RECOLLECTION OF A JOURNEY - Book review

R.C. Hutchinson’s novel Recollection of a Journey was published in 1952; this edition 1983.

Several of Hutchinson’s novels are about a journey – the human journey through life, with its entire vicissitudes, and this book is no exception. It’s narrated by Stefanie Kolbeck, looking back as an old woman to a time in 1940 when Poland was invaded by the German Army and then by the Soviets. ‘One’s memories of childhood are seldom clear visually’ (p9).

In 1940 Stefanie is pregnant. She has a young daughter Annette with her as she boarded a train to escape bombardment, accompanied by her father-in-law, Julius; they’re returning to the Kolbeck family home, Setory. Her ex-husband Casimir had absconded and she had since wed his brother Victor who was in the Polish army.

History tells us that the contest was uneven, though the Poles fought valiantly. ‘These Prussians, and those barbarians on the other side, they suppose they can make an end of Poland by seizing our people and crushing their bodies; they think they can bury the whole history of our nationhood, make us forget our own tongue...’ (p29). ‘We get our greatness from suffering’ (p227).

When the Germans fled and the Russians took over, life didn’t improve for the Kolbecks and the villagers nearby. ‘All the official guidance we had came from the area propagandist, one much lower in intelligence than most of his kind’ (p224) who extolled the superiority of freedoms enjoyed in the Soviet Union...

The descriptions of the family’s constant upheaval, the privations, the move from one labour camp to another, are thoroughly immersive; the reader is there, sharing this first-person narrative. We view scenes in detail through her eyes. ‘... the image of that session remains upon a separate page of my memory, like a photograph in a family album; blurred at the edges now...’ (p55).

Julius’s ageing father was with the family for a while. ‘... even if he was in physical pain his clouded eyes would be faintly lit with amusement over something scratched from his mind’s vast field...’ (p109). ‘... but in their pinched and cheese-white faces I saw the settled apathy of those to whom life is only death’s postponement’ (p109).

When the family and the villagers are herded towards the train and its cattle trucks the imagery seems totally real: ‘It was light too feeble to reach ourselves. In the darkness where we stood we were only spectators of a shadow play that was at once unreal and oddly sinister, where a waving arm would suddenly protrude from the black sierra, where the glint from a bayonet showed like a falling star’ (230).

Amidst hardship, loss, brutality, ignorance, and death, Stefanie learns compassion and perseverance. ‘The heart, I think, which may be convulsed by lesser griefs, is an instrument too finely made to respond at once to the highest charge of sorrow; it will vibrate a little, and that vibration must continue through the years before the charge is absorbed’ (p121).

Throughout, the novel reads like Stefanie’s autobiography, revealing the suffering of innocent casualties of war, displaced, traumatised and exploited, with great observation, imagery and prose:

‘He did pause for a few moments, as if some breeze had brought to his mind a dust which had to settle’ (p181)

‘He drank it slowly, making little grimaces, as children do with medicine; and this reminded me how much the contentment of the cold depends on the precise observance of their simple routines’ (p211).

‘... that Siberian morning light which gives a stone-like quality to the earth and to every object that it finds...’ (p286).

‘... it began to rain, and soon, at a petulant shout from our commander, the prostrate figures, like the dead summoned to judgement, were struggling all together to their feet’ (p287)

‘... behind the stygian hills the sky had become a furnace in the sunrise; ahead, where the river turned, a soft-fleshed shoulder of the farther heights had caught from this fire an unearthly, roseate glow, and in the thorny scrub which lined the river’s edge that fluorescence was broken into shimmering gold by a million particles of ice’ (p298).

For Stefanie, the journey ends on the Caspian, though we know she eventually moved to the west. It’s a remarkable book by an excellent writer, neglected for too long.

Hutchinson (1907 – 1975) wrote seventeen novels, many of them best-sellers and book club choices in their day.  I’ve previously read his A Child Possessed and March the Ninth which didn’t disappoint.

HANNAH - Book review

 

Paul-Loup Sulitzer’s saga Hannah was published in 1988 – translated by Christine Donougher. This is one of those sprawling novels that cover many years, taking the heroine from childhood to old age; a book to get lost in and enjoy. It’s narrated from an omniscient point-of-view.

It begins in Poland in 1882. Hannah is a seven-year-old Jew. While playing in the fields with her brother Yasha and a friend Taddeuz, a young Polish Catholic, she learns of the attack by Cossacks on her village. Then the pogrom reaches them; Hannah hides but her brother is burned to death and Taddeuz betrays her by running away.

She was a precocious child and her father Reb Nathan taught her to read and talked of the wonders of the universe. ‘There was between the two of them an extraordinary closeness that she would know with no other man’ (p5). ‘He would declare: Nothing in the world is more mysterious than a little girl’ (p5). Her father was killed in the raid.

The drayman Mendel Visoker was twenty-four when he discovered Hannah alone in the fields and took her home. She was traumatised, but did not cry. A phrase Mendel uses is: ‘One of two things is possible…’ which Hannah hijacks several times in the narrative, to comic effect.

The years passed and Hannah continued her learning in several languages, borrowing books from Mendel when he visited. She would always be of diminutive stature and had enchanting grey eyes. When she was fourteen Mendel agreed to take her to a relative of the village rabbi in Warsaw as Hannah was plainly stifled in the little village. She stayed in the Klotz household; the woman Dobbe was the power in the marriage, Pinchos was ‘only a suggestion of a husband’. There are many amusing and colourful character descriptions in the book; this one stands out: ‘The couple were nearly sixty and had never had any children. In fact, they had not spoken to each other for some thirty-odd years, united in one of those silent bonds of well-maintained hatred that only a perfect marriage can achieve’ (p77). ‘She was truly colossal, as tall as Mendel, and the look she shot him would have terrified a lesser man. Her small keen eyes were tucked away beneath heavy eyelids that fell, like the rest of her face, in folds’ (p77). However, Dobbe is no match for the wilful Hannah.

While working in the Klotz shop, Hannah sets about improving things and strikes a deal with Dobbe to earn a percentage of the takings. Eventually, she strikes out on her own, achieving considerable success – until she is attacked and robbed. Mendel learns of this and metes out his own revenge but is then on the run and arrested, sent to Siberia. Hannah is given his boat-ticket to Australia, where she is taken in by the Mackenna family. ‘… this sudden immersion in a real family came as something new and surprising; she had not experienced the same since she was seven… Their average height alone was impressive… She felt like a fox terrier invited to share a meal with an assembly of St Bernards’ (p206).

Hannah was a quick study and soon turned her hand to developing scented cream lotions. She scoured much of Australia for the ingredients and quickly understood commerce: ‘she knew that the less cream she included in each pot the more highly priced – and prized – the contents would be’ (p284). All the time she desired to find and reunite with her childhood love, Taddeuz…

‘She was not going to remain in Australia for twenty years, and she was already getting old, nearly eighteen. Taddeuz would not wait half a century for her, nor would Mendel, in the event he had not already escaped…’ (p292).

By the turn of the century, Hannah is a rich and successful woman, head of a cosmetics empire with establishments in London, Paris and Vienna. And yet she seems unfulfilled unless she can find Taddeuz…

This is a completely engrossing novel with a wonderful and memorable heroine in Hannah and plenty of other fascinating characters, not least Mendel, her protector who possesses an unrequited love for her.

The book ends on a reasonably high note; however, there appears to be a sequel, The Empress, dubbed Hannah Tome 2, but it is hard to come by. I’m quite content to leave Hannah at the end of this book.

Apparently, Sulitzer used a ghost writer for many of his books: Loup Durand. I don’t know if Durand wrote this one.

Sulitzer is a French financier, and was a self-made millionaire by the age of seventeen.

It has been postulated that Hannah’s story is a fictional account of Helena Rubinstein. True, both originally came from Poland, and both took the cosmetics and fashion industries by storm at the start of the twentieth century. Quite a number of authors have used real larger-than-life people as templates for their fiction. Whatever the story behind the book, that should not detract from a well-told and affecting tale.

 

 

 

Book of the film - Schindler's Ark

Thomas Keneally’s book was published in 1982; its title for the US publication was Schindler’s List. It won the Booker Prize for the same year, though there were ripples of controversy regarding its selection for this fiction prize. Despite it being referred to as a novel, it is far from that: it is a relatively early example of narrative nonfiction (sometimes called creative nonfiction). The writer employs all the tools of fiction, applying them to factual events and real individuals.

Keneally states in his Author’s Note: ‘To use the texture and devices of a novel to tell a true story is a course which has frequently been followed in modern writing. It is one I have chosen to follow here; both because the craft of the novelist is the only craft to which I can lay claim, and because the novel’s techniques seem suited for a character of such ambiguity and magnitude as Oskar. I have attempted to avoid all fiction, though, since fiction would debase the record, and to distinguish between reality and the myths… Sometimes it has been necessary to attempt to construct conversations of which Oskar and others have left only the briefest record… But most exchanges and conversations and all events, are based on the detailed recollections of the Schindler Jews, of Schindler himself, and of other witnesses to Oskar’s acts of outrageous rescue.’

In effect, Keneally succeeds beautifully. The documentary feel about it is perhaps appropriate for the subject matter.

 

It’s probable that Oskar Schindler needs no introduction these days, thanks to this book, subsequent books and of course the Oscar-winning Spielberg film, Schindler’s List (1993).

 

Briefly, before the war, Schindler worked for the Abwehr, the Nazi party’s intelligence service, where he build up a number of contacts who proved useful to him when he began an enamelware business in Cracow, taking over the Rekord works, renaming it Deutsche Email Fabrik (DEF) [email before e-mail, indeed!] His factory employed about 1,700, a thousand of them being Jews. Initially, he seemed driven by the profit motive, when he wasn’t cheating on his wife and also drinking to excess.

Then war descended upon Poland and, gradually, he saw and heard of the inhuman treatment meted out to the Jews by the German invaders and many Poles. He addressed a number of newly recruited workers: ‘You’ll be safe working here. If you work here, then you’ll live through the war.’ He was a big imposing man, and yet many wondered how he could make such a promise. Didn’t he know what was happening all around? His tone commanded belief.

Schindler seemed to be an uncanny judge of character. SS Oberfuhrer Julian Scherner would ‘sometimes be discovered wearing the smirk of his unexpected power like a childish jam-stain in the corner of his mouth. He was always convivial and dependably heartless. Oskar could tell that Scherner favoured working the Jews rather than killing them, that he would bend rules for the sake of profit…’ (p91) Often, Oskar had to deal with and bribe men in authority, and always got what he wanted.

SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Amon Goeth was the commandant of the Kraków-Plaszów concentration camp, which he had built by forced labour; here Oskar’s workers were forced to live.

‘Oskar had the characteristic salesman’s gift of treating men he abhorred as if they were soul brothers, and it would deceive the Herr Commandant so completely that Amon would always believe Oskar a friend… Oskar despised Goeth in the simplest and most passionate terms. His contempt would grow without limit and his career would dramatically demonstrate it.’ (p164)

Goeth was a psychotic killer, who thought nothing of leaning out of his window and shooting to death a passing worker in the camp. Oskar had the measure of him, however, and during one of their drinking sessions together, he risked Amon Goeth’s murderous ire: ‘… acting out of an amity which, even with this much cognac aboard, did not go beyond the surface of the skin, merely a sort of frisson, a phantom shiver of brotherhood running along the pores, nothing more – Oskar, leaning towards Amon and cunning as a demon, began to tempt him towards restraint.’ (216) And it seemed that Goeth became magnanimous, no longer arbitrarily murdering people.

Oskar’s deviousness knew no bounds. He constantly risked his position, his business, all his money and his life by protecting his workers. There is an allusion to good soldier Schweik, a First World War character created by Jaroslav Hasek, ‘to foul up the system’ (p229). That was Oskar’s Czech ancestry. Schweik bamboozled authority with his comic incompetence, puncturing pomposity and highlighting military stupidity (my copy of The Good Soldier Schweik and His Fortunes in the World War translated by Cecil Parrot proved useful in my research for The Prague Papers!)

There are many painful and memorable moments in this book. Take, for example, the three-year-old child. Even at that age she had her vanities – ‘a passionately preferred colour. Red. She sat there in red cap, red coat, small red boots…’ (p100) – more of which anon.

Rumours in closed societies can be debilitating, dangerous and destructive. Whispers about salt mines, being buried alive… ‘All this hearsay, much of which reached Oskar, was based on a human instinct to prevent the evil by voicing it; to forestall the fates by showing them that you could be as imaginative as they. But that June all the worst of the dreams and whispers took concrete form and the most unimaginable rumour became fact.’ While out horse riding, Oskar witnessed the clearing of part of the ghetto, and he saw a little girl, a toddler, being shepherded with the doomed men and women by SS guards, and the toddler was wearing a small scarlet coat and cap. Before moving out of sight, the child witnessed abhorrent brutality and murder. Afterwards, Oskar realised that the culprits ‘permitted witnesses, such witnesses as the red toddler, because they believed all the witnesses would perish too.’  (p123)

Even disallowing the moral dimension, it beggared belief that the Nazi war machine would squander so many resources on the ‘Final Solution’, diverting transport, troops, administrators, and weapons in their insane mission of extermination.

Eventually, towards the end of the war, Oskar realised he had to move his workforce out of Poland before they were selected for the crematoria. Not without much conniving, effort, and payment – kilos of tea, leather shoes, carpets, coffee, canned fish – he arranged for his Jews to be transferred to a factory in Moravia. A list was created and the authorities sanctioned the move for all on the list. There was privation and despair before they all finally arrived at the new factory, however...

 
Ultimately, Oskar saved 1,200 Jews by employing them– and he was such a con-man that they never produced one item that aided the German war effort. At the time of liberation, those he saved spread to countries round the world.

Keneally’s book is moving without lurching into sentimentality, and provides many psychological insights, some touched upon in the few quotations above. The writing is at times almost poetic: ‘… without the evidence of the crematoria, the dead could offer no witness, were a whisper behind the wind, an inconsequential dust on the aspen leaves.’

 
The film condenses much of the book, starkly in black-and-white – save for that shot of the little girl in red. The presence of Liam Neeson as Oskar dominates the screen. The other characters are faithfully acted, notably Ben Kinglsey as Itshak Stern, Oskar’s accountant and conscience, and Ralph Fiennes is horribly real as Goeth.
 
This film should be viewed at least once in a lifetime.
 
And this book should be read, too.

When Oskar Schindler died in 1974, ‘he was mourned in every nation.’ (p401).  

Writing – word-play – chapter headings continued-2

Last blog on the subject of chapter titles, I provided an insight into Catalyst, where many of the chapters played with variations on the theme of ‘the cat’. See here

However, my psychic spy Tana Standish series chapter titles follow a different format. They’re all single word headings. By doing this, to some extent I’m signposting what the chapter is about, though not giving away too much - because that's always an issue , revealing something that should be a surprise.

Here are the first four from The Prague Papers:

1: Prelude – self-evident, but two-pronged. A) A glimpse at Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Tana’s mission there during the Soviet invasion. B) jumping to the narrative’s ‘present’, 1975, and the beginning of this mission, Operation Ouija. This latter scene is also very relevant to the end, Chapter 24. De-briefing.

2: Tana – yes, most of the book is from Tana’s point of view. However, this chapter shows a long flashback revealing her origins in Poland in 1942.

3. Fort – here we briefly visit ‘the fort’ in Gosport, Hampshire where to this day British spies undergo some of their training.

4. Ilyichev – the name of a Soviet enemy Tana wounded in the past, who now stumbles upon her during her mission and sets his telescopic sights on her…

So, you get the gist. Even a one-word chapter heading can be helpful to a reader should they wish to check back to a scene or sequence of events.

As a possibly interesting aside, Chapter 1 of The Tehran Text is entitled ‘Heart’ and Chapter 1 of The Khyber Chronicle is ‘Herat’, the latter being an anagram of ‘heart’ besides being a place in Afghanistan.

 

1. The Prague Papers e-book available now

Amazon UK here

2. The Tehran Text e-book due out February 17, 2015

3. The Khyber Chronicle - work in progress

The Tana Standish Series published by Crooked Cat Publishing

 

Uncomfortable news from Crimea

2014 news from Crimea: Unidentified armed men entered the Crimean parliament in the regional capital Simferopol by force on Thursday morning, and hoisted a Russian flag on the roof. They were cheered by a handful of pro-Russian demonstrators who gathered round the building, despite a police cordon. We've been waiting for this moment for 20 years," the protest leader said. "We want a united Russia."

If I correctly recall my history, and William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, there are uncomfortable echoes of 1939 Poland in these current events. ‘Unidentified armed men’, indeed.

A work which everyone should read - Hugh Trevor-Roper

 

1939. The German assault on Poland was originally scheduled to begin at 04:00 on 26 August. However, the day before, a pact was signed in which Britain committed itself to the defence of Poland, guaranteeing to preserve Polish independence. Hitler postponed his attack until 1 September.

However, there was one exception: in the night of 25–6 August, a German sabotage group which had not heard anything about a delay of the invasion made an attack on the Jablunkov Pass and Mosty railway station in Silesia. On the morning of 26 August, this group was repelled by Polish troops. The German side described all this as an incident "caused by an insane individual".

On 29 August, the German government stated that it aimed not only for the restoration of Danzig but also the Polish Corridor (which had not previously been part of Hitler’s demands) in addition to the safeguarding of the German minority in Poland (my italics). It said that they were willing to commence negotiations, but indicated that a Polish representative with the power to sign an agreement had to arrive in Berlin the next day while in the meantime it would draw up a set of proposals. Needless to say, it was engineered that this ultimatum was impossible to meet and when no such representative could reach Berlin in time, it was then broadcast that Poland had rejected Germany's offer, and negotiations with Poland came to an end. Hitler issued orders for the invasion to commence soon afterwards.

That same day, German saboteurs planted a bomb at the railway station in Tarnów and killed 21 passengers, leaving 35 wounded.

During the night of 31 August, a false flag attack on the radio station, was staged near the border city of Gleiwitz by German units posing as Polish troops (my italics) in Upper Silesia as part of the wider operation… On 31 August 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. Because of these political vacillations over the previous week, Poland managed to mobilize only 70% of its planned forces, and many units were still forming or moving to their designated frontline positions when the blitzkrieg began. [Memory jogged by Wikipedia.]

2014. There is still no official confirmation of who the armed men surrounding key areas in Crimea really are. They wear uniforms without insignia and drive unidentified vehicles. Some say they are locals organising themselves into a self-defence unit against the Ukrainian uprising…

Uncomfortable echoes indeed.