons many in the aftermath of any war. My father once told me, very wisely, that "Everybody feels guilty when there's a war." He wasn't completely correct, since the ones who should feel the most guilty do not, or if they do they don't tell us about it. But I think for most people it is true. There is survivor's guilt, guilt about killing and guilt about not killing. (My told me about this last one.) Tim O'Brien writes (in The Things They Carried) that he felt guilty about not being able to face the consequences of fleeing to Canada instead of submitting to the draft. 

I made the opposite choice, not to submit to the draft, so I guess I was bound to feel the opposite guilt, about choosing not to go to war. As long as both the war and the opposition to it were raging, the guilt could be suppressed. But eventually it had to seep up again through the morass of "cultural values" that are actually indistinguishable from internalized propaganda. Refusing to fight could be seen as "brave" as long as it had consequences, like going to jail or going into exile, but in time the ancient shibboleth about "becoming a man" by "serving," that is, fighting – undergoing the traditional ordeal, the rite of passage, the trial by fire  – worms its way back into and chips away at one's self-esteem.

I am only able to say this because of what happened on November 30, 1988. 

But first you have to know the following. 

Sometime in 1986 or 1987, as Vee and I were walking down Ysenburgstraße, near the university, on our way to our favorite Turkish restaurant, we passed by the Goethe Gymnasium (high school). Something about the scene struck me. The schoolyard, behind a wire mesh fence, was deserted, the classrooms empty. Inside one of them I could see a blackboard and a wall map.

I hadn't written a poem in years. But later that night, or the next day, I wrote this:

Schoolyard

through the wire mesh at night
the schoolyard domed in yellow light
smooth and empty no-man's-land
like the inside of a peach can

the old block left to lurch
shut up tighter than a church
through darkened eyes we hardly see
inside the flags and maps of country

once as children, fond of yarns
father's land and mother's arms
we learned our lessons, by the book
of chinks in armor, gobbledygook

till the bell rang, and we heard her
each one screaming bloody murder
free for all, we came to blows
over hopscotch and dominoes

now that concrete slab
packed over worms and blab
dirty words unseeming
childish poems without meaning
engraved with names of love and war
is still, but will crack once more

It came out in a rush, as if I were taking dictation from someone sitting inside my head. I had no idea what it meant.

It was a premonition.

Fast-forwarding now to Nov. 30, 1988, it was the day of Vee's hysterectomy. A week or so before she went to the hospital I was looking through the TV guide to find something to record and watch while she was gone. It was before we had cable so I can't explain why I was looking at the schedule for a channel (WDR, Westdeutsche Rundfunk) we didn’t get. I didn't normally do this.

My eyes lit on a program that was scheduled to be aired a few nights later. The title was Präsidentenmord. It turned out to be the German version of Nigel Turner’s (then two-part) documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which had received no attention at all in Germany. I had heard nothing about it. Nor had I ever had a second thought about the assassination of President Kennedy. No curiosity, no doubts, no questions. I can remember hearing about the shooting in my freshman dorm at Hopkins and getting a little irritated at the fellow across the hall for being flippant about it, because I felt it was a sad thing. But nothing more. I was not particularly upset or even interested. 

Nevertheless, I got into the car and drove all the way across town to the university media center, where they could receive all the channels, and arranged for them to record the program. I will always ask myself what stars had crossed to make that happen. I had never done it before, and never did it again.

I picked up the film the next day but didn’t watch it right away. I waited until the day of Vee's operation, when I would be alone and need some entertainment. 

The film was in two parts. Even before the first part was over I was on the phone with Vee. She was still recovering from the anesthesia and I felt pretty foolish since she was the one who had just had her guts torn out, but that's the way I felt. I went on and on. It was the government, my own government! I must have said it a hundred times. 

The film didn't mention Vietnam. I didn't make that connection explicitly until weeks later, when I read about JFK's withdrawal plan in a footnote in David Scheim's Contract on America. (It was a minor point in his main thesis that the Mafia did it.) I had never heard of this. I had always thought that JFK got us into Vietnam, and LBJ and Nixon just continued the war. 

But the dam had broken. The coin had dropped. I started reading about the assassination (Scheim's book was the first). There were a lot of details to assimilate, but the main point remained as starkly simple as it is today: the government did it. By the time I wrote my review of the film in April 1989 (Vee and I met with Nigel Turner and Sue Winter in London during the Easter vacation) it was clear that the Vietnam war was a major factor in the decision to kill the president, and when I re-read the poem I had written a year or two earlier, I realized that it was a premonition. The images and connotation were now clear: "the old block,"  "flags and maps of country," "children, fond of yarns/father's land and mother's arms," "chinks and gooks," "screaming bloody murder/free for all, we came to blows," "dominoes," "that concrete slab," "engraved with names of love and war," "is still, but will crack once more." 

Indeed, that slab had cracked wide open, and what came pouring out would occupy me for many years thereafter, if not the rest of my life. I was no longer that confused fellow with his fist in the air on April 15, 1986. That person was dead. My head was clear.

This happened. It wasn't me. I didn't do it, any more than I had caused Otto to appear in Saintes Maries. I don't know who or what it was, but I am certain that it was something. Something was afoot.