From First to Last: A Teacher’s Tale
Fourth Period: What’s in Your Survival Kit?
For third period of A Teacher’s Tale, please see:
Fourth period began less animated. Perhaps we were tired out from the first discussion. Or we were just ready for lunch. Each of us sewn together of platonic mind and bodily function. Was it true that one aspect was neither higher nor lower than the other? Or did the base function mock the high?
“Let’s begin this lesson with the Brits.”
I was at the board, reviewing our stockpile of terms. The students were reassembling.
“Krzystof mentioned in the first lesson that they were more civilized than the Americans. Is that what you meant Krzystof?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, getting comfortable in his chair. “It was a long time ago.”
“It was fifteen minutes ago!”
“Sir, I can’t remember what I just did in the hallway.”
I bowed my head.
“It’s no wonder literature is gasping for air.”
“Everything passes sir.”
“So this book will be forgotten once we stop talking about it?”
They nodded.
“So that means we can’t stop talking about it!”
“No sir. We have to forget,” Krzystof said, now alert. “We remember in order to forget.”
“Don’t be so wise. I’m talking about the death of literature.”
I held my worn paperback, polishing it like a jewel. We were stuck.
“Wait a second,” I said as if jolted. “Didn’t the Tralfamadorians have an evolved way of reading? Let me find it.”
I flipped through my book’s many creased pages, through bountiful red ink and stars in the margins, searching for a passage from memory. Forward and backward I went, time-traveling with Billy Pilgrim. It’s onerous trapping down those Tralfamdorians. The students waited for me in a lulled silence.
“Aha. Page 88. Are you guys there?”
They addressed their books sluggishly.
“Listen — ”
There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore. But you’re right—each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message—describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once.”
“Wow,” Wiki said after a pause. “He’s talking about his own book. It’s exactly what we were talking about. Everything is random.”
“But carefully chosen.”
“And marvelous sir?” Maja asked.
“You don’t find this book marvelous?”
“It’s describing hell.”
“It is and it isn’t. That’s why it’s hard to categorize. Vonnegut is giving us something more valuable than just the anguish of war. He’s giving us a point of view. Perhaps an evolved one. Beauty in the midst of hell.”
“Where’s the beauty sir?” Hakeem asked.
“Billy Pilgrim. Always smiling. Smiling at his captors in his Cinderella slippers and animal skin jacket with a diamond shining in the lining.”
They smirked.
“The British soldiers, they’re beautiful, singing the way they do. Always cleanly and making order. Putting on a play, hosting their guests with a buffet. Isn’t that a sign of civilization? To make art? To dine? To brush one’s teeth?”
“You’re exaggerating sir,” Krzystof spoke more assured and ready to go. “I’m not sure they’re beautiful. But I would say they were civilized. And it’s funny because that makes them better at war. That’s why the German officers like them so much.”
“So you do remember!”
“I remember when I want to remember.”
“That says a lot. So girls, what do you think of that statement. Civilized and better at war? That sounds like a contradiction.”
I waited for them to start up their engines.
“I don’t know about this war business,” Monika said. “Maybe you need to be organized to be good at war. But civilized?”
“I think they were better soldiers,” Maja said, “because they adapted to reality.”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t become perverted, like Filip said. Just thinking about themselves and their basic needs.”
“They didn’t masturbate!” Krzystof poked.
Maja wanted to finish.
“It’s like, they were one unit. They drew closer together. They were one.”
“And therefore not more primitive?” I asked. “Like Wiki had suggested?”
She nodded.
“But it’s just one half,” Wiki countered. “There’s still Lazarro. After Weary dies, he tells everyone that it was Billy’s fault. And Lazarro promises him that he’ll kill Billy after the war, that he’ll take care of him. There’s still revenge and brutality.”
“Of course there is. There’s everything under the sun. And we need to look at all of it, feel all of it, like it was one moment. It has amazing power and beauty doesn’t it? When you condense it all into one, like a piece of amber?”
We paused.
“I wanted to talk about the Brits because it brings us to an aspect of war that we haven’t really covered — brotherhood.”
Hakeem smiled.
“And civility. Do you remember that speech the British officer gave on behalf of hygiene?”
They filed through their books, for the most part. Pawel and Filip remained passengers only.
“I got it sir,” Wiki said. “Page 145. Can I read it?”
“Sure.”
Somewhere in there was a lecture on personal hygiene—
“This part sir?”
“Keep going.”
By the head of the Englishmen, and then a free election. At least half the Americans went on snoozing through it all. The Englishmen got up on the stage, and he rapped on the arm of a throne with a swagger stick, called, ‘Lads, lads, lads—can I have your attention, please?’ And so on….
“And so on…” Krzystof repeated.
Wiki continued:
What the Englishman said about survival was this: ‘If you stop taking pride in your appearance, you will very soon die.’ He said that he had seen several men die in the following way: “They ceased to stand up straight, then ceased to shave or wash, then ceased to get out of bed, then ceased to talk, then died. There is much to be said for it: it is evidently a very easy and painless way to go.
“So it goes.”
She said the last part with her face to me.
“So this book is not only about dying is it? Isn’t it about living? Isn’t it about how to live, given the knowledge and experience of war?”
Filip had a look of illumination.
“It’s interesting sir,” he said. “I mean, a little thing like your appearance. And you start to die.”
“Can you say how that works?”
“That in a way, we choose whether to live or die. And it doesn’t have to be in extreme conditions like war. We choose whether we want to live or die everyday. Don’t we? A little thing like taking care of your appearance. Or getting up earlier than you want. Cooking breakfast. Standing up straight.”
“And sitting up straight,” I needled.
He sat up.
“It’s about pride sir,” he said with more force. “About having pride.”
“So you wouldn’t turn to pornography in war? There’s not a whole lot of pride in that. It seems to be a choice of dying.”
“But I turn to pornography now.”
He chewed this over. The class chewed this over.
“You know sir,” Hakeem sat up, “my father is always teaching me little things like good manners. He’s always telling me to sit up at the table and to be courteous to other people. That’s why I help girls put their coats on, even though they laugh at me.”
They laughed now.
“I had no idea that this was like survival.”
“It sounds like civility should be in our survival kit,” I said.
“I think it should. How can you survive without pride?” Krzystof asked rhetorically. “How can we have pride in these big moments when we don’t have it in the little ones? The Americans don’t really have pride. They don’t have manners. They don’t have any training.”
I sank in the recollection of truth.
“But there’s just one problem with all this,” Krzystof continued, ready to deliver a punch line.
“Uh-oh..”
“I like the Englishmen you know. I like that they take pride in themselves. I like how they keep the latrines clean and put on a production of Cinderella. It’s like a little fairy tale in the middle of hell. But there’s a reason why the British soldiers were able to take pride in themselves.”
Wiki and Monika turned around with quizzical expressions.
“It’s a little strange, isn’t it?” he asked. “They’re POWs, but they eat like kings. And the Germans treat them like brothers.”
“Why is that? You’re right,” I said. “The Americans were brought in from the front and both the Germans and Englishmen mock them like they’re filth.”
“Weren’t the Brits in the camp for like four years?” Wiki asked.
“Vonnegut called them professional POWs.”
“How was that possible?”
“Because of a clerical error,” Krzystof answered firmly. “They were supposed to receive a monthly ration of supplies but because of a clerical error they received a year’s supply instead. They were sitting on a pot of gold! And they managed it perfectly and used it as bribes for the Germans. I mean, both sides were just profiting from the war. They were lucky, that’s all.”
“For the time being...”
“Yea, right. Still, it’s no wonder they’re singing all the time and giving speeches about hygiene,” he continued. “They’re not suffering! All because of a clerical error!”
“I don’t get it,” Hakeem said.
“Krzystof?”
“Everything is chance,” he repeated. “The Englishmen are more civilized because they’re better fed. They’re not struggling for survival.”
“So you don’t take their advice seriously?”
“I don’t know. It’s true but it’s also compromised, isn’t it? Would the officer give the same speech if their rations had been reduced by ten times instead of increased?”
“Man, my head is going to explode,” Hakeem said. “As soon as I come to some nice place someone says something and I’m lost.”
“There’s nothing really to hang onto is there Hakeem?”
“Nothing sir.”
He held onto his thick curly hair and bowed his head.
“But I still believe in good manners,” he said, propping himself back up. “And the pride stuff.”
“Good. I think it’s valuable too. And valueless.”
The conversation had stopped. The paradoxes, rather than plowing a trail through the tall weeds only weighed down on everyone like a heavy sack.
“Do you think it was true sir?” Wiki asked.
“What?”
“The part about the clerical error. That sounds far-fetched. Germans and Englishmen siding with each other? Why didn’t the Germans just kill the Brits and take their supplies?”
“Because war didn’t make them more primitive?” I challenged.
“Ughh. Now my head’s going to explode.”
“Sorry. Try not to splatter the books.”
“Sir!”
“English class is dangerous! It’s a battlefield in here! Bombs dropping, heads exploding!”
They leaned back in their chairs, looking much like my 9th graders in the same room just a couple hours prior.
“But really sir, he could have made it up,” Wiki continued. “How are we supposed to know what’s true and what’s not true?”
“That’s a great question. Does it matter?”
“It matters to me. I mean, if he’s just making this stuff up about the British soldiers then I don’t know what it means.”
“Do you think he’s making it up?”
“Well, he made up the parts about the Tralmad….the Trafalads….I can’t even say their names!”
“Tralfamadorians.”
“Tralmadorians. Damnit! The aliens. That was made up. So maybe the British officers are too. Maybe everything is.”
“Maybe he didn’t really live through the war,” I progressed.
“I’m not saying that.”
“You don’t trust Vonnegut? This is important. He says in the very first sentence of the book, ‘All this happened, more or less’. He announces his intentions from the get-go, even includes himself as a character, as the author attempting to retell this mess of human history. Even gives away the last line of the book in the first chapter. Poo-tee-weet.”
“I think it makes him more honest sir,” Krzystof said.
“But he’s mixing everything up,” Wiki replied. “He has all these war details, and even an exact speech given by the president.”
“President Truman’s speech after dropping the atomic bomb.”
“And then all this time travel. And Billy Pilgrim on the planet Tralmadore — “
“Tralfamadore.”
“I give up. But he’s on the planet in like a zoo cage with a movie star from Earth.”
“Montana Wildhack.”
“Montana Wildhack. And the aliens watch them have sex, like it’s a game-show or something. And then he becomes a successful businessman and makes tons of money. But then he’s in a plane crash somewhere — “
“Vermont. Sugarbush Mountain.”
“Vermont. He’s in a plane, which crashes into a mountain, and he somehow survives. Again! He survives a plane crash and the Dresden bombings. But then his wife, oh God, that was weird.”
“His wife — “
“His wife thinks that he has died in the plane crash and is driving hysterically to the hospital, or something like that.”
“That’s right. Billy is in the hospital and she has been told that if he survives, he will likely be a vegetable.”
“A vegetable. Okay. But he survives and turns out fine. Only his wife while driving to the hospital hits another car, and she dies!”
“A tragedy inside a tragedy.”
“Only it’s not a tragedy! It’s like, funny!”
“Well, it’s satire.”
“And the Tralfamadorians themselves.”
“You said it right!”
“And this business about being stuck in time, like bugs in amber. Back and forth, in and out of time. It’s all science fiction.”
“More or less,” I said. “One might say that the reality sounds more like fiction. The atomic bomb. Not to mention the rest of the holocaust burning in its ovens just to the east of Dresden…”
She paused to take that in.
“So do you think the fictional parts diminish the war parts?”
“I don’t think they conflict at all sir,” Krzystof answered first. “It’s obvious that he’s trying to make a point. He hates war.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, ‘and so on…’ first of all. Like you said, that line kind of says everything.”
“It doesn’t necessarily say he hates war. It says it happens and in a way there’s nothing to be done about it. That’s not exactly anti-war protest. It’s more like, ‘so it goes…’”
“Whatever sir. I think he hates war. I think he includes that transcription from Truman to build his case. Can I read it?”
“Absolutely. I can find it for you.”
I had marked this page with a wide fold.
“It’s page 185. Remember class, this is the actual radio address to the nation. You need to imagine that you’re at home, fireside, and you’re a proud American.”
The boys slouched in their chairs.
Krzystof pulled himself up and read in controlled and measured beats, as he were the President of the United States:
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British “Grand Slam”, which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many-fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But nobody knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to all the other engines of war which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1’s and V-2’s late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. It was to spare —
Krzystof raised his eyes from the book. “And so on,” he finished.
He read the passage well. Imperial. Righteous. A heightened drama compacted the room.
“I like it sir,” Filip said suddenly. “I’m ready to fight.”
“Oh Filip, you’re just crazy,” Wiki addressed him. “You go where the wind blows.”
“Maybe that’s true. I could go with this wind. It’s pretty powerful. It’s amazing how easy it is to be swept up.”
“A lot of boys were swept up,” I said. “War could not function if this were not true. Patriotism is as old as fire. It sweeps up the entire countryside and doesn’t seem to stop until the destruction reaches a natural culmination. Like an atomic bomb.”
“But that’s what the author is doing sir,” Krzystof said. “That’s his point. He’s mocking the speech like he’s mocking everything else.
“Or at least everything high and mighty,” I helped out. “That’s very typical of satire. To pull down those from their imagined pedestals.”
“So he’s mocking patriotism?” Wiki asked.
“What does everyone say when they defend the dropping of the atomic bomb?” I asked. “You guys likely discuss this in your history classes. Wiki?”
“I don’t know. How can you defend the dropping of an atomic bomb?”
“To spare lives,” Krzystof replied.
“Whose lives?” I asked. “How many lives did it take?”
“I don’t know. Like 100,000?”
“And counting,” I asserted. “The nuclear fallout didn’t end in 1945. The Japanese still suffer from that bomb. So how can you claim to have spared lives when all you’re really doing is taking them? It’s like taking a gun to an unarmed person, killing him, and saying I did it to save my life.”
“Self defense.”
“Yes. Except you just wiped out an entire population of civilians. How can you claim self defense?”
“But they started the war,” Filip countered. “They attacked Pearl Harbor.”
“Their army did. Their leaders did. So you drop a bomb on their people? Doesn’t that redraw the bounds of war? Doesn’t that mean it could be us next time, you or me, any time? It sounds like terrorism.”
“It is.”
“And Dresden?” I continued. “Did you pick up that detail Vonnegut slipped in, that the number of people who died in Dresden was actually higher than the victims of Hiroshima? And yet no one puts them into the same conversation. Nobody even knew much about Dresden until this book came out. Are they the same thing?”
“It’s the same thing,” Krzystof said. “That’s why he’s putting the speech in there. Dresden wasn’t a military target. It was a free city. They just bombed it as revenge for the London bombings. And Hiroshima was revenge for Pearl Harbor. That’s what I think.”
“Sweet revenge,” Wiki said, reciting Lazarro’s favorite pastime. “Lazarro said there was nothing sweeter than revenge. He said it while thinking of that poor dog.”
“What dog?” Pawel asked from his space, drawn into the conversation once more.
“It was awful sir,” Monika said. “I couldn’t read it.”
“Lazarro,” Wiki continued with more energy, “this crazy American GI, put bits of metal in the dog’s meat so that when he ate it, he….oh, it’s horrible...”
“That’s sick,” Pawel said.
“But carpet-bombing an entire city, incinerating about 135,000 people, isn’t?”
There was no answer.
“I don’t know why sir, but I feel worse when I think about the dog,” Maja said.
“It’s like that Stalin quote sir,” Krzystof added, “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”
“Did he say anything about dogs being more sympathetic than human beings?”
We paused.
“I want to go back to Lazarro, this crazy GI. Doesn’t it appear that there’s a direct link between his madness and President Truman? There’s nothing sweeter than revenge. Do you not hear that in Truman’s voice?”
“I heard it sir,” Monika said. “That’s exactly what it was.”
“That’s what felt so good about it,” Filip reflected. “It’s true. Revenge is sweet. It feels good to hurt people you think deserve it.”
Then he turned inward, and I could tell we were not talking about war.
“And this is what the whole nation felt,” I added. “And they felt it stronger, because they felt it together. They became one. It’s kind of spiritual.”
I took in their expressions of contemplation, working out these ethical dilemmas.
“This is why countries need to have enemies. I mean, you’ve also likely read how World War II is called a “just war” because Germany, Japan and Italy were aggressors. Hitler was a pathological dictator. But you know, Hitler gathered steam for his war by painting the rest of Europe as the enemy for destroying Germany in the Great War. It goes on and on.”
“So it goes…” Krzystof put in astutely.
“When does it stop?” Monika asked.
“Does it stop?”
“It should stop, shouldn’t it? Isn’t that the point?”
“What do the Tralfamadorians say?”
“Oh no, not them,” Wiki said.
“Isn’t this why they’re in the book? I mean if it’s just going to be an anti-war book we don’t really need them.”
She was listening.
“And haven’t we already received that message a hundred fold? Owen’s poem, would you call that anti-war?”
“It’s clearly anti-war,” Krzystof said. “He says that when you look at the face of a dying soldier, coughing up blood, you would never believe war is noble.”
“And Vonnegut? Does he have the same message?”
“He does. But he also says ‘so it goes’. To be honest with you, Owen’s poem is simple compared to this. It’s just anger. And it even makes you feel revenge for an enemy. Vonnegut is beyond that.”
“So it’s not anti-war?”
“It is and it isn’t.”
I looked at Hakeem. He clung to his hair. Krzystof continued:
“In a way it’s anti-war because he describes the experience of war. And when you experience war, you see how inhumane it is. You feel it. From a distance, it’s just numbers. 135,000 people died in the Dresden bombing. The people don’t matter. That’s how it’s inhumane. We all cry about a dog but can’t really weep about 135,000 burning people. That’s natural.”
“So we’re inhumane?”
“Maybe we are.”
“I don’t think we are,” Monika countered. “I feel for the people that were burned up in the bombing just like I do for the dog. It doesn’t mean I care less about people. It hurts to hear about anyone who is killed so uselessly.”
“But all the same, nothing matters,” I said. “That’s what the Tralfamadorians tell Billy Pilgrim. That’s why they’re in the book, right?”
“So that’s what Billy Pilgrim is trying to tell us right?” Maja asked.
“Like some kind of prophet?”
“Sir?”
They looked at me with expectant eyes.
“Why not? He gets assassinated at the end, while giving his sermon on the mount. Preaching his Tralfamadorian idea. Makes for a perfect martyr.”
“He’s Jesus sir?” Krzystof said alight. “Billy Pilgrim is Jesus?”
Pawel looked disconcerted. Hakeem sank in disbelief.
“Should we go there? Jesus was a pilgrim. He had a fundamental teaching, something so otherworldly that we still haven’t come close to mastering it. Who says he didn’t get it from an alien? And it’s basically an anti-war message. Love your enemy. No nations. No enemies. No cycle of revenge and violence. Just one big brotherhood.”
“And there’s that part at the beginning, on the train!” Monhika burst out. “That’s the first time I thought about this. I put it on my list for homework.”
“You haven’t checked our homework sir,” Hakeem said.
“Sh — let her finish.”
“I have it right here….
Listen — on the tenth night the peg was pulled out of the hasp on Billy’s boxcar door, and the door was opened. Billy Pilgrim was lying at an angle on the corner-brace, self-crucified, holding himself there with a blue and ivory claw hooked over the sill of the ventilator.”
She stressed the phrase, self-crucified.
“I thought it was important. That’s a pretty direct reference, isn’t it?”
“Not the only bible reference either,” I added. “There’s Adam and Eve shining in officer’s boots, and Billy’s innocence, crying as he does.”
“He never cried really,” Krzystof corrected. “He moistened.”
“And he never knew why. It just sort of happened. He felt so much in him.”
“Like Jesus.”
“We’re moving too fast,” Wiki said. “I’m getting lost.”
“We’re time traveling Wiki! And you started this with the Tralfamadorians. They provide the grand perspective. They look upon us and our habitual writhing from the distance of space and time. And when you look at us from that kind of distance, we must seem kind of ridiculous.”
“Billy is ridiculous,” Maja added subtly.
“Most prophets are.”
“So nothing matters sir?” Wiki asked with exasperation.
“From a distance, the Dresden carpet bombing probably looked no different than a mild star,” I said. “It’s just fire. Nothing matters.”
“It matters to those who live in it,” Monika asserted. “And die in it.”
“What do the Tralfamadorians say about death?”
“That I don’t remember,” she said.
Nobody wanted to reach for the book. But I trudged on, scouring again through the folded pages. The students took the opportunity to breathe.
“Here it is — no wonder I couldn’t find it. It’s right at the beginning! Vonnegut doesn’t make you wait for anything. Page 26, at the bottom.”
We turned again to the presence of the book, Vonnegut alive and well, proving his Tralfamadorian theory through the civilized method of writing.
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes.’
I closed the book for good.
“It’s pretty deep sir,” Filip said after a pause.
I checked my phone for the time. I had a few ideas bouncing around for how to end the lesson and was hoping Filip’s words would not sidetrack them. If only my mind worked like that singular stretch of Rocky Mountains….
“So dying is no different from living?” Wiki asked.
“But there is no such thing as dying. Can you get your mind around that?”
“No.”
“Perhaps it requires being abducted.”
“How can a person die and remain alive?” Hakeem asked. “So all those people in Dresden didn’t really die?”
“In that moment they died, and in other moments they’re still alive.”
“That’s just impossible sir.”
“Why suggest you know better. Is your brain equal to the laws of creation?”
He shook it as if to get it working at full capacity.
“This is why we have drugs,” Filip said excitedly.
His comment was, as ever, awakening.
“Seriously,” he said, “it’s impossible to get something like this because our minds are limited. They’re conditioned. But psychedelics break through the limits, they give us like a third eye. Like an alien. I bet war is like a drug. It just breaks you out of your limits. We can’t get this kind of idea because we really don’t experience our death.”
“That last part again?”
“I mean, we do. But only once. Only one moment. And the rest of the time we think about it. So they’re like two realities — life and death. There’s one that’s always happening now as it’s happening and then there’s this other that is going on in our mind.”
We took our time to process his wisdom.
“But when a person dies, like in war, it’s real,” Monika said. “It’s not in our mind.”
“It’s in our minds now, the deaths of all the people in this book,” Filip replied. “That’s not exactly real.”
“So we shouldn’t care? We should just say so it goes?”
“You think the author doesn’t care?” I cornered her. “You think that’s what he’s saying?”
“No, he does.”
“He’s saying something else,” Krzystof got back in. “He’s saying that crying about it gets you nowhere. Imagine that you’ve seen all the death caused by mankind over and over and over again. Imagine seeing all the wars up close. One death after another, like a facebook feed. You can’t get lost in your cares. You have to let it go.”
“You have to accept it?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“Does this philosophy help you accept Derby’s death?”
“Probably it does. What’s so tragic about dying anyway. Everyone dies. We live life pretending that we wont.”
“Because there’s another life in our minds and that’s where we live most the time,” Filip said.
“That’s where you live,” Krzystof answered.
“That’s where Pawel is right now!”
Pawel looked up like a lost dog.
“Does it help you accept the holocaust?” I asked suddenly.
The laughter settled down.
“That’s a big one,” Krzystof replied. “But I’d say yea. Because it’s going to happen again and again. That’s why this isn’t really an anti-war book. He’s accepting that it’s going to happen again and again.”
“Actually, the Tralfamadorians said that. In their infinite wisdom, have they learned how to live in peace?”
“No,” Krzystof said, wanting to remember. “They said that the world will continue to destroy itself.”
“How?”
“Some guy presses the button. In a lab. Or a factory. In the production of Tralfamadorian fuel. Some guy presses the button and will always press the button. By accident.”
“A clerical error.”
“So it goes.”
“So there’s no hope for us?” Wiki asked anxiously.
“You don’t find hope in this message? I find it the most hopeful of all messages.”
“But how sir?! He’s saying it’s inevitable that the holocaust will happen again. That war will just go on and on and get worse. Then we just sit back and let these leaders drop their bombs and give their speeches?”
“Well, I don’t think so. The writer did publish this book. That’s not exactly passive.”
Wiki settled down.
“Of course you want to fight against ignorance. But this philosophy teaches something higher. Or lower. Or right in the middle. If life is just a series of moments and some of the moments are awful, including death, torture and disease, and some of the moments good, like the birth of your child or miraculously surviving war and birthing a book, which moments should we concentrate our minds on?”
“The good sir,” Pawel said, innocently.
Wiki expressed her sweetened concerned look. I agree she suggested, but I still don’t like something.
“Hakeem? Do you like this philosophy?”
“I don’t know. It’s a lot for one morning. I don’t like how you make us think so much sir. It’s painful.”
“It can be. But we’re laughing too.”
“Yea. But what I want to say is that it’s like how this whole book is written, the philosophy I mean, with all the details mixed up and equal. It kind of makes the bad stuff less bad. But then it makes the good stuff less good.”
“Well said. I should write that down.”
“Please don’t.”
“So what’s the problem Hakeem.”
“Well I like the good stuff sir. I like it a lot. But according to this, it’s kind of like I shouldn’t care so much. I shouldn’t get so emotional. Bad stuff happens too, and maybe even bad stuff is going to happen.”
“Well, maybe not. It’s a matter of chance. I think our religions have a tendency to prepare us for bad things to come.”
“Sir,” Krzystof spoke again, “I think this philosophy should be in the survival kit.”
“Great idea! Would it fit?”
“It’s the easiest thing to carry with you.”
“You’d choose it over your knife?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” his enthusiasm dipped. “I’d still want to survive.”
“But everything is chance Krzystof….that’s what you’ve been saying since the beginning. The knife supports the belief that you can control your fate.”
“I guess I’d still want to try…”
“And in this world now,” I turned to the class, “in our relative comfort, what’s in your survival kit? What can you count on to live, and to live well?”
I pointed to our masterpiece on the board.
“Just your food, your clothing, your sex? Your porn, your love letters? Your civility? Your knives and spoons? What can you really count on to get you through, when you’ve been totally reduced?”
There was a thick and lovely silence.
“Philosophy,” Filip answered.
I smiled. I had no idea how we arrived here.
“You know, it’s great what you guys are saying. Philosophy was once the fountain of every kind of learning. It founded the first school in Athens and the first universities throughout Europe. Now it’s considered rather useless. I think you’re right. I think the book is showing how a way of looking at things is the most essential of things. And, um…”
I wanted to complete my thought but I was searching for a different book at that moment, The Little Prince, and the author’s line about something being invisible. Yes, what was it — what’s essential is invisible to the eye. I leapt back in time and saw my 6th graders inching forward in their seats with their flowers in Dixie cups, then refocused my eyes and saw again the 11th graders in their place. Only room 3 remained unchanged.
“Please sir, stop,” Hakeem said. “My head is in a good place now. Please don’t say something else!”
“Sorry. We wont speak. Let’s just consider everything we’ve covered this morning, this range of humanity that is inhumanity as well. Like a mountain range stretching beyond our vision. Even our whiteboard has limits. We can’t capture all of it, though we have tried.”
We gazed at our amateur rendition of themes and details…drawn in haphazard blue ink, ensaring everything in its net from bulletproof bibles to pregnant spoons. I had an idea.
“Listen, given the intensity of war, given how so much of the yourself and mankind is revealed in its experience, and how much remains concealed throughout our more comfortable reality, wouldn’t you be willing to live it?”
“Live it?”
“Live war.”
“And trade all this?” Krzystof mocked the banality of our four white walls.
“How many of you are willing to go to war? I’m serious. We don’t know ourselves as it is. It’s like what Filip said. We live in our minds. Our ideals are rarely tested, if ever. We coast. We chat. We spend most our time outside our own truths. We delay. Wouldn’t it be better to confront death, so as to know?”
“So as to know what sir?”
“Who we are?”
“At the risk of dying?”
“Is there any other way?”
Slowly, the boys raised their crooked arms. Pawel was the last to join, looking around first at his peers, unsure what he just volunteered for. The girls gasped.
“You realize that in a not so distant time, under different circumstances, that hesitant buy-in would qualify you boys for enlistment — you, the young and innocent, fodder for another man’s war.”
They dropped their arms reflexively. Unsuspectingly, I had taken them through both sides of the paradox. They were confused.
“Let’s make this real!”
I clacked my heels together as they were a commander’s black soles.
“Atten — tion!”
They fell backwards awaiting my next turn.
“Up straight. Up, up! Stand at attention! Stand up!! I’m addressing you!”
Hakeem was up first, followed by Krzystof. Filip seemed to fall up from his chair, for he could do nothing with intention. Pawel chuckled himself up by the shoulders. They all faced me.
“Hands to the sides! Backs straight! Chests out! Chins down! Eyes forward! Buttocks in!”
Their bodies ricocheted in four directions. I channeled my inner Louis Gossett Jr., from the film Officer and a Gentleman.
“File out! Let’s go, one-two, one-two, in step! Your mothers raised you as babies! I’m going to make you men! Fall in!”
We arrived to the front of the classroom. My sloppy regiment stood shoulder to shoulder, Hakeem and Krzystof plump as pillows, Pawel unable to restrain laughter, and Filip resting on one leg.
“They’re hopeless sir!” Wiki shouted from the bleachers.
“Don’t listen to her men. Grab your rifles. We will march as one brotherhood! All men, equal under the sun! On the count of one — ready — ”
But Hakeem had fallen out. No longer acting, he staggered back to his chair.
“Mr. Krasner,” he said dropping himself down, “I don’t think this is more real.”
The rest of the soldiers returned to their seats, boys again.
“I think this is some kind of distraction,” Hakeem continued. “It’s a sidetrack. It’s the wrong life. I’m sorry. I don’t agree with what you are saying about war. Maybe war does test us. But this life we have now, this school, this classroom, this is more real.”
“But we’re not doing anything really,” I said. “We just sit here and talk.”
“Yea, but we’re safe and we have our futures. We can think about what we want to do without some war stopping everything in its tracks. We can choose what we want to become. We can choose a woman, we can get married and have kids. We can raise them. This is real. War is death. That’s what I think.”
He had the final word. The bell was about to ring. I wanted to write.
“You’ve brought us back to earth Hakeem. It ought to be enough to learn from what we have. But for a moment I want you to consider who you would be if fate hadn’t been so kind as to let you sit in this classroom. Not because I want us to experience misfortune. Only I want us to consider the other half of life. What are we capable of? We started class with this idea. Remember Hakeem? I’m capable! I’m certainly capable!”
He laughed. How ridiculous that moment now seemed, worrying over a picture going viral. What does that even mean?
“Now put yourself in Billy Pilgrim’s shoes. Or one of your direct ancestors, who was once young and enthusiastic like yourself, but then got caught in the fire of war. It happens almost every other generation. Who would you become? What would you become? And forget for a moment that girls don’t fight wars. They do. Slowly but surely they’re gaining that right. We can all enter this reality. Can you write about it?”
For 10 minutes they wrote. Some had their hands moving rapidly, filling up an entire page. Others held their gaze outward, frozen by thought. I tried to nudge them from towards a stream of words. They had practice at this. I had taught some of them since the 6th grade.
The bell rang. The students continued writing. The door to room 3 opened and faces popped in. I pointed a stiff arm back out to the hallway. It took three successions before the curious faces moved on to the cafeteria.
Lunch could wait.
Here is what my students had to say:
Hakeem: This is very difficult to say. I think a lot would depend on what the war was about. If I felt that I was defending my country from wrong-doing, I think I could become a good soldier. I’m Iraqi. My people know a lot about war. We have one of the oldest civilizations in the world and yet somehow we’re always threatened. It’s mostly poor people who suffer. They get their villages bombed. They don’t have the best schools to go to. Not many think about their futures. To fight against the people dropping those bombs, that’s good. I’d take up arms with them and I think I would be brave. But only if it was a war I believed in. I’d rather have good schools to go to.
Monika: I’ve never been asked such a question before, who would I become in war? Luckily, I’ve never had to consider it. When I think about it, boys have a terrible burden. Women have theirs too. We have the burden of giving birth. I don’t mean to call it a burden really, but it is in some way. It’s not easy. It’s scary to have a living being inside of you, to have another being totally dependent on you. What if you fail? What if something goes wrong in the pregnancy? What if you don’t know exactly what to do? There’s so much that goes into having a baby and raising him healthy. But now I’m supposed to think about being a boy and having the burden of fighting in wars. To protect my country, that’s what we say. Still, whether the boy is a natural soldier or not, he’s got to go. Just like a woman. She may not be a natural mother, but if she wants a family, she’s got to have the baby. I hope I will be a good mother one day. And I would rather have my children go to jail then fight in someone’s war.
Krzystof: I’ve actually thought about this a number of times. It’s too common a topic in Poland. We have memorials throughout the city marking where soldiers spilled their blood defending the country against fascism. We have our uprisings from the time of Russian Czars and all the way up to the Warsaw uprising, when the entire city got blown up, much like Dresden. You can’t be a Polish boy and not think about it. My grandfather had a brother who died in the uprising. He told my father about it. He was with his brother when the building they were in collapsed. The brother died. My grandfather might have seen this with his own eyes. You hear stuff like this in Polish families. You push it away, but somewhere inside it stays with you. I think I’d be a pretty damn good soldier really. I think it’s in the blood to fight. In some ways, I think it is the only real test of manhood. I wish it were otherwise. I’m afraid I’d like war.
Maja: I would have to be severely brainwashed to fight in a war. I can’t think of anything I would like about it. The marching. The heavy equipment. Even the camaraderie wouldn’t be worth it, because I don’t think I’d find anyone in an army like me. I’d be forced to spend all my time with aliens. I guess I could try to escape. But I’m not sure I’d have the courage for that. I think I’d be a little like Billy Pilgrim. I’d just go about my business quietly, try not to be noticed, and try to keep something in my mind to keep me happy. My boyfriend. My music. My skateboard.
Pawel: Well, I think being in a war today might be kind of fun. I’m pretty sure it’s all done by electronics now. I think you just sit in a tank and point your gun at targets like in Call of Duty. So I might be good at war because I’m pretty good at that game. I can concentrate on it for long periods of time without getting bored, as long as I have enough to eat and drink. The problem is that in Call of Duty you’re allowed to die a number of times and it just takes away from your points. But in real war you die when you die. So I probably wouldn’t want to leave the tank.
Wiki: I hope women do not get the right to fight in wars because someone has to keep the world sane! Someone has to stay at home and keep the family together, keep reality in one piece, waiting for the soldiers to come home. But if I was forced to go into war, I’m pretty sure I would stay in my tent all day and draw. I’d try to turn everything I see into art. I love Kathe Kollwitz. She expressed so much empathy in her charcoal faces, in the agony of a mother having her baby torn away from her. I’d probably make all kinds of drawings in that style and leave them around the barracks. I’d keep a pocket sized sketchbook with me and draw before I ever loaded a gun. I’d probably get shot while drawing and maybe I’d capture my last breath as an image.
Filip: The first thing they’re going to do is cut off all my hair. And they’re going to get me cleaned up and wake me up each day with the sun. And they’re going to march me in stride and make me do push-ups and sit-ups. And they’re going to teach me how to shoot a gun with accuracy from up to 100 meters away. And they’re going to make me strong. For the first time in my life, I’ll have focus. My life will be another’s responsibility. All I have to do is take the order, jump highest, move fastest. I don’t have to worry about graduating from high school and applying to universities, then medical schools, becoming a doctor. It’s funny, those orders come from above too. I can either take them from my parents or from a captain in the army. Either way, everyone wants you to be someone other than who you are. I think I’d go awol.
We were ten minutes into the lunch period.
“Mr. Krasner, what kind of soldier would you be?” Hakeem asked.
“A dead one,” I replied, not missing a beat. “I don’t think I could stand seeing so many people here one moment, so alive, and then mercilessly taken. It’d be too much for my heart. I don’t have the heart for life as it is! But for war?”
“But perhaps you would come to understand yourself, as you said,” Krzystof said from the back of the room again. “Perhaps you would develop the heart you need to live this life. You underestimate yourself, Mr. Krasner.”
The door to room 3 opened again. This time I could not withstand the tide. Other members of the 11th grade entered. Janny, Antoni, Alex, Piotr. They were waiting for their friends to join them for pizza.
Antoni, a slim and frenetic boy, spoke for them.
“What are you guys doing? We’re losing time!”
“How can you lose time?” Hakeem asked him skillfully.
He winked in my direction.
“Come on! There’s always a line and I’m starving!”
They got up from their seats. I remained at my desk. I was hungry too. But I didn’t know it. I was completely full.
For Lunch Break of A Teacher’s Tale, please see:
