The utter senselessness and insensibility, insanity, incongruity, gruesomeness and despicability of war sounds in the background. It’s about the young men who serve and return from war, of friendship, of the ties that bind comrades-in-arms, of humanity, of remaining humane in the midst of a grey world, of struggling and battling and not giving in, of finding room for laughs with a car put together (a car named ‘Karl the Road Spook’), of a birthday and listing of years, of not really hoping, of having a friend and two who would not give a thought about laying down their lives and everything they could for the other, of finding sudden hope in the midst of that not-hoping, of finding life, of being touched by an inexplicable love, of touching a human life and of being touched by another human being through curious tentative beginnings, of a sudden ray of light, of a friend who drops everything to come racing down through the mist and rain with a doc', of wanting to take care of another, of taking care of another, of being made to feel alright, of make believing that things are perfect, of playing silly games while walking down a road lined with shops, of not having enough money, of the wrong kind of people who have lots, of listening to music on a radio and identifying music with the first bars, of wondering in an odd moment that one might have been a music teacher in another world, of telling stories to make the other laugh and being egged on by the other’s laughter even as life is dripping out drop by drop…, of falling in love slowly and deeply and fully, of the bliss of being, of utter despair, of a sudden cheeky hope that one might be going too, of a light gone out.
It wasn’t a book where I bonded with the characters – I became one of them, and felt through and lived through one of them and identified with the primary character and his thoughts most of all (and sometimes with the other primary character). Maybe it’s because it's written in the first person, maybe because one lives then and for those moments through the ‘I’ of the primary character – there is no hope nor help for it. But not all books written in the 'I' do that. Not all stories do that. Here I did and this book did.
I can’t know what it means to return from war nor what it means to struggle against the greyness that greets one on one’s return. These I could see only through the primary character and the others and feel only in a ghostly and nightmarish way (as a writer very matter-of-factly once said, maybe we carry imprints of cultural memories in us...). I do not know what it is like to have a friend especially like Koster and I never will, and I will never be able to be a friend like Koster either. And yet many of the thoughts and feelings I could feel viscerally - the return of life, the coming back to life - just as I could intensely feel the hope, the loss of hope, the playing of juvenile games to preserve hope even while hope trickles through one’s fingers. It’s a matter of playing against time, of making deals, of saying that something has to last, something has to stay...but really, what must and why? The feeling of gentle revulsion and the feeling of indifference towards the flat greyness of the world, and then the hard, implacable and frightful intensity with which one suddenly compares and sees everything in the light of what one has found – something incomparable, and then knowing – as a reader not as the character that something is amiss, the slow and accumulating dread of knowing and distancing oneself from the character then and then from the book, even before the hope barely hints at slipping away but to have the character calling out for some reason to get back into his world and to have him drape one, and to let out even little laughs because of the warm and funny and perfect conversations, the tiny incidents, the tenderness, the camaraderie, and also because the thoughts of the character and his little quirks and his sudden sentiments and the slow ones and some of his actions are like taking involuntary glimpses in the mirror, and all the other characters have grown on one too, and so one starts reading again, lets go, and starts all over again and knows that one simply has to read all the way through (with a quiet fimh in the background), and so one does while pausing to catch one’s breath, forgets to breathe and remembers only on taking in a sudden breath still walking through that haunting grey nothingness which is pierced with the laughter of the soul which holds so much promise that it doesn’t feel very real until, before one knows it, one has reached the final lap and has started hoping without intending to even while knowing that the long drawn-out ending up in the mountains can end only one way. There is that utter and final loss that hits one from within one even as one intently focuses on simply reading the last two or three pages and then the lines, even while one clenches one’s jaws, even while one wills one’s inner self not to cry out. And there is no getting over that loss. There is no getting over and getting on with things. I don’t know what he did after that. After sitting there. In that room. What did he do? I don’t know what Robby did. I was hoping he would die. That would have made it less unbearable. But what would Koster do and what would he do if and when Robby went back?
And those fine lines. The lines expressing a thought, a sentiment or a feeling that one knows one has felt and feels but has never been able to articulate nor express nor found the words. Very simply put. Without fuss and without going into a three page long passionate explanation. Remarque does that. Just a line. Or two. Finished off with maybe a smile. An emotion, a sentiment trapped in words and then one realizes all over again – even though one had almost started doubting the sanctity of language because of one’s own inadequacies of expression and utter hopelessness of ever getting anything to sound right especially in the midst of an argument or in the middle of writing – the beauty and the grace of language, of perfect words one following the other, of fine writing. For that’s what it is. Somebody has expressed in language the inexpressible thought that one could spend a lifetime fumbling around with or trying to explain and justify and defend (or feel too embarrassed or ashamed to even want to express in words). Maybe those trapped lines don’t mean that one is right. Maybe they don’t always mean that one is normal or particularly mature in feeling what one does…but one does know that someone (worthwhile) somewhere has felt the same and that somehow makes it better. There is an unbreakable connection and a bond and also a deep gratitude. (I have felt that, yes, but sometimes I start wondering whether some rare writers forget what they write or pretend to forget ...!). I could type out some of the liners from this book that gripped me but I won’t. That would be like sharing one’s diary of thoughts on public space.
I tried reading this book the first time while in Class XI or XII although I don’t remember from whom I’d borrowed the book. I’d read maybe twenty pages but I couldn’t go on. And for the last five years or so, I have tried reading it, at least, once a year (or Robby or maybe even Pat would call out from the book or God-only-knows who...)but I couldn't. I’d barely manage to get through the first 30 or so (yet again) and I’d feel the ghostly wrench. Nothing had gone wrong. There was hope, wasn’t there? But the chains would pull. There was something that was going to happen. Not just death. Something worse.I got my current copy of the book from a library sale some 5 years ago. And I got it for 50 cents. This one, for some reason, is less widely available than All Quiet…, Spark of Life, The Road Back and Shadows in Paradise. The edition was brought out in 1958. It has a racy cover on the front (and Robby looks like a block and somewhat dimwitted and dull and somewhat cross-eyed and Pat looks like a shapely tart beckoning from an open window!) and a less racy one on the back. It looks like a cover for a cheap romance paperback, and it amused me in a dry way when it didn’t annoy me that the NYT book review blurb on the back said, ‘racy action and incident…’ and more. And it makes me laugh shortly when I see a comparison made between this and The Three Musketeers. Hmm (is it the 'three'?). Apparently this book '..is as racily written...'. Hmm. Makes me think that some things were the same back in the late 50's as far as selling books were concerned. And so no, the little blurb which talked about 'heartbreaking tragedy' had nothing to do with my own ghostly feelings. The print is fine and small and the pages are brown and of the sort that will not tear if not handled with care. The pages will break like a communion wafer. And inspite of all the gentleness with which I handled the book and while the book was held delicately by its binding when I bought it…upon one of my yearly attempts, the fragile book-binding – to my utter dismay – came apart. Down somewhere in the middle. And so I carried around both parts while reading it through this time. And as if that were not enough I made the mistake of carrying both parts in my bag just one day and a page came off and did break into two.
The book hits one in waves. I know I will forget most of it. But some of it will stay like very, very, very few books and writings and essays and stories have stayed within – even from the ones that I enjoyed reading when I did and have read more than once. There is something that gets absorbed from the book and gets absorbed within one’s being so that one will never forget an essence and some of the shards. They get implanted into one's being. And for now they and parts that I will forget later keep me company and gently rain or burst within while I go about doing normal and regular things that real humans do like walking (with fimh which might not be that normal).
Did I enjoy reading the book? I wouldn’t say that. I couldn’t say that. But one cannot not read it. I don’t know what may have happened if they had been together: would things have worked alright? Would they have been their quirky, not entirely comprehensible but strangely lovable selves who would have loved and lasted together? I don’t know these things (and there's little point in presenting the overheard arguments amongst the cynic, the mystic and the romantic in my head). Nor does the book tell me anything more about human responses to other humans. I’m just as utterly puzzled and sometimes laughingly or quietly puzzled as ever. People love and people like and people fall madly or slowly in love with and stay in love or fall more in love through time with those whom they do…and when they don’t – they don’t. And sometimes it all happens inspite of the reluctance and the accumulated cynicism (or marked scepticism) and wariness. There seems to be nothing terribly reasonable or explainable about the process. Why one and not another? Why those but not these others? Why that one and not this one? Who knows. And can one list off reasons? As Pat says at a point, 'If I knew all the reasons then it wouldn't be love'. Maybe that is so (still can't avoid prodding at it though). Maybe how humans love in the external world and whether they continue to love is a place where they have a choice...and human beings do love in different ways - that much (or little) I know. I don't quite know whether the book, for me, spells an absolute and horrifying loss of hope or whether it tells me that inspite of the horror and the loss there always is something that can be hoped for as long as people are living and alive and on the planet which makes its yearly swing around the sun or maybe both and some other stuff in between and besides. I know I’ll wonder ever so often, what did Robby do…?...and I'm not so sure I want to know.
A quiet 'Thank you...' to the characters from the books and other unnamed beings (human and otherwise) for egging me on to read the book.
2 comments:
Three Musketeers is a great book (in the non-trivial sense of 'great') and Three Comrades is a great book, but only a moron (of a type increasingly common these days - graduates of top-notch colleges too) could think of comparing the two, merely because both books involve three good friends and are 'racily' written.
But Three Comrades I can't read any more. It hurts too badly... In the last twenty years, only two books have hurt me nearly as much: The Half Blood Prince and A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Thank you for commenting....and after a terribly long gap but you really could and should have written some more.
You're right: it was the moronic comparison that got me annoyed not that both aren't great books.
I don't think I'll be able to read the book again (it's the particular kind of horrible hurt)....nor A Thousand Splendid Suns, but it was the barbaric cruelty and the horrifying meaningless even in death in that one...even though one bit came through. For me, there's only one short story that hurts utterly (even though I've read it more than once) and it, most likely, wouldn't seem remotely sensible (I don't know about sane) to anybody else to be comparing books and all else to that but I do.
This has become a long letter now...better wrap it up.
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