Lydia Davis is the most important short American story writer I have come across after Raymond Carver. I love her stories’. Here are three samples of her flash fiction, some of her very short short stories in her collected stories. I pray one day she wins the Nobel.
A Different Man
“At night he was a different man. If she knew him as he was in the morning, at night she hardly recognized him: a pale man, a gray man, a man in a brown sweater, a man with dark eyes who kept his distance from her, who took offence, who was not reasonable. In the morning, he was a rosy king, gleaming, smooth-cheeked and smooth-chinned, fragrant with perfumed talc, coming out into the sunlight with a wide embrace in his royal red plaid robe…”
(Loved the way she concludes with a valediction of time passing, of a dwindling into cramped old age (night is used as metaphor for old age and morning for his youth), but then in an act of ironically sentimental romantic retrospection, she delivers a final flurry—with the ever-present participles “gleaming” and “coming out into the sunlight” animating and glamorizing a last sentence that ends not with a period but with an ellipsis springing hope eternal.)
The Outing
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes. (I like “The Outing” because it’s the skeleton of a story, poking fun at the notion of “what happens”—and yet still creates a powerful sense of what indeed happened.)
Fear
Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, “Emergency, emergency,” and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has not been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families too, to quiet us. (This one portrays anxiety, the kind of irrational fear that rises right to the surface, breaking through the comforting repetition of certain phrases and words. In the last sentence of the story the narrator says that each of the neighbors have thought about running out their homes and screaming just as the woman does, but they never do because they have friends and family that keep them under control. .This one gives a deep drink of what can and cannot be known, of the relative success and failure of sympathy with other people, of need that enables comfort and comfort that disguises need.)
Introduction Every now and then one encounters a story that leaves an indelible impression long after it is read. I read this short short story written by Naguib Mahfouz shortly after his winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I was enamoured by its rich and ornate style, its narrative technique, universal theme and dramatic ending. Quite recently, I suggested a speaker to present it as a monodrama in a Toastmasters meeting and it was well-received by the audience. Egyptian writer Mahfouz is the only Nobel Laureate in Arabic Literature. I had the delight to visit the Naguib Mahfouz Cafe (Earlier known as Fishawy’s Cafe in Khan Al Khalili market, one of the most ancient surviving markets in the World) during my visit to Egypt in 2007. Naguib used to write many parts of his Cairo Trilogy in a special place in this cafe. In his 33 novels, including his masterpiece, “The Cairo Trilogy”; his 16 short story collections; 30 screenplays; and several plays he invented a vast human comedy populated by the inhabitants of Cairo’s sprawling metropolis whose lives embodied the history of his country: wily shopkeepers and heartless bureaucrats, wheedling beggars, voluptuous women, whores and holy men, desperate parents and starving students. Mahfouz passed away in 2006. Story I proceeded alongside my father, clutching his right hand, running to keep up with the long strides he was taking. All my clothes were new: the black shoes, the green school uniform, and the red tarbush. My delight in my new clothes, however, was not altogether unmarred, for this was no feast day but the day on which I was to be cast into school for the first time. My mother stood at the window watching our progress, and I would turn toward her from time to time, as tough appealing for help. We walked along a street lined with gardens; on both sides were extensive fields planted with crops, prickly pears, henna trees, and a few date palms. “Why school?” I challenged my father openly. “I shall never do anything to annoy you.” “I’m not punishing you,” he said, laughing. “School’s not a punishment. It’s the factory that makes useful men out of boys. Don’t you want to be like your father and brothers?” I was not convinced. I did not believe there was really any good to be had in tearing me away from the intimacy of my home and throwing me into this building that stood at the end of the road like some huge, high-walled fortress, exceedingly stern and grim. When we arrived at the gate we could see the courtyard, vast and crammed full of boys and girls. “Go in by yourself,” said my father, “and join them. Put a smile on your face and be a good example to others.” I hesitated and clung to his hand, but he gently pushed me from him. “Be a man,” he said. “Today you truly begin life. You will find me waiting for you when it’s time to leave.” I took a few steps, then stopped and looked but saw nothing. Then the faces of boys and girls came into view. I did not know a single one of them, and none of them knew me. I felt I was a stranger who had lost his way. But glances of curiosity were directed toward me, and one boy approached and asked, “Who brought you?” “My father,” I whispered. “My father’s dead,” he said quite simply. I did not know what to say. The gate was closed, letting out a pitiable screech. Some of the children burst into tears. The bell rang. A lady came along, followed by a group of men. The men began sorting us into ranks. We were formed into an intricate pattern in the great courtyard surrounded on three sides by high buildings of several floors; from each floor we were overlooked by a long balcony roofed in wood. “This is your new home,” said the woman. “Here too there are mothers and fathers. Here there is everything that is enjoyable and beneficial to knowledge and religion. Dry your tears and face life joyfully.” We submitted to the facts, and this submission brought a sort of contentment. Living beings were drawn to other living beings, and from the first moments my heart made friends with such boys as were to be my friends and fell in love with such girls as I was to be in love with, so that it seemed my misgivings had had no basis. I had never imagined school would have this rich variety. We played all sorts of different games: swings, the vaulting horse, ball games. In the music room we chanted our first songs. We also had our first introduction to language. We saw a globe of the Earth, which revolved and showed the various continents and countries. We started learning the numbers. The story of the Creator of the Universe was read to us, we were told of His present world and of His Hereafter, and we heard examples of what He said. We ate delicious food, took a little nap, and woke up to go on with friendship and love, play and learning.
As our path revealed itself to us, however, we did not find it as totally sweet and unclouded as we had presumed. Dust-laden winds and unexpected accidents came about suddenly, so we had to be watchful, at the ready and very patient. It was not all a matter of playing and fooling around. Rivalries could bring pain and hatred or give rise to fighting. And while the lady would sometimes smile, she would often scowl and scold. Even more frequently she would resort to physical punishment.
In addition, the time for changing one’s mind was over and gone and there was no question of ever returning to the paradise of home. Nothing lay ahead of us but exertion, struggle, and perseverance. Those who were able took advantage of the opportunities for success and happiness that presented themselves amid the worries.
The bell rang announcing the passing of the day and the end of work. The throngs of children rushed toward the gate, which was opened again. I bade farewell to friends and sweethearts and passed through the gate. I peered around but found no trace of my father, who had promised to be there. I stepped aside to wait. When I had waited for a long time without avail, I decided to return home by my own. After I had taken a few steps, a middle-aged man passed by, and I realized at once that I knew him. He came toward me, smiling, and shook me by the hand, saying, “It’s a long time since we last met – how are you?” With a nod of my head, I agreed with him and in turn asked, “And you, how are you?” “As you can see, not all that good, the Almighty be praised!”
Again he shook me by the hand and went off. I preceded a few steps, and then came to a startled halt. Good Lord! Where was the street lined with gardens? Where had it disappeared to? When did all these vehicles invade it? And when did all these hordes of humanity come to rest upon its surface? How did these hills of refuse come to cover its sides? And where were the fields that bordered it? High buildings had taken over, the street surged with children, and disturbing noises shook the air. At various points stood conjurers showing off their tricks and making snakes appear from baskets. Then there was a band announcing the opening of a circus, with clowns and weight lifters walking in front. A line of trucks carrying central security troops crawled majestically by. The siren of a fire engine shrieked, and it was not clear how the vehicle would cleave its way to reach the blazing fire. A battle raged between a taxi driver and his passenger, while the passenger’s wife called out for help and no one answered. Good God! I was in a daze. My head spun. I almost went crazy. How could all this have happened in half a day, between early morning and sunset? I would find the answer at home with my father. But where was my home? I could see only tall buildings and hordes of people. I hastened on to the crossroads between the gardens and Abou Khoda. I had to cross Abou Khoda to reach my house, but the stream of cars would not let up. The fire engine’s siren was shrieking at full pitch as it moved at a snail’s pace, and I said to myself, “Let the fire take its pleasure in what it consumes.”
Extremely irritated, I wondered when I would be able to cross. I stood there a long time, until the young lad employed at the ironing shop on the corner came up to me. He stretched out his arm and said gallantly, “Grandpa, let me take you across.” Tarbush: red hat similar to the fez worn especially by Muslim men
Post Script: Time is telescoped into a morning’s walk, the first day in the school, and the return journey home. To Mahfouz, our entire life can be condensed into just ‘Half a Day” in the school of life, from sunrise to sunset. Everything you learn in school repeats in life as well (Learning to work, love, play, obey rules, break rules). Being a follower of Bergson’s philosophy Mahfouz has made a stunning masterwork on ‘Time’, both lived and straight. The narrator emerges from the gates of the school oblivious that his entire life has passed, and that he is now no longer a young boy but an old man. Life is a tragedy. It is a gentle story tinged with nostalgia for time irrecoverable.
He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favorite armchair, its back toward the door–even the possibility of an intrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it–he let his left hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set to reading the final chapters. He remembered effortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park. Word by word, licked up the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin. The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, his face cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not come to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through the forest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneath liberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity. Even to those caresses which writhed about the lover’s body, as though wishing to keep him there, to dissuade him from it; they sketched abominably the frame of that other body it was necessary to destroy. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes. From this hour on, each instant had its use minutely assigned. The cold-blooded, twice-gone-over reexamination of the details was barely broken off so that a hand could caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark. Not looking at each other now, rigidly fixed upon the task which awaited them, they separated at the cabin door. She was to follow the trail that led north. On the path leading in the opposite direction, he turned for a moment to watch her running, her hair loosened and flying. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges until, in the yellowish fog of dusk, he could distinguish the avenue of trees, which led up to the house. The dogs were not supposed to bark, and they did not bark. The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there. He went up the three porch steps and entered. The woman’s words reached him over a thudding of blood in his ears: first a blue chamber, then a hall, then a carpeted stairway. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door of the salon, and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel.
Source: Blow-Up and Other Stories
( Note to the reader: Julio Cortazar (Argentinean writer) is one of my favorite Latin American writers. He was a great sensation in the literary circles of Kerala in the vibrant eighties when yours truly also got exposed to some unadulterated Latin American stuff. Pablo Neruda once said, ‘Anyone who doesn’t read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair’. I cannot agree more and anyone who has tasted Cortazar and Borges will assert that much of the fiction that one encounters these days is sadly insipid. This metafiction is an excellent example of Cortazar’s genius. To read a gripping story is to be transported into its fictional world. Certain stories creates the illusion that I am no longer reading the story but I am actually in the story. ‘In continuity of Parks’, Cortazar memorably evokes this experience of total immersion in a fictional text. This story seamlessly shifts from two realistic narratives, finally provoking a metaphysical uncertainty about which is the text and which is reality. A business man reads a novel sitting in his high backed green velvet armchair in his study. The novel he is reading tells of a desperate but resolute murderer who follows an avenue of trees that leads to a house; he climbs the stairs and locates the study,… ‘and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel’. When the crime is about to be performed, the victim is revealed as the businessman sitting in the armchair at the opening. So at the climatic end, the real man reading a novel suddenly becomes a character in the novel just as the characters suddenly become ‘real’ to end the man’s life. Cortazar involves the reader, first by constructing the business man as the narrative point of view and then, without warning, abruptly shifting to the lovers. The rapid conclusion is a bit jolting, not only because the text ends just before the murder occurs, but because the reader was earlier positioned in the victim’s point of view, assuming it to be reality. Thus the text that the hero reads becomes the text in which he is read. The reader immersed in the thriller becomes the victim of the narrated murder, thus paying with his life the disappearance of the boundary between fiction and reality. Note the economy of words in this story. The ending line is superb, perfectly balanced, without any superfluous or gory words to describe a cool murder…In essence, the sign of great fiction!….PGR)
by Guy de Maupassant Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson and Mme. Quesada
Introduction
The French writer Guy de Maupassant (185-1993) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered as one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. Maupassant took the subjects for his pessimistic stories and novels chiefly from the behaviour of the bourgeoisie, the Franco-Prussian War, and the fashionable life of Paris.
Maupassant had contracted syphilis in his 20s and the disease later caused increasing mental disorder. Many of his famous stories and masterpieces such as the horror story, “The Horla” have their roots in the flashes of madness. The below story too was written during that period. He has also written amazingly beautiful stories such as “In the moonlight” which has infidelity as its theme. Perhaps one story that all of you must be familiar is, “The Necklace”, in which a woman’s vanity brings about the down fall and ruin of her and her husband. Its dramatic ending evokes deep pathos.
While the writer Maupassant is certainly familiar to many story writers in Sulekha, I am not too sure how many here have encountered this nugget of Mauppasant. This one is one of my favourites.
The Grave
The seventeenth of July, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three, at half-past two in the morning, the watchman in the cemetery of Besiers, who lived in a small cottage on the edge of this field of the dead, was awakened by the barking of his dog, which was shut up in the kitchen.
Going down quickly, he saw the animal sniffing at the crack of the door and barking furiously, as if some tramp had been sneaking about the house. The keeper, Vincent, therefore took his gun and went out.
His dog, preceding him, at once ran in the direction of the Avenue General Bonnet, stopping short at the monument of Madame Tomoiseau.
The keeper, advancing cautiously, soon saw a faint light on the side of the Avenue Malenvers, and stealing in among the graves, he came upon a horrible act of profanation.
A man had dug up the coffin of a young woman who had been buried the evening before and was dragging the corpse out of it.
A small dark lantern, standing on a pile of earth, lighted up this hideous scene.
Vincent sprang upon the wretch, threw him to the ground, bound his hands and took him to the police station.
It was a young, wealthy and respected lawyer in town, named Courbataille.
He was brought into court. The public prosecutor opened the case by referring to the monstrous deeds of the Sergeant Bertrand.
A wave of indignation swept over the courtroom. When the magistrate sat down the crowd assembled cried: “Death! death!” With difficulty the presiding judge established silence.
Then he said gravely:
“Defendant, what have you to say in your defense?”
Courbataille, who had refused counsel, rose. He was a handsome fellow, tall, brown, with a frank face, energetic manner and a fearless eye.
Paying no attention to the whistlings in the room, he began to speak in a voice that was low and veiled at first, but that grew more firm as he proceeded.
“Monsieur le President, gentlemen of the jury: I have very little to say. The woman whose grave I violated was my sweetheart. I loved her.
“I loved her, not with a sensual love and not with mere tenderness of heart and soul, but with an absolute, complete love, with an overpowering passion.
“Hear me:
“When I met her for the first time I felt a strange sensation. It was not astonishment nor admiration, nor yet that which is called love at first sight, but a feeling of delicious well-being, as if I had been plunged into a warm bath. Her gestures seduced me, her voice enchanted me, and it was with infinite pleasure that I looked upon her person. It seemed to me as if I had seen her before and as if I had known her a long time. She had within her something of my spirit.
“She seemed to me like an answer to a cry uttered by my soul, to that vague and unceasing cry with which we call upon Hope during our whole life.
“When I knew her a little better, the mere thought of seeing her again filled me with exquisite and profound uneasiness; the touch of her hand in mine was more delightful to me than anything that I had imagined; her smile filled me with a mad joy, with the desire to run, to dance, to fling myself upon the ground.
“So we became lovers.
“Yes, more than that: she was my very life. I looked for nothing further on earth, and had no further desires. I longed for nothing further.
“One evening, when we had gone on a somewhat long walk by the river, we were overtaken by the rain, and she caught cold. It developed into pneumonia the next day, and a week later she was dead.
“During the hours of her suffering astonishment and consternation prevented my understanding and reflecting upon it, but when she was dead I was so overwhelmed by blank despair that I had no thoughts left. I wept.
“During all the horrible details of the interment my keen and wild grief was like a madness, a kind of sensual, physical grief.
“Then when she was gone, when she was under the earth, my mind at once found itself again, and I passed through a series of moral sufferings so terrible that even the love she had vouchsafed to me was dear at that price.
“Then the fixed idea came to me: I shall not see her again.
“When one dwells on this thought for a whole day one feels as if he were going mad. Just think of it! There is a woman whom you adore, a unique woman, for in the whole universe there is not a second one like her. This woman has given herself to you and has created with you the mysterious union that is called Love. Her eye seems to you more vast than space, more charming than the world, that clear eye smiling with her tenderness. This woman loves you. When she speaks to you her voice floods you with joy.
“And suddenly she disappears! Think of it! She disappears, not only for you, but forever. She is dead. Do you understand what that means? Never, never, never, not anywhere will she exist any more. Nevermore will that eye look upon anything again; nevermore will that voice, nor any voice like it, utter a word in the same way as she uttered it.
“Nevermore will a face be born that is like hers. Never, never! The molds of statues are kept; casts are kept by which one can make objects with the same outlines and forms. But that one body and that one face will never more be born again upon the earth. And yet millions and millions of creatures will be born, and more than that, and this one woman will not reappear among all the women of the future. Is it possible? It drives one mad to think of it.
“She lived for twenty-years, not more, and she has disappeared forever, forever, forever! She thought, she smiled, she loved me. And now nothing! The flies that die in the autumn are as much as we are in this world. And now nothing! And I thought that her body, her fresh body, so warm, so sweet, so white, so lovely, would rot down there in that box under the earth. And her soul, her thought, her love–where is it?
“Not to see her again! The idea of this decomposing body, that I might yet recognize, haunted me. I wanted to look at it once more.
“I went out with a spade, a lantern and a hammer; I jumped over the cemetery wall and I found the grave, which had not yet been closed entirely; I uncovered the coffin and took up a board. An abominable odor, the stench of putrefaction, greeted my nostrils. Oh, her bed perfumed with orris!
“Yet I opened the coffin, and, holding my lighted lantern down into it I saw her. Her face was blue, swollen, frightful. A black liquid had oozed out of her mouth.
“She! That was she! Horror seized me. But I stretched out my arm to draw this monstrous face toward me. And then I was caught.
“All night I have retained the foul odor of this putrid body, the odor of my well beloved, as one retains the perfume of a woman after a love embrace.
“Do with me what you will.”
A strange silence seemed to oppress the room. They seemed to be waiting for something more. The jury retired to deliberate.
When they came back a few minutes later the accused showed no fear and did not even seem to think.
The president announced with the usual formalities that his judges declared him to be not guilty.
He did not move and the room applauded.
Postscript This gruesome story of obsessive love and terrible madness is set in 19th century New England. As the grave robber is brought to trial, the stunned townspeople hear firsthand his bizarre, ghastly reasons for the unspeakable act which he committed. While this one is indeed very affecting, what I find so impressive about the Maupassant story is that it is really about the power of language; in this it is modern before its time. You could even say that the dead woman is emblematic of the author as person, while the linguistic achievement of the lover’s oration is emblematic of the author’s achievement as artist. And of course to write this story, Maupassant had to meet a formidable challenge he had set himself. We know Chekhov’s remark that a revolver introduced in Act I must end up being fired in Act III. Well, it may also have been Chekhov who said that a playwright has a big problem if he announces that a character who is yet to appear is a genius — because then when the character arrives, the playwright has to come up with what a genius would say! For Maupassant’s story to work, he had to produce an oration in the mouth of the character that would melt the jury (and with them, the reader). In essence, this story is a paragon of passionate writing. .
THE DINOSAUR Bina Gupta has made a challenging proposition to Sulekha bloggers to write a poem or story of 55 words containing mixed emotions. When I saw that theme, I was reminded of one of the smallest (and one of the best) stories in literature titled ‘The Dinosaur’ by the great Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, who was well-known for his terse minimalist style of writing like that of Hemingway. The story has just nine words: ‘When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there’
A perfect story. Unbeatable power of persuasion, remarkable concision, perfect drama, color, suggestiveness, and clarity. A real minimalist narrative gem. ‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. Monterroso leaves this text in suspense and offers to the reader an opportunity to become co-fabulator here. This enigmatic work has given rise to numerous doctoral theses. In the book ‘Letters to a young Novelist’, the great Peruvian Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa discusses this story from the points of view of -the narrator, space, time and Level of reality. I have summarized it below. The narration in ‘The Dinosaur’ is made in the past tense. So the narrator is situated in the future, narrating something that happened-when? In the near or middle past from the narrator’s future point of view? In the middle past. How do we know that the narrator is situated in the near or middle past in relation to the time of the narrator? Because between those two times there is an unbridgeable abyss, a gap, a barrier that abolishes all link or continuity between the two (The comma). This is the determining characteristic of the tense the narrator employs: The action is confined to a closed- off past, split from the time the narrator inhabits. The action of ‘Dinosaur’ takes place, therefore, in a middle past. What is the point of view in terms of level of reality in this story? The narrative is situated in the plane of the fantastic, since in the real world you and I inhabit, it is improbable that prehistoric animals that appeared in our dreams–or in our nightmares–would turn up as an objective reality, and that we should encounter them in the flesh at the foot of our beds when we opened our eyes. It’s clear, then, that the level of reality of the narrative is an imaginary or fantastic reality. Is the narrator (omniscient and impersonal) situated on the same plane? We could venture to say that he is not, that he establishes himself instead on a real or realist plane–in other words, one that is essentially opposite and contrary to that of the narrative. How do we know this? By the tiniest but most unmistakable of indications, a signal or hint that the careful narrator gives the reader as he tells his pared-down tale: the adverb, ‘still’. The word doesn’t just define an objective temporal circumstance, indicating a miraculous occurrence (the passage of the dinosaur from a dreamworld to objective reality). It is also a call to attention, a display of surprise or astonishment at the remarkable event. Monterroso’s still is flanked by invisible exclamation points and implicitly urges us to be surprised by the amazing thing that has happened. (“Notice, all of you, what is going on: the dinosaur is still there, when it’s obvious that it shouldn’t be, since in true reality things like this don’t happen; they are only possible in a fantastic reality.”) This is how we know the narrator is narrating from an objective reality; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t induce us through the knowing use of an amphibious adverb (still ) to take note of the transition of the dinosaur from dream to life, from the imaginary to the tangible. The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes rightly remarked the following about Monterroso – ‘He is one of the cleanest, most intelligent, transparent and smiling authors in the Spanish language’. No wonder, ‘The Dinosaur’ became such a hit in Latin American literary history.
A story by Heinrich Boll (Translated by Leila Vennewitz )
When someone asks me what business I am in, I am seized with embarrassment: I blush and stammer, I who am otherwise known as a man of poise. I envy people who can say: I am a mason. I envy barbers, bookkeepers and writers the simplicity of their avowal, for all these professions speak for themselves and need no lengthy explanation, while I am constrained to reply to such questions: I am laughter. An admission of this kind demands another, since I have to answer the second question: ” Is that how you make a living?” truthfully with “Yes”. I actually do make a living at my laughing, and a good one too, for my laughing is -commercially speaking – much in demand.
I am a good laughter, experienced; no one else laughs as well as I do, no one else has such command of the fine points of my art. For a long time, in order to avoid tiresome explanations, I called myself an actor, but my talents in the field of mime and elocution are so meager that I felt the designation to be far from the truth: I love the truth, and the truth is that I am a laughter. I am neither a clown nor a comedian. I do not make people gay, I portray gaiety: I laugh like a Roman emperor, or like a sensitive schoolboy, I am as much at home in the laughter of the seventeenth century as in that of the nineteenth, and when occasions demands I laugh my way through all the centuries, all classes of society, all categories of age: it is simply a skill which I have acquired, like the skill of being able to repair shoes. In my breast I harbor the laughter of America, the laughter of Africa, white, red, yellow laughter- and for the right fee I let it peal out in accordance with the director’s requirements.
I have become indispensable: I laugh on records, I laugh on tape, and television; directors treat me with respect. I laugh mournfully, moderately, hysterically, I laugh like a streetcar conductor or like a helper in the grocery business: laughter in the morning, laughter in the evening, nocturnal laughter and the laughter of twilight. In short: wherever and however laughter is required-I do it.
It need hardly be pointed out that a profession of this kind is tiring, especially as I have also-this is my specialty-mastered the art of infectious laughter, this has also made me indispensable to third-and forth-rate comedians, who are scared-and with good reason-that their audiences will miss their punch lines, so I spend most of the evenings in night clubs as a kind of discreet claque, my job being to laugh infectiously during the weaker parts of the program. It has to be carefully timed: my hearty, boisterous laughter must not come too soon, but neither must it come too late, it must come just at the right spot: at the pre-arranged moment I burst out laughing, the whole audience laugh with me, and the joke is saved.
But as for me, I drag myself exhausted to the checkroom, put on my coat, happy that I can go off duty at last. At home I usually find telegrams waiting for me:” Urgently require your laughter. Recording Tuesday,” and a few hours later I am sitting in an overheated express train bemoaning my fate.
I need scarcely say that when I am off duty or on vacation I have little inclination to laugh: the cowhand is glad when he can forget the cow, the brick-layer when he can forget the mortar, and the carpenters usually have the doors at home which don’t work or drawers which are hard to open. Confectioners like sour pickles, butchers like marzipan, and the baker prefers sausage to bread, the bullfighters raise pigeons for a hobby, boxers turn pale when their children have nose bleeds: I find all this quite natural, for I never laugh off duty, I am a very solemn person, and people consider me-perhaps rightly so- a pessimist.
During the first years of our married life, my wife would often say to me: “Do laugh” but since then she has come to realize that I cannot grant her this wish. I am happy that I am free to relax my tense face muscles, my frayed spirit, in profound solemnity. Indeed, even other people’s laughter gets on my nerves, since it reminds me too much of my own profession. So our marriage is quiet, peaceful one because my wife has also forgotten how to laugh: now and then I catch her smiling, and I smile too. We converse, in low tones, for I detest the noise of nightclubs, the noise that fills the recording studios. People who do not know think me that I am taciturn. Perhaps I am, because I have to open my mouth so often to laugh.
I go through life with an impassive expression, from time to time permitting myself a gentle smile, and I often wonder whether I have ever laughed. I think not. My brothers and sisters have known me as a serious boy.
So I laugh in many different ways, but my own laughter I have never heard.
POSTSCRIPT:
This short masterpiece of Heinrich Böll , the German writer and Nobel prize winner of 1972, weaves the tale of a laugher–a person whose laughter is required for recordings and live performances. The Laughter may remind you of the touching Hindi movie “Mera Nam Joker” or that professional mourner ‘Shanichari’ in Kalpana Lajmi’s film ’Rudali”. The character Laughter records canned laughter for soap comedy TV serials like “Lucy Show”. I consider this as a little gem, a moving grandiloquent soliloquy. I like this story for its great poignancy and irony of life. I once presented this story as a monodrama before an audience and they loved it.
The story touches the paradox of anything that is done on demand for the gratification of another, instead of for self. Even art can be taxing when it becomes a profession and ceases to be an indulgence by choice , i.e. when it is not pursued at one’s own will and for one’s own need/ pleasure. The persona in The Laugher may be equated to anyone who chooses to put on a cheery countenance for the public to see but is really formal, serious and humorless in his private side. This immediately brings to mind the two contrasting faces of theater–the sad and happy face. It further underscores the idea that it never pays to pretend to be somebody else you’re not.
Life will always have its smiles and frowns–it’s a fact of life. Perhaps, the character fleshed out in the selection may not have used his job (that of a laugher) as an avenue to escape from the silent bond that ties him to his uneventful life, like others do, but he remains to be a metaphor for the modern-day individual. In short it touchingly portrays the tragedy of being service to others at the expense of personal fulfillment and keeping up pretenses, the tragedy of someone who has mortgaged his laughter forever.
These are five 110 word travel stories with a twist originally written for a challenge in Sulekha. Be candid and not candied in your comments.
Story No.1
As Venad Express was pulling out of the station, a young man clutching his briefcase leaped through the door. He stood puffing but victorious, mopping the sweat from his forehead, as the train gathered momentum. An older man on the train watched him with disdain. ”You young people don’t keep yourself in shape,” he said scornfully. “Why, when I was your age, I could carry a cup of coffee in one hand and run half a mile to catch the 7:30 in the nick of time and still be fresh as a daisy” “You don’t understand”, panted the young man. “I missed this train at the last station!” (110 words)
Story No.2
The stylish old man in impeccable suit sat next to me when he boarded the U-Bahn from Vienna. I was perusing the map to locate Schwedenplatz station to see the river Danube. Frustrated, I sought his help, but he replied that he would alight at a station before mine. He described in advance the scenery I would see from my window–first the peach orchard, then the birch mountain, then oak alley…. Finally, the train halted at his station. As I was helping him off the train, a young man, trying to get in, jostled him. ‘Would you let this blind man off first?’, the old man implored. (108 words)
Story No.3
The Coromandel Express was approaching Cuttack station. The 2nd class compartment was empty except for him and the middle aged lady in deep slumber with a gold chain adorning her neck. He needed a gift for his beloved for their 25th wedding anniversary. Business had turned him into a destitute. He vacillated and then in a sudden urge ripped that gold chain. He was about to move away, when he heard a voice behind him, “If you will accept, I have a thicker one. It is a bit plain but one that fits all.” He turned to see the lady with a handcuff and a pistol. (107 words)
Story No.4
Panhandlers, of myriad categories, have always been a nuisance to commuters in the Flying Rani express. I generally avoid them. I was on my usual weekend trip to Mumbai from Surat. A young girl with beautiful blue eyes was collecting alms for the Lathur earthquake victims. When she approached me, with a flourish I pulled out a few notes from my wallet and placed it in her bowl. “Two hundred rupees for your blues eyes”, I said looking into her lustrous eyes. She smiled coyly, took the notes and put it in her pocket. ‘Now sir, could you give something for the quake victims as well?’ (106 words)
Story No.5
It was his first day in Saudi. He was on a bus to the office. He spotted a pink palatial house and asked the Saudi co-passenger, “Do you know whose house that is?” The Saudi looked out and replied, ‘Mahdri’ Soon they came upon an even bigger sprawling mansion. “Do you know who owns that?” “Mahdri” came the reply. The same query and the same reply over and over again, only increased our Indian’s admiration for Mahdri. Mahdri must indeed be a big business tycoon. A month later, he asked a smart Saudi who this ‘Mahdri’ was. He replied, “My dear fellow, ‘Mahdri’ in Arabic means ‘I don’t know’ “ (109 words)
‘Oh! You’re going to Italy. Beware of pickpockets’, my globe-trotting friend warned us. We are in Florence. My friend’s words keep ringing in my head. I am obsessed with my left back pocket so much that my left hand is stuck to my left butt. We enter Academia Gallery… tourists teem before Michelangelo’s ‘David’, the most beautiful statue ever crafted by human hand. With my left hand on my left pocket, I am devouring ‘David’.. his burning eyes, seductive lips and adorable anatomy. My wife vanishes into the crowd. My younger son nags me to give 1€ to view ‘David’ through a televiewer.. The crowd surges forward..Click..Click …and my left hand goes to my left pocket and I feel a numbing emptiness… I cry out….Thief! thief! My wallet is gone! My wallet!… My wife rushes in and shouts ‘Oh PGR, it’s there in your right hand!’ Apparently, I had taken it out to give money to my son and kept it in my right hand
These are ‘55’ words micro fiction written by me during a creative collaboration contest in Sulekha.
LOVE It was after months that they were having this rapturous rendezvous. They couldn’t control any longer and disappeared behind the green cover of bamboos, which offered camouflage, to quench their lust. It was then she sensed a tremor and noticed a man videotaping them. “Get lost idiot! We too need privacy”, the lady parrot hollered.
JEALOUSY She was younger, taller, smarter and prettier. She was everything that I longed to be but could not. I repeatedly downplayed her but she emerged more confident with a strange vengeance. Gradually my husband started getting closer to her. That is when I regretted for the first time the creation of her – our daughter.
HATRED She opened the mail box with a sigh.
26th January…Dying to see you!
Click! Delete
8th March…Forever yours!
Click!
4th April…My Sweetie
Click! And she moved on, gliding the cursor over each subject line, pressing DELETE.
Red eyes aching. Pale lines vanishing.
She paused. A photo! His rapturous embrace….
Click! Click! Click! Click! Delete Account.
GREED As a prolific blogger, her blogs always topped in the most commented section in Sulekha . She had just completed her 500th blog. After her incessant persuasion to be bloggers, we joined Sulekha and sought her advice to begin blogging. She politely said, ‘Do blog to your heart’s content, but comment only on mine.
PHILANDERING Where is the belly ring I bought you? John asked Mary fumbled. John took out the ring with “MJ” inscribed on it from his pocket. Mary gasped. “Where did you find this dear”? “I got it from Sophie’s” , John quipped. “Edward had gone there straight from here “ Both stared in long silence
Remarks: All creation is a process of destruction. There is one which I feel can be classified into the off grade category. I post it below HATRED-2 He was dying. I softly said, “I had long waited to be near you’. His eyes flashed open and fumed liked a volcano I sensed the eruption of hatred from his eyes and his gasping, convulsive mouth. Smilingly, I poured a spoonful of water into his mouth. He swallowed the liquefied hatred and passed away.
By Johann Peter Hebel Translated by John Hibberd (The story extolled by Kafka as the most wonderful story in the World)
At Falun in Sweden, a good fifty years ago, a young miner kissed his pretty young bride-to-be and said, ‘On the feast of Saint Lucia the parson will bless our love and we shall become man and wife and start a home of our own’. ‘And may peace and love dwell there with us’, said his lovely bride, and smiled sweetly, ‘for if you are everything to me, and without you I‘d sooner be in the grave than anywhere else’. ‘When however, before the feast of Saint Lucia, the parson had called out their names in the church for the second time: ‘If any of you know cause, or just hindrance, why these two persons should not get joined together in holy Matrimony’ -Death paid a call. For the next day when the young man passed her house in his black miner’s suit (a miner is always dressed ready for the funeral), he tapped at the window as usual and wished her good morning all right, but he did not wish her good evening. He did not return from the mine, and in vain that same morning she sewed a red border on a black neckerchief for him to wear on their wedding day, and when he did not come back she put it away, and she wept for him, and never forgot him. In the meantime the city of Lisbon in Portugal was destroyed by an earthquake, the Seven Years War came and went, the Emperor Francis I died, the Jesuits were dissolved, Poland was partitioned, the Empress Maria Theresa died, and Struensee was executed, and America became independent, and the combined French and Spanish force failed to take the Gibraltar. The Turks cooped up General Stein in the Veterane Cave in Hungary, and the Emperor Joseph died too. King Gustavus of Sweden conquered Russian Finland ,the French Revolution came and the long war began, and the Emperor Leopold II was buried. Napoleon defeated Prussia, the English bombarded Copenhagen, and the farmers sowed and reaped. The millers ground the corn, the blacksmiths wielded their hammers, and the miners dug for seams of metal in their workplace under the ground. But in 1809, within a day or two of the feast of Saint John, when the miners at Falun were trying to open up a passage between two shafts, they dug out from the rubble and the vitriol water, a good three hundred yards below the ground, the body of a young man soaked in ferrous vitriol but otherwise untouched by decay and unchanged, so that all his features and his age were still clearly recognizable, as if he had died only an hour before or had just nodded off at work. Yet when they brought him to the surface his father and mother and friends and acquaintances were all long since dead, and no one claimed to know the sleeping youth or to remember his misadventure, until the woman came who had once been promised to the miner who one day had gone below and had not returned. Grey and bent, she hobbled up on a crutch to where he lay and recognized her bridegroom, and more in joyous rapture than in grief, she sank down over the beloved corpse, and it was some time before she had recovered from her fervent emotion. ‘It is my betrothed’, she said at last, ‘whom I have mourned these past fifty years, and now God grants that I see him once more before I die. A week before our wedding, he went under ground and never came up again’. The hearts of all those there were moved to sadness and tears when they saw the former bride-to-be as an old woman whose beauty and strength had left her, and the groom still in the flower of his youth; and how the flame of young love was rekindled in her breast after fifty years, yet he did not open his mouth to smile , nor his eyes to recognize her; and how finally she, as the sole relative and the only person who had claim to him, had the miners carry him into her house until the grave was made ready for him in the churchyard. The next day when the grave lay ready in the churchyard and the miners came to fetch him she opened a casket and put the black silk kerchief and red stripes on him, and then she went with him in her best Sunday dress, as if it were her wedding day, not the day of his burial. You see, as they lowered him into his grave in the churchyard she said, “Sleep well for another day or a week or so longer in your cold wedding bed, and don’t let time weigh heavy on you! I have only a few things left to do, and I shall join you soon, and soon the day will dawn’. ‘What the earth has given back once it will not withhold again at the final call’, she said as she went away and looked back over her shoulder once more. Postscript It was couple of years ago while reading Elias Canetti’s (1981 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature) autobiography, ‘The tongue set free’, that I came across the mention of this story which Franz Kafka had hailed as ‘most wonderful story in the world’. This story appears in the German writer Johan Peter Hebel’s (1760-1826) only story collection titled, “The Treasure Chest”. I am glad that I lived to read this story which I too consider as one of the rare gems in literature.
Walter Benjamin once made the striking claim, when writing about Hebel, that “death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.” He was referring particularly to the story “Unexpected Reunion”.
Hermann Hesse called Hebel’s book ‘The Treasure Chest’ , ‘a summit and jewel of German narrative prose’; and Elias Canetti said ‘I don’t believe there’s a book in the world that engraved itself on my mind as perfectly and as minutely as this one.’ He “secretly” measured each of his books against Hebel’s style. ‘The Treasure Chest’ is not unlike a child’s box of treasures, and that is part of its charm. It inspires uncommon fondness in the first reading itself .Its contents are unpretentious and they are presented with such an allure that even the most sophisticated of readers may accept them too with a smile of pleasure. The sheer variety and brevity of his stories (some as brief as a paragraph) is amazing. They are simple and agreeable to even a casual reader .They include weird, funny, touching and good-humoured ones too. Hebel had as sure a grasp of the world as he had of the way to amuse his readers. Nearly two hundred years after he wrote his stories, you’ll get the point of Hebel in about a minute. No wonder, Hebel’s admirers included Goethe, Tolstoy and the brothers Grimm. Hebel posessed unique style and aesthetic tricks. The key point is that he succeeded in describing simple people and made a meaningful order of the world shine through their everyday actions. In every detail, he had the whole in view. This “holistic” trait of his writings is very contemporary. I remembered this story only a day after Valentine’s Day (Perhaps this is the best Valentine’s story ever written by anyone). This is the first time this story is made available in the internet and I am glad of it (The world is still not awake to savor this most beautiful story). But, if there are any copyright issues, I may delete this post without any compunction. So save your copy now!
(The picture posted at the beginning is the scanned image of the sketch that accompanies the story)
Do read all comments as I have chipped in my thoughts on the story in the comments section. Your discussion on this story will enrich this blog.
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