Oscar did not say that the process of choosing the diplomatic life as a career had begun one night in Italy in the fall of 1943. He was by that time a sergeant in a company of men advancing in the pouring rain in single file up a steep goat trail behind enemy lines. They were on their way to seize the high ground and cut off the supply lines of a German unit blocking the forward movement of the Eighth Army up the Adriatic coast. It was so dark that each soldier had to hold the shoulder of the man in front of him to avoid stepping off the path and tumbling down the side of the hill and alerting the enemy. Suddenly, the column came to a halt and word was passed back through the ranks from the commanding officer at the head of the column: “Get the Chief! He’s needed up front.”
Oscar squeezed his way forward to where the commanding officer was waiting for him.
“The guys say there’s a German guard post about fifty yards up ahead with a sentry standing in the doorway of a shed watching this trail. Your job is to take care of him as quietly as you can before he cries out. Otherwise his buddies will sound the alarm and we’ll all be in the shit.”
Oscar nodded, removed his pack, set down his rifle, took off the pouches filled with grenades and ammunition attached to the combat webbing around his chest, and set off up the hill armed only with his combat knife with its ten-inch blade. Moving ahead warily, he stopped every few yards to listen for sounds of the enemy and to peer ahead in an attempt to penetrate the veil of black pouring rain. Finally, he saw a glow and the outline of a face as the German soldier on watch sucked on his cigarette. Crouching down, his knife grasped firmly in his right hand, he waited patiently as the face of the German soldier, slumped against the door jamb of the goat shed, lit up periodically as he puffed away, unaware that Oscar was only two yards from him. When the soldier finished his cigarette and tossed it casually outside into the rain, Oscar stepped forward, placed a hand firmly over his mouth, wrapped an arm around his head, twisted it sharply, and slit his throat before he could raise the alarm. He dragged the dying man outside into the rain, took his place in the doorway, and listened to the breathing and snoring of other members of the German squad sleeping inside. After fixing in his mind their numbers and locations, he went back down the trail, quietly provided the password to the soldier on watch, and reported to the commanding officer who sent a team of soldiers with fixed bayonets to deal with the Germans asleep in the hut.
Later that night, hunched over and trembling from delayed shock in the waterlogged trench he and his comrades had dug on the brow of the hill they had just seized, Oscar was still savouring the praise he had received from his commanding officer for killing the sentry. It was not the first time he had carried out such a task and he liked to think he was chosen because he was the one who stepped forward when volunteers were needed for dangerous missions. He was the one who had distinguished himself by acts of bravery, leading the men of his platoon in attacks on enemy tanks and machine-gun nests as his regiment participated in the liberation of town after town from south to north in Italy. But these reasons aside, he had always welcomed the chance to show his solidarity with the men of the 48th Highlanders; they were his brothers-in-arms and his family, and family members helped each other, even at the risk to their lives.
The rain ended and Oscar got to his feet and looked out over the top of the trench at the tracer fire coming from the nearby German lines. As he waited for the enemy counterattack to begin, he remembered the soldier he had killed and the rush of adrenaline mixed with elation that had engulfed him when he slit his throat. He had felt the same way, he recalled, when he had set fire to the general store at Port Carling. A wave of shame swept over him, making him wish he had never been born. There was something despicable, perhaps evil within his soul that made him rejoice in the harm he inflicted on others. The depression that had plagued his life during his years in California was creeping back.
Afraid he wouldn’t be able to participate in the coming engagement and be called a coward, he squeezed shut his eyes; he tried with all his might to fight off the mental anguish. He then remembered that years ago, when he was struggling to come to terms with his paralyzing fear of Jacob’s shadow, he had realized that the gods were but figments of his imagination that he could drive away by an act of will. The guilt he had been carrying around with him for years, he saw, was something similar, a self-inflicted mental wound brought about by worrying about all the stupid things he had done in life. He needed to take control of himself. He needed to stop brooding on the past. If his mind threw up painful memories of the past, he would fight them by telling himself that that was then and now was now. He would remind himself that he had made a contribution to his country as a soldier that more than compensated for the errors of his youth. And should he survive the war, he would do even more for his people and his country.
Thus, at war’s end, after two years of positive thinking, Oscar lined up with hundreds of other demobilized comrades-in-arms to register at the University of Toronto for his first year in the Humanities. This time, his fees and living costs were paid by the Canadian government under a program to help veterans reintegrate into society rather than by benefactors with their own agendas. This time, he felt at home studying with men and women his own age who had experienced war as he had, and who had no time for petty social snobbery. Three years of hard work then paid off when he graduated close to the top of his class and won the gold medal for International Relations and Modern History.
Faced with deciding what career path to follow, Oscar thought back to the evenings in the living room at the manse in Port Carling when Reverend Huxley had told stories about his journey back to Canada on the eve of the Great War. He remembered the hint of longing and lost opportunity in the reverend’s voice when he talked about the sons of missionaries who had become diplomats and gone on to help solve the big international problems of the day. Inspired by his newfound confidence, Oscar decided to pursue the career denied to his benefactor, wrote the Foreign Service exams, and was rewarded by being offered a job as a junior foreign service officer. It had all seemed so easy.
But it was just as well for Oscar’s morale that he did not know, and would never know, that he had almost been barred entry into the Foreign Service by the unchanged systemic prejudice against Indians. When the results of the country-wide examinations to select recruits came in, the selection board had been surprised to note that an Indian by the name of Oscar Wolf, a decorated war veteran and student in his final year at the University of Toronto, had scored high enough to merit entrance into the service. Such a thing had never happened before and they consulted the Department of Indian Affairs on the eligibility of Canada’s First Peoples to become civil servants.
“Indians are indeed eligible,” came back the Delphic reply, “as long as they are not Indians. The Indian agent on Mr. Wolf’s reserve should obtain from him a sworn declaration that he renounces his status as an Indian as well as his right to live at any time at present or in future on his reserve. He will thus have the legal status of a real Canadian and be eligible to accept an appointment of Junior Foreign Service Officer in the Department of External Affairs.”
The head of the selection board, afraid that Oscar might make a fuss, called on the undersecretary of state for External Affairs, the top-ranking official in the Department and a personal adviser to prime ministers going back for decades, to seek his views. The undersecretary, a man with a conscience who thought it was high time Canada began to practise at home the values it preached abroad at the United Nations, found a way around the regulations to let Oscar join the Department without renouncing his birthright.
2
When Oscar left the Indian Camp, he decided to call on the Huxleys, but when he went to the manse and knocked on the front door, nobody answered. However, the curtains parted and someone looked out at him. It was Mrs. Huxley and she did not look happy. The curtains closed, he heard footsteps retreating into the interior of the house, and then all was silent.
James McCrum greeted him coolly when Oscar dropped in to see him at the general store.
“What can
