When the Elephants Dance (The Philipines)

by Tess Uriza Holthe

Let me just say I wish the Negrito tribes indigenous to these islands, and the Austronesians who migrated there had fought off the Spanish, because the name of their country wouldn’t be so damned hard to spell!

Ok, I’m over it.

This book was recommended by my friend Erin who is in my writer’s group. I *loved* this book.

THE PLOT: GREAT STORY MATERIAL THAT MAKES YOU THANK GOD IT DIDN’T HAPPEN TO YOU

It starts out with a group of people who are hiding in a cellar in Manila as the Japanese (the elephants) stomp around gang-raping women; torturing men and small boys by tying them to sheet metal and leaving them to fry in the sun; and the corpses are piling up like cordwood. Conditions during the last frantic days before the return of Douglas MacArthur are hellish. Will he return or won’t he? And will the Japanese have tortured everyone to death before he gets there?

The people in the cellar include:

• An old Spaniard and his cowardly 1/2 Filipeno  son
• A Japanese woman and her daughter (The husband/dad died in an internment camp when the Americans were in control of the islands)
• Two young brothers whose mother is dependent on them to forage for food by selling scavenged cigarettes
• The wife of a freedom fighter and her two young sons and her teenage daughter

What’s great about this book is the stories that the people tell in the cellar while they’re waiting for their loved ones to return. You find out what led all these people to this moment. The old Spaniard is a talented and even slightly famous painter. He had a great romance with his son’s mother. From him, you learn about how the Spanish thought the natives were low class and treated them badly. But he fell in love with his son’s mother and started standing up for her male family members when they were unjustly jailed and punished by the fat Spanish priests who lusted after the pretty virgins. And he got exiled for it.

One of the men in the cellar was enticed by black magic when he was little, because his father wasn’t interested in him so he tried too hard to get his attention. Fortunately the boy’s grandfather and his older brother rescued him from the black magic practitioner.

The cowardly man redeems himself during the final bombing of Manila and earns his old father’s respect at last.

BECAUSE BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO NOTHING

All the characters are intriguing, but none more than the freedom fighter, Domingo Matapang. This man runs into the little boy narrator, Alejandro, a few times when he and his little brother have been captured by the Japanese. In many scenes, he is the only man with the courage to stand up to evil and  give others strength by his courage. The Japanese don’t have a picture of him so don’t know what he looks like–only his name. Nobody gives him away.

AH….ROMANCE.

The hero Domingo Matapang’s weak spot is his romance. Unfortunately it isn’t with his wife, the mother of his two sons. He is desperately in love with a freedom fighting woman who lives with his guerilla fighters in the hills. Finally his cellar is raided and he’s captured along with all the others. His well-trained wife doesn’t embrace him or even look at him, because for her safety she has to pretend they don’t even know each other.

One of my favorite parts in the book is when the boy narrator’s sister Isabelle is rescued from the Japanese by a boy she had a crush on before the war. He has been serving the Japanese as a collaborator, but seeing Isabelle about to be gang-raped by soldiers is enough to make him turn his coat and desert. Unfortunately not quite in time, but at least she’s alive. She in turn saves him from the wrath of Domingo Matapang who hates traitors.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Excellent book on many levels. Magical realism. Gripping and thrilling race through history. Many layers of the Philipines…many peoples… classes…languages… much time…many different experiences. Read it, read it, read it.

Nostalgia (Romania)

Ok, so I was totally wrapped up in WRITING a novel during the month of November (Nanowrimo) so I didn’t post. Sorry about that. My friend Dana in Romania sent me this book. What a delightful surprise!

by Mircea Cartarescu
“Mystic of Housing Projects” & (might I add) “Poet Laureate of the grim Soviet housing block.”

Nostalgia hit me as a cross between Pan’s Labyrinth and Where The Wild Things Are with a dash of JD Salinger. It’s a trip!

WARNING: This book messes with your head. It’s not linear, like we’re used to in the Western Cannon. You have to shut up your left brain, as my painting teacher Mr. Stan Miller is fond of saying. You have to be willing to sit with uncertainty for most of the book. It’s like closing your eyes and sledding down a hill.

What’s funny is, the whole time I was reading the book, I didn’t see the screaming man on the cover. Suddenly, as I uploaded the photo for this blog: Whap! Fap! OMG, what have I been looking at this whole time? Seems an apt metaphor for living under an insane regime. Any of them.

Controversy: Is Nostalgia a novel, or is it 5 unconnected stories? Cartarescu says it’s a novel. Publisher’s Weekly says it’s a short story collection. Here’s my favorite:

The Roulette Player

Nostalgia starts off in Bucharest with underground Russian roulette played by the wealthy and the bored. They get a bum off the streets and offer him an astronomical amount of money if he will put a pistol to his temple and pull the trigger. The gun has one bullet in its six chambers–five chances to live.

Then one vagabond, “The Roulette Player,” changes everything.

“During a period of two years, the Roulette player lifted the pistol to his temple eight times in various cellars throughout the filthy labyrinths underneath the foundation of our city. Each time, I was told–and later saw it for myself–on his tormented face almost without a forehead, an overwhelming terror etched itself; an animal fear that you couldn’t bear to witness. It seemed as though this very fear cajoled fate and helped him escape. His emotional tension reached a peak when, tightening his eyelids and smirking, he abruptly pulled the trigger.

“You heard the slight click, after which his frame with its heavy bones crashed softly to the floor; he lost consciousness, but was unharmed.”

The city’s elite are in the Roulette Player’s hands. He owns the game. He calls the shots. (Ha ha.) He is the wealthiest one there, yet he keeps gambling with his life. A world champion at survival, yet constantly increase the odds against himself. Why? (I think I caught some historical irony there.)

To Dream Enormously In Demented Colors…

The other stories: I won’t recap because we’d be here all night.

The narrators are children or teens, so the POV is limited. Floating in the memory fog are half-understood conversations and events, plus partial memories that may or may not have happened. (I am not fond of the male coming-of-age genre with its creepy sex obsession–didn’t care for it here either.)

But the boy who snuck into his sister’s closet was interesting: In Cartarescu’s sharp, elegant prose you could feel both the joy and pain of the cross-dressing compulsion.

And who hasn’t been obsessed, at times, with a lost first love? Creepy and curious.

THE CRITICS ARE WRONG (As usual)

I take strong exception to the Publisher’s Weekly note that “the self-conscious postmodernism of this collection may prove off-putting for American readers accustomed to conventions of realist fiction.” (Excuse me, I’ve taken 2 college courses on Postmoderism. I think Americans have some idea about it.) And I have a feeling that once I’ve digested the prose, and spent time away, I will be reading the stories again.

All told, Nostalgia was a great entry point for me to go and discover more Romanian writers. With a little help from my friends!

*PS: I know the ” at the beginning of the blog is displaying incorrectly. It does drive me crazy but it’s late, I’m tired, and I’m going to bed. Lol