Category: EU Fiction Special

These contributions to A Personal Anthology are part of a special series of letters celebrating the short fiction of the 27 EU member states that the UK has tragically and stupidly decided to cut itself off from. So far we have letters for:
Italy (picked by Marco Mancassola, Marco Magini and Giorgia Tolfo)
Malta (picked by Jan Calleja and Kat Storace)
The Netherlands (curated by Richard de Nooy)
Poland (picked by Boyd Tonkin)
Portugal (picked by Gary Michael Perry)
Spain (picked by Miranda France)

‘Larrios’ by J. Slauerhoff

Suggested by Bart Wessels, former marketing manager at Singel Publishers, where he currently heads the imprint Volt, focusing on translated work by leading foreign authors.

Driven by the desire for love and joy (or perhaps just a tranquil harbour where his soul can find rest), the narrator sails the seven seas in search of the woman of his dreams. This detailed, sublimely written ship’s log hints at the many hours Slauerhoff spent at sea as a surgeon. “My miserable life was slung across those three encounters like a broken bridge on wrecked pillars,” the narrator laments.  Then you appeared on one of the verandas of the last house. That’s when it began. You leaned over the unpainted balustrade. You did not look up at first, but a glance was all I needed to take you in from top to toe, from your skin’s surface to your innermost depths. Still you resembled so many other Spanish women, with a mantle around your slim shoulders, your pose betraying the promise of slender and sultry movement, and of course you wore a red flower in your all too shiny hair. Although I could not see your eyes, your overall appearance hinted at their colour and gaze. When you looked up, just as the train was gathering speed, several metres from the window, I was dismayed to see your eyes were filled with the suffering that has waited patiently for centuries and, despite the grief and subjugation, has refused to submit, but has instead grown stronger in resistance, as if it awaits a single unspeakable word to rise up proud and irresistible, as if that long humiliation were borne arbitrarily, driven by a strange desire to be put to the test. That is how you looked at me and I forgot everything, even that I was being dragged onward, and so I was shaken by the torment that overcomes us all; to be faced suddenly with a life-changing decision, which must be taken that very instant or never again, and once taken is forever irrevocable. This truly is our mortal struggle, in the midst of life, compared to which our later death is merely a painless ascent, but I did nothing and lost you, Larrios.

from the collection Schuim en Asch (Foam and Ash), 1930. Available online in Dutch here

‘Ridders’ (‘Knights’) by Rascha Peper

Suggested by an anonymous editor at Tzum.info, a leading Dutch literary website. Tzum annually organises a competition for the best sentence published in Dutch during the previous year. The cash prize is equal to the number of words in the sentence.

This story almost immediately immerses the reader in a clandestine relationship between a young woman and her elderly lover, mapping out memory and loss inexcruciating detail, as the following excerpt confirms.The rain has stopped and a stiff, warm breeze is blowing. Against a dark-blue sky, tatters of black cloud race past a moon in its first quarter. The streets are quiet. A weekday night.
 He has wrapped his arm around her and she lets him set the pace, which adds stability and rhythm to her unsteadiness. This makes for pleasant walking, especially if he keeps quiet.
The narrow bed in her dorm room creaks disconcertingly under his weight. He is too colossal, in every way, for these tiny quarters full of girly accessories, dried flowers and frilly cushions. A lion in a boudoir. He has chairs at home that even two men cannot lift. Standing by the window a moment ago, he lifted a fragile, light-blue bottle full of cuttings off the windowsill, holding it up to the light to study the delicate roots, before smiling and replacing it with the utmost care. He is studying her with much the same smile now.
An unbearable gaze, prompting her to pull him towards her by his shirt sleeves. He is warm and heavy and smells of cigars. He speaks – his voice a double bass – then he kisses her gently, as if any greater force might snap her like a stick of cinnamon. She trembles under his caressing hands.

Published in Hollands Maandblad, 1988. Available online in Dutch here

‘De vertalers’ (‘The Interpreters’) by Arnon Grunberg

Suggested by Caroline Mulder, my Dutch editor, who also edits the work of Arnon Grunberg and many other authors. Caroline suggested several other stories and authors, but I liked the triangular connection between us.

Caroline writes: “In just four pages, the reader is wrong-footed and the story proves to be far more horrific than you imagined,” succinctly summarising this harrowing story, in which we are introduced to a young woman and soon learn what she is capable of. Lara had a boyfriend who works at a gas station, which is five minutes’ walk from her mother’s house. She promised him she would be faithful, but she did not keep her promise. The pressure was too great. You need to blow off steam here. Sometimes the questioning goes on for five or six hours.
Questioning prisoners is like mopping with the tap open. So little comes out. They contradict one another. Or they all say the same. She often looks at the interpreters and asks: “Is that really all he said?”
She finds it hard to believe. But what can the interpreters do about it?
They also have a doctor present. He usually keeps to himself, as if he is above all this.
Sometimes they urinate on the prisoners during questioning. But only if the prisoner is not yet unconscious.
Farmers also urinate on their wounds to disinfect them.

From Hollands Maandblad, 2006. Available online in Dutch here

‘Een brommer op zee’ (‘A Scooter at Sea’) by J.M.A. Biesheuvel

Suggested by reader Jos on Twitter | The J.M.A. Biesheuvel Prize is annually awarded to the best short story collection in Dutch. Founded in 2015, the prize is crowd-funded and the only award for short fiction in the Netherlands.

Because Biesheuvel’s name is attached to the Netherlands’ only short-story prize, I had high hopes for this story, which proved to be absurd and entertaining, as well as poignant. During the night watch, a young deckhand sees a light approaching. A strange encounter unfolds.“How can you ride on water?” asked Isaac in amazement.
“It’s a question of practising,” said the man. “I started by placing a pin flat on the water’s surface. Then I progressed to heavier and heavier objects. I was building up to my scooter, of course, and eventually I rode my first laps on the city pond. Nowadays, I ride all over the world. I don’t go on land anywhere, but I have to eat, so I regularly ride up to ships. I prefer going in the dead of night, because everyone is asleep then. At first, I used to ride up to ships in the middle of the day, but that drove some people completely magoo. At first they’d say it was the best thing they’d ever seen in their lives, but then they’d started talking nonsense or going crazy. I’m planning to cover 40,000 kilometres by sea, maybe a couple of kilometres more, as long as I make it all the way around the Earth. I want to do something no one else has ever done. That has always been my ambition.”

In Maatstaf, Volume 19, 1971-1972. Available online in Dutch here

‘Dit is wat ik je beloof’ (‘This I promise you’) by Rob van Essen

Van Essen’s work was suggested by several avid readers, including Marieke Ruijzenaars, who is an account manager at Van Ditmar book importers. Van Essen just won the prestigious Libris Prize for his latest novel, De goede zoon (The Good Son). Congratulations, Rob! 

After crashing his bike, the narrator gets help from a female rowing team, who later seem to be on a quest to fulfil his erotic fantasies, drawing the reader deeper into the story, which undergoes a superb transformation from erotica to drama to tragedy in the closing paragraphs.Only when I hit the ground did time continue – with a thud and a crack. Other sounds followed. A tinny voice, more voices, calling, the sound of sloshing water, the damp rustle of footsteps through grass, the muffled sound of socks on asphalt. I saw nothing, then blue sky and white clouds, and branches covered with fresh leaves as fine as down.
And then I saw their faces above, as if it were a single face that kept changing shape and hair colour, and eye colour, and voice, and place. Eyelashes, freckles, damp lips, white teeth, dark nostrils, strong arms exposed, fingertips on my skin. And on top of that, stronger still, the scent of sweat and excitement, warm and fresh at once, like seawater warmed by the sun, like bodies that have endured hard labour, like girls who have been rowing.

Published in De Revisor, 2-3, 2011. Full story available online in Dutch here

‘Intern’ (‘Inside’) by Bertram Coleman

Suggested by Rob van Essen, because it seemed like a good idea to ask leading Dutch writers of short fiction to name authors whose work they admire or enjoy.

A grief-fuelled rant, full of violent fantasies, that sprawls into a comprehensive list of the kinds of people who anger and annoy the narrator, whose senses have been laid bare, following the sudden death of his beloved.I went back to work the day after the funeral. My colleague came up to me and placed his hand on my arm. The expression on his face said he shared my grief, but also that it was a good idea to get on with my life. He told me it had probably been a good way for Tessa to die. When I asked him what he meant, he said she hadn’t suffered and that was the main thing. So I asked him who the fuck he thought he was, deciding what the main thing was for my wife. Whether he had some sort of unique insight into her dying brain, allowing him to peek in and see which cause of death she preferred. A heart attack, out in the street, at the age of thirty. Excellent. Where do I sign up? Sounds fantastic. I told him that, in terms of his analogy, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he dropped dead tomorrow. He gave me a strange look, as if I’d threatened him. Then he raised his hands and said he meant well. I told him to go to hell, and to keep a close eye on the paving as he went in.
That’s not really what happened.

Published in De Gids, 2015, No. 6. Full story in Dutch online here

‘Ijsregen’ (‘Ice Rain’) by Sanneke van Hassel

Several readers insisted that I read Van Hassel, whose work regularly features on long and shorts lists for Dutch literary awards. 

This nightmarish account of a woman trapped alone in her home by a blizzard first triggered my claustrophobia before opening the door to even darker misery, all mapped out in evocative and intricate detail.Walking back to the kitchen, I am chilled to the bone. I hear droplets falling the sink. Back home, my mother would turn open the silver taps and let the water trickle into the bath, to stop the pipes from freezing up. My survival strategy is limited: I glance in the pantry cupboard, I count the logs, I drag my mattress into the kitchen. Maybe I should shove the snow off the roof before it comes crashing down. Maybe I should shut off the main valve. Hank knows where that is.

The title story from a collection published by the Bezige Bij in 2005. This version was published in Tirade, 2001, Vol.45. Full story in Dutch is online here

‘Het rechtzetten van een misvatting’ (‘Rectifying a Misconception’) by Bob den Uyl

The most prestigious Dutch travel writing prize is named after Bob den Uyl. Several people said he deserved a place on my reading list, including fellow author Rob Waumans. 

Bob den Uyl’s effusive, eloquent and at times ornamentally hilarious tale of cycling woes beyond Dutch borders perfectly reflects the European tendency to distrust, disparage and dislike neighbouring nations, which is hardly surprising in the case of Netherlands, having been occupied by the Germans, French, Spanish, Romans and Vikings at one time or another. In the following excerpt, the narrator finds himself watching a football on television at German hotel in Cologne. 

Much to my dismay, the hotel owner, who was also in attendance, took it upon himself to inform the other members of the audience that I was Dutch and therefore undoubtedly gifted with unlimited insight into the art of football. They took it for granted, unspoken, that Cruyff and Van Hanegem were not only open books to me, but also regularly dropped in for a visit. It is truly remarkable that the winning of several aesthetically questionable trophies, manufactured from inferior materials and won by several Dutch clubs, bestows upon that nation’s inhabitants a certain esteem, despite the fact that they played no part whatsoever in the achievement. This is even more remarkable in Germany, where people seem to experience a certain personal shame on our behalf for the smallness of our country. Germans don’t quite know what to do with something small, and one is often treated with the kind of sympathetic generosity one displays when helping blind people cross busy intersections.

Published in Maatstaf, Volume 21, 1973

Introduction

My first acquaintance with Portuguese fiction was, unsurprisingly, with The Book of Disquiet. A book that I read as I would a collection of short stories, picking the book up at whim, reading a fragment here, another there. There is very little short fiction from Portugal available in translation and you will notice that my selections draw from just two publishers. What does exist in translation, however, is certainly enough to whet the appetite and to highlight Portugal’s remarkable contribution to the art of the short story.

‘Sesame’ by Miguel Torga, translated by Ivana Rangel-Carlsen

Torga’s miniatures, published as Tales from the Mountain in 1941 and New Tales from the Mountain in 1944, rarely stretch to more than a couple of pages and yet contain a plenitude of wisdom. Collectively, they form a richly textured mosaic of rural life. Taken singly, each is its own uniquely perfect narrative. In ‘Sesame’, a young boy, his imagination fired by the tales he hears read aloud by the village storyteller, attempts to unearth the gold he believes to be buried under Gallows Mountain. What follows is a meditation on fiction and the imagination. Wonder is swiftly followed by disenchantment and yet, in the tale’s final lines, awe and mystery return in the most mundane and beautiful of ways.

First published in Contos da Montanha, 1941. Translation in Tales & More Tales from the Mountain by Miguel Torga, Carcanet, 1996

‘So Many People, Mariana’ by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

In my view, a contender for the title of finest short story in existence. Mariana is a figure at odds with her environment and. more specifically, the deeply patriarchal world of Salazar’s Portugal. A Job-like figure, beset by misfortune, she is rebel, victim and accomplice, at times rebellious and, at others, complicit in her own sufferings. Carvalho’s assertion that loneliness can be a source of strength as well as of tragedy still feels revolutionary so many decades after its initial and controversial publication.

First published as ‘Tanta Gente Mariana’ in 1988. Translation in the anthology Take Six: Six Portuguese Women Writers, Dedalus, 2018. Also available in a translation by John Byrne in Professor Pfiglzz and His Strange Companion and Other Stories, Carcanet, 1997

‘The Man of Dreams’, by Mário de Sá-Carneiro, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

In a cheap restaurant in Paris, our narrator meets a man who claims to be able to control his dreams, a man who “dreamed life and lived dreams”, a man who, like the author, rails against convention, cliche and the simplistic binaries (love/hate, male/female) with which we stifle freedom. He is a figure who stands proudly for movement, fluidity and imagination.

In The Great Shadow, Dedalus, 1996

‘Two Hands’ by Hélia Correia, translated by Annie McDermott

Nature, in Correia’s imagination, is a cantankerous old woman, dealing natural death with one hand and accidental death with the other. Overworked and exhausted, a temporary lapse in attention results in a misallocated death, leaving a woman, Barbara, without a death of her own. This is a strange story that, like most of Correia’s work, combines brutality and violence with an exquisitely dark and dry sense of humour.

In the anthology Take Six: Six Portuguese Women Writers, Dedalus, 2018

‘The Silence’ by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Jennifer Alexander, Elenice Barbosa de Araujo, Sally Bolton, Clara Buxton, Tom Gatehouse, Felix Macpherson and Maria Reimondez

A woman in a house, in apparent synergy with her surroundings. Yet there is tension in the air; a sensation that the property is observing her. The stillness is eventually broken by the scream of an unknown woman. Is her scream a cry of pain or of warning? Is it, perhaps, a plea for help? No easy answers are offered and yet, in the air of watchfulness that pervades the narrative, it’s not difficult to sense the all-seeing eye of authoritarianism, of the fear that keeps us at home and prevents us from coming to the defence of others.

In the anthology Take Six: Six Portuguese Women Writers, Dedalus, 2018