My latest read, again comes from Istros Books, park of their
“Best Balkan Books” Series, “The Son” by Andrej Nikolaidis.
However little we expect of life,
it gives us even less. Disappointment is inevitable, and not even the complete
absence of hope can free us of it.
So here’s a warning, are you after a nice uplifting tale?
Sorry, this won’t fit the bill....do you want enlightening ruminations on the
futility of existence? Well just about every page here contains something to
make you ponder your own life.
Our novel opens with heat, the stench of sweat, insomnia, a
broken marriage and cannibalism, and that’s just the first four pages. Welcome
to the world of our unnamed writer protagonist, a first person narration on a
day in the life of “the son”.
Our narrator is carrying a deep dark secret, one that
separates him and his depressed father. A relationship that his late mother
could not mend, a burden he carries but will not discuss that could lead to
forgiveness and forgiveness is a punishment? A story set in Montenegro, more specifically
in the seaside city of Ulcinj. A city where our writer, Andrej Nikolaidis,
lives, a place which contains the “Square of Slaves”, where allegedly Miquel de
Cervantes was traded as a slave. The city where tourism is rife but a dark past
is lurking in the shadows. A city which becomes the melting pot for our
narrator as he travels it, guzzling whisky, throughout a single night.
To escape a fire in the family olive grove (the third and
obviously final nail in his father’s coffin) our writer goes into town and our
nightmare begins. He comes across an angry mob outside the mosque, debates and
lamentations on patricide and stories “gleaned from anecdotes” follow. He then
meets up with the town cheapskate, who pimps his own three daughters. A fellow
school friend who was severely bullied as a child, ended up in the army, lost
everything and is now an alcoholic. More and more characters from our narrators
past appear, others join his life, like a family of lepers living in an
abandoned car park. A multi storey car park with no access road, the road is
the promise of a better future, if only extra work is put in the future would
be rosy...
This is a work which contains numerous illuminating snippets
throughout, for example:
He slaved away all his life, only
to die in misery.
Things never fail because of me, not do they go off well thanks to me. They always happen with me
as a bystander. I just adapt to them.
If someone managed to wring all
the black out of just one human soul, like the ink from a squid, the whole
world would disappear in murk.
Is “illuminating” the correct word for the darkness we wade
through here? However there are great passages revealing the angst of this man’s
soul, this one as he watches his father’s olive grove burn;
I soon tired of the scene. Three
helicopters were now in operation, and it was plain to see that they would
defeat the fire in what would be one more triumph of technology. Once
technology and nature were pitted against each other in this way I felt that
there was nothing left for me. And yet I simply couldn’t make up my mind as to
which was more monstrous: nature itself or the methods people employ in order
to dominate it.
Even though our anti-hero narrator writhes in the murk of
his own existence, his relationship with his father simmering along in the
background, as each hour of his journey into the soul of Ulcinj reveals more of
his despair and hatred of humanity;
As a matter of fact, everyone
becomes unbearable once we get to know them a little better. That’s why the
most beautiful women are on those painters’ canvases, where they’re limited to
their appearance. Beautiful they are, and that’s all we need to know about
them. Because any other detail about their biographies, habits and thoughts
would repulse us and turn delight into disgust. I can just imagine how the girl
with the pearl earring must have stunk. Europe at that time didn’t have
bathrooms, so it’s hard to think of European women of that era as anything
other than carriers of the plague bacillus. This woman, as we know, was a
maidservant. Before she sat for the painter determined to immortalise her
beauty, in other words the lie about her, she must have already cooked the main
meal, scrubbed the floors and done all the shopping. She’s sure to have worked
up a sweat at least three times, and being in the same room as her must have
been awful. But there’s not a man alive who doesn’t desire to kiss her when he
sees her on a museum wall.
I don’t want to reveal all the characters our writer comes
across in his nightly travels as the underbelly of Ulcinj would be a lesser
experience for you as a reader if I exposed the Dantesque gathering of misfits.
Needless to say our protagonist ends up at the Square of Slaves, where he
dreams up a modern concept of a slave market for writers and artists (of course
the outcasts in his world).
A novel which also contains a “soundtrack”, unfortunately
this is listed at the end as I may have listened to the recommended tracks as I
was reading – a listing of thirteen pieces to accompany the reading, ranging
from J.S. Bach to Sonic Youth (“Tunic (A Song for Karen)” which is about Karen
Carpenter, the singer who died from anorexia nervosa – “You are never going
anywhere”).
Although this is a short work, only running to 115 pages, it is multi layered and complex in its observations. Ultimately a story about the father/son relationship, this
is also a moving story of Montenegro and the futility of existence. Another great
work from the Balkan region and yet another from Istros Books that I thoroughly
enjoyed. A region I will continue to explore given the wealth of writing
talent.
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