My left side tingles. Sometimes it feels as if I still have it. Then I look at the empty sleeve I always pin across my belly. It is truly gone. I remember exactly where I lost my arm—near Petersburg. Not the city in Russia, but here, in the New World. I remember exactly when—a winter’s day five years ago. But why I lost it—or rather, for what—that is still very much the question. The hardest question, however, is: how can I explain it to them?

I shall have to, for Josef is pressing me again today. His curiosity has spread to the rest of the class. They really want to know. There are forty-three of them. We can’t take any more. We’re all gathered around the central coal stove. The classroom is really a large wooden hut with a chimney in the middle. There aren’t enough benches for everyone, so they all prefer to sit on the floor. My pupils will not tolerate inequality.

It’s evening, so I read to them from my little store of books. They love those thick tomes by Charles Dickens—Oliver Twist and David Copperfield most of all. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is a favorite too, probably because so many of them are orphans. Their parents are dead—or more often simply gone. Sometimes a father or mother finds them again. From hundreds of miles away they arrive barefoot. Then they shake and shudder with joy and hug their children until they almost suffocate. They would gladly tear the hair from their bodies and dance the skin off their feet because they do not know what to do with such happiness.

The classroom is silent. Outside it is dusk, and inside forty-three pairs of eyes are on me. I hesitate a moment and then gently close my battered book. “Gulliver’s Travels would surely interest you more than my life,” I say. They cheer and squeeze closer. The older ones take the younger on their laps. They sit in a tight circle around me and wait, full of suspense. I am struck with stage fright. How am I to begin?

1.

“I was born in a country almost as small as the largest American city. I lived in a little town with tiny houses. The streets are narrow there, much narrower than here, and they crisscross in every direction. There are no plantations there and no slaves. Everyone is as free as the amount of money he possesses. Which is usually not much. The workers earn a pittance, and the farmers toil themselves crooked to survive.

“My parents both scraped their meager living in a cotton mill. You could say the cotton your parents picked was processed further by mine. I myself went to school until I was twelve, where I learned to read, write, and reckon, just like you. But the master was much stricter, mind you. He’d beat you if you didn’t pay attention—and sometimes he’d beat you simply because he felt like it. Still, I considered myself lucky to go to school so long. Many of my peers were not so fortunate and had to work much earlier. In a sense I owed my luck to my misfortune: I was an only child. I would have loved a brother or sister. I was often lonely, but this way my parents could afford to send at least one child to school.

“That made me an exception. Most families had eight to twelve children, sometimes more. That my parents had only one child was considered a great misfortune in our neighborhood—in some eyes even a punishment from God. My mother dreamed of more children. My father saw it differently. He thought it best that his only son be given every chance. The mill took me on as a junior clerk. The odd thing was that I earned more than the hard-toiling workers while I sat quietly tallying stock. My parents were proud. Compared to others in the working class, we had it good. So as not to arouse envy, we lived as simply as we could. I saved most of my pay.

“When the war broke out here, your war, our good fortune ended. The cotton supply was largely cut off. A great crisis came to my town. Many mills laid off workers. In the first year of the war both my parents and I lost our jobs. Then began my hardest days. My mother’s cough worsened and she died of tuberculosis. She had always worked in the dampest part of the mill; her lungs were ruined. My father soon after suffered a heart attack. They say a heart can break from grief—my father’s broke when my mother died. So there I stood. Fifteen, and an orphan. It was as if I awoke from a sweet dream and opened my eyes to reality for the first time. Little remained of our savings after the burials. I couldn’t pay the rent alone. What was I to do?”

2.

“I moved in for a time with my father’s elder sister—Aunt Isidora. An old maid who was angry at nearly the entire world. All she did was knit. The little money she earned went to cheap sugar almonds for herself and foul hunks of meat or fish for Hercule, her mud-fat tom. When she looked up from her knitting, she cast me a reproachful glance. She would have charged me for the air I breathed in her presence if she could.

“She arranged a place for me as an apprentice at the fishmonger’s—on condition I give her half my paltry pay for room and board. The board was a watery cabbage soup with a limp hunk of bread, so poor I was tempted to steal the cat’s food. The room was a tiny garret where, at night, the cold wind blew straight through the tiles.

“Savings were now impossible. The other half of my wage went on dried sausage so I might have a full belly now and then. At work I sometimes dared to swallow a few shrimps whole, quick and without chewing, if no one was looking. I felt I had a right to it. At that fishmonger’s I learned not only to fillet fish—soon I was doing the books as well, without a penny more in pay. If I asked for a raise, my master only said, ‘Can’t. Crisis, lad, crisis.’ So I worked on and hoped for better times.”

3.

“One day I’d had enough. I came home from the fish shop and hurried to the pump in the courtyard—the fish stench clung to me like a rotten mussel. Still I was cheerful: the workday was over, and I could devote my evening to my favorite pastime—reading. I owned just four books, but that didn’t matter. Even on the twentieth reading they still thrilled me. The Lion of Flanders, about a medieval battle, was my favorite. I’d received each book for a birthday. They were still in fine condition, bound in pigskin. They were my most precious possessions.

“But that day I could not find them. I turned my garret inside out, but they were nowhere. When I asked my aunt, distraught, she said curtly: ‘Sold.’ My stomach shrank into a fiery fist of rage. ‘Why?’ I shouted. She needed the money, she said. ‘Do you have any idea what you cost me? Cabbage and bread don’t grow on my back, you know.’ I said nothing and locked myself in my room. She could keep her cabbage soup.

“I took my fury out on the fish whose bellies I slit. Like a raging locomotive I opened one after another and brooded on how to escape this life. Hercule got a fierce pinch on his tail each time I came home. I’m ashamed to admit it, but that tom with his proud eyes nettled me.

“The solution presented itself in the form of a rumor. A customer at the shop told me: a company was recruiting strong laborers for the coal mines in America. They promised steady work and very good pay. You signed a list, shipped out, and upon arrival you were put to work. We were told not to worry about the war—we would be working in the northern part of the United States, far from the fighting. It didn’t frighten me. What had I, a Fleming, to do with that distant war? I didn’t even know what it was about.

“The only problem was my age. The loss of my parents, my work, and my home in such quick succession had not made me look any younger, but I certainly didn’t look like a grown man. What would I do if they asked my age? I wasn’t used to lying. I’d never had reason to. I was afraid I’d be found out at once. What if they looked at me sternly and asked: ‘Are you over eighteen?’”

3. (second)

“My aunt reacted with suspicious panic. She begged me to stay. She said half the people on a transatlantic crossing died of strange diseases. When I asked for an example, she said: ‘Brain worm. It tickles so hard in your head you scratch out your own eyes.’ When I wouldn’t believe her, she called me a shameless lout showing not a grain of gratitude. She had taken me in, found me work, and now I was dropping her like a brick.

“I was not moved. One look at her wicker rocking chair, her crooked needles, and plate of sugar almonds was enough. There had to be more to life than sharing a house with a spoiled tom and a stingy old woman. I grabbed my few belongings and stuffed them in my old schoolbag. As I left, I stepped on Hercule’s tail one last time—that for every scratch he’d given my hands, made ravenous by the smell of fish. For so heavy a beast he ran surprisingly fast. Afterwards I did feel a little guilty. It wasn’t his fault that my aunt had spoiled him rotten.”

4.

“Just before embarkation the question inevitably came. Was I over eighteen? ‘Yes,’ I said without batting an eye. I could say it without a quiver, because I wasn’t even lying: on the soles of both clogs I had carved the number eighteen with a penknife. They weren’t very thorough in their selection. Anyone could see that with my scrawny shoulders I was an odd duck among all those burly fellows. The clerk slid a document before me. He nodded briefly and muttered something. I understood I had to sign. The text was in French, a language I barely knew. I scrawled my name as quickly as I could. Imagine if he changed his mind.

“With the enlistment paper in my pocket I was overjoyed. That night I took a little of the savings I had left and went out. To prove I was a real man, I suppose, I drank four beers in a tavern. Each time I ordered, the landlady looked at me with pity, serving me as if she were handing me poison. I understood her look only after closing time, when I vomited in a dark alley. I had not yet set foot on the ship and I was already seasick.”

5.

“In a sense my aunt was right. The ship’s doctor laughed out loud when I asked if he had ever seen a case of ‘brain worm.’ That didn’t change the fact that some aboard died of measles. The farm boys especially were nearly defenseless against that childhood disease. I was spared. I felt I had had my portion of misery.

“On the ship I had time to think for the first time. I thought of my parents and how I missed them. But I consoled myself that they had found each other again in heaven. They had led exemplary lives, so surely they no longer had to work. I imagined them, like me, sailing a paradise sea and mooring at exotic shores. With the wind in my hair and my hands on the rail, I felt hopeful again for the first time in a long while.”

6.

“Upon arrival we were sent straight to a medical tent with U.S. Army painted in big letters across it. The doctor gave me a cursory look and peered into my mouth. He asked briefly, ‘Any ailments?’ I didn’t yet understand English, so I shook my head. Apparently the right answer, for he waved me on. Only much later did I realize he’d asked if I had any complaints.

“Leaving the tent, a man in a blue uniform with three white stripes on each shoulder led me to a wooden barrack. There I was given the same blue uniform and a pair of ugly shoes. My overall had no white stripes—perhaps you got a stripe for each year in the mines? As for the shoes, they made no difference between left and right. It took weeks before they took the shape of my feet; a few weeks later the sole had already come off. ‘Shoddy,’ they called such shoes. I never knew what it meant, but that it was the purest junk could not have been clearer.

“Later I couldn’t fathom how I had been so naïve. I truly thought these blue uniforms were work overalls. Blue seemed a logical color for miners. Of course I saw no mines at all. I had enlisted, by accident, in the army of the United States.”

7.

“The realization came quickly—and deafeningly. Our drill sergeant, the man with the white stripes, bellowed us almost back across the ocean. I understood nothing of it, and neither did my comrades. So we simply mimicked until he shouted a little less. The chief thing we had to learn was to march together at the same pace. It had to be exact, or he flew into a rage. If we bungled it, he ordered us onto a muddy field to lie down and jump up, lie down and jump up, until the mud was in our noses and ears. The next day we had to present ourselves immaculate at roll call. I discovered a soldier spends a great part of his time polishing—buttons and boots alike.”

8.

“To tell the truth, I wasn’t so very sorry that the mines came to nothing. The war didn’t scare me because I had no picture of it. My only image of war came from The Lion of Flanders. I imagined a great battle somewhere and our regiment arriving just in time to turn the tide.

“By then I understood more or less why there was war here. The South had risen against the North. Down South there were rich planters; here in the North mostly factories. That caused political trouble, for laws good for one side were bad for the other. In the end the Southerners wanted to found their own country. The Northerners didn’t agree and wanted to keep the Union whole. The South had Negro slaves; the North did not. As I understood it, the Northerners wanted to free those slaves and the Southerners did not. When I discussed it with an older veteran, he quickly set me straight. ‘Don’t think I’m fighting to free the Negroes,’ he said. I asked him why he was fighting then. ‘Because the South fired the first shot.’ It sounded logical, but the more I thought on it, the less I understood.

“I noticed everyone had his own version of the war’s cause. A mouthy recruit said: ‘There’s war because rich men profit by the war machine. Look at our uniforms—someone makes them and gets paid handsomely. Believe me, this is a war for the benefit of the rich man at the expense of the poor.’ For the moment I didn’t lose much sleep over causes. The questions came later. For now war was one great adventure. I even hoped it would last a while. It might be over before I saw any of it.”

9.

“To ‘see the elephant,’ they said in America when you entered combat for the first time. ‘Have you seen the elephant yet?’ older regiments would ask us. We would blush and admit we hadn’t been to the front. Some regiments marched past and jeered: ‘Fresh meat for the grinder! Have fun, sweethearts!’ or ‘Take a good look at your neighbor—tomorrow he’ll be in a pit beside you.’ Others were kind and gave advice. ‘Aim low. Green boys always shoot high. And don’t forget to pull the trigger—some load their guns twenty times and forget to fire until the barrel is clogged with bullets.’ Others tried to frighten us. ‘Those fellows across the way are hellhounds. At night they creep up on you with a big Bowie knife, and by day you keep to your belly or a sharpshooter will take you. And when they charge, find yourself a tall tree. They’re devils. However many we shoot, more appear. Devils, I tell you.’ I wasn’t so much afraid as curious to finally see the enemy. As long as we had no rifles, that chance was slim.”

10.

“Until then we’d learned to march with broom handles. We felt ridiculous. People from town sometimes came to watch us on the drill field; they could not suppress their laughter. At such moments the drill sergeant shouted even louder. Thankfully, the humiliation ended when a wagon arrived stacked with long wooden crates. Springfields, they said—excellent rifles. They looked beautiful and weighed a ton. Loading and firing proved intricate. You had to ram the ball down the muzzle with a rod. A seasoned soldier could fire three aimed shots a minute, the sergeant claimed. I was glad to manage one in under ten. He thought us so bungling a lot that he devised a punishment: we had to trot half an hour round the field with our muskets between our legs like hobbyhorses. ‘If you can’t fight, you can always join the cavalry,’ he sneered. ‘Those gentlemen have repeaters.’”

11.

“When our training finally ended, the whole regiment was in a festive mood. The best reason to rejoice was that our drill sergeant wasn’t coming with us. That braying ape received a fresh batch of recruits the same day.

“We set out in early spring. When the sun dried the paths, they became great banks of dust. The marching raised the earth in clouds; dust was everywhere. The color of our uniforms disappeared. We were forever thirsty. Each hour we halted ten minutes, racing to the nearest river or pond to fill our canteens. We were not choosy and drank brackish water too. That gave us cramps and diarrhea. Many could not keep the pace and fell at the roadside. When the spring sun truly broke through, the heat felled some as well. I was very hungry, having wolfed down in one go the rations meant to last a week. I pulled green apples off trees and plucked unripe corn along the road.

“After more days marched than I could count, we reached a place called the Wilderness. A good name for that hell.”

12.

“We had not expected a fight there. The Wilderness was a vast, close-grown forest—no ground for a battle. Few good roads crossed it. Our artillery could take little part. You couldn’t see a hundred yards. The trees stood in the way of everything. Our cavalry had to dismount or loop around. For the foot soldiers it was a witches’ cauldron. Splinters flew from the trees; heavy limbs were shot off and crashed down. Brush and grass caught fire. The wounded who fell risked burning alive. We no longer knew where the rest of the army was. Our officers improvised. We lay down and waited. In the distance I heard the screams of the wounded. I heard the shots and the explosions—but saw no enemy anywhere. At last a thin, keen, long animal howl rose in the distance: Yiiiip, yip, yip—as if a pack of coyotes were rushing us. We could hear their canteens and cartridge boxes clatter as they ran. We fired blindly toward the howl. The undergrowth burned here, too. Our lines began to buckle. I saw men ramming and firing their muskets without aiming, then throwing them away and running—running from the enemy.

“I wanted to follow, but my legs wouldn’t move. In a kind of trance I focused on loading and shooting—until I realized I was firing into emptiness. No one was coming at us. I looked up and, to my great alarm, saw I was quite alone. For the first time I was truly afraid. I thought: if I die now, no one will mourn me. My life simply must not end here. I reloaded and took position behind a thick tree. The howling receded. The fight curled around my spot. Then a terrible quiet fell. The only sound was the cries for help. A wounded man lay some yards off. The brush was burning and creeping toward him. I set my rifle against the tree, stripped off my coat, and tried to beat out the flames. It was useless. The fire advanced. I had to fall back—one trouser leg was already alight. The cries grew worse—then ceased. My coat was burned to a rag. I couldn’t see my rifle anywhere. Worst of all: I didn’t know where my regiment was. Panic took me and I was about to run when I felt a firm hand on my shoulder.”

13.

“‘All right, son. Our regiment is that way. We’ve got a spell of rest.’ The man wore blue trousers like mine, with the cavalry’s yellow stripe. Otherwise he had on a brown shirt and a black felt hat. Long curls fell to his shoulders; a blanket was slung bandolier-wise across his chest. However he managed in that heat, he looked most like a scarecrow. I was not fooled by the blue trousers. I knew I had run straight into the arms of the enemy. My throat closed. I’d heard the horror stories of Southern prison camps: the rebels had little food and their prisoners even less. I noticed how lean and yet sinewy this Southerner was—the first enemy I had ever seen.

“I reached behind my back with one hand. My bayonet still hung from my belt. For an instant I thought of stabbing him. But he would be quicker. Besides, what had this man done to me? ‘Lost your gun?’ he asked. I nodded. Well then, at least I’d kept it out of their hands—a small comfort. Then he did what I never expected: he put an arm around me and said, ‘Never mind, boy—we’ll find you another.’”

14.

“We came to his regiment. ‘Found another straggler,’ he told an officer— a man with a fine mustache and a spotless gray coat trimmed with gold. He looked me over sternly and said, ‘Try to keep step, son.’ In America all older men called me son.

“The Southern soldiers lay sprawled in the grass as if idling in the shade. Some were playing cards. Others were eating quietly. As though it were a pleasant picnic. The man who had taken me for one of his own returned and thrust a rifle into my hands. ‘Take better care of this one,’ he said, giving me a comradely slap on the back. The Enfield weighed even more than my Springfield. He pulled me down into the grass. ‘Your first fight?’ he asked. I nodded. His drawl swallowed half his words, but I understood enough. ‘You get used to it,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all right. Those fellows yonder may be well fed, but it only makes them sluggish.’ Several men laughed. They looked like beggars—but with guns.

“I better understood the mistake when I looked around again. More than half wore blue trousers like mine. The Southerners often dressed in captured uniforms. But the great battle flag—a blue saltire with thirteen stars on a red field—left no doubt. I had, plain and simple, changed sides. What was I to do now?”

15.

“I thought of waiting for nightfall. In the dark I might slip back to my own lines. Dangerous, of course: pickets would shoot first and ask later. Perhaps I should bide my time for a surer chance. I had little time to think. All around me men reached for their weapons. I looked about, puzzled. ‘Counterattack coming,’ someone whispered. The men loaded their rifles lying on their backs. I copied them, awkwardly—I had learned to load standing. I resolved to aim wide, of course—until a bullet thudded into the tree above my head. Then I did fire toward a spot where I might hit something. More bullets smacked into the trunk and I grew angry. I was one of them, curse it. I reloaded and fired again. The man next to me praised me. ‘Good shot, boy. I reckon you got one.’ The counterattack stalled. In the distance a voice cried, ‘Fall back!’ A soldier slapped my back to congratulate me again. Was I meant to be happy? I had seen the elephant—but the wrong one.”

16.

“My plan to slip away by night came to nothing. No sooner did darkness fall than we received marching orders. The speed with which we moved astonished me. On my side—was it my side?—a march was prepared far longer. But was the other side truly mine? Which side had more in common with me? If I was honest, I preferred the Southern side. There was a spirit of ‘we against they’ here. On the Northern side I had felt alone. No one could tell me plainly why we were fighting the South. Here it was simple: the South was defending itself because the North invaded their country. I now saw many likenesses to The Lion of Flanders: the Southerners were the Flemish lads throwing off the yoke of French knights—only now the North played the French.

“Two days later I was in another fight. Again I was praised for staying calm under fire. How much effort it cost me, I kept to myself. That night we roasted corn and ate smoked bacon by the fire while someone played the banjo. I no longer thought of sneaking away. After the skirmish I found myself a brown jacket and a black felt hat. From then on I was one of the hellhounds.”

17.

“To get on the muster roll officially, I invented a story. I said I was from Maryland, a border state between North and South. People there could scarcely decide which side they were on. The South was so starved for men that my name was entered at once. This time, at least, I enlisted by choice. I liked that better than blundering into an army unawares—though my choice for the South had been driven by chance, too. I preferred not to dwell on that. I applied myself as hard as I could—no doubt to prove to myself that I governed my fate and not chance.”

18.

“After the Wilderness came a month of savage fighting. We marched by night, dug elaborate trenches by dawn, and repelled attacks all day. I lay under artillery for the first time. The men across the way who had been shooting at me daily for a month I now regarded as the true enemy. Fear hardened into grim resolve. We knew we were badly outnumbered and short of heavy guns. But our works grew deeper and stronger by the day—and we built them faster. After that month of desperate fighting, patching holes the enemy blew in our lines, a lull came. Then the front shifted to Petersburg—a vital rail hub. If the North took the city, the Confederate capital would fall. The war would be lost. We knew what was at stake when we marched into Petersburg’s ring of defenses.”

19.

“At Petersburg the fighting bogged down to a stalemate. They could not push us out; we could not push them. Both sides dug in deeper and battered each other. I learned every trick of a veteran from George—the soldier who had taken me in. My looks changed with my experience. My body grew wiry and strong; my face, bronzed. I felt sure of myself. I had made friends in the regiment. Most were simple farmers in civilian life. I discovered the South was not swarming with rich planters. They existed, yes—but safely at home, or officers. Most of those were in the cavalry, not the infantry.

“The men were adaptable. We made the best of life in the trenches. By day we kept as still as we could. It was quiet for a time. At last the Northerners had learned—they had paid dearly for their last frontal attack. Sometimes I thought of my first regiment. I realized I had no bond there. I didn’t much care what had become of them. I only hoped they would give it up—along with the rest of the North. I dreamed of a farm of my own in the South. The soldiers’ stories of home had warmed me to a farmer’s life. I admired them for being ready to give their lives for hearth and home, wife and children.”

20.

“The seeming calm ended abruptly with a tremendous explosion. The blast dwarfed every blast I had ever heard. The ground bubbled like a geyser. I felt myself lifted even before the sound reached me. My clothes flew off my chest; my lungs were plastered to my spine. When I slammed back to earth I could hear nothing. Around me men clawed frantically for comrades buried alive. We understood at once: the Northerners had dug a tunnel under our lines and blown a great mine. A mine after all—only not the one I’d expected. ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ someone shouted. I searched for my rifle. I had sworn never to lose it again. The Northerners ran straight into the crater the blast had made, only to discover too late they had rushed into a trap. They trampled one another in that pit. In their confusion we could shoot them down. I shouted for a rifle. I wouldn’t miss this chance. For nearly three months those men had been firing at me without pause. It was my turn.

“I kept searching for a rifle—until someone rolled me over and said, ‘You’re done, boy—get to the hospital before you bleed out.’ Only then did I see I could not move my left arm.”

21.

“It took months to recover as far as I have. Active service at the front was indeed over. But where should I go? I stayed in the army. In the ward I read aloud from books—mostly Les Misérables, which had just appeared. We soldiers now called ourselves ‘Lee’s Miserables,’ a nod to the novel and to General Lee—our commander. I assisted the surgeon in his operations. With a thin smile I thought my fish-filleting skills were of some use after all. When there were no operations, I read to the wounded.

“Sometimes I had to go to the capital to scrounge scarce medicines. There I truly saw, for the first time, the condition of the Blacks. The war was going so poorly for the South that the government had finally recruited Black soldiers. That former slaves were willing to fight for their former masters intrigued me deeply. The white populace, however, thanked them strangely for their extraordinary loyalty—by pelting the Black men in gray with mud. It was then I began to think seriously about slavery and the position of Black people.”

22.

“Slowly it became clear we could no longer win. Those who continued to fight did their best to keep up our spirits, but many deserted. The odds were simply too great. When a second Northern army moved toward our flank, we tried to break out. It failed. Surrender followed swiftly. The army I had joined no longer existed. Where should I go now?”

23.

“Five years later I am a schoolmaster. I no longer read to the wounded but to Black children. My old comrades have mostly turned their backs on me. That they do me no violence I owe only to my status as a veteran. For the second time I have changed sides—the first out of a hunger for romance. Like a boy defending sandcastles against the incoming tide, I fought for the South. That was wrong, but it gave my life meaning then. All in all I think I lost my way in the Wilderness for a reason. It led me at last to my true calling: to bring equality between Black and white a step closer. I hope my pupils can forgive my youthful sin. My Black wife, thankfully, has.”

END