Prague

To a greater degree than we could ever hope to imagine, our attitudes are the product of our parents and the security that this initial human relationship provides.  It is they who teach us love, responsibility, sacrifice, care, thoughtfulness, politeness, kindness, charity, honesty.  And if we don’t or cannot for whatever reason learn from them, we should be so lucky to have an older sibling or other relative to inculcate those values before our habits become fossilized.  Whatever path we choose, knowing right from wrong begins with the actions and the words of those who gave us life.  Yes, these are platitudinous generalizations of someone eternally grateful to have had the love and care that every child craves.  But my good fortune does not blind me to its absence in the lives of others, as well as the attitudes that are resultant from such deficiencies.  Which brings us to this simple but rather exquisite film.

The premise involves Christoffer (Mads Mikkelsen), a Dane in his late thirties, and his wife, coeval, and compatriot Maja (Stine Stengade) as they travel to the Czech capital to arrange for the burial of Christoffer’s father.  The journey is particularly brutal given the fact that his Father suddenly abandoned him (age eleven or so) and his mother, and never really bothered to come up with an explanation.  This circumstance bears down upon Christoffer like a leaden cross.  His life back home is marked by stringent routine and completely devoid of any spontaneity.  Moreover, being frugal in tax-plagued Denmark, he cannot justify spending any more time or money than necessary (and both will be needed in copious quantities) to lay his Father to rest, and yet realizes that he should at least learn something about his life here in Prague.  Matters are not helped by the infighting and bickering that he has to endure with Maja, who seems absorbed in her cell phone at the oddest of times.  Christoffer takes solace in the fact that his own son, at home but constantly visible by webcam, will never have to travel thousands of miles to bury a father he wouldn’t recognize on one of Copenhagen’s gorgeous cobblestone streets.  A ghastly trip made more stressful by an overwhelming feeling of multifaceted failure, true enough, but also a time for Christoffer’s maniacally organized life to receive a much-needed kick in the caboose.

The first such shockwave is embodied by the Czech gentleman who greets them at their arrival.  He is, he tells them in rather hilarious but generally correct English, the Father’s lawyer and executor.  The man’s eccentric behavior is a tip-off, as is his obvious affection for his dearly departed friend, and a logical conclusion is drawn by members of the audience who have seen this trick before.  In fact, the only person to whom this seems less than obvious is Christoffer himself.  And since this is his story and we are obliged to see things only with his eyes (he is never omitted from any scene), we must believe what he believes and work with the data that he chooses to process.  Taking care of the usual formalities, says the attorney coyly, is the right thing to do, and we will see that it is done.  But he says so with such unabashed antipathy to the whole endeavor that one wonders what obstacle he has placed or is planning to place in its way.

With the cogs now merrily in motion it comes time, as it does in all first-rate character studies, for the cogs to learn more about one another.  Maja, it turns out, has been unhappy for some time, in no small part because of that omnipresent vice on the part of husbands worldwide, emotional distance slipping ineffably into indifference.  The lawyer, on the other hand, unpleased with how the extradition of the deceased is developing, announces that the body is lost and Christoffer will have to stay in Prague should he wish to receive it.  Our protagonist understandably wants to get away from everyone that he has known hitherto in his life, if only for a short while, and do an inventory of what is really important to him.  Soon he talks up a young Czech who can’t really speak English but did know his father.  Was she his father’s lover, he gets her to understand, and her reaction speaks volumes about Christoffer’s fortress of mental blocks.  But then, in the comfort of a stranger who cannot speak his language, Christoffer bears his soul (the same technique is used with less devastating of an effect in this great film) and says the best and saddest line of his entire journey:

When a boy of eleven is abandoned by his father, he looks in the mailbox every day for a letter to explain why.  And when he doesn’t get that letter, he blames himself.  He wants to know why.  Why was he not worth caring about?

Christoffer cannot really get an answer to his question, if one exists, but another clever cinematic technique allows him to hear his Father’s voice one last time.  And then all those decisions seem a bit easier.

La forma de la espada (part 2)

The conclusion to a story ("The shape of the sword") by this Argentine.  You can read the original here.

"In that autumn of 1922 I had been holing up in the house of General Berkeley.  I had never laid eyes on the man; he was carrying out who knows what administrative job in Bengal.  The building was less than a century old and yet already decrepit and opaque, abounding in perplexing corridors and vain antechambers.  The museum and enormous library usurped the ground floor; controversial and incompatible books which in a way were the history of the nineteenth century; scimitars of Nishapur whose circular arcs seemed to capture the wind and war of battle.  We entered (I believe) through the lower level.  Moon, his mouth trembling and very dry, mumbled that the events of the evening were interesting.  I prepared a treatment for him and brought him a cup of tea.  I could determine that his 'wound' was superficial.  Soon enough he babbled confusedly:

"'Yet you took a sensible risk.  I told you not to worry.' (The habit of civil war impelled me to act as I acted.  Moreover, the incarceration of a single member of our allies would compromise our entire cause.)  

"The next day Moon had recovered his aplomb.  He accepted my offer of a cigarette and subjected me to a severe interrogation on the 'economic resources of our revolutionary party.'  His questions were very lucid; I told him (quite truthfully) that the situation was grave.  Profound gunfire rattled the South.  I told Moon that our comrades were waiting for us.  My overcoat and my revolver were in my room; when I returned I found Moon stretched out on the sofa with his eyes shut.  He conjectured that he probably had a fever, and  a doleful spasm in his shoulder cried out.

"It was then that I realized that his cowardice was irreparable.  I begged him clumsily to take care of himself and took my leave.  This man shamed me with fear as if it were I, not Vincent Moon, who was the coward.  When one man does something it is as if all men have done it.  For that reason it is not unjust to have a single disobedience in a garden contaminate the entire human race; nor for the same reason is it unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew could be enough for its salvation.  Perhaps Schopenhauer was right: I am everyone else, every man is everyone else.  In a certain way, therefore, Shakespeare is the miserable John Vincent Moon.

"Nine days we spent in the general's enormous house.  I will say nothing of the agonies and victories of the war: my offer to you was in regard to the scar that so offends me.  These nine days in my memory form one single day, save for the penultimate day when our men broke into a barracks and we were able to avenge ourselves exactly for our sixteen comrades machine-gunned in Elphin.  I slipped out of the house around dawn, in the confusion of the morning light.  I returned at dusk.  My comrade was waiting for me on the first floor, as his wound did not allow him to descend the stairs.  I remember him with some book of strategy in his hand, E.N. Maude or Clausewitz.  'My weapon of choice is artillery,' he confessed to me one night.  He inquired as to our plans, which he would have loved to censure or reform.  So too would he denounce 'our deplorable economic base,' and foresee dogmatically and sombrely the ruinous end.  C'est une affaire flambée, he muttered.  He attempted, in other words, to magnify his intellectual arrogance as proof of his indifference to being a physical coward.  

"On the tenth day the city fell decisively into the power of the Black and Tans.  Tall, silent horsemen patrolled the streets; the wind was pockmarked with ashes and smoke; I saw a body flung aside on one corner, a less tenacious memory than that of the dummy on which soldiers forever practiced their marksmanship in the middle of the square ... I had left as the dawn's first rays burst into the sky and I returned before noon.  Moon was talking to someone in the library; his tone of voice led me to believe he was on the telephone.  Then I heard my name; then I heard that I would be returning at seven; then the order that I should be arrested as I crossed the garden.  My reasonable friend was so reasonably selling me out.  I heard him make some demands for personal security. 

"And here my story becomes confused and lost.  I know that I pursued the informer through the black hallways of a nightmare and vertiginously cascading stairways.  Moon knew the house very well, much better than I did.  Once or twice I lost him.  But I corralled him before the soldiers arrested me.  From the general's arsenal I pulled out a Spanish scimitar, the alfanje, and with this crescent of steel I carved in his face for all eternity a crescent of blood.  Borges, to you as a stranger I have made this confession.  Your contempt does not pain me greatly."

And here the narrator stopped.  I noticed that his hands were shaking.

"And Moon?" I asked.

"He charged the fee of Judas and fled to Brazil.  That night, in the square, he saw a dummy being shot by a bunch of drunks."

In vain I awaited the end of the story.  I told him he could continue.

Then a groan came over him, and with frail sweetness he showed me the curved whitish scar.

"You don't believe me?" he muttered.  "Don't you see that my very face bears the mark of my infamy?  I told the story in this way so you would listen until the end.  I have denounced the man who protected me: I am Vincent Moon.  So now, please, your disdain."         

La forma de la espada (part 1)

The first part of a story ("The shape of the sword") by this Argentine.  You can read the original here.

A resentful scar crossed his face, an ashen, almost perfect arc that creased his temple on one side and on the other his cheek.  His real name does not matter to us: everyone in Tacuarembó called him the Englishman of La Colorada hotel.  The owner of the lands, Cardoso, did not want to sell; but I heard that the Englishman resorted to an unforeseeable argument: namely, he confided to the owner the secret origin of the scar.  The Englishman came from the frontier region, from Río Grande del Sur, and there was no shortage of those who said that in Brazil he had been a smuggler.  The fields were muddy, water-logged and bitter; to correct these deficiencies the Englishman worked alongside his laborers.  They say he was strict to the point of cruelty, but scrupulously fair.  They also say he was a drinker: a couple of times a year he would lock himself into the room with a view and emerge two or three days later as if from battle or vertigo – pale, trembling, and astonished, yet as authoritarian as before.  I recall the icy eyes, the energetic leanness, the grey moustache.  He would not socialize with anyone; true, his Spanish was rudimentary and Brazilianized.  Apart from the occasional advertisement or brochure, he received no correspondence.

The last time I passed through the Northern districts, a flooding of the Caraguatá obliged me to spend the night at the Colorada.  After but a few minutes I understood that my appearance was inopportune; I tried to ingratiate myself with the Englishman, and I leaned on that least perspicacious of passions, patriotism.  I told him that a country with the spirit of England was invincible.  My interlocutor agreed, but added with a smile that he was not English.  He was an Irishman, from Dungarvan.  Having said this, he stopped, as if he had revealed a secret.

After dinner we went out to gaze at the sky.  It had stopped raining but the South, cracking and lightning  behind blades of firmament, was devising another storm.  In the stripped-down dining room the laborer who had served our meal now brought in a bottle of rum.  We drank for a long time in silence.

I do not know at what time I realized I was drunk; nor do I recall what inspiration, what joy or what tedium drove me to mention the scar.  The expression on the Englishman's face changed.  For a few seconds I thought that he was about to throw me out of his house.  But at length he spoke in his usual voice:

"I will tell you the story behind my wound on one condition: that you allow it in no way to mitigate the dishonor or any detail of infamy."

I consented.  This is the story that he related, switching between English, Spanish and Portuguese:

"In about 1922, in one of the towns of Connaught, I was one of many who conspired towards the independence of Ireland.  From among my co-conspirators some survived to devote themselves to peaceful tasks; others, paradoxically, are still fighting on the seas or in the desert beneath the Union Jack; another, in fact the one who mattered most, died in the courtyard of a barracks at dawn, shot by men aching for sleep; still others (not the most ill-fated) gave themselves to the anonymous and almost secret battles of the Civil War.  We were Republicans and Catholics; we were also, I suspect, Romantics.  For us Ireland was not only the utopic future and the intolerable present, but also a bitter and affectionate mythology, circular towers, and red swamps, the reputation of Parnell and the enormous epic poems that sang of the theft of bulls, which in another incarnation were heroes and in others fish and mountains ... One twilight which I shall never forget, an ally from Munster arrived, John Vincent Moon.     

"He was barely twenty years old.  He was at once both thin and flabby; he gave you the uncomfortable impression of being an invertebrate.  He had studied with fervor and vanity all the pages of I don't know what communist handbook, and dialectical materialism aided him in obstructing any dispute.  The reasons one man may have to detest or love another are infinite: Moon reduced world history to a sordid economic conflict.  He affirmed that the revolution was destined to triumph.  I told him that only a gentleman could be interested in lost causes ... It was already night and we continued our disagreements in the corridor, on the stairs, then in the idle streets.  The opinions presented by Moon impressed me less than his indisputable apodictic tone.  My new colleague did not really discuss matters, so much as judge them with disdain and certain wrath.

"Having reached up the last row of houses, we were taken aback by a sudden spate of gunfire (Sooner or later, we passed the blind wall of a factory or barracks).  We advanced onto a dirt road; a soldier, enormous in the glare, came out of a burning cabin.  Shouting, he ordered us to stop.  I hastened my pace, but my comrade did not follow.  I turned around: John Vincent Moon was standing perfectly still, fascinated as if frozen for all of eternity in terror.  Then I turned, flattened the soldier with one blow, shook Vincent Moon, insulted him and ordered him to follow me.  I had to take him by the arm as the passion of fear had rendered him an invalid.  And we fled in the night pierced with fires.  A salvo of artillery sought us out; one bullet grazed Moon's right shoulder.  And he, as we fled amongst the pine trees, broke into a feeble sob.

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/index3.htm

Schakale und Araber

A story ("Jackals and Arabs") by this Austrian author.  You can read the original here.

We set up camp by the oasis.  My fellow travelers were asleep as an Arab, tall and white, walked by me.  He had tended to the camels and now went to his spot to sleep.  I threw myself back into the grass: I wanted to sleep, yet could not.  The plaintive howl of a jackal echoed in the distance and I sat up again.  And what was so far away was suddenly close by: a throng of jackals had surrounded me.  They had eyes of matted gold, at once both shining and fading, and slim bodies as if they moved nimbly and properly under the command of a whip.    

One of them came up from behind me, pushed his way through under my arm, quite close, as if he needed my warmth, then stepped before me and spoke, at this point almost eye-to-eye:

"I am the oldest jackal far and wide.  I am happy to be able to greet you here still.   I had almost given up all hope, since for you we have been waiting an eternity.  My mother waited and her mother waited and all their mothers up through the mother of all jackals.  Believe this much!"

"That surprises me," I said, forgetting to light the pile of wood that lay ready to fend off the jackals with its smoke.  "To hear that surprises me greatly.  I have come quite by accident from the farthest regions of the North and was planning a short trip.  What do you want then, jackals?"

And as if encouraged by this perhaps all-too-friendly comment, they narrowed their circle around me.  All of them had short, hissing breath.

"We know," the eldest began, "that you hail from the North, for precisely on that fact rest our hopes.  There one has reason, something that cannot be found here among the Arabs.  As you know, no sparks of reason can be beaten out of their cold arrogance.  They kill animals so as to eat them and they loathe carrion."

"Do not speak so loudly," I said.  "Arabs are sleeping just nearby." 

"You really are a foreigner," said the Jackal.  "Otherwise you would know that not once in the history of the world has a jackal ever feared an Arab.  We are supposed to fear them?  Is it not unfortunate enough that we have been cast out among such a people?" 

"That may be, that may be," I said.  "I am no judge of things that are so far away from me.  This appears to be a very old dispute; it therefore must be in the blood and could also only end in blood."

"You are very clever," said the old Jackal, and all of them began to breathe more quickly with agitated lungs even though they were standing still.  A bitter smell only bearable through clenched teeth now escaped their mouths.  "You are very clever indeed.  What you say corresponds to our old teachings.  We will take their blood and the dispute will come to an end."   

"Oh," I said more wildly than I wanted.  "But they will defend themselves; and with their flints they will strike you down in packs."

"You misunderstand us," he said, "for the type of person that would also not get lost in the extreme North.  We are not going to kill them.  The Nile would not have enough water to cleanse us.  What we will do is run away from the mere sight of their living bodies, into the fresh air, into the desert, which after all is our home." 

And all the jackals, some of whom had come from very far off, lowered their heads between their front legs and rubbed them with their paws.  It was as if they wished to conceal a dislike so horrible that I would have most preferred to leap away from this circle in a single bound.

"What then do you plan on doing?" I asked and wanted to get up, but could not.  Two young animals had already bitten my shirt and knee-length garb.  I had to remain seated.  "They consider your train," said the old Jackal in an explanatory and serious tone, "an indication of honor."  "They have to let me go!" I said, turning first to the old Jackal, then to the young ones.  "And of course they will do so," said the old Jackal, "if you so wish.  But this will take a while, as they have in our custom bitten quite deeply and must slowly retract their jaws from one another.  While they are doing so, listen to our  request."  "Your behavior has not made me exactly receptive to that," I said.  "Do not hold our awkwardness against us," he said and now for the first time assumed the plaintive tone of his natural voice as an aide.  "We are poor animals; we only have our jaws.  For all that we wish to do, for the good and the bad, we only have our jaws."  "So what do you want?" I said, only mildly appeased.

"Lord," he said, and all the jackals began to howl.  In the far distance this seemed to be a melody.  "Lord, you must end the dispute that has split the world in two.  Our forefathers described who should do so, and this is how you are.  We must have peace from the Arabs; breathable air; a view of the panoramic horizon that is cleansed of them; no cry of the lamb that the Arab stabs to death; all animals should die in peace; we should be able to drink our fill undisturbed and eat the carrion to the bone.  Cleanliness and purity, this is all we want."  And now they all cried and sobbed.  "How do you, noble heart and sweet entrails, endure this world?  Dirt is their white; dirt is their black; horror is their beard; one must spit at the sight of the corners of their eyes; and when they raise their arms, hell opens up from their armpits.  For that reason, o lord, o dearest lord, with the help of your capable hands, with the help of your capable hands you will slice their throats with these shears!"  And after he had signaled with his head, a jackal came carrying in his teeth a pair of small, rusted-over sewing scissors.    

"So at last the shears and now an end!" called out the Arab leader of our caravan who had crept up to us against the wind and was now swinging his massive whip.

Everything happened rapidly, but they remained at a certain distance crouched down tightly, these many animals so stiff and close upon one another that they resembled a small herd encircled by lanterns or ghost lights.

"Now, lord, you have also seen and heard this drama," said the Arab and laughed as merrily as the restraint of his tribe permitted.  "So you know what the animals want?"  I asked.  "Of course," he said, "everyone knows what they want.  As long as there are Arabs, these shears wander through the desert and will wander with us until the end of days.  They will be offered to every European to accomplish this great work; and every European will appear to them to be the chosen one.  These animals possess an unreasonable hope; fools, veritable fools they are.  We love them for that; they are our dogs, more beautiful than yours.  Look now, a camel died in the night.  I have had it brought here."

Four porters came and threw the heavy cadaver before us.  Hardly had it lain there for long before the jackals raised their voices.  Each one, as if irresistibly drawn, came stumbling in, their bodies grazing the ground.  They had forgotten the Arabs; they had forgotten the hate, and the all-extinguishing present of the powerfully evaporating corpse bewitched them.  Soon one of them was on the animal's neck and his first bite found an artery.  Just like a small, racing pump that wishes both unconditionally and hopelessly to put out a massive fire, every muscle of the jackal's body jerked and jumped in place.  And soon atop the corpse all of them partook of the same work.

The leader cracked his sharp whip here and there over them with some power.  They raised their heads, half in ecstasy and half-fainted; they saw the Arabs standing before them; now they felt the whip upon their snouts.  They leapt back and retreated a small distance.  Yet the camel's blood already lay there in puddles giving off a stench, and the body was ripped apart in many places.  They could not resist; again they fell upon it; again the leader raised his whip.  I grabbed his arm. 

"You are right, lord," he said.  "We shall leave them to their job.  It is also time for us to break camp.  You have seen them.  Wonderful animals, don't you think?  And how they hate us!"

The Angel

We are confined in our flesh only by our thoughts, however persistently morbid those thoughts may become (I, for one, have always been plagued by what this author once termed "the imp of the perverse," an epitaph that will not gain further explanation on these pages).  The drift of our imagination may be denied by those who believe in nothing greater than themselves, but some of us know full well that it is within our imagination not our reason that the truth lies hidden.  Amidst the clouds we gaze upon are the shapes of things that do not make sense except in dreams of another realm, dreams that suggest we inhabit a sliver of the universe reflected in many others.  A somewhat abstract introduction to a fine story in this collection.

Our narrator is Bernard, a younger writer in New York whose future seems neither particularly obscure nor particularly bright.  He has no ostensible family or friends and the structure of his days is embedded in his petty routines.  In this setting a good mind will not despair.  However disheartening such an existence may appear to be, the creative spirit will not languish in self-pity for more than a few moments and instead let the surroundings guide its thoughts.  Such an event is the writer's sudden acquaintance with an elderly dandy called Harry Talboys.  A name that already sounds like a cocktail or the pseudonym of a ne'er-do-well:

A tall, thin figure in a seersucker suit the grubbiness of which, the fraying cuffs, the cigarette burns and faded reddish wine stain on the crotch could not altogether disguise the quality of the fabric and the elegance of the cut.  Very erect, very tall, very slow, on his head a Panama hat; and his face a veritable atlas of human experience, the nose a great hooked bone of a thing projecting like the prow of a ship, and the mouth – well, the mouth had foundered somewhat, but the old man animated it with lipstick!  He must have been at least eighty.  His shirt collar was not clean, and he wore a silk tie of some pastel shade – pale lilac or mauve, I seem to remember; and in his buttonhole a fresh white lily.

One short phrase in this passage gives away much more than it should, but we can do without belaboring these unfortunate hints.  Harry is for all intents and purposes a perfect literary subject.  He is cultured, old enough to have had a very interesting life, and mindfully rueful about some past mistakes.  When he confesses something we are not so much appalled as curious as to how much was omitted from his sentiments.  For that reason and some others is his narrative about a young man once his age by the name of Anson Havershaw far more provocative than it would first appear.

And how precisely does it first appear?  In the guise, as it were, of a normal, homosexual coupling, although one might ask oneself how many public passions of this nature were successfully carried out in New York in 1925.  Havershaw, "he of the milk-white flesh and non-existent navel," becomes Harry's muse in a series of episodes whose contents we perceive emotionally more than in any consistent reality, and Bernard begins to entertain – such is his vocation, as it were – a few rogue ideas.  Harry has his own notion of what his relationship was to the young man "who bore a striking resemblance to himself ... an uncanny physical likeness":

That summer ... Harry often found himself leaving Anson's house in the first light of dawn, still in evening clothes, and slipping into the welcome gloom of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue. 'You wouldn't know it, Bernard,' he said; 'they tore it down in 1947.  A lovely church, Gothic revival; I miss it ... at the early Mass it would be lit only by the dim, blood-red glow from the stained-glass windows, and by a pair of white candles that rose from gilded holders on either side of the altar and threw out a gorgeous, shimmering halo ... The priest I knew well, an ascetic young Jesuit; I remember how his pale face caught the candlelight as he turned to the congregation – the whole effect was strangely beautiful, Bernard, if you had seen it you would understand the attraction Catholicism held for so many of us ... it was the emotional appeal, really; disciplined Christianity we found more difficult to embrace.'

Without revealing why such an understanding of standard Christian faith and practice could be so important to Harry, I should confess that without an emotional appeal, religion is no different from any system of beliefs that convinces the holder of its benefits.  Liturgy and Mass may involve rote memorization, but what these rituals truly signify should bring the believer quite often to tears.  Harry does not elaborate on his flirtation with the Catholic system, only suggesting that it fulfilled some of his Romantic criteria and did not wholly dispel the rest.  Alas, Harry's stories become saturated with self-analysis, and Bernard grows increasingly frustrated at his new acquaintance whom he once considered mining for fictional ends.  The dénouement, an inevitability that even Bernard admits, involves more impolitic neighboring although the young writer, at times, does seem justified in his skepticism.  

Blood and Water was McGrath's first work, and while not his best (a scatological preoccupation abounds; one edition even features a ghostly likeness of a once-ballyhooed quack), it tenderizes topics that will be probed at greater depths in his delicious novels.  However one feels about the mentally ill and the delusional, their minds are fabulous sources of creativity.  When reading McGrath it is thus preferable to discount the clinical aspects of his analysis and focus on the imaginative wonderlands that these psyches paint in an eerie vividness reminiscent of a Scottish moor in early autumn.  Harry does not belong on such a moor, and indeed may not quite belong anywhere apart from his quarters in the same building as Bernard where his neighbor repeatedly finds himself ensconced in an uncomfortable seat.  And I haven't even mentioned the intensifying stench.