Short Stories
Longmans Miscellany has. a wild look about it, as if the editor, setting off with the good intention , of bringing together the very 'best English-Indian writings about India, had got rather tired of , sorting them out and in the end flung in the first round dozen or so. But this wildness has the charm of chance. A particularly happy chance is Mr. Vijayatunga's essay Seeing by Sunlight 1940. The 'author writes sharply and with a laconic sort of humour which is .endearing about the " femininity " of India, the "womanly tech- nique " of sitting on your debtor's doorstep until he pays his bill —or you die; about spitting (" I may yet earn a Ph. D. degree for a thesis on 'Expectoration Asiatic Manhood ") ; not dressing tor breakfast ; lolling on the sofa instead of sitting in a chair ; suffering ; -going to law ; not shaving. "There is too much of a Vakildom in India. The legal complex coupled to the martyrdomplex." It is :a pleasure to read an essay that is so shrewd and so amusing. Some of the short stories by English contributors (all with an Indian :interest) are good light reading, The Senorita, for instance, by Victor Kiernan (if he is English), and Harry Champness's Delhi '43. It is the point of view that links them with Mr. Vijayaturtga's essay : they seem to be written by young men of the world who have .their twits about them and are not complaining. This is a wonderfully tonic new note in writings about India. Of the poems, on the other hand, the less said the better.
Mr. Sansom's stories are Mediterrean,- ancient and wicked. How beautifully he gives the feeling of the cruelty of white sunlight,. the treachery of the dark seas, the dirt, the flies, the malevolence of disinheritance, the impudence. "A glacier, a glacier to freeze this thunderous orange south," cries The Man at Monte Carlo. "A 'glacier alive with blood-drunk polar bears to guzzle these lemon 'Latins ! " Coming north to Milan Mr. Sansom has a memorable fancy—or may be it is a true story—of some ladies with dyed hair who are playing saxophones and trumpets in a ladies' band. A large snake which has escaped from the zoo comes rolling up the arcade where they are playing and everybody bolts exce_pt the ladies. The snake tears up tb them and, as they play faster for fear, it sits -up and sways to the music. Soon the leading lady—she has been rather frigid up to now—looking into the snake's eyes, begins to sway too. She is wearing electric-green satin pyjamas with her bleached hair ; and the other ladies 'sway, and there they all sit swaying, and the snake' sways, and they dare not stop playing. In spite of the touchiness of the -IriSh about their national virtues it is probable that on the whole they are liked better by the English than they are by themselves. For this reason (upon whose analysis one must not pause) Mr. O'Flaherty's. tales of, poverty-stricken peasants with their supple speech and mercenary instincts, of tavern- keepers, colonels, Dublin doctots and dronken barristers, of perse- cuted old men cursing tourists—' May you die viith`xtreme Unction . . . wink the devil,! have the power now "—should find a wider
public than their mere excellence as Short stories would obtain for them were they about matters nearer home. Like so much of the best Irish writing they have the talking voice ; the words fall on the ear rather than on the eye.
Mr. Steinbeck is not quite at home with his old Mexican "folk" story—" fake" would be better—of Kino, his wife Juana and their child Coyitito. Kino finds a great pearl, tries to sell it, learns that merchants cheat, keeps the pearl, commits murder, runs away with his family, Is hunted and when the baby is killed comes home and throws the pearl away. Mr. Steinbeck tries hard to be simple, but he only manages to be embarrassing:. " Coyitito whimpered and Juana muttered little magics over him to make him silent." The book is really a fine example of what the Germans call erstklassiger Kitsch. It is difficult to- find an adequate English translation for these withering words and kinder perhaps not to try. -
STEVIE &arm.
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