African Trio - a trio of Georges Simenon novels - Talatala, Tropic Moon, Aboard the Aquitaine.
African Trio - Not once does Inspector Jules Maigret make an appearance; nope, these novels are romans durs all the way, tales of French men and women sweltering day by day, hour by hour under a scorching African sun - each novel hard as bloody hell on its characters.
My review here is for Talatala, originally published in 1943, excellent English translation compliments of Stewart Gilbert. My reviews for the other two novels are posted separately under their respective titles.
Simenon's typical scenario for his romans durs features a man or woman (generally a man) facing a crisis such as automobile crash, murder, loss of job or death of a friend - and the same goes for Talatala, the crisis consisting of a haughty aristocratic Englishwoman convalescing at the protagonist's coffee plantation (taking over his bedroom, actually), following the crash landing of her private airplane.
With Talatala Georges Simenon widens his lens to focus not only on the psychology of his main character but also what it's like for white Europeans to live in the wide open spaces among the native peoples, plants and animals of Africa.
We're treated to a number of penetrating character portraits. Right on the first page we meet a young couple, Georges and Yette Bodet - Georges, citizen of Belgium and official in the Belgian Congo, a self-effacing, fair haired twenty-five-year old already turning fat from glass after glass after glass of beer; Yette, short for Henriette, a city-bred girl of twenty from Paris with a washed-out complexion who speaks in a shrill, high-pitched voice, continually repeating, "Do you hear, Georges?" every single time she's told a tidbit about people or things relating to Africa. As the couple travels across Africa by plane (Yette's first time on the continent) making stops at hotels along the way, Yette doesn't fail to get on everyone's nerves, especially the English and most especially husband Georges who drinks his beer and sulks in silence.
Among the travelers is Ferdinand Graux, age twenty-eight, a Frenchman and coffee planter en route to his plantation. Graux has been cultivating his coffee plants for the past several years and he feels completely at home in Africa. The native Africans have given him a nickname -Talatala - loosely translated as "white man who can only see with his spectacles on."
Although Ferdinand Graux treasures his tranquility and solitude, somewhat surprisingly, he doesn't mind conversing with Yette, even when the young lady comes out with such brash statements as "Really, considering we pay like everybody else, it's up to them (the African help at restaurants) to understand us." and ""I had no idea Africa was like this! We've hardly seen any niggers."
The novel's drama quickens when Graux the coffee planter reaches his land and discovers (as mentioned above) a crashed plane amid his coffee field and an injured Lady Makinson in his bed. The good English lady apologizes for commandeering his bedroom until her plane is repaired but assures Graux she will reimburse him for his hospitality and any loss of his coffee production.
Grrr! For Graux, money is hardly the main issue. He'll have to sleep in a cot out in the hall and be knocked off his pins respecting his cherished routine. Also, he must put up with Captain Phelps, Lady Makinson's pilot who has taken over the second bedroom, an uppity Englishman who quickly proves himself a complete nuisance. What a bore!
Fortunately for Graux, there's his assistant and friend Camille, a young man he brought with him from France since they both have been friends from childhood. Also, a fifteen-year-old African girl serves as his housekeeper, his cook and his bedmate (a common practice for French men in Africa at the time). But, damn, what will those prudish English think?
To add an extra helping of drama to the equation, Graux is engaged to lovely Emilienne who is living with her lawyer father back in France and she's scheduled to join her fiancé in Africa in a number of months.
But Emilienne's travel plans might change when she becomes alarmed reading the latest batch of Graux's letters. What is he talking about when he writes that he's undergoing a great transformation? She knows her fiancé as a levelheaded man disinclined to give in to emotional outbursts. Does his current state have anything to do with that English lady waiting for her airplane to be repaired? Didn't Graux alert her that Lady Makinson is in her early thirties, married and has two young children? The more Emilienne considers the possibilities, the more upset she becomes.
Lastly, Africa makes its presence felt on every page. For Simenon fans, Talatala is not to be missed. Order African Trio and you'll have three Simenon for the price of one.
Georges Simenon, 1903-1989
"The sky hung low, like a vast pane of frosted glass suspended close overhead, and the ground here was almost level. It was as if one were moving in a two-dimensional world, scaled down to man's stature. Sometimes the tall grass bordering the roadside parted silently to frame the dark, still form of the watching black. At long intervals a lean and leafless tree, usually a silk-cotton tree, rose above the level green expanse. Rarely did one see a native hut; yet there were huts everywhere, twenty or thirty meters back, in the bush, the only tokens of their presence being clumps of bananas, with long pendent leaves like elephants' ears." - Georges Simenon, Talatala
Comments
Post a Comment