hunger and thirst
by
Douglas Messerli
Jenny Erpenbeck Geschichte vom
alten Kind and Tand, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
as The Old Child and Other Stories (New York: New Directions, 2005)
This animalistic child is, like
Casper Hauser, a kind of “blank slate,” a being so empty that adults hardly
take note of her. But for the young boys and girls of the Home for Children in
which she is placed, she is seen as a kind of monster that reminds one a bit of
a Russian doll in appearance, “bigger than she should be,” appearing “like
Gulliver among the Lilliputians,” with a “body that has swollen out of all
proportion,” and a face equally swollen so that it has almost erased her eyes,
nose, and mouth.
Given her near-complete emptiness
of being and the monstrosity of her appearance, it is almost inevitable that
she is tortured by her classmates. But the tale that Erpenbeck weaves is much
more complex, as the children gradually perceive how to abuse her in much more
devious ways. One of the first lessons she encounters in her schooling at the
Home concerns Bertolt Brecht’s comedy, Puntila and His Man Matti, a
story about a hard-drinking master who suffers from a split personality:
friendly and humane when drunk, ruthless and self-centered when sober. With
these two personalities he tortures various employees, his daughter, potential
wives, and, particularly, his chauffeur-valet Matti. It is a story, in other
words, about servitude. The fellow students of this monstrous child,
accordingly, quickly perceive the potentiality, in both her seeming stupidity
and in her desire to be loved, for her to serve them. She willingly does so in
numerous ways, passing messages between them, covering up their derelict behavior,
serving as a silent confessor for her roommates, even becoming a sexual
surrogate lover for the young boys.
It is as a servant, in short, that
this “Russian doll” attains any happiness, any sense of being, any possible
personality that she attains. The moment she begins to discover the power and
joy of her role, however, a second being within her begins to emerge. As the
city in which the Home is located is fire-bombed, a battle brews equally
within, as the “old child” begins to write letters, apparently to herself,
which she hides in secret places around the Home. The messages scrawled upon
these, read by no one after they are hidden, portray an inner world that may
begin to explain the emptiness of the girl’s surface: NEVER GO OUT IN THE DARK
AGAIN WITHOUT YOUR CAP, OR ELSE THE CROWS WILL PECK YOUR EYES OUT. BEST
WISHES—YOUR MAMA; DON’T STICK YOUR HEAD SO FAR OUT THE WINDOW, OR ELSE IT MIGHT
FALL OFF. BEST WISHES—YOUR MAMA.
These horrific aphoristic-like
warnings—so full of hate and seemingly maternal love—gradually reveal a past of
servitude on an even grander scale than the roles imposed upon her by her
fellow students. Just as in Brecht’s play, the world conveyed through these
hidden epistles is one of extremes: HUNGER AND THIRST. AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED,
reads one of the messages, YOU ARE DEAD. BEST WISHES—YOUR MAMA.
In the context of these tortured
warnings, the dénouement of this beautifully crafted tale is inevitable. The
girl falls into a deep sleep, refusing to eat, and is rushed to the Municipal
Hospital, where she gradually wastes away, revealing a full-grown woman, whose
elderly mother sits by her bedside, “shame…written all over her face.” Whether
the shame is due to her own behavior to her daughter or because her daughter
has been found to be a kind of fraud is not revealed. But, in a sense, it
hardly matters: the shedding of so many layers of selves has also allowed the
girl-woman to shed her past. “Oh, are you my mother? says the woman who used to
be a girl, and very slowly she opens her eyes. I don’t remember you at all.”
The servant-child has at last become master of her own life.
Within
the context of this title book of seventy-some pages, no other tale can
compare. However, three stand out: “Sand,” a beautiful story of youth and age,
and, again, of power and servitude; “Siberia,” another tale of servitude, this
of a woman—who upon surviving and escaping from a Siberian work camp—returns
home to find another woman living with her husband; and “Hale and Hallowed,” an
ironic work about two woman, the birth of their sons, and their sons’ fates.
In
all, Erpenbeck’s writing represented in this book promises more work in the
future worth our attention.
Los Angeles, January 1, 2006
Reprinted from Rain Taxi,
II, No. 1 (Spring 2006).
