A Paler Shade of Red: Memoirs of a Radical. W. E. Gutman

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Publisher:

CCB Publishing

British Columbia, Canada

www.ccbpublishing.com

IN MEMORY OF IONEL

Also by W. E. Gutman

JOURNEY TO XIBALBA:

The Subversion of Human Rights in Central America

Reporter’s Notebook, ã 2000 (Out of print)

NOCTURNES -- Tales from the Dreamtime

Fiction, ã 2006

FLIGHT FROM EIN SOF

Fiction, ã 2009

THE INVENTOR

Historical fiction, ã 2009

ONE NIGHT IN COPÁN -- Chronicles of Madness Foretold

Short stories, ã 2012

ONE LAST DREAM

Screenplay (Registered with the American Writers’ Guild), ã 2012

UN DERNIER RÊVE

Screenplay (French-language version), ã 2012.

WHEN THERE’S DOUBT THERE’S HOPE

DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING UNTIL ITS’ BEEN OFFICIALLY DENIED

John Pilger

FOREWORD

By Alan Riding, author of

And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris

W. E. Gutman’s life has been so crammed with twists-and-turns -- some unwelcome, many unexpected, a few stubbornly pursued -- that his moving and lyrical memoir has the punch of an epic novel, both fast-paced and reflective. Driven successively by a need to survive occupied France, by an intense curiosity, by an instinct for rebellion and a taste for adventure, Gutman has collided all too often with the shortcomings of humanity. But in A Paler Shade of Red, he finds solace in the power of words, free at last to display the idealism that explains his simmering fury with the world.

PROLOGUE

Say what you will but not all rivers run to the sea. Only those whose beds are deep and wide, whose waters swell with winter snows and summer rains will ever stream unhindered into Mother Sea’s embrace. Nor do the fountainheads from which they spring share common beginnings. Some come to life in silent majesty where ice-encrusted granite reaches for the sky. Others dribble out of a mossy cleft or scatter from a rocky crevice like strands of quicksilver. Brook, rivulet and creek merge at random. Tributaries join the headlong race and carve mighty waterways. They will all return to the source one day, transmuted by nature’s alchemy, ready for yet another cycle of endless self-renewal.

Some would-be rivers are stunted at birth. Their channels lack depth or vigor. Others bubble and billow for a while then vanish, never to be seen again. Exhausted, disheartened, others yet die of thirst along the way on some arid plain. A few meander without cause. They don’t seem to know where they’re headed, or why. They just obey their own life force, rushing heedlessly toward an estuary and surrendering at last to the rapture of the deep.

You are about to embark on a journey brimming with reminiscences. Reflected in its paces is the deepest dimension of self. Revelation is the fruit of foreknowledge. It entails a sense of déjà vu. It also evokes an anticipatory awareness of life’s looming exactions. Yet,

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