Wait of the Heaths

The narrator's family called him The November Boy—A French-speaking, taciturn, elusive boy, who would guest at the Barralh (In Gascon – residence and surrounding land belonging to the narrator's branch of the Haza family, literally meaning 'enclosure' or 'enclosed plot of land') of our narrator Bernat during November, soliloquies and leave his aura behind, particularly for young narrator, who is suffered from tuberculosis. Bernat named the boy also as "Bernat" or "November Bernat"; such was his fascination, who would wait for his arrival earnestly though very less is communicated between them. At this time of the story, the residence of Barralh and other Haza families is coming to destitution, unable to house servants and provide enough for the sharecroppers, who are leaving their old masters, owing to the falling economy held by Pine resin and Oak timber, a story based on the real history of the area—Landes of Gascony/Grande Lande.

Bernat's catholic family consists of his aged cousin, his diseased mother and Anna, the housemaid. Doctor Haza, who often visits the Barralh for Bernat's and his cousin's medical treatment seems to be relying on ancient method of cure, which doesn't seem here to work well. When Bernat is invited by the Doctor at Lo Pericat—residence of one of his Haza cousin—he meets Maria again, after one such encounter at the church, a polish émigré girl, and finds in her the same enigma and sorrow of being alive like him with frail body seeking soulful company and love, but who is now obsessed with the idea of death and solitude. After his encounter with childhood friend Denisa, whom he thinks he loves, he hopes that his loneliness would finally end but the internal torment Bernat realizes in this heath with wind, rain and cold, the world is all but gloomy. Happiness is a vague thing, while everything gnawing and annoying him. In one of his lonely excursions in the woods he meets a sawmill machiner, befriends him and at Barralh plays with him the game of being poisoned and rescued, again and again, such that the death becomes an ordinary thing for them. The story ends with a mournful fate both for the Barralh and the November boy in his last visit.

As said in the introduction by the translator, the semi-hallucinatory construction and fragmented chapters and sentences used makes this a challenging work. In my case, second reading lifted many veils and new revelations came to surface. At some point reader is sure to be surprised with sharp turns with each new sentences.¹ The sensitivity captured and the form taken has more to do in the story with an experimental language, where episodes and time jumps and intermingles, than plot-driven tale of consequences. And the atmosphere and setting particular to the region contrasts as well as offers the deep affiliation one seeks in a story, weather resembling unsettlement or toning it with allusiveness.²

1.   She spent days embroidering for one of our relations who lived out in the dunes. A wounded heron came to perch in front of the house. It was there sometime before leaving. And Matiu, once he'd kneaded the dough, paced the room, forecasting even rougher weather to come.

2.    The smell of the sea became more intense. I remember it. We didn't know what it was; the pines were still mute and heavy. Why then, why, were we so sad? That girl, awaited, it would seem, in vain, made more bitter and morose than the first clear day of deepest autumn.

We sense that there is a complex family story behind this ordinariness and bleakness. The glow of the hearth, the smell of Pine, the texture of the marshland and the wind playing in the heath fills up the furrows of emotional distance rising and waning among the characters. Bernat finds fragments of hope sometimes in the mirror, or in the piano snippet by Maria, but mostly in this other Bernat, the November Boy. The poetic expressions shared by Bernat makes him an acute observer of the surrounding, and in need of company who understands him. ^{3, 4}

3.    And so I would be alone on that slightly sinister day of endless drizzle, mournful winds and wretched psalms in the gloomy, sepulcher-laden, candle-hot church, where women sobbed at Vespers for the Dead and then lamented their misfortune by the tombs.

4.     (The smell of the sea, powerful, returns to my memory. But the storm – the sky was still clear – would only come tomorrow.)

The whole story is like a monologue of Bernat. Intertwining time, travel and memory, with shiftsin description, it all seems like solving a puzzle and mystery of a life with emptiness and solitude, where everyone is waiting and in need of something, but unattainable, many things deteriorating—the old houses, estate and their hope and health. But something holds Bernat, who seeks identity in the landscape, in another Bernat, something ideal full of grace. This short novel is like a shadow play, a transformation, successful in imparting the mysteriousness of identity, meaning, loss and hope, in a rare voice.

Author: Bernat Manciet

Translator: James Thomas

Publisher: Francis Boutle Publishers

Page Count: 96

Price: $ 11.53