Our novel opens with our unnamed
protagonist/narrator telling us that he is unfit for the job of guard/guide of
the Pales caves as the uniform is too small, the cap is too large and the shoes
too big. The caves contain Palaeolithic paintings, and our protagonist has been
“demoted” to the role of guide/guard as he injured himself falling whilst on an
archaeologist tour (he’s is an archaeologist without a kneecap).
This is where our novel takes a turn into the land
of “strange”, our writer doesn’t want to actually start our protagonist’s
story, our guide doesn’t want to go to work as a guide, procrastination and
delay are the themes, our hero is potentially unevolving (?), disevolving(?),
evolving backwards, is he slowly becoming prehistoric?
No two skulls are alike, as any
peasant growing his turnips on the site of an ancient necropolis can tell you;
no two turnips either, even if an exhumed skull is sometimes so similar to a
turnip that you can mistake one for the other. When you think about it, it
might even be that our particular casts of mind – each unique – depend solely
on the shape of our skull, individual thought testing itself first against the
bone of its brainpan, like music molding itself to the geometry of a dome
without regard for the musician’s intentions. Just a hypotheses I’m throwing
out here. Indeed, I’m going beyond the call of my duties. But since I haven’t
yet taken them up…Let’s grant for a moment that this hypothesis is correct, in
which case we can legitimately claim that one’s thoughts will develop more
freely in a huge-domed skull – but with the risk of getting lost or confused –
than in a narrow, pointy skull, unless, on the contrary, they become sharper
and burst forth, which is not impossible. My starting hypothesis thus branches
out into diverging subhypotheses: this is how webs are woven; truth cannot be
caught by the hand.
Our protagonist delays and delays his actual role as a guide
– showing people through the caves – as well as his role as a guardian –
protecting the caves – which causes no amount of angst amongst his superiors.
Quite simply, they are not impressed. But then again he’s writing this book:
My younger brother, who joined me
three years later, travelled the same, though somewhat wider route and, once I got
started, I kept on like that for some time, opening the road for the two of us
in the enchanted world of childhood. We progressed slowly, it’s raining serpents’
heads, the flora has the reflexes and appetites of fauna but the animals
resemble broad green leaves, I’m clearing my path through it all with a
machete, my brother tags along behind, there are so many mosquitoes around us
that all the seats are taken, the air is saturated with them, I cut into the
flesh of fat steaks bleeding with our blood, believe me or don’t, I’m not
making anything up, I’m writing fiction; apparently that’s a job, I could see
myself doing it, it seems pretty easy, besides all the seats are taken,
decidedly, must I also cut into that, I’m a bit reluctant, I’m not used to
this, I don’t have the experience. In truth, our childhood was hardly
adventurous at all. We learned with difficulty how to speak, with difficulty
how to walk, and then, once that was done, we were ordered to shut up and sit
still.
As you can see an absurdist dream, where our
protagonist/writer draws further and further into himself, and during this
journey the writing becomes more and more obscure, more absurd, our novel
disintegrates around us, evolution is put in reverse as we return to the world
of the prehistoric.
After a lifetime of experience
and daily practice, we instinctively expend the precise amount of energy we
need to open a drawer, but the difficulties I just experienced have completely
distorted this sense of moderation acquired over the years, assimilated by
nerves and muscles, so that the third drawer yanked too brutally goes off the
rails and falls on my feet. It’s painful but I’ve read Epictetus’s Art of Living.
I don’t really want to give away the ending of the book so
you’ll just have to read it yourself to see how far backwards can our writer
go? This is a fantastic romp through a surreal mind, one that slides between
the fantastic and the real (for example, I was wondering how long it was going
to take our writer to start the novel when I realised I was actually reading the
novel!!!) A work I can imagine would have been very difficult to translate, given
word plays, snide remarks and views that could well be lost through language.
Another absurd mind from Europe that I have entered – yet again
translated fiction pushing the boundaries, it’s not always going to come off
but in this case I think it does. Yet again a challenge from a foreign
language.
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