One of the doctors said that her resistance came from a deep-seated displacement of the maternal instinct. She had no child, she had no country, she could not have any feeling of a motherland; and at the same time she looked on her husband as her child, now the husband was a defender of the motherland, she blamed her husband for defending the wrong mother.
He was an extremely subtle doctor, the wrong mother, so they decided to apply the electric beams to areolas and nipples, not easy to take such a decision, it needed sturdy sisters who volunteered to restrain her, the question was raised whether male patients waiting their turn should be allowed to watch, in the end they were made to attend these sessions, that’s right, three sessions, results were inconclusive.
At one point, the woman started muttering:
‘Victory, victory.’
She stared at the Faraday machine, most impressive, the doctors realised that they had won, in the theatre everyone started mouthing victory, she was exhausted, she is always exhausted, but she has returned to her own, into the community, a fine victory, and one which paved the way for others.
Two of the patients waiting to be treated got up one morning saying that they felt better, that they wouldn’t need to have the treatment, but they were given it all the same. With the woman, it had been extra difficult because she was French by adoption, she was very brave, the doctors congratulated her.
‘All that will have to go in your novel, Max.’
‘Putting everything in is a German speciality, Hans, in France we call it being long-winded. A novel is not an encyclopaedia.’
‘You can’t just ignore the knowledge of the age you live in.’
‘But you don’t have to import it wholesale, what you want is a quick turn over, create an impression.’
‘Nein, that would be bluffing!’
‘Whether I describe or don’t describe, the main thing is that it changed our militant heroine permanently, with lifelong after-care, the ne plus ultra, at the army’s expense.’
‘And for years your Thomas de Vèze has been taking Hélène out for walks of an afternoon, whenever it’s fine, a great love, is she able to speak?’
‘Very slowly, all she can say are the usual hellos and thank-yous, the neighbours call her the Madwoman, especially those who had almost believed what she’d said, the ones the gendarmes questioned at the time and did not prosecute, no charges were brought, there were only statements from witnesses, it was put down to a minor outbreak of hysteria foreign in origin, they concluded that the stock was healthy, it didn’t stop Hélène having a kid.’
‘And will The Madwoman be the title of this novella?’
‘Of my novel, Monsieur Kappler!’
‘You’re going to have to pad it out if you want to make it look like a novel, so you’ll need to stir in some factual stuff.’
‘You said there was a knack to writing descriptions?’
‘Yes, a secret, and a secret it will stay.’
‘I’ll swap you, the secret for a beautiful object I’ve spotted hereabouts.’
‘No object is worth a trade secret, Max.’
‘This one is.’
‘At least tell me what it’s called.’
‘It’s a spanking chair.’
‘Trust you French, such dirty minds! What’s it like? Did you find it in some knocking shop? How is the victim strapped in?’
‘Your trade secret first.’
‘No, Max, your secret, then I promise I’ll hand over mine.’
‘In fact, there’s nothing so special about it to qualify as secret, no mechanism to immobilise the partially unclothed victim, no hatch, it’s a perfectly inoffensive chair, looks like any other carver’s chair, with arm-rests, except that one of the arm-rests has been removed so that it doesn’t impede the pedagogue who is free to swish whoever he has forced on to his or her knees, every school in France has one, the one I saw was actually designed for a left-handed swisher.’
*
Hans refuses to include this hogwash in the backdrop to the novel, Max tries to negotiate, it would be fun, push the reader into a spot of dirty-minded adult fantasising, when he comes round he finds there are small children within reach and it’s his fault… As you wish… Over to you now: the secret of describing.
‘It’s not much of a secret either, Max, it’s simple, for a description you need a clash, a conflict, the conflict is much more important than the details otherwise the reader gets bored, the wind and the trees, if you show the wind bending the trees, you’ve soon finished, but if the trees resist you have a struggle, a lull, battle rejoined, suspense, drama, a structure, La Fontaine knew all this long ago, you can also do it along lines very fashionable nowadays, abandon descriptions altogether, take out plot, dialogue, things, you stand the character in front of a mirror or insert him into a waking dream, he talks to himself, you fracture grammar and thought, you make things easier for yourself, with short sentences, very curt.’
‘I prefer conflict,’ says Max.
‘In that case your sentence must brawl with itself, that is the whole point of describing, it’s not to be lifelike, nowadays photos are far better at doing that, you have to describe without knowing where you’re going, Max you see that light through the foliage? On the other side of the track? The flowers? I tell myself that if I succeed in getting them down interestingly on the page, not to remind the reader of what he has already seen and heard, but to make him hear what is unwonted in language, there, look, between the railway posters, the leaves and the purple dress that woman is wearing, there on the platform opposite, that couple, don’t stare, the dark-haired woman in the purple dress, the background ochre of the poster behind the purple dress and the belladonna shade of the scarf, I don’t know yet, there you have all the power of daylight, or there’s nothing, but if words start brawling with one another over the poster and the face of the woman in the purple dress, then my German language will become less useful for giving orders with, you’ve seen that face, Max? We’ve been through catastrophic times, but pretty women are always with us.’
Max doesn’t think there’s anything particularly extraordinary about the woman, but now that Hans has stopped talking about Lena he feels disposed to admire all the women travelling on Swiss railways who come within his friend’s ambit.
‘A sentence brawling with itself. Today the fashion is the exact opposite, the curt sentence, Max, it’s perfectly good, no affectation, it packs a punch, it has a youthful ring, but actually it’s exactly like giving an order, there’s nothing ambiguous about it, it leaves nothing unsaid, the curt sentence is omniscience in a dozen words, it intimidates, it connives with order, the sentence must fight against order, Max, it must stretch its limbs and fight against everything it has been made to do up to now, we must invent a longer sentence, different from what it was before we began, a sentence that is without order, chiaroskewered words, the feeling that they’ve missed something out, don’t start a sentence if you know how to end it, because the reader will also know, and when you reread it you will rage at what you have not succeeded in doing, and if the whole thing suddenly starts to sing, even if it’s only in the proper name of plants for example, in the setting sun, Nerine, Torch Lily, Chinese Lantern, some day I’d like to write a poem with Chinese Lantern.
‘You’ve got to let it sing and when it starts to sing you must say to yourself the song is merely the conceit of what you have failed to achieve, you wanted to flay bare and you describe, you sough, you rage, and you start again, if necessary you jettison flowers, you start again with fungi, the underwoods, the colours which change, something to do with the name of fungi, Max, or the movements of a dancer or a woman singing.’