FICTION: EILEEN BATTERSBYreviews Soul of WoodBy Jakov Lind, translated by Ralph Manheim New York Review Books, 190pp, £8.99
YOUNG Anton Barth hasn't a hope. It all began badly; he was born with only a head. The doctors despaired, his parents were embarrassed. Eventually, the rest of his body arrived, but none of it worked. But now there are bigger problems. The Nazis are in power, and the Jews are facing eternity. Jakov Lind's Soul of Woodis about as black as satire can get.
When he wrote it in 1962, only three years after Günter Grass published The Tin Drum, it was further proof that any chance of understanding the insanity of the second World War might possibly be found by listening to German-language writers.
Unlike Grass, who had been drafted during the closing years of the war, Lind, born to educated Viennese Jews, had been sent to Holland in 1938, when he was 11. The plan was then to join his parents in Palestine. But Lind went into hiding and, after five years in occupied Holland, entered Germany, using false papers, and got a job in German shipping. With a story as good as his own, vividly recorded in a three-volume autobiography dealing with his experiences in wartime Europe, why read his fiction? Because it is original; daring, offbeat, with traces of Kafka and Grass, not forgetting the European fairy tale, and has a wry tone all of its own.
Fast, funny and buoyed up by the madness of the era it is set in, Soul of Woodis different. It all begins with a dramatic truth: "Those who had no papers entitling them to live lined up to die." Among those waiting are Dr and Mrs Barth, the parents of Anton, an inert parcel of flesh, barely alive. He cannot see, speak or move; every part of him is paralysed, even his eyelids. His parents have entrusted him to Wohlbrecht, a veteran of the Great War, who has a wooden leg (having been wounded at the front) and sufficient sense of honour to fulfil the promises he has made to the boy's parents. After all, they have given him their apartment, which he plans to sell.
But first the boy, who has made an art of breathing, must be, if not exactly rescued, moved elsewhere, to the mountains. This is done. Wohlbrecht packs the boy into a crate full of supplies: “They had simply folded Anton Barth into two. Wedged in between the preserved fruit (guaranteed nutritious), the cans of sardines and the loaves of bread – the salt was an afterthought, they had just poured it in his pockets – he couldn’t move.”
The only way to get by an inspection, when asked about the contents of the crate, is for Wohlbrecht to lie: “My mother-in-law cut up in little pieces.” The joke works, when the driver asking the questions adds: “You killed her first, I hope?” Wohlbrecht’s response is quick: “You think I’m crazy?” So far, so good.
Wohlbrecht fears that the boy will die in transit and that he, Wohlbrecht, will be locked up “on suspicion of murder, and murdering a Jew whose parents had given him an apartment”. The one-legged man is a kind of a hero, sufficiently decent to keep the reader on his side. The real fun starts as he waits for Alois, an epileptic “exempted from all military and labour service” who is always late. Alois finally arrives and regards Anton Barth’s open, lidless eyes with terror.
The writing is sharp, funny and confident; the comedy vaudevillian and so well rendered by the gifted translator, Ralph Manheim (1907-1992), who also translated Günter Grass. Lind’s characters are vivid and curiously real considering how odd they are. He is exploiting the madness of the moment and the dialogue reflects this. Handsome Alois is not the most efficient of accomplices: “Alois was a slow-coach. A fellow like that, you’re lucky he doesn’t throw a fit, Wohlbrecht consoled himself.”
When they finally get on the road, the policeman they meet has one concern: “You haven’t got a pig there under the hay, have you?” The wooden leg proves useful. Lind also conveys the atmosphere of an Austria caught between Nazi rule and still feeling Austrian.
Barth is left alone in a shack in the mountains. He has supplies, but he can’t move. Yet Wohlbrecht feels he has done his duty, and off he goes with Alois. But everything changes with a burst of machine-gun fire. Wolhbrecht is left with another body, this time a dead one. “How am I going to tell me sister? And the police? Who’ll believe me?”
Lind tells the story as if it were a cartoon. Wolhbrecht, “as though pursued by swarms of enormous grasshoppers”, drives on to the city and morgue.
Meanwhile, back at the hut, Barth is wakened by a furious pounding at the door. A stag kicks its way in and charges the bed “like a bull”. The attack, which should have killed him, instead liberates Barth – “a demon had got into him. He danced and spun in a circle, hoped, jumped and sang.” He makes a new life with the forest animals.
Wolhbrecht settles into life in a lunatic asylum. All is well enough, until the Germans concede that they have lost the war. The staff at the asylum decide that the recovery of Barth could help their respective bids for leniency. A memorable race to the mountains sets the scene for a finale rife with ironies.
Soul of Woodmade Lind famous and there are six stories included in this lively volume, such as Hurrah for Freedom, in which a grateful medical student is given a lift and is welcomed by a friendly family pleased to share a meal consisting of one of their children.
Many of those interested in the arts will have heard of Jakov Lind, as he also wrote plays and was a film director and visual artist. He settled in London, where he died in 2007. Soul of Woodsucceeds through the sheer wickedly comic telling; for all the surrealist gags, frenetic symbolism and laughs, the horror strikes one full in the face.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Timesand the author of Second Readings: From Beckett to Black Beauty, published by Liberties Press
