Before the reader's eyes, a big-city square is brought to life, with a tram cruising around it. In this minimalist scenery there develops a story about the everyday lives and hidden passions of the local residents: a notary burdened with a family, a radical student, a sluggish policeman, a young servant girl. These matters remain in the shadow of an ambiguous game being played behind the scenes, where the only important thing is the shady profits of the invisible personnel responsible for the external setting of events. An omnipresent destructive makeshift approach is an expression of their arrogance which infects the residents, poisoning their emotions. On their part, they despise anyone who is dependent on them. Contempt sets in motion a mechanism of violence and exclusion when the square fills with a crowd who arrive on the tram, suddenly deprived of a roof over their heads. The less someone matters in this world, the more of other people's guilt they have to bear.
Source of Polish version: www.wab.com.pl
- Magdalena Tulli
Skaza / Flaw
Series: archipelagi
Wydawnictwo W.A.B., Warszawa 2006
125 x 195, 180 pages, hardcover
ISBN 83-7414-151-4
www.wab.com.pl
The book has been nominated for the 2007 Nike Literary Award.
INVENTION AS UNAVOIDABLE TRUTH
[Excerpts from the described book are translations made for the purpose of this article; for the original text go to the
link*Polish version*http://www.culture.pl/pl/culture/artykuly/dz_tulli_skaza**]**The characters in this novel are real and unreal, they find themselves in a real and at the same time symbolic situation. Did all the events that happened in some unspecified city square really take place? Or perhaps they only might have taken place, and that possibility makes them legitimate? Or maybe they happened some other time and elsewhere, and that's the same as if they were happening all the time and everywhere? "From a certain point of view, there is no such thing as an invented story. In the end, each and every one, against all appearances, turns out to be true and unavoidable", we read in Skaza / Flaw.
Tulli's novel, though it fulfils all the requirements of probability, is not realistic. It is more of a parable in which attention is paid to detail, where feelings are described and events presented, but not for the purpose of limiting them to an individual situation. It is more about an idea - a situation, people, the world in general. That's why Skaza / Flaw does not feature distinctive characters with a lively, deep psychological makeup, but people who are like extras thrown into the world as if into a tacky production in shabby decorations.
The impression of artificiality is compounded by the narrator's comments. It is he, like some great demiurge, who constantly creates the world of this book, it is he who plays around with different versions of the same situation, as if he were playing with puppets, as if he had the power to change the course of events or at least predict it: "Due to the size of the square, there is no need for more than two stops", we read. "Let one be on the northern side, the other on the southern side". Let it be so, and so it is. Reality in Tulli's novel is not objectively given, and is not subject simply to description. It is subject to constant inventing, and does not exist until it is stated.
The world shown in Skaza / Flaw is oppressive. A coup d'état and seizure of power takes place in the city. Nothing seems to be said about the coup, actually it's not clear who is losing power or who is seizing it, but though nothing is said outright, just like a parable, there is more than enough suspicion. Stocks plummet, real estate prices drop, the stockbroker tries to call the notary, they should decide how to save their profitable investments. An unknown face in military uniform suddenly appears in the photographer's shop window, apparently a picture of the new leader, a few teenagers fix an old radio to a tall pole, as a loudspeaker, "the queue for water twists around the closed hydrant with empty jars". Disciplinary guard units are established, all young people are accepted, but they throw out the notary's son, the notary has a servant. People in winter coats with remnants of their worldly possessions gather in the square. They are refugees. Some have black mourning armbands on their sleeves. This is an opportunity for the locals - for a few slices of bread or a bottle of fresh water, you can buy quite a good set of tableware. Children from an orphanage, no one knows where they came from, rummage around in the dustbins looking for scraps.
The earlier world, probably as real and unreal as the one we are observing, has undergone an unexpected, easy change:
"The student pushed his trouser legs into his boots, he put on a leather army belt over his suit jacket, which immediately destroyed the charm of skilfully cut and well tailored civilian clothing, instead giving the clothes a tone of brash arrogance that will stop at nothing".
Author: Marek Radziwon, wiadomosci.gazeta.pl, June 5, 2007 - Polish version