I have vanquished the writer's block
Pardon the literary intrusion into this timeline, but some stories just desperately need to be told. The idea for this short story just hit me with the force of revelation one day, and so here it is, at least in part. If this Alt History is ever to be published, this will be the prototype.
A Simple Life
The last seconds of the school day always tick by the slowest, especially on a Friday. For the sixth graders of Alexandra Kollontai Middle School, that was doubly true this Friday. Tomorrow would be May Day, probably the biggest holiday of the whole year.(1) The streets and fora of New York would be filled with parades, picnics, art shows, theater troupes, and all other manner of ways for a kid to become lost in youthful exuberance.
And, unfortunately for the American History class, the teacher Lily Edelin insisted upon using every second of seventh period to cover as much ground as possible. The lecture would continue until the final bell rang, and would not relent so much as a moment sooner. This suited Lenina Revmira(2) just fine as she watched the birds frolic about outside the classroom window. With a heavy sigh, she slumped down to her desk, wishing she could be as free as the birds. The pigeons suddenly scattered from their roosts, heralding the coming of a great black raven. It perched on the tree branch right outside the window, unconcerned with the panic of the other birds. And as Lenina stared, the raven stared right back.
"Students," the teacher called, "who can tell me about the dictatorship of the proletariat that we read about in Critique of the Gotha Programme?" The class was silent, fidgeting uncomfortably. Less than a minute to go until the bell, and Comrade Edelin won't let anyone go until the question is answered to her satisfaction. Since no one volunteered, the teacher began searching through the class to volunteer someone.
Before she could make her choice, one kid finally spoke up. "I'll bet Lenina knows," he snickered.
Lenina shot him an icy glare. "You scab!" she wanted to say, but she bit her tongue. Lenina played video games with Fred after school, helped him with his homework, and this was how he showed his thanks? She just couldn't understand it, let alone why he was laughing about it.
"Pranks like that aren't very nice, Fred. However, Lenina; you shouldn't be daydreaming like that in class. It's disrespectful to your classmates. So, unless the raven outside can answer the question better than you, I'd like to hear your answer."
Edelin's smile just sickened Lenina. She was so matronizing about everything. With a sigh, Lenina flipped through her notes, trying to find something important to say so that the day could end and she could go home. "Well," she paused, fiddling with one of her dreadlocks as she collected herself, "the dictatorship of the proletariat is like when the workers overthrow the capitalists and the state, and set up a new worker's state to defend the revolution from enemies."
"And who leads the workers?"
Lenina flipped through her notes again. "Uh, is it the vanguard party?"
"Yes. But who then teaches the vanguard how to fight the revolution?"
"Damn know it alls like you" was what she wanted to say. But she wasn't that rude. "That would be the working class right?"
“Yes. But it looks like that's all we have time for now. So, remember to read up on the Foster government's Red Terror, and be prepared to criticize it in class tomorrow in relation to Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat. Okay, have a nice weekend.”
The class bolted out the door as soon as they heard “all we have time for.” The race outside was brutal, but Lenina was a bit taller and stronger then most in her class, so she had a natural advantage pushing her way through to her locker and then outside. She squeezed her way through the throngs of people, and out through the school's main entrance. From there, it was a short walk to the metro station. She skipped down the several flights of stairs down to the metro platform. Sticking her hands in her jean pockets, she paced back and forth while the platform began to fill up, waiting for the 3:40 train to arrive. Many of her classmates would ride the same metroline home, and they milled about, gossiping about the day's drama.
When the sleek train arrived, everyone quickly filed into the train and found a seat. Once the doors closed, the train accelerated quickly, though in the tunnel it was hard to get an accurate sense of speed. The trains in New York's Metro Line usually cruised at around 130 kph, but the new express lines that ran from the Jersey Shore to the far end of Long Island would routinely break 200 kph.(3)
Lenina always enjoyed the metro ride to and from school. The trains were very nice, and the whole metro was well maintained, befitting its status as the pride of the New York ASR. While the stops weren't quite as frequent as the light rail or the bus lines, it was the best way to get long distances. The train soon reached her stop, and she quickly disembarked, along with a couple of her classmates and some other commuters. She didn't go to her grandfather's flat often enough to recognize the rest of the commuters on this stop, but her classmates clearly did. Older brothers, friends of the family, fellow communards, it didn't really matter; the sense of community in the neighborhoods of the city was always strong.
Lenina took her time to get to her grandfather's flat. As she lollygagged, she looked at the agitprop pasted on the sides of the old buildings, wondering if this sort of thing was common when Grandpa Arnold was a boy. The military's famous Uncle Sinclair “I want you to join the RDF, comrade!” posters always struck Lenina as a bit odd. Uncle Sinclair just looked too old and jolly to seriously encourage someone to join the military to fulfill their national service requirement. He was like a skinny, beardless Santa Claus; not very intimidating.
She bought two cappuccinos from the café across from Grandpa Arnold's apartment building. Her grandpa lived up on the eighth floor, so she decided to skip the pastries they barrista tried to offer her before skipping across the street. She took the elevator up, after briefly contemplating taking the stairs. Grandpa's flat was just down the hall and around the corner, and much to her amazement, her grandpa was already waiting there to welcome her.
“Grandpa!” she cried, “how did you know I was here?”
Grandpa gave her a big hug before taking one of the cappuccinos from her. “Well, baby-doll, I always know when my granddaughter is coming, because you bring joy wherever you go.” He took her backpack, and ushered her into his flat.
“Aww, grandpa,” she blushed and quickly changed the subject, “Are your flatmates in?”
“No, looks like we've got the commons to ourselves for the next few hours. Jim's got his chemistry lab at the university today. Robin and Marian are going out to dinner, and Marcel... well, Marcel is just being Marcel. I think he's out clubbing or something. He never tells us much.”
Lenina had hear a lot about Marcel these past few weeks. Marcel was one of those people who might be called “antisocial” rather unfairly due to his idiosyncratic behavior and lack of participation in community events. As Grandpa Arnold had described him, he was a nice enough fellow, just not really with the program when it came to communal living and civic virtue. He suspected he was probably from Canada, so sharing a flat with a widowed pensioner, a young married lawyer couple, and a young college student was probably a new experience for him.
“Well that's a bummer. I was hoping to get to say hi to Robin and Marian; he's such a funny guy, and Marian really is sweet as can be.”
“Well, I'll make sure to tell them that you missed them. Now, you tell me about your day while I make us a snack to go with the coffee.” He pulled out a stool at the island in the flat's well-equipped kitchen before setting about the business of after-school snacks.
Lenina sat on the stool, dangling her feet playfully while she told Grandpa Arnold about her day. “Well, we're learning about polynomials in Algebra class right now. It's really hard, but the teacher says it's important. Oh well. My group aced the quiz though!”
“Oh, that's great. So, coffee cake or fruit slices?”
“Mm... how about both?”
“Sounds good to me,” Grandpa Arnold smiled as he started chopping the two Fuji apples into slices.
“We watched Premier's Questions in Politics today. Daniel Berrigan(4) is a smart old guy; he really did well fending off Progressive Labor's questions, I think. My teacher, Comrade Guliani, says that there's probably going to be new elections soon.”
“Probably true. So, what else did you do today, sweetie?”
“Well, in Literature we started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It's supposedly based on some real events in the author's life. So kind of the Old South right after the Revolution. I think it's really interesting. I like Scout, she's a neat character.”
“Oh, I remember that book. I read it when it was first published. Really good book, good to see your teacher knows a good one when she sees one. Yeah, I wasn't much older than Scout during the Cultural Revolution, probably about your age when it was going down. Here's your snacks, sweetie.” He took a first sip of his cappuccino. “I say, I do like Ma Belle's espresso. She makes it the proper way, like they do in Italy. I remember having cappuccino in Rome with some of the Frente Populare partisans, after we liberated the city from the Fascists. One part espresso, one part milk, one part foam...”
“Grandpa?” Lenina asked, sipping on her cappuccino.
“Yes dear?”
“What was it like, growing up in the Cultural Revolution?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, Edelin wants us to discuss the Red Terror and other things of that period, and I just can't help but think that so much of that stuff was just wrong. I mean, what does that say about our country, when we did terrible things then?”
“Well, sweetie,” he said, scratching his graying goatee, “that's only one part of a very complicated time. I was about your age during that time period, just growing up, but I still remember a whole lot about that time. A lot of things were going on, some good, some bad. But mostly, it was just an exciting time.”
“Like what?” she asked, nibbling on an apple slice.
“Ever heard of the Collectivization Drives?”
“Vaguely...”
“Well, starting in late 35 and early 36, the union government started this massive public campaign to collectivize agriculture and what was left of private capitalist business from the revolution. Mostly the smaller businesses and factories that escaped occupation during the great strikes of 33 and 34.”
“That does sound kind of exciting.”
“Yeah, it really was. I was twelve when it started. I remember when the drive started. My father was a small farmer, and we were in the town of Three Forks, Montana that day to pick up some barb wire fence to string out on the border between our farm and neighbor's ranch. Just as we were leaving the general store, a group of men from the Ag secretariat, along with a small group of party workers, were collecting a town meeting in a nearby park. So we went down to see what the commotion was about.
“Now, my dad had been a loyal member of the Worker's Communist Party for over a decade, and he knew all of the officials from the state's union and party locals. He didn't recognize most of these men, which must of meant they were from the national party headquarters in Chicago, which meant this must be important.
“The head honcho of the union government officials identified himself as Cecil Salmon, one of the principal administrators the Agriculture Secretariat, and he said something along the lines of 'In order to continue the revolution, we must not rest until all the vestiges of capitalism are eliminated from our society.' I'm sure he said a lot more, but I can't really remember much more than it was a rousing speech and everybody cheered.”
Lenina sipped her cappuccino thoughtfully. “Were all speeches that jingoistic in the 30s, Grandpa?”
“Absolutely, pumpkin. Absolutely.”
She laughed heartily. “So, what did you do?”
“Well, the mayor of the town convened a town assembly that night, and the party workers gave us the brief on the government's collectivization policy. They encouraged us to form a kibbutz from the town and the surrounding farm land, and collectivize all of the agriculture in the county and bring it under rational management. And with the kind of aid the government was offering, we really would have been stupid to say no. So, going with the revolutionary spirit of the time, we agreed to trade in our private land allotments for tractors and advanced irrigation systems.
“A couple people in the county needed to be dragged along, but mostly, if they put up a lot of resistance we just let them stew in their reactionary juices. So we tore down most of the old fences, and set up new ones, mingled our herds, and marveled at the new wonderful tractors that came in on the railroad that spring. It was a lot of hard work, and the managers and technicians the Ag secretariat assigned to our kibbutz were a bit spread too far, too thin. But they taught us what we needed to learn to keep them running until they could do the more detailed work. Hell, working on those beasts is why I learned how to be a mechanic. Wasn't quite strong enough to buck hay or rope calves yet, but I was good with my hands and I learned fast.”
“I really never thought of you as a farm boy, Grandpa. Montana's like three thousand kilometers away from the New York ASR. Why'd you leave for here?” Lenina asked.
“Well, I left because I met your grandma. But that's another story. Now where was I? Oh yeah, working on the kibbutz. One thing I'll always remember was during the summer of 36, we got a lot of German immigrants coming into the county. From what I heard, there were a lot of them scattered all around the country. A lot of them couldn't speak much English when they arrived, and I was always so intrigued by their strange clothes, or that they didn't go to church with the rest of the community.”
“Why didn't they go to church, if it was so important in the town?”
“Most of them were Jews, sweetie, fleeing the Nazis.”
“Oh...” she said, realizing how serious it was.
“Quite a few of them came over thanks to cloak and dagger diplomacy between our government and the Nazi regime. The Nazis hated Jews, but didn't know what to do with them now that they were in power. The politically easy solution was to make as many of them as possible someone else's problem. They'd take their homes and possessions, and give them a one way ticket to America.”
“That's terrible!” she gasped, “how could they do such horrible things to other people?”
“Believe me, exiled Ashkenazim got off light compared to the rest of the Jews in Europe. You've probably never heard of the Final Solution, have you?”
“No, I haven't. Though I think Comrade Edelin said that we'd be watching a documentary on that next week.”
Grandpa Arnold sighed. Her innocence was about to be shattered in a pretty brutal way. Better now then later, so he thought. “Well, let's just say that it's something you'll never forget...” he said, as memories of the living skeletons he had seen when his unit liberated Dachau came flooding back in a torrent. The anger was still there as well, the seething hatred he had felt as they marched the townsfolk and captured Hitler Youth paramilitaries through the hell they had turned a blind eye to. If his chest had been a cannon, he'd have shot his heart at the ones who were responsible.
“Grandpa, are you okay? You look upset...”
“Oh, I'm okay,” he lied and then changed the subject, “Did I ever tell you about one of my old friends, Otto Liebgott?”
“No, I don't think so. Who was he?”
“Well, he was a German immigrant that I met when I was a boy. He settled in Three Forks that summer I was working on the kibbutz's tractors. In Germany, before the Nazis had come to power, he had been a fairly prosperous banker in Munich. He arrived at Ellis Island with only the clothes on his back, a letter from his brother encouraging him to come out west.
“Needless to say, he did not feel very welcome in the UASR.” Hearing her laugh, he chuckled too. “Sad thing is, a lot of my fellow kibbutzniks didn't treat him with much respect either. Sure, he wasn't the friendliest, and had been a class enemy once upon a time. But he was a still a human being, and that might as well have been another life. He was as proletarian as the rest of us now.
“He got employment teaching German at the school house, since the new curricula from the republican government in Helena required all of us to learn a second language. When he wasn't teaching us, or working on the community projects with the rest of the kibbutz, he would teach other German immigrants how to speak English.”
“Sounds like a neat guy then,” Lenina said.
“I'll never forget when I first met him. He knew a fair bit about engines, since he used to own a car back in Germany, so he and I were sent to go recover a tractor that had broken down in one of the hayfields during the harvest season. No one else was available, so it was up to a thirteen year old kid with a spot of on-the-job training, and a former banker used to tinkering with passenger cars to go rescue the big beast.
“He wasn't very talkative in the morning. We stripped apart the engine, looking for the problem all morning, until finally, frustrated and hungry, we decided to break for lunch. I finished before him, and like most kids I hated awkward silences. So I decided to make small talk with him. 'So, got any family Otto?' I asked him.
“He was quiet for a long time, and just when I was about to move onto something else, he finally answered. 'Just one brother,' he drawled, in between bites of his sandwhich, 'Karl. I haven't spoken with him in years though.”
“'Oh, why is that?' I asked, forgetting that this was such a touchy subject.
“'Well, if you must know boy, it's because of politics. We had a falling out because father disowned him for joining the Communist Party, and I refuse to take his side in the issue. Oh, he was always so impetuous. But, now, he's probably the only reason I made it out of Germany, even though we haven't spoken in since he left home almost a decade ago.'
“Now, naïve as I was, I just didn't understand this. I mean, I had gotten into fights with my brother, but we always worked it out and we stayed friends. 'Well, why don't you just talk to him then?' I said.
“What did he say about that?” she asked.
“He laughed actually. He said something like, 'If only more people were as straightforward and honest as they were as boys.' I think we clicked right about then.”
“How did he deal with living here?”
“Pretty well actually. He took to teaching pretty well, and pretty soon he was teaching the philosophy he learned from his days at university to some of the seniors in the high school. I think some good collective labor was great therapy for him, and he finally reunited with his brother too.”
Lenina smiled, “That's a happy ending.”
1. It's 1999 at the start of this story
2. Yeah, a nod to Brave New World. But more, it's just that I think "Lenina" is a pretty name really, regardless of its significance.
3. This timeline will come as close as possible to being a trainwank
4. To fend off the inevitable questions, Daniel Berrigan is an ordained Trinitarian priest, and a member of the Left Democratic Party. He leads an electoral coalition with the Socialist Party and the Social Ecology Union.
Pardon the literary intrusion into this timeline, but some stories just desperately need to be told. The idea for this short story just hit me with the force of revelation one day, and so here it is, at least in part. If this Alt History is ever to be published, this will be the prototype.
A Simple Life
The last seconds of the school day always tick by the slowest, especially on a Friday. For the sixth graders of Alexandra Kollontai Middle School, that was doubly true this Friday. Tomorrow would be May Day, probably the biggest holiday of the whole year.(1) The streets and fora of New York would be filled with parades, picnics, art shows, theater troupes, and all other manner of ways for a kid to become lost in youthful exuberance.
And, unfortunately for the American History class, the teacher Lily Edelin insisted upon using every second of seventh period to cover as much ground as possible. The lecture would continue until the final bell rang, and would not relent so much as a moment sooner. This suited Lenina Revmira(2) just fine as she watched the birds frolic about outside the classroom window. With a heavy sigh, she slumped down to her desk, wishing she could be as free as the birds. The pigeons suddenly scattered from their roosts, heralding the coming of a great black raven. It perched on the tree branch right outside the window, unconcerned with the panic of the other birds. And as Lenina stared, the raven stared right back.
"Students," the teacher called, "who can tell me about the dictatorship of the proletariat that we read about in Critique of the Gotha Programme?" The class was silent, fidgeting uncomfortably. Less than a minute to go until the bell, and Comrade Edelin won't let anyone go until the question is answered to her satisfaction. Since no one volunteered, the teacher began searching through the class to volunteer someone.
Before she could make her choice, one kid finally spoke up. "I'll bet Lenina knows," he snickered.
Lenina shot him an icy glare. "You scab!" she wanted to say, but she bit her tongue. Lenina played video games with Fred after school, helped him with his homework, and this was how he showed his thanks? She just couldn't understand it, let alone why he was laughing about it.
"Pranks like that aren't very nice, Fred. However, Lenina; you shouldn't be daydreaming like that in class. It's disrespectful to your classmates. So, unless the raven outside can answer the question better than you, I'd like to hear your answer."
Edelin's smile just sickened Lenina. She was so matronizing about everything. With a sigh, Lenina flipped through her notes, trying to find something important to say so that the day could end and she could go home. "Well," she paused, fiddling with one of her dreadlocks as she collected herself, "the dictatorship of the proletariat is like when the workers overthrow the capitalists and the state, and set up a new worker's state to defend the revolution from enemies."
"And who leads the workers?"
Lenina flipped through her notes again. "Uh, is it the vanguard party?"
"Yes. But who then teaches the vanguard how to fight the revolution?"
"Damn know it alls like you" was what she wanted to say. But she wasn't that rude. "That would be the working class right?"
“Yes. But it looks like that's all we have time for now. So, remember to read up on the Foster government's Red Terror, and be prepared to criticize it in class tomorrow in relation to Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat. Okay, have a nice weekend.”
The class bolted out the door as soon as they heard “all we have time for.” The race outside was brutal, but Lenina was a bit taller and stronger then most in her class, so she had a natural advantage pushing her way through to her locker and then outside. She squeezed her way through the throngs of people, and out through the school's main entrance. From there, it was a short walk to the metro station. She skipped down the several flights of stairs down to the metro platform. Sticking her hands in her jean pockets, she paced back and forth while the platform began to fill up, waiting for the 3:40 train to arrive. Many of her classmates would ride the same metroline home, and they milled about, gossiping about the day's drama.
When the sleek train arrived, everyone quickly filed into the train and found a seat. Once the doors closed, the train accelerated quickly, though in the tunnel it was hard to get an accurate sense of speed. The trains in New York's Metro Line usually cruised at around 130 kph, but the new express lines that ran from the Jersey Shore to the far end of Long Island would routinely break 200 kph.(3)
Lenina always enjoyed the metro ride to and from school. The trains were very nice, and the whole metro was well maintained, befitting its status as the pride of the New York ASR. While the stops weren't quite as frequent as the light rail or the bus lines, it was the best way to get long distances. The train soon reached her stop, and she quickly disembarked, along with a couple of her classmates and some other commuters. She didn't go to her grandfather's flat often enough to recognize the rest of the commuters on this stop, but her classmates clearly did. Older brothers, friends of the family, fellow communards, it didn't really matter; the sense of community in the neighborhoods of the city was always strong.
Lenina took her time to get to her grandfather's flat. As she lollygagged, she looked at the agitprop pasted on the sides of the old buildings, wondering if this sort of thing was common when Grandpa Arnold was a boy. The military's famous Uncle Sinclair “I want you to join the RDF, comrade!” posters always struck Lenina as a bit odd. Uncle Sinclair just looked too old and jolly to seriously encourage someone to join the military to fulfill their national service requirement. He was like a skinny, beardless Santa Claus; not very intimidating.
She bought two cappuccinos from the café across from Grandpa Arnold's apartment building. Her grandpa lived up on the eighth floor, so she decided to skip the pastries they barrista tried to offer her before skipping across the street. She took the elevator up, after briefly contemplating taking the stairs. Grandpa's flat was just down the hall and around the corner, and much to her amazement, her grandpa was already waiting there to welcome her.
“Grandpa!” she cried, “how did you know I was here?”
Grandpa gave her a big hug before taking one of the cappuccinos from her. “Well, baby-doll, I always know when my granddaughter is coming, because you bring joy wherever you go.” He took her backpack, and ushered her into his flat.
“Aww, grandpa,” she blushed and quickly changed the subject, “Are your flatmates in?”
“No, looks like we've got the commons to ourselves for the next few hours. Jim's got his chemistry lab at the university today. Robin and Marian are going out to dinner, and Marcel... well, Marcel is just being Marcel. I think he's out clubbing or something. He never tells us much.”
Lenina had hear a lot about Marcel these past few weeks. Marcel was one of those people who might be called “antisocial” rather unfairly due to his idiosyncratic behavior and lack of participation in community events. As Grandpa Arnold had described him, he was a nice enough fellow, just not really with the program when it came to communal living and civic virtue. He suspected he was probably from Canada, so sharing a flat with a widowed pensioner, a young married lawyer couple, and a young college student was probably a new experience for him.
“Well that's a bummer. I was hoping to get to say hi to Robin and Marian; he's such a funny guy, and Marian really is sweet as can be.”
“Well, I'll make sure to tell them that you missed them. Now, you tell me about your day while I make us a snack to go with the coffee.” He pulled out a stool at the island in the flat's well-equipped kitchen before setting about the business of after-school snacks.
Lenina sat on the stool, dangling her feet playfully while she told Grandpa Arnold about her day. “Well, we're learning about polynomials in Algebra class right now. It's really hard, but the teacher says it's important. Oh well. My group aced the quiz though!”
“Oh, that's great. So, coffee cake or fruit slices?”
“Mm... how about both?”
“Sounds good to me,” Grandpa Arnold smiled as he started chopping the two Fuji apples into slices.
“We watched Premier's Questions in Politics today. Daniel Berrigan(4) is a smart old guy; he really did well fending off Progressive Labor's questions, I think. My teacher, Comrade Guliani, says that there's probably going to be new elections soon.”
“Probably true. So, what else did you do today, sweetie?”
“Well, in Literature we started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It's supposedly based on some real events in the author's life. So kind of the Old South right after the Revolution. I think it's really interesting. I like Scout, she's a neat character.”
“Oh, I remember that book. I read it when it was first published. Really good book, good to see your teacher knows a good one when she sees one. Yeah, I wasn't much older than Scout during the Cultural Revolution, probably about your age when it was going down. Here's your snacks, sweetie.” He took a first sip of his cappuccino. “I say, I do like Ma Belle's espresso. She makes it the proper way, like they do in Italy. I remember having cappuccino in Rome with some of the Frente Populare partisans, after we liberated the city from the Fascists. One part espresso, one part milk, one part foam...”
“Grandpa?” Lenina asked, sipping on her cappuccino.
“Yes dear?”
“What was it like, growing up in the Cultural Revolution?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, Edelin wants us to discuss the Red Terror and other things of that period, and I just can't help but think that so much of that stuff was just wrong. I mean, what does that say about our country, when we did terrible things then?”
“Well, sweetie,” he said, scratching his graying goatee, “that's only one part of a very complicated time. I was about your age during that time period, just growing up, but I still remember a whole lot about that time. A lot of things were going on, some good, some bad. But mostly, it was just an exciting time.”
“Like what?” she asked, nibbling on an apple slice.
“Ever heard of the Collectivization Drives?”
“Vaguely...”
“Well, starting in late 35 and early 36, the union government started this massive public campaign to collectivize agriculture and what was left of private capitalist business from the revolution. Mostly the smaller businesses and factories that escaped occupation during the great strikes of 33 and 34.”
“That does sound kind of exciting.”
“Yeah, it really was. I was twelve when it started. I remember when the drive started. My father was a small farmer, and we were in the town of Three Forks, Montana that day to pick up some barb wire fence to string out on the border between our farm and neighbor's ranch. Just as we were leaving the general store, a group of men from the Ag secretariat, along with a small group of party workers, were collecting a town meeting in a nearby park. So we went down to see what the commotion was about.
“Now, my dad had been a loyal member of the Worker's Communist Party for over a decade, and he knew all of the officials from the state's union and party locals. He didn't recognize most of these men, which must of meant they were from the national party headquarters in Chicago, which meant this must be important.
“The head honcho of the union government officials identified himself as Cecil Salmon, one of the principal administrators the Agriculture Secretariat, and he said something along the lines of 'In order to continue the revolution, we must not rest until all the vestiges of capitalism are eliminated from our society.' I'm sure he said a lot more, but I can't really remember much more than it was a rousing speech and everybody cheered.”
Lenina sipped her cappuccino thoughtfully. “Were all speeches that jingoistic in the 30s, Grandpa?”
“Absolutely, pumpkin. Absolutely.”
She laughed heartily. “So, what did you do?”
“Well, the mayor of the town convened a town assembly that night, and the party workers gave us the brief on the government's collectivization policy. They encouraged us to form a kibbutz from the town and the surrounding farm land, and collectivize all of the agriculture in the county and bring it under rational management. And with the kind of aid the government was offering, we really would have been stupid to say no. So, going with the revolutionary spirit of the time, we agreed to trade in our private land allotments for tractors and advanced irrigation systems.
“A couple people in the county needed to be dragged along, but mostly, if they put up a lot of resistance we just let them stew in their reactionary juices. So we tore down most of the old fences, and set up new ones, mingled our herds, and marveled at the new wonderful tractors that came in on the railroad that spring. It was a lot of hard work, and the managers and technicians the Ag secretariat assigned to our kibbutz were a bit spread too far, too thin. But they taught us what we needed to learn to keep them running until they could do the more detailed work. Hell, working on those beasts is why I learned how to be a mechanic. Wasn't quite strong enough to buck hay or rope calves yet, but I was good with my hands and I learned fast.”
“I really never thought of you as a farm boy, Grandpa. Montana's like three thousand kilometers away from the New York ASR. Why'd you leave for here?” Lenina asked.
“Well, I left because I met your grandma. But that's another story. Now where was I? Oh yeah, working on the kibbutz. One thing I'll always remember was during the summer of 36, we got a lot of German immigrants coming into the county. From what I heard, there were a lot of them scattered all around the country. A lot of them couldn't speak much English when they arrived, and I was always so intrigued by their strange clothes, or that they didn't go to church with the rest of the community.”
“Why didn't they go to church, if it was so important in the town?”
“Most of them were Jews, sweetie, fleeing the Nazis.”
“Oh...” she said, realizing how serious it was.
“Quite a few of them came over thanks to cloak and dagger diplomacy between our government and the Nazi regime. The Nazis hated Jews, but didn't know what to do with them now that they were in power. The politically easy solution was to make as many of them as possible someone else's problem. They'd take their homes and possessions, and give them a one way ticket to America.”
“That's terrible!” she gasped, “how could they do such horrible things to other people?”
“Believe me, exiled Ashkenazim got off light compared to the rest of the Jews in Europe. You've probably never heard of the Final Solution, have you?”
“No, I haven't. Though I think Comrade Edelin said that we'd be watching a documentary on that next week.”
Grandpa Arnold sighed. Her innocence was about to be shattered in a pretty brutal way. Better now then later, so he thought. “Well, let's just say that it's something you'll never forget...” he said, as memories of the living skeletons he had seen when his unit liberated Dachau came flooding back in a torrent. The anger was still there as well, the seething hatred he had felt as they marched the townsfolk and captured Hitler Youth paramilitaries through the hell they had turned a blind eye to. If his chest had been a cannon, he'd have shot his heart at the ones who were responsible.
“Grandpa, are you okay? You look upset...”
“Oh, I'm okay,” he lied and then changed the subject, “Did I ever tell you about one of my old friends, Otto Liebgott?”
“No, I don't think so. Who was he?”
“Well, he was a German immigrant that I met when I was a boy. He settled in Three Forks that summer I was working on the kibbutz's tractors. In Germany, before the Nazis had come to power, he had been a fairly prosperous banker in Munich. He arrived at Ellis Island with only the clothes on his back, a letter from his brother encouraging him to come out west.
“Needless to say, he did not feel very welcome in the UASR.” Hearing her laugh, he chuckled too. “Sad thing is, a lot of my fellow kibbutzniks didn't treat him with much respect either. Sure, he wasn't the friendliest, and had been a class enemy once upon a time. But he was a still a human being, and that might as well have been another life. He was as proletarian as the rest of us now.
“He got employment teaching German at the school house, since the new curricula from the republican government in Helena required all of us to learn a second language. When he wasn't teaching us, or working on the community projects with the rest of the kibbutz, he would teach other German immigrants how to speak English.”
“Sounds like a neat guy then,” Lenina said.
“I'll never forget when I first met him. He knew a fair bit about engines, since he used to own a car back in Germany, so he and I were sent to go recover a tractor that had broken down in one of the hayfields during the harvest season. No one else was available, so it was up to a thirteen year old kid with a spot of on-the-job training, and a former banker used to tinkering with passenger cars to go rescue the big beast.
“He wasn't very talkative in the morning. We stripped apart the engine, looking for the problem all morning, until finally, frustrated and hungry, we decided to break for lunch. I finished before him, and like most kids I hated awkward silences. So I decided to make small talk with him. 'So, got any family Otto?' I asked him.
“He was quiet for a long time, and just when I was about to move onto something else, he finally answered. 'Just one brother,' he drawled, in between bites of his sandwhich, 'Karl. I haven't spoken with him in years though.”
“'Oh, why is that?' I asked, forgetting that this was such a touchy subject.
“'Well, if you must know boy, it's because of politics. We had a falling out because father disowned him for joining the Communist Party, and I refuse to take his side in the issue. Oh, he was always so impetuous. But, now, he's probably the only reason I made it out of Germany, even though we haven't spoken in since he left home almost a decade ago.'
“Now, naïve as I was, I just didn't understand this. I mean, I had gotten into fights with my brother, but we always worked it out and we stayed friends. 'Well, why don't you just talk to him then?' I said.
“What did he say about that?” she asked.
“He laughed actually. He said something like, 'If only more people were as straightforward and honest as they were as boys.' I think we clicked right about then.”
“How did he deal with living here?”
“Pretty well actually. He took to teaching pretty well, and pretty soon he was teaching the philosophy he learned from his days at university to some of the seniors in the high school. I think some good collective labor was great therapy for him, and he finally reunited with his brother too.”
Lenina smiled, “That's a happy ending.”
1. It's 1999 at the start of this story
2. Yeah, a nod to Brave New World. But more, it's just that I think "Lenina" is a pretty name really, regardless of its significance.
3. This timeline will come as close as possible to being a trainwank
4. To fend off the inevitable questions, Daniel Berrigan is an ordained Trinitarian priest, and a member of the Left Democratic Party. He leads an electoral coalition with the Socialist Party and the Social Ecology Union.
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