The Dedalus Book of Slovak Literature, page 20
Judging by the reception of a number of my books, I’m aware that I’ve not been able to make the reader believe the illusion that life is full of extremely complicated situations, which don’t lend themselves to a definitive solution. Many seasoned critics haven’t accepted my works as models of worlds or real-life situations either, regarding them instead as unacceptably evil, leading me to think that I have not succeeded in getting them to admire both my hero and anti-hero equally. (For instance, Vilo Marčok brilliantly concluded his remarks about Reason and its hero by saying that my ‘method’ cannot serve as a guide or a yardstick, that at best it can be a warning, a buoy beyond which lie forbidden waters. It hadn’t even occurred to him that I had not created the hero as an example to be followed but as someone whose problems the reader could identify with and attempt to solve. Literature that does nothing more than reflect a clear-cut, superficial, real-life problem, where choosing a side is easy, encourages neither thinking nor aesthetic feeling. The reader should be presented with such subtleties that the mere existence of the problem would come as a surprise to him.)
I have to admit, I’m fed up with the tense situations my heroes consistently find themselves in, and I can’t tell you how relieved I would be if I could simply content myself with a formula in which beauty would shine forth without so much as a mention of life’s cruelty.
Endogenous depression is sure to give a morbid air and make us lean in the direction of works in which my strung-out marionettes go whizzing by. That being the case, it will be necessary to look at everything from Uršuľa’s perspective and not to dwell on the medical aspects of Pátek’s illness. His depression has to be real, but in a cosy and likeable way, so that it evokes quiet sympathy instead of loathing.
The novel will thus enter an intimately familiar territory and one I’ve been living in for twenty-five years.
Having said that, I’ve been around the block enough not to revert to impressing the reader with my own life experience. In the past I’ve managed to do that only thanks to my endless disdain for people. Fortunately, those simpletons thought I was crazy. Some people think you can’t see the tip of their nose even when you’re sitting across from them. Just utter the word ‘nose’ in front of them, and they assume you’ve touched upon something incredibly personal.
I repeat, I am not ashamed of my so-called honesty, and I’m not about to repent, but I will be considerate to all, including the people who deny the nose between their eyes. They too are my readers, and it is my goal to win them over while also retaining the past fans of my work who didn’t think me a fool.
Uršuľa will have to decide between the two men. If we face the fact that divorce is on the rise in Slovakia, we don’t have to make excuses about whether it is a suitable topic or not. (I was so offended by Hykisch’s remark, his dig, when he claimed that, in The Scaffold, Chinghiz Aitmatov did not write about marriages, or about this and that, but… about great, monumental themes. Thank God that monks and scholarly theologians have sorted out his themes a long time ago both in western Europe and here at home. If I understood Aitmatov correctly in light of Hykisch, Europe no longer needs to ask whether the world works well or not. Of course, Hykisch was trying to flatter a Soviet novelist in attendance. He’s a Muslim, and as Nietzche once put it, there’s not much wisdom in the Quran. Is that why he was so interested in Pilate? I have no idea… I don’t write about such things.)
Uršuľa will suffer all the more because she had once killed a man. We’ll have to keep bringing it up discreetly, and we’ll make sure Urban knows about it. (Now that I mention it, I don’t like the name Urban anymore because it reminds me of Jožo Urban, who’s nothing like my hero. The name has to be changed at once. Jožo Urban is too experienced and astute, and I would keep getting confused. Which one then: Narcissus? A name as unique as its bearer.)
There is a composer by the name of Narcisa Donátová. The name Narcissus does not even make it into the calendar. But these days you’ll find parents who’d give such a ridiculous name to their son. We should emphasise that, when these parents think about Narcissus, they’re imagining someone like Apollo. Should we go with Apollo? Or John? If I give the hero a foreign name, he’ll be immediately disqualified and so will Uršuľa. Will she be taken in by the name? A Czech name could be the cause of a fight between Uršuľa and the young man. She’s Uršuľa, a strange name, he could be Zdenko… damn, I’m glad my name isn’t Zdenko, it’s hideous. You can’t tell if you should pronounce it with a soft or a hard ‘d’.
I’ve got it, he’ll be called Marcel. He’ll be like young Proust, and the name is definitely neutral – neither Slovak nor Czech. It’s sufficiently ‘genteel’ too and not a peasant name like Jano, Juro, Mišo, Fero and others, many of which have appeared in my books. Marcel it is. I always picture a very young, rosy-cheeked Proust, as he has described himself, a sensitive student, who loves not only women… but men too? That’s no good. Then again, why not? Raised by anxious parents, a boy who craves power and, by extension, manliness – such a boy will readily fall in love forevermore with the beautiful Uršuľa (the way Proust did with Madame Guermantes).
Uršuľa will have a hard time resisting Marcel, but she will feel some sort of an obligation toward Pátek… but what sort? Should she hurt him in some way? No, she shouldn’t. She loves Pátek too. That’s it, she loves both of them, and she doesn’t know what to do. What one lacks the other one has. Doesn’t this sound smutty?
What’s moral and what isn’t? Are despair and scepticism moral?
Realism, especially fiction, and in works such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, have forever laid to rest literary ‘despair’ and ‘absolute sorrow’, or absolute scepticism. Scepticism and sorrow, just like joy and hope, are opposites, which can never permanently settle in the human soul.
But the fragmentary arts (painting, sculpture, music, ballet) cannot successfully record the exact alternation of the hours of sorrow and joy. They cannot bring together the high and the low; one or the other always ends up being more prominent. The greatness of the realist novel lies in respecting the fact (and here we can mention Balzac, Tolstoy and others) that a person can neither keep track of, nor experience, a one-sided mental state for any length of time. That is why – rather than because they have become inexpensive or because of the printing press – novels have become the reading material of the masses. Which leads us to the conclusion that the novels written before the invention of the printing press must have faults other than being handwritten and consequently expensive.
In the modern novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the expanding middle class discovered its social standing, its aesthetic, its worldview – austerity, pragmatism, realism, democracy, freethinking, moderation and industriousness (indeed, the latter was unheard of in the literature of the Middle Ages).
The novel didn’t just express the ideology of the rising class, the working class or the bourgeoisie – it was universal. (How Proust’s father loved Balzac. Of course, both Balzac and Proust, the doctor, were quite industrious, which comes across in just a few lines.)
As far as the novel is concerned, any genteelness is immoral. Despair is the worst of it. The novel is not a ballad. The hero’s heirs surface after his death and cause all kinds of mayhem in the world. What’s the use of wringing our hands?!
Even a novella or a short, intimate novel is at risk of not capturing the spirit of the times, of being too one-sided. This could turn out to be an advantage; the reader may at some point seek out such a one-trick work, just as he seeks out verse (poems) alongside prose.
The danger facing the small structure arises in part from its tendency toward symbolism. To give you an example: so far, we have been contemplating what drives Uršuľa’s actions, and we gave the impression that the actual writing will be a trifle. The problem is that ‘the form’, the plot that is to receive our profound thoughts, could easily slip into symbolism, which is difficult to read. The reader can never be sure whether he has interpreted the symbols correctly. His aesthetic experience must be confronted by other readers’ experiences; the reader must become a member of, for example, the Symbolist movement. Then he stands to be amazed by the ingenuity of every word in the poem.
This is why deciding whether a prose passage can be the basis for finishing a book is very risky. The seasoned author’s text will always turn into something – and the book will sell a few copies at a time – which is what the institute should care about. After all, the Slovak Literary Fund cannot predict, even if they put a team of world-renowned literary critics on the job, whether Sloboda will turn a seventy-page text into a good book, which will become an asset to Slovak literature.
Which is why I’m done accumulating evidence about my good intentions to write a beautiful book. After all, luck has to play its part too.
Indecisive
Ján Johanides
(18. 8. 1934 Dolný Kubín – 5. 6. 2008 Šaľa)
Translated by Denis Dobrovoda
Ján Johanides studied history, history of art and aesthetics at Commenius University in Bratislava. However, he was expelled for political reasons and never finished his studies. After being employed as a factory psychologist in Nižná na Orave he went on to work for the Union of Slovak Writers in Bratislava, the Municipal Office of Culture in Bratislava, and the Institute of Art Criticism and Theatre Documentation. In 1972 he moved to Šaľa, where he lived until his death.
Shortly after his work appeared for the first time in Young Writing Magazine, his first collection of short stories, Privacy (1963), was published. A number of novels, novellas and collections of short stories followed. He also wrote essays and screenplays for radio and television.
The predominant feature of all his work is his focus on morality; Johanides condemned violence and intolerance. The tragic and sometimes bizarre stories of his heroes are told with detailed descriptions of their inner world, emphasising the uniqueness and value of every human life. The utilisation of the method called ‘the camera eye’ helped to make his prose very visual. Critics praised Johanides’s stylistic perfection, originality and ethical message.
Indecisive, a story of a surgeon whose main fault is his inability to make decisions, takes place in the turbulent period before and during the Second World War. The surgeon’s indecisiveness is the result of his disillusion with life, which leads to the death of people around him, including his girlfriend and the wife of a work colleague. In the end, he is killed as well, paradoxically after he finally makes the decision to join the resistance.
Indecisive
Ján Johanides
1
Sometimes it seems like a decision means a change in direction. Perhaps. But you knew that your decisions didn’t lead to the goals you had chosen. You wanted to go to the hospital, even though you had a day off, because there were too many patients, and you were always expected to come. But you also wanted to stay with your father who had had a stroke some time ago. You lived together just the two of you, and you knew that your quiet presence was enough to make him happy, but you spent most of your time apart.
Instead, you went for a walk around the house, and you felt like you were circling around yourself. That happened yesterday – a beginning of sorts.
You admitted that you only ever desired ‘regional’ happiness. To mean something, to ‘be someone’ – that was the basis and the most important characteristic of such happiness. To be respected by your friends, to feel useful to them, to help them as a judge in their arguments and their decisions, and to have your place and your truth among them. You always wanted to be right within the boundaries of your region.
You found Viera, the daughter of the saw-mill manager, in your bathroom. The sink was full of her hair, as if she were washing her hair with her head laid on the side of the sink. The reflection of the gas pipe was the only thing to be seen in the mirror, until your eyes entered it as well.
You always had the courage to advise people, those pleading faces; after all most of them came from your region, which didn’t follow the official boundaries of your town, and when you thought about your advice, you called it the ‘help for the fellowmen’ – within the bounds of your means.
You lifted Viera’s chin on that crystal clear autumn day, when the mountains in the distance looked as if one was examining them with binoculars. She slowly submitted to your trembling fingers… do you remember? Her neck seemed so fragile that you always thought it might be broken. That was when you embraced her. Her head leaned to the side, and you had the impression that even after she died, her sight penetrated her left clavicle to look at the pumping heart with its aortic insufficiency. A modest square of light lay at your feet, and the bathroom felt exactly like it did right after the departure of your mother, who was getting thinner and thinner. Do you remember? You never saw her again after that. She left as abruptly as Viera. The curtains were throwing feeble shadows on Viera’s face, and that moment with her also belonged to that period of your life when you longed for regional happiness.
You knew why you added that adjective ‘regional’ to your desire for happiness. You did it consciously, realising that you could only operate within your region, which differed from the official limits of your town but which followed the boundaries of your discipline and your experience. You could only ever interact with people who entered your region. You knew that everyone had his region, but because yours seemed so small to you, you were aware of its existence. Even then you wanted to have it, because in your eyes the entire European continent was divided into regions, which were ruled by ‘certain powerful individuals’ who deserved to ‘mean something’.
The beginning was as unremarkable as an accidental brush of shoulders at a railway station. You went to the paediatric unit to make a phone call, and a colleague introduced you to Viera, a friend of hers. As usual you ended up talking for longer than you should have, and in the end you invited both of them for a coffee. The conversation was very ordinary. You talked about the reconstruction of the central square based on the plans of a local architect. Your second encounter with Viera was also just a coincidence. You walked into a café to buy cigarettes, and you found her sitting there alone, looking at an empty vase and waiting for her dinner. So you joined her.
You didn’t know that it would lead to her inhaling carbon monoxide in your flat. At the time she seemed bored, and you wanted to entertain her, but you ended up hearing a sad story of a woman enclosed by the walls of the tax bureau where she worked, her kitchen and the street paved with cobblestones. She constantly repeated the words ‘later’ and ‘you know’, and her interminable story started to bore you. The encounter seemed endless. She told you about her mother and how they often spent hours sitting at the table without saying a word. At times her mother got angry and made her leave the house to have dinner in a café by herself.
You asked about the cause of the anger, and she said she didn’t know it. You repeated the question, thinking that she might be hiding something, but her response surprised you: ‘I’ve never asked her.’
‘And your father?’ you ventured.
‘He is always at work.’
That was all.
You thought about her in the evening when you were taking a shower in the bathroom where she would later kill herself because of you. You came to the conclusion that her ‘personality’ wasn’t ‘developed’. ‘One has to atrophy in such an environment.’ And your reflections continued: ‘Perhaps she can’t even tell whether she is happy or sad… how can she live like that, what does she want from her life…’ Your effort to ‘turn her into a rationalist’ was successful, you were ‘enlarging the horizons of her soul’, and you weren’t trying to gain her sympathies; you just wanted to be her selfless friend and advisor.
But one evening she addressed you in your own words.. Her monologue was a confession of love and admiration. Her openness, which you welcomed from others, surprised you, and you felt like you were listening to a bad, cutting joke about yourself. Viera would often share her thoughts with you, repeating what she had heard you say. It was humiliating. Why? Did you feel ‘superior’ to your ‘pupil’?
Your answer wasn’t dishonest or hypocritical. You told her the truth, that you didn’t want to marry, reassuring her that you wouldn’t marry her or anyone else. You were trying to persuade her that marriage wasn’t a ‘solution’.
She objected: ‘But you have told me that if two people understand each other…!’
You remained quiet, and Viera started crying. And you felt like you had promised something to her and now you weren’t willing to fulfil it. ‘But I didn’t promise anything,’ you kept repeating to yourself, ‘who am I to her anyway?’ That was when you apprehended your ‘regionality’ and the boundaries of it.
But Viera is dead, she died in your bathroom, and perhaps it wouldn’t have happened had you not been called in to do an emergency operation. You left her in your flat and told her to ‘think about it all’ until you returned. Viera is dead, and the story of you and her, which would have seemed extremely banal to you if it had happened to someone else, shook your self-confidence.
Later you built a tiny chalet in the mountains behind the town. It was quite ugly from the outside, but you didn’t mind, because you built it with your own hands and without anyone’s help. You didn’t even try to seduce your ‘other’ friend, as was expected from owners of weekend houses who had a car and invited a lady. It wasn’t because you didn’t find her attractive. You didn’t seduce her because your success with women depressed you. Viera was dead, and you didn’t want to ‘meddle in other people’s lives’. You stopped looking at yourself in the mirror while shaving; instead you looked at the razor in the way you looked at a dark room after a phone call woke you up. You were afraid of looking into your own eyes and seeing your wrinkles… and the question written into them: ‘what now?’ Didn’t you look at your patients in the same way?
