What would have happened to Flaubert's novel if Emma Bovary had in fact ignored the author, refused to give herself up to carnal passion, and bought a sewing machine instead?
And could we possibly imagine a heroine, or simply a protagonist, to whom nothing very much has ever happened? Caught fast in a cocoon-like quiet equanimity, she has never been truely happy, although real misfortunes have passed her by. Her service, if she can be said to have performed one, could only be that she represents the norm with which true heroes clash, a wall to bang their heads against interminably, or, you might say, the amorphous grey anonymity that provides a background for them. To serve, just serve, to have no meaning, to stand in the common ranks, to assert nothing, to deny nothing, to keep out of the big picture, never to speak on a platform or lead anyone into battle — the most ordinary existence, which can hardly be to anyone's credit.
Our heroine lived in an old wooden house with aspidistras but no running water, her small daughter, her husband and her elderly mother-in-law. The girl's father, heroine's husband and mother-in-law's son was a thick-set lecher, who would make a pass at any woman, even the ones in calico overalls who swept up leaves at the steam-baths. His cheerful nonchalance suggested that he viewed this existence as the norm, the natural order of things. His mother and wife would wait patiently throughout his long absences, and it is quite possible that their life would have continued in this pattern of enforced waiting and joyless meetings, had he not one day, in a blind moment induced by a rather special woman, thrown his wife out of the house and given her a parting smack on the backside to boot.
He hadn't meant to insult her, just whacked her like a ball — clear off, you're in the way. Yet strangely enough, this slap, which was not a serious blow, just a token, so to say, became a kind of «moment of truth» for our heroine, as if the curtain had been raised prematurely revealing the naked hulk of an unfinished stage-set on which the beauty of life was to be played out. She was not afraid of the bare wooden crossbeams still smelling of pine, the mechanism of the intersecting joints, cogwheels, hooks, blocks, ropes and pulleys suddenly exposed to view, but gone suddenly and forever was the young girl's dreaminess with its fragile wings, the blind trust in life and expectation of surprises. All that remained was the way she walked, which made people behind her call «Hey, miss!» then apologise «Sorry, madam» when they caught sight of her face.
Two years went by. The mother-in-law was allocated an apartment with running water in place of the old wooden house, took the aspidistras with her and found her daughter-in-law and the little girl in their hostel. They went to live with this white-haired old woman who was trying to redress the wrongs of the past, but without the husband, now enamoured and lured away by a woman with an almost masculine voice and a rudimentary beard.
They rarely left their cosy apartment with the aspidistras, bought a sewing machine with an overlock, and a tailor's dummy, and began to make leather berets, handbags, fashionable coats of long-haired wool, and even wedding dresses for which the mother-in-law made pink and cream flowers, light as puff-pastry, and long satin gloves with pointed triangular finger tips or oval ones like grapes. The old woman could never sew without showing off her stitching and pleating skills. All three of them were remarkably well dressed, and that was the only remarkable thing about them. The needle's eye had launched them into the world. Through it they saw and sensed reality. And through it, in turn, reality scrutinised them, bestowing its modest joys and blessings.
The new apartment was near a shoe factory, and the faces of the local residents bore all manner of blemishes and bruises, from a tobacco yellow to a purplish-black, in which they took pride like badges of distinction, the women even more than the men. Theirs was a tense, proud life, with ecstatic singing, raucous shouts, unruly family brawls that spilled out into the street and attracted rings of onlookers who surveyed the unsightly bloody consequences with a deferential distaste.
Among the shoemakers was an artist whose apartment was packed with unsold pictures. Quite a few people were willing to buy, swap or simply take advantage of his weaknesses and wheedle them out of him, these cruel, masterly pictures, but that wasn't how it usually turned out. For a start the artist would make his client stay for a drink in his studio, stinking of urine and tobacco, with cockroaches scuttling from behind the pictures and long, muddled conversations punctuated by belches and heavy drinking, all this in vast quantities and with the best of intentions. Then suddenly he'd turn nasty, fly into a rage and start a fight that should have ended in hugs, but did not usually get that far, because the art-lovers, unlike their author, soon capitulated.
Watching this life from the sidelines one might have thought the shoemakers had read and learnt by heart the founder of Socialist Realism and were simply acting out the script to the letter. But this was hardly the case. Most likely the founder himself had actually hit upon the bitter truth, namely the deep-seated attraction for heroic art, however shabby its attire.
The local fool Boriska was always going up to people in the street, even children and old ladies with dogs, asking them if they felt like a drink. Hearing the occasional no, he would blush and mutter in a barely audible whisper, to his own amazement, «And I never drink.»
When our heroine and the old woman decided to replace the plumbing in the bathroom and lavatory whose terrible roars and gurgles seemed to harmonise with the street noises outside, they were forced into a closer acquaintance with the shoemakers than they might have wished.
«Third floor! That'll be three grand for you, ma!» they announced, blotches glistening gleefully. In the fetching and carrying that ensued some vital parts went missing on the way, such as pipes, taps and even for some obscure reason the cistern lid, although who could possibly have wanted to pinch that. But disappear it did, in transit into the dark jungle of the shoemakers' mysterious realm.
In their innocence the women phoned the shop, which dispatched a team of young, loud-mouthed, skinhead loaders now suspected of stealing. They made short work of the crafty shoemakers, without wasting any words or any time on words.
From among the group of suddenly alert but still contemptuous shoemakers they picked out the ringleader and grabbed him by the jacket so deftly that only the collar remained forlornly embracing his scrawny neck. The snide yells of the mob ceased instantly, and they produced the missing parts, laying them silently at the victors' feet like captured banners on a public square.
Yet all the same these silenced men radiated arrogance, the superiority of tradition over upstarts and pretenders, backed by the universal cry: «Can you possibly understand, dear Sir, what it means when a man has nowhere to go?» And the founder of Socialist Realism together with many other men of letters would certainly have understood and loved them for it. And the more silent and depressed they were, the more obviously serious and important they seemed; after all it was not for nothing that the double-headed eagle, the emblem of the medieval shoemakers, survived to become the standard of a whole state. And although they never took part in opinion polls and didn't give a damn about elections, they were capable of creating a fair amount of mayhem in private life, and life as we know, is always private.
«Ladies!» cried one of the upstart loaders fervently from the porch platform as they were departing. «Fancy asking that lot to help you. They're all dickheads! Be sure to call us next time.» The women didn't know how to thank them.