literary encounters: girl meets ghosts

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WATSONWORKSblog.blogspot.coJanuary

2012

Blog 28 J James Watson:

A Writer’s Notebook

CONTENTS*Literary

Encounters (8): GIRL MEETS GHOST*Notes in Passing: No Great Novels,

Just Great Passages*Poems of Place (7) Lakeland: the

Children’s Part* Correspondence

GIRL MEETS GHOST Bored with her French village holiday, Elsa fails to befriend a young local boy.

Curiously, he seems to know her and her attempt to start up a conversationmakes him nervous. Wondering why he seems so scared, so desperate to get

away, she wanders alone into the church.

She is at a loss, rather more upset than she really ought to be. Also, despite the

heat of this April morning, she is shivering.

This whole place gives me the creeps.

In to the church. It is cool, and, as shafts of sunlight penetrate the gloom,

mysterious. Churches can also be creepy, so full of dark shadows. The slightestsound is amplified, rises to the vaulted roof and seems to return as a reproach.

She sits down. There is a potent odour of incense mixed with damp. This

holiday is becoming a disaster. Dad’s on edge, Carol’s on edge and so am I.

Three’s a crowd: I’m beginning to understand what that means. I’m the odd one

out. I resent Carol and I can’t disguise it; and I’m mad at Dad. He thinks

everything can be normal. She’s not my mum and never will be. I told him in

Carol’s hearing. She probably won’t ever forgive me…

As for the boy out there, that I don’t understand; why his startled look,

especially as he seemed to recognise me; and what or who was he staring at over

my shoulder?



He’s a loner, that’s my guess; stuck all day on a farm out there, herding cattle,

picking grapes or whatever; probably with only rabbits and crows to talk to. I

liked his eyes and his dark hair, though…

Elise wanders towards the east end of the church, and the high altar. Sunbeams

project the colours of the stained glass window, blue and red across the tiles of the choir and the altar steps. She closes her eyes, inhales the scent of spring

flowers, though, look as she might, she cannot see any.

The cool has become cold. That’s it, then: five minutes and I’ve run out of the

tourist attractions of Izieu. Elise quickens her pace towards a door on the north

side of the church. She pauses beside a tray of unlit votive candles. She picks up

a box of matches. This’ll be for my Gran. The matches are too damp to light.

Sorry, Gran. I’ll bring Dad’s lighter next time.

Beside the north door is an oak table. There is a large leather-bound Visitors’

Book and beside it the stub of a pencil. I suppose people pinch the biros.

Elise opens the book. Its yellowed pages give off a pungent, musty smell: wet

tobacco and rotting cabbage. What shall I write? ‘ Had the most exciting holidayof my life. Back again next year !’ Better not or Dad might take me at my word

and rent the cottage for every year till I’m an old maid.

That’s strange, I could have sworn…Must be the poor light in here. She looks

closer at the pages of the Visitors’ Book. Odd – very: could be some joker. She

runs her finger down the list of names. Astonishment makes her voice ring

through the church: ‘It can’t be! The last date is 1943!’

Not a very good joke. She turns back the pages: 1942, 1941, 1940. Could be

that the priest’s put out an old visitors’ book by mistake. This is ridiculous. All

at once, the silence of the church provokes her. She pronounces the word out

loud:‘Ridiculous!’

1943: that’s the war – Dad’s war. She addresses her words to the back of the

church: ‘Hitler, Nazis, Goebbels, the concentration camps – Auschwitz, the gas

chambers…Huh!’

Not funny.

Elise has been studying both world wars in History. She turns, as if imagining

the church full of parishioners. ‘The war’s over, folks!’

Suddenly, from the West door, a voice: ‘Eloise! You must come now.’ The

woman wears a shawl around her shoulders and a patterned scarf around her

head. In the poor light she looks ancient but she is coming towards Elise with

the speed of someone strong and determined.She says in a loud, harsh voice, ‘So Stefan didn’t manage to persuade you.’

‘I’m sorry, I…’

Stefan? Warn me?’

‘You will bring disaster on us all with your wilfulness.’

‘Disaster?’ She called me Eloise.

Stay calm, stay polite. In this gloom she’s mistaken me for somebody else.

Elise tries a smile, yet steps briskly towards the North door: your turn, she tells

herself, to leg it.

The woman advances on her, clasps her arm. ‘Why do you do these things –

and risk everything?’

This is weird. ‘Risk everything? Every what?’ Elise is pulled towards the North door. ‘You’re hurting me. Please let go my arm.’



‘You will remember the rules, Eloise, whatever your natural desires. And you

will obey them, like everyone else has to do.’

Elise guesses it’s to do with talking out loud in church. Sure, for most of us,

the war’s long over, but for some it’s never over; and that means they take

offence easily if you don’t show proper respect.

‘I’m sorry. I thought I was alone. The words just slipped out.’ She iswondering, will a Hail Mary or two get me off the hook and away from this

crazy lady?

‘You will not be slipping out in future, I can assure you of that.’ The woman

thrusts Elise out of the church door, then prods her in the back when she

hesitates, dazzled by the sun in her eyes.

They have emerged on to a side street, unfamiliar to Elise, running at an angle

from the village square. Everything looks different from here. Elise can’t make

out the war memorial, but her concern is for the hand that bites into her forearm.

‘Please, I’m not…’ In broad daylight surely the woman will recognise her

mistake. She’ll apologise. Elise can think of nothing to say but, ‘I think I’ll be

all right now. Sorry about that.’But the misunderstanding is not to be resolved. ‘You wish to be independent,

my child, yet –’

‘Yes I do.’ All at once Elise is keen to assert that independence. This is not a

joke; indeed it’s scary. She had been shivering in the church and now she is

trembling in the morning heat. ‘I’m not a child, and if you don’t mind…

Madame.’

‘I do mind. Don’t you understand? – your actions put us all of us in peril. All

of us!’

‘My actions? I was just…’

She is not to be heeded. ‘Come now! This is your last chance.’ When Elisetries to reply, the woman clamps her hand across her mouth. ‘Move – and not a single

word!’

From The Ghosts of Izieu (Penguin Readers).

Previous encounters:Boy Meets Girl (Besieged! The Coils of the Viper ; Blog 21, 17 March2011). Girl Meets Girl (Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa; Blog 22, 14April). Dissident Girl Meets Dissident Poet (Ticket to Prague; Blog 23, 11May). Enemies Meet Face to Face (The Freedom Tree; Blog 24, 6

September). Encounter with Bombs (The Freedom Tree; Blog 25, 13October). Athlete Meets Bull (The Bull Leapers; Blog 26, 19 November).Mother Forest Meets Brother Business ( Justice of the Dagger ; Blog 27,15 December).

NOTES IN PASSING: No great novels, just greatpassagesRe-reading classic novels imported for next-to-nothing on Kindle, I’vereached the hesitant conclusion that ‘masterpieces’ scale the heights butalso include some very low-level passages. Dostoevsky’s Crime and

Punishment and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina possess a kernel of passageswhich reach the heavens of literary achievement; yet they are



complemented by acres of text working at a lower, more pedestrian oreven irrelevant level that prompts the reader to question the literary

judgment of the writers as storytellers.

The centrepiece of Crime & Punishment is the existential life of

Raskolnikov, the penniless student who murders the wickedly meanmoneylender and the subtle reeling in and entrapment of the ‘hero’ by theinvestigator, Ily Petrovych. In good Russian tradition we are treated to analmost uncountable host of characters and situations, many directlyrelevant to the emerging story, but also many existing in a paralleluniverse, a galaxy of red herrings.

One becomes bogged down in freshly imported lives that distract fromrather than adding to the unity of the novel. They slow its pace, disperseits tension: in short, keep running away with the story. It’s as if Dostoevsky were being paid lineage and was thus reluctant to impoverish

himself by judicious editing.

In Anna Karenina Tolstoy creates one of the greatest love-stories inliterature. His portrayal of the passionate, tragedy-marked Anna and herwell-matched hero, Prince Vronsky, is stunning, the depth and turbulenceof their relationship magnificently examined.

In parallel, and connected throughout, we encounter the life of Levin, hislove for Kitty, his marriage, his fatherhood: in fascinating contrast, thehonest, deep-feeling ‘good’ person intriguingly documented, his feelingssensitively recorded and divined with great perception.

However, Levin has another side, reflecting the interests of the authorhimself, and it is one that borders on the mundane, is treated at suchlength and becomes tedious – Levin’s obsessive interest in Russianestates, agriculture, the character and attitude of the stuck-in-their-wayspeasantry. Much text is also given over to hunting, for partridge, ducksand snipe, leaving the story in a sort of instruction-manual doldrums. Atother times, the novel risks becoming a dry social tract.

Acknowledgment has to be made that at the time of writing theseinterests might well have been seen by contemporary readers as

important uses of the novel, addressing issues of the time. Even so, thechapters on this issue are endless, as are those detailing the minutae of provincial elections. Only when Anna reappears does the novel springback to life; then for a few chapters she has to step entirely aside for anarrative that seems to occupy the more mundane side of Tolstoy aswriter, sinking into social discourse.

Both novels bore as much as they inspire, leaving one to wonder whether,at the time of writing, the authors reflected on the erratic levels of theirachievement (or just carried on with their 2000 word a day regardless).Even when Anna Karenina reaches its grand finale with the suicide of Anna, suggesting that nothing could reach beyond this devastating event,Tolsoy ploughs on for several chapters with the doggedness of life itself which rarely judges a decent climax.



In contrast, very little of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights deserves to beleft on the cutting-room floor. It is dramatically tighter than theDostoevsky or the Tolstoy, but it takes a greater narrative risk withensuing hazards.

The Russians are god the creator. We get inside the thoughts of characters through the direct agency of the author. In Brontë’s case wehave two narrators, Mr. Lockwood and housekeeper Nelly Dean. Nelly inparticular is a great raconteur; she is author Emily in scarcely concealeddisguise. We gain from the narrative emerging directly from eventsthough at the same time the device prevents us from knowing thethoughts of the hero/villain of the story, Heathcliff.

We are given much on his behavour, his wild love for Catherine, hisdepthless bitterness, the way he destroys two families and makes thelives of so many he has power over miserable; but what is lacking is the

author’s own explanation and analysis until, towards the end of the storyHeathcliff opens his thoughts to Nelly.

There’s reason to commend this, for it leaves the characters subject tofate. It also allows the author to hold back from giving explanations,especially with regard to Heathcliff’s life between leaving WutheringHeights and returning to it a rich man. We are permitted no revelation of his inner self or made aware of any transition to self-knowledge. As far asthe old servant Joseph is concerned Heathcliff lies in death as damned ashe lived: ‘Th’divil’s harried off his soul…and he may hev’ his carcass intot’bargin, for ought I care! Ech! What a wicked ‘un he looks, girning at

death!’

And yet ‘poor Hareton, the most wronged’ by Heathcliff sees somethingbeyond common judgment: he ‘kissed the sarcastic, savage face thateveryone else shrank from contemplating’. By this time of course theyoung Catherine has employed the magic of reading and affectionatecompassion to bring Hareton Earnshaw into the radiant glow of love, thekind that might have rescued Heathcliff from himself had circumstancesbeen different.

By limiting herself to narrators within the text Brontë resists the

controlling power of the author-as-god. But the story is moreconcentrated and more consistently intense as a result, leaving readers tomake their own judgments about Heathcliff. After all, towards the end, heconcedes defeat. Referring to Catherine and Hareton, he says to Nelly, ‘Ihave lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle todestroy for nothing’; and there are shades of hope, for he acknowledges

‘there is a strange change approaching’, an epiphany in which love doesnot defeat death but comes to terms with it.

We are offered confirmation of this when Mr. Lockwood recounts meetinga little boy on the moor, ‘crying terribly’. The lad ‘blubbered “There’sHeathcliff and a woman yonder, under t’nab…un’I darnut pass ‘em.’ Withsuch an ending, one is left thinking that the ultimate dream is possible,love overcoming death.



*

Final paragraph, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood speaking: ‘Ilingered round them [the headstones], under that benign sky: watched

the moths fluttering among the heather and the harebells, listened to thesoft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone couldimagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.’

A quote from Anna Karenina: ‘And she felt that beside the love thatbound them together there had grown up between them some evil spiritof strife, which she could not exorcise from his, and still less from her ownheart.’

***

POEMS OF PLACE (6)

LAKELAND: THE CHILDREN’S PART

Coniston: the lakewaves glitter, glad

To host kids’ feet slow-stepping

Over pebbles and the risk of glass;

Around their heads a haunting

Of flies like shrunken bats – a covenOf night witches envious of childhearts

And of mornings crystal bright.

Later Tarn Hows’ fernclad slopes

Were their splashing picnic ground;

Farmsteads sprinkling white

Up Langdale’s blue-green crags

Made a backcloth worthy of Claude Lorraine

Only to be quite ignored.

We alone, disengaged from their games,

Drew together the cobweb strands of vision –

The light, the landscape, the figures,

The streamsong of their voices; hoarding

Them as solace for a winter’s day.

CORRESPONDENCE

Dear Editor,

As Director of Homer Studies at the Institute of Greek Literature, Iwish to query the assertion of your correspondent Ned Baslow



that our nation’s greatest poet was probably a member of ascriptwriting team called Anon, and whose reluctance to put pento paper can be explained by his suffering from dyslexia. Thesuggestion is preposterous. Further, we object to the doubts hecasts on the intelligence of the Trojans in welcoming the Greekgift of the famous Wooden Horse and not suspecting that it was

packed to the tail with warriors.After all, weren’t the Germans successfully deceived by the

escape pit dug beneath the wooden horse and out of the prisoncamp in the popular movie The Wooden Horse starring Leo Genn

and Ian Dalrymple? If the Germans of all people could be takenin by such a ruse it’s obvious that a people shell-shocked afterten years of war might as easily be deceived.

Should Mr. Baslow care to visit the Institute, or provide uswith a stamped addressed envelope, we will be happy to supplyhim with ample data that proves beyond doubt that Homer wasneither dislexic nor a figure of the Greek imagination: after all, if he were, how would the Institute justify its own existence?

Yours etc.Prof. Milos Kanzankstasis

Institute of Greek Literature,1, Mount Parnassus Drive,

Athens.

We are happy to publish letters on all matters included in or referred to in Watsonworks Blogs. As promised in Blog 27, wereproduce here another letter from Ned Baslow in his Celebrity Letters series. This month Ned turns his attention to a historical

misunderstanding involving Nebuchadnezzar and the famousLondon artist, poet and visionary, Mr.William Blake.

Dear King Nebuchadnezzar,I am writing to you to convey rather delayed apologies on behalf of the well-

known London artist, William Blake (‘Jerusalem’ etc), several private artcollectors and the British Museum. You may or may not be aware that one of

Mr. Blake’s finest works of art concerns your good self; alas, I doubt whetheryou would consider it the sort of portrait you could display in front of your

children or your subjects.

It is no portrait in the flattering style of Raphael or Van Dyck, dignified,in elegant profile and adorned with suitably magnificent garments, lace cuffsand jewellery up to the elbows. Rather, Mr. Blake portrays you on your kneesand in hairy nakedness, best described as grovelling. The theme of hispainting is, my wife Betty informs me (she is studying for her Open Universitydegree and knows about such things) is one of Shame and Mortification, but,

and this is the reason for my writing to you – it’s based on a simplemisunderstanding.

The Him in the painting is not You, meaning that generation after generationof gallery-goers, including vulnerable school parties, have mistakenly beenturning up their noses at you and making inappropriate comments.

Some, of course, would say you deserve it considering what you did to

Jerusalem or the citizens of Tyre, but what is essential in an honest world is to

get the facts right once and for all. Instead of thinking good thoughts aboutyour Hanging Gardens in downtown Babylon (don’t ask me what’s happened



to Babylon since your day!) visitors to galleries and especially those queuingfor entry into the British Museum (and paying good money for the privilege)have been confronted by your ‘portrait’ when in truth the squalid creaturebefore them was one of your lesser successors, one Nabonidas.

In Mr. Blake’s days there was no Google to summon up in order to get

one’s facts straight. The painter was either drunk, quarrelling with his printersor in a haze of dreams and fantasies trying to summon up positive things to

say about the British nation, when he happened upon your utterly worthlesssuccessor, painted his masterpiece (Betty admits it is of high quality) in the

hope that sensation would score over truth (it usually does, but that’s anothermatter).

From what my Betty tells me, this Nabonidos got into hot water fortrying to mess about with the state religion (like the Egyptian pharaohAkhenaten who incurred similar bother). Nab switched his support from theMoon God, your own particularly favourite according Betty, to Marduk who byall accounts was a thoroughly bad influence.

I’ve long held it to be true that tampering with people’s gods is one of the quickest ways for a ruler to end up on his knees in a sea of shards, or as

we would term it these days, shrapnel. Art that misrepresents the past playssome nasty tricks with people’s attitudes as I pointed out in my letter to theDirector of the British Museum demanding that your denomination (ie name)be immediately replaced in all future posters, captions, indexes, postcards; inshort, Nab for Neb. I have the Director’s email assurance that Mr. Blake isequally willing to make amends so long as nobody attempts to render Nabupstanding as grovelling has been one of Mr. Blake’s chief selling-points overthe years.

With every best wish for an eventually successful makeover of your

public and historical image, I am, My Lord King, Yours Truly (incidentally agreat admirer of hanging baskets),

Ned Baslow, ‘Yer Tis’ Old Roman RoadWickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven

Readers may be interested in learning what Ned Baslow had to say in

previous Blogs: to King Harold (Blog 26) and Homer the Greek (Blog 27).The editorial team wishes it to be known that they do not necessarily share

Ned’s opinion of the god Marduk.

*• Kindle reading

Now available on Kindle:Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa (£.5.95 inc. VAT)Talking in Whispers (£2.24 inc. VAT)The Freedom Tree (99p + VAT)

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