Back Across the Rubicon: Eight From the Land of No Return II

Monika liked to play with frogs and play like a frog. We climbed trees like monkeys and made sea shell necklaces by chipping out holes with a chisel and running twine through it. She crowned me King of Valhalla (I had just read about Norse myths in school), and she was the Queen of the fairies. Later, after we had moved to Canada, we learned to play Robinson Crusoe and Lewis and Clark, who explored the wilds of Northern America in 1802. But we stopped playing together not long after that. After all, Monika was twelve, and for her, it was time to put aside children’s games.

Poor Monika had a hard time fitting in when me moved to Canada, though it didn’t always seem so, since Monika was beautiful and exotic to the Canadian teenagers. They carried her books home and gave her English lessons.

That was the problem. Monika’s English was atrocious, and took a long time to improve. She never was very good at writing it until around the time she went to college.

I suppose it should have been just as hard for me to learn English, even though I was only eight.

At first I thought it was going to be difficult. But it wasn’t. And you won’t believe me when I tell you why.

Because you see, when I was eight years old, I discovered that I was a chameleon. Of course, on some basic level I had already realized that you had to survive a change and become stronger or else wither and die, that in this world, it is either eat or be eaten. But I had resisted this idea with my childish principles, armed with the intoxicating brightness of Monika’s world. I didn’t know yet what to do to survive, but I didn’t want to be as sad as she was, resisting the new, resisting change, almost stubbornly insisting on keeping our old traditions. She was only hurting herself for nothing.

While the chameleon within me wanted to survive. But I hadn’t ever been able to use my gift of sight before. Gift of sight? Hmmm, I suppose I should explain it.

I well remember how it happened, when I first knew myself for what I was.

* * * * *

One day in elementary school, the teacher, Mrs. Stewart, called for me to read aloud from the children’s book, "The Phantom Tollbooth". There I was sitting in the corner, hoping she would call on someone else when she picked me. My English was so bad the kids sometimes called me Frankenstein. I had tried so hard for days to imagine, to concentrate on English and let myself absorb all the sounds I could, just so my accent would improve. In the past few days, I had refused to speak German even at home. When I was eight, I thought it as so difficult to understand a land and the minds of people who were alien to me. I can hardly believe this was ever true, looking back on it all now.

Anyway, when Mrs. Stewart asked me to read aloud, I had no choice but to do it. But at least I could read English far better than I could speak it.

From chapter two I read:

"...Suddenly he found himself speeding along an unfamiliar country highway, and as he looked back over his shoulder neither the tollbooth nor even his room nor even the house was anywhere in sight. What had started as make believe was now very real..."

The book thudded to the floor. I don’t remember even dropping it.

"Are you not feeling well, Karl?" Mrs. Stewart asked kindly as I stared in blank horror at her.