A place in the sun
Miranda France UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY by Christina Koning Viking, £10.99, pp. 309 Somehow it seems right, when thinking of the second world war, and especially of the Holocaust, for the brain to function in black and white. That is doubtless a reaction to the many stark images associat- ed with the era. But perhaps it is also an unconscious signal of respect, an acknowl- edgment that some episodes of history are too terrible for colour. Steven Spielberg, after all, chose black and white for his film Schindler's List.
In this powerful second novel, Christina Koning places a black-and-white memory of war in the brightly coloured context of a tropical country. Venezuela in 1953 is a far cry from blitzed London. The land is lush and florid, the living easy, the sun some- times too hot even for mad dogs, let alone Englishmen. We learn that Christopher Columbus thought he might have discov- ered Paradise when he landed on Venezuela's shores. Amerigo Vespucci coined its charmingly inappropriate name, `little Venice'.
In the Maracaibo basin, the British ex- patriates working for oil companies laze away hours on the beach and at cocktail Parties. Their conversation is inconsequen- tial: The men talk about work and last night's poker game; their wives discuss the servant problem, boarding schools, dressmakers' bills and the new people from Europe.
But more than one party is destined to be spoiled when the latest 'new people from Europe' turn out to be a tormented Jewish couple with two young children. Sofie van Wel's parents and brothers per- ished in the gas chambers. Husband Piet has married her out of compassion, and lives stoically with the consequences. Their two children are terribly fragile. Annetje is bed-bound; young Karel never opens his mouth, except to emit shuddering sobs. At school he weeps onto his exercise book; at the swimming club he chokes and nearly drowns. Karel's nightmares are of men in black bundling people into trains. Pale-skinned and hollow-eyed, the van Wels are a spectre of suffering among the suntans, painted nails and flirtations of Maracaibo. Parties cannot swing when they are present, rooms fall silent at their ghost- ly entrance.
The narrative of Undiscovered Country is convincingly divided among several voices. Some of the time it belongs to Vivienne, an English teacher pondering the wisdom of her recent marriage to dashing Jack, a Texan womaniser. Jack's own narrative is full of goddamns and juicy lechery. Shut- tered in her house, Sofie longs for the raw winds of the North Sea.
Most of the events, however, are seen through the eyes of Vivienne's daughter, Tony, 11 years old and bound soon for boarding school on the English coast. Tony is looking forward to her first glimpse of Britain; Ruislip, Worthing and Victoria sound exotic to her. Besides, the frivolous behaviour of adults in Venezuela perplexes her, and she is mystified by the suffering of her Jewish peer Karel.
We know when Tony is speaking because the narrative dispenses with commas. Pre- sumably this is to convey a childish breath- lessness and to help distinguish narrative strands, but it is irritating, particularly since Tony is apparently adroit enough to man- age semi-colons and other kinds of punctu- ation.
Undiscovered Country starts off seeming slight, but the layering of narratives is most effective, and out of the layers gradually emerge several compelling storylines: the growing instability of Sofie, Jack's lusts, Vivienne and Piet's mutual consolation. One senses that these are people with too much time on their hands; memories, remorse and recriminations swell danger- ously to fill their empty hours.
Though Miss Koning's style is clear and simple, she evokes a vivid atmosphere of heat, colour and impending crisis. The reader feels acutely the dreary inevitability of adultery and cocktail parties in an expa- triate community. Perhaps the most power- ful message concerns memory's devastating scope to destroy happiness. It is the best novel I have read for a long time.
`Ready, Mr Sotheby? Ready, Mr Christie?'
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