Young People and Old Places
The Horses of the Sun. By Oriel Malet. (Gollancz, 16s.) Exam settings are a great cover-up for nullity and the species of fine feeling that has never bumped into a thought—which is why Mr. Kingsley Amis didn't want any more poems about foreign cities. But the three books under review are real novels, not unholy combinations of inadequate fiction and incompetent travelogue. The two set in Mexico concern actions and states of mind both peculiar to their localities and universal in significance, while the third, despite the jacket's claim, is not 'a novel of Italy', thank heavens, but the story of a lively and amusing child who is at least half Italian.
The Mexican stories both describe the process of decay but are otherwise quite dis- similar. The Nine Guardians illustrates the break-up of the landed families of Mexico in face of the agrarian reforms of the 1930s and the growing intransigence of the Indians. We see this process chiefly in terms of family life, not through movements, manifestos and massacres, thank heavens again. The landowners are clearly losing, against the reformers and against their own super- stitiousness too, but the author does not take sides. At times the story is told through the 'I's' of various characters, which is con- fusing if not worse. A seven-year-old child who on the first page cannot see higher than her father's knees and supposes he goes on growing 'like a big tree, and in its topmost branch a very small tiger is hiding', would hardly remark three pages later that the teacher's voice 'is like the little machines for sharpening pencils: troublesome, but useful'.
Pueblo is a grimmer document. Set in the present, in a New Mexico pueblo near Los Alamos with its Research Centre, it is grim in that neither of the opposing civilisations, as we see them, is at all impressive. The 'White' is the Atomic Energy Commission and what that implies; the 'Indian' consists largely of silence under a blanket. The negativeness of the 'Indian' profundity is suggested by the words of an elder: `Never forget that on a printed page what is white is good and what is black is bad.' Writing as a foreigner, M. Michel-Droit is more self- conscious than Miss Castellanos in depicting local customs, but this befits his more formal theme. The bison dance—a ritual marking the opening of the hunting season —is beautiful to watch, but any bison left on the territory are tame ones in a conser- vation park. The Indians, too, are 'con- served'; tourists pay half a dollar for the privilege of photographing them. Atomic Energy and 'the blanket', the Indianesque decor of the tourist hotel in Santa Fe and the flaking ceiling of the adobe, the Federal Agent and the Elders of the Council. . . . The 'symbolism' is very obvious, yet we feel that the author's simplification is not far wrong, alas.
At eighteen years Paco must decide on his future: shall it be 'Indian' or 'White', and can he, after a 'White' education, be of help to his own people as such? The Cacique says, 'You will find no truth but here, among your own people.' But the sacred mescal to which the priest introduces Paco brings the young man no truths, no useful visions, only headache, a pain in the neck (literally), and epilepsy, 'a White man's sick- ness'. He goes to the 'city of vanished Indians', a ruined pueblo on the cliffs, and gazes into the kiwa, the pit whereby the priests spoke with the spirits of the race. 'His people were down there; this was the only road which led to them.' He jumps. But we do not resent the melodrama of this, or the heavy underlining of the symbolism. Paco can believe neither in the 'wisdom' of his race nor in the possibility of a dignified compromise between 'Indian' and 'White'. He would rather be dead-dead than dead- alive. The bleakness of the novel is con- vincing.
The Horses of the Sun has growth, not decay, for its subject. Miss Malet manceuvres her conventional characters with a rare lightness of touch: the eccentric Contessa who rules Elba; her English secretary who forgot through twelve years to legalise her union with an Italian conjuror; nine-year- old Liz, the conjuror's best trick; a famous Professor who was once in love with the Contessa; his handsome son; and the Con- tessa's priggish English niece. One cannot believe that Pascal would fall even tem- porarily for so patent a bitch as Laura, nor that village gossip would drive the secretary to resign from so comfortable a job and so suitable a marriage. But Liz is what matters —she keeps her father's tricks extant at the expense of seeming a kleptomaniac—and she is a success. This is, in the true meaning of the three words, a charming light novel. If the happy italicised ending seems to have been tacked on by a publisher's reader, then the publisher's reader wrote right.
D. J. ENRIGHT
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