No Guardian Angels

In 1956, Scarberia is a developing suburb on the east side of one of the most boring cities in the world. One of the sources of the city’s pride is the Orange Parade celebrating the victory of Protestantism in Britain over Catholicism. It is not the best place to be for those who are not Orangemen. It is a bad place to be if you are a Jew, a Bohunk, an Italian or any other type of person who is not white and Christian.

If you were in Scarberia in the autumn of 1956, you might see a seven-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy of no particular significance walking home from school. You would be right to assume he is a lot like other boys his age. There would not be a whole lot more about Daniel Lehmann you could discern from just looking at him. There is no visible evidence of what is going on inside his head, and there is a lot going on inside his head. Though he doesn’t know it, his experiences at various points along the mile-and-a-half walk back and forth each way from school to his home and the half-mile from his home to where his newspapers are dropped off will greatly determine the trajectory of his life and his eventual descent into madness. On his way home today, he will learn about bravery or his lack of it.

To understand the importance of Daniel’s experience, you must understand the context in which his first act of cowardice occurs. Daniel’s head is full of stories about Catholic martyrs: men and women who stood up for and defended their faith and died doing so. The stories relayed to him by nuns, priests and lay teachers were supposed to instil in him a desire to embrace martyrdom should the need arise. Being beheaded, crucified, burned at the stake, raped, or flogged to death should all be seen as opportunities for showing God just how much you love him. Being killed for being Catholic should be seen as a gift from God.

Daniel assumed his older brother Joe knew all about martyrdom and standing up for your faith. He saw Joe’s commitment one day when Joe was giving him a ride home on his bike. Joe took a shortcut through the Protestant school yard. Some guys that were throwing a ball up against the school started calling out “Hey Dogan. What you doing here?” And others were shouting “No Micks allowed.” Daniel had no idea of what those terms meant. But apparently Joseph did. “When the crowd yelled out, “Hey. Go kiss the Pope’s toe.” He pushed Daniel off the bike and threw it to the ground. He then challenged the Protestants to a fight. Joe was older than them, and they backed off and walked away. Daniel wondered if he would have been as brave as Joe.

Daniel’s walk to and from school along Kingston Road each day takes him past the John A. Lesley Public School danger zone in which Joe defended the Pope’s digit. His first brush with potential martyrdom came within that zone. Two large boys, who were Protestant, stopped him on the sidewalk and menacingly demanded to know if he was a Catholic. At that moment, Daniel experienced a flood of images. He saw Saint Agnes being stripped naked and her hair growing out to cover her body. He saw Saint Sebastian stripped, tied to a pole, and shot full of arrows. He saw the Jesuit Martyrs being burned at the stake. They called to him to be a soldier of Christ. “Are you a Catholic or not? the boys asked again, even more angrily. “No,” he said. “But those boys are,” he said pointing at two boys playing in a nearby field.

Denying his faith and sentencing the boys in the field to an unpleasant fate didn’t bother Daniel much. It might have if he hadn’t already realized that much of was being told about his faith was not true. Angels were just one example. Stories about angels had filled his early years. He knew a lot about angels such as Gabriel and of course, the fallen angel, Lucifer. From early on, Daniel was assured his Guardian Angel was always watching over him, and he believed that to be true. This belief was reinforced by the picture in his bedroom that showed a guardian angel watching over a young boy just like him. That all changed when the school inspector came to assess the reading ability of grade-one students.

A couple of times a year, an Inspector from the school board would come and sit in on classes to see how well students were doing. This time it was Daniel’s classmates that would have a chance to show how well their reading had progressed. Daniel was looking forward to this visit. He was a good reader even before he started school and he wanted to show the inspector just how good a reader he was.

The students arranged themselves in a semi-circle around the Inspector. Daniel was seated next to him. Each student read in turn and when it was Daniel’s turn, the Inspector to glanced down at his reader and saw that all the circles in the d’s, b’s, and o’s had been filled in with pencil.

“Did you do that?” asked the inspector pointing to the penciled pages of Daniel’s reader.

“No.” said Daniel.

“Maybe it was your Guardian Angel,” said the Inspector as he looked toward the beautiful Sister Mary Peter whom Daniel had fallen in love with the first moment he saw her even though he wasn’t sure if nuns were women or a different gender.

“Maybe,” said Daniel, sure that it was a distinct possibility. Afterall, some angels were bad actors and were thrown out of heaven and left to create mischief in the world along with the devils and demons he had heard so much about. Colouring the circles in his reader was a kind of mischief.

The Inspector again looked at Sister Mary Peter, then motioned to Daniel to begin his reading.

When all the students had read, the Inspector thanked them for their work, and then asked Sister Mary Peter to come into the hallway with him. After a few moments, she returned to the class and asked Daniel to come into the hallway with her.

Once in the hallway, Sister Mary Peter motioned for him to follow her. Daniel did not know where they were headed, but he convinced himself that he was going to be rewarded for being such a good reader. His optimism began to fade when they arrived at the office door of Sister Luke, the school principal. Sister Luke was short, fierce, and rumoured to take great pleasure in disciplining students with her thick, black strap. Daniel had only heard about Sister Luke’s strap. He was now about to meet it in person.

Daniel was given three slaps of the strap on each hand. Once for pencil-marking his reader, once for lying to the Inspector and once for blaming his Guardian Angel for what he had done. Daniel continued to fume long after the stinging in his hands had stopped. He kept on asking himself how Sister Mary Peter and Sister Luke knew for certain his Guardian Angel hadn’t marked up his reader. By the end of the day, he was certain the only way they knew for sure was because Guardian Angels did not exist and they had been lying to him. This led him to wonder just what else he was being lied to about. Some time later, It’s a Wonderful Life was shown on television. Daniel was unmoved by a story featuring a Guardian Angel and he never watched the movie again.