“ The Book of Bruises” - A Short Story by Catherine McNamara from her collection The Cartography of Others - 2018

 

“The Book of Bruises” - A Short Story by Catherine McNamara from her collection The Cartography of Others - 2018

This is part of my participation in Paris in July 2021 - hosted by Thyme for Tea 

I have been an avid reader of Catherine McNamara for Seven years.

Today’s story is set in a Paris train station.  

Gateway to Catherine McNamara on The Reading Life - including a wide ranging Q and A session. Also included Is one of her short stories.

Website of Catherine McNamara 

World wide Pandemic issues have halted most global travel plans.  In the marvelous stories of Catherine McNamara we can continue our journeys, in great company.

I have been an avid reader of the Short Stories of Catherine McNamara since I read her debut collection Pelt and Other Stories in 2014.  Here were my observations on this marvelous collection-

“Pelt and Other Stories by Catherine McNamara, her debut collection, is a very powerful, thoroughly captivating collection of stories most of which center on the post colonial world of central coastal West Africa. The  subtlies and levels of irony in these stories show a very great insight into how cross cultural encounters impact all parties.  The people in the stories range from European hotel owners in Ghana, famous art photographers, mistresses of Europeans, drivers, and village people.   The stories are mostly but not all set in West Africa.  One is set in the very worldly city of Sydney, some in Italy.   .   The stories are miniature marvels in showing us the manifestation of orientalizing of the African not just by Europeans and Americans but by returned citizens.  The stories show us how hard it is to return home unchanged.  

Today’s story open in the Gare du Nord train station in Paris.  It is one of Europe’s busiest stations.  Renzo is there to escort his sister  Monique on a train back Italy to her abusive husband, a trip he wishes she was not making.  She is there to visit their mother.

“They would take their mother to her favourite restaurant in the fourth arrondisement, where Monique would shepherd talk and locate harbours of recollection..”

He notices Gypsey women.  A woman from his past joins him at The station bar.  They think of The past.  He recalls his father’s stories of Young boys drafted to be blown apart in Defense of Paris from The Germans.  He has involutary memories his own ten years in Rome

This story gives us a strong sense of Paris as City to leave and one to which you are drawn to return.

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write, and ended up in Ghana co-running a bar. On the way she lived in Milan, Mogadishu and Brussels, working as a translator, graphic designer, teacher, art gallery director, shoe model, mother. The Cartography of Others was a finalist in the People’s Book Prize (UK) and won the Eyelands International Fiction Award (Greece). Pelt and Other Stories was a semi- finalist in the Hudson Prize (USA) and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award (Ireland). Her short fiction has been Pushcart-nominated and published widely. Catherine lives in a farmhouse in northern Italy.

THE LAST AND THE FIRST by Nina Berberova - 1929- Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz 2021-published by Pushkin Press

 This is part of my participation in Paris in July 2021 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea 

This year I have been focusing on Russian Émigrés in Paris 

THE LAST AND THE FIRST by Nina Berberova - 1929- Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz 2021-published by Pushkin Press

Nina Berberova 

Born July 26, 1901 - St Petersburg, Russia 

She leaves Russian 1922 for Berlin. With her husband Vladislav Khodasevich, a well known poet 

1924 - They move to Paris. He dies 1939

She became a contributor to Russian Émigré publications including many short stories 

1950 - Moves to USA and becomes a citizen in 1959

She taught Russian at Yale then Princeton .she retired in 1971

Dies September 26, 1993 - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, USA

Dies - September 26, 1993 - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 

“The first English translation of celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova’s debut novel: an intense story of family conflict and the struggle over the future of émigré life

On a crisp September morning, trouble comes to the Gorbatovs’ farm. Having fled revolution and civil war in Russia, the family has worked tirelessly to establish themselves as crop farmers in Provence, their hopes of returning home a distant dream. While young Ilya Stepanovich is committed to this new way of life, his step-brother Vasya looks only to the past. With the arrival of a letter from Paris, a plot to lure Vasya back to Russia begins in earnest, and Ilya must set out for the capital to try to preserve his family’s fragile stability.

The first novel by the celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova, The Last and the First is an elegant and devastating portrayal of the internal struggles of a generation of émigrés. Appearing for the first time in English in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Marian Schwartz, it shows Berberova in full command of her gifts as a writer of masterful poise and psychological insight.”  From Pushkin press 

I am very glad I had the opportunity to read this work. It is historically important.  One of the conflicts among Émigrés was over whether they were better off in Russia.  There is perpetual debate over the Russian character.

An Unofficial Marriage : A Novel About Pauline Viadot and Ivan Turgenev by Joie Davidow - 2021 - 283 pages

 

An Unofficial Marriage : A Novel About Pauline Viadot and Ivan Turgenev by Joie Davidow - 2021 - 283 pages 

Paris in July - 2021 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

I give this marvelous novel my complete endorsement.  The more you know and have read in Turgenev the more you will love this book.

The salient facts below of Turgenev’s life are derived from the novel 

Ivan Turgenav 

Born November 9, 1818 - Oryal, Russia - his notoriously cruel very rich mother owned 6000 serfs 

 

1843 - St.Perrsburg, Russian. Falls deeply in Love with The opera singer Pauline Viradot after seeing her in The Barber of Seville.

This encounter will shape both of their lives from then on.

In 1845 he leaves Russia to follow Paulina all over Europe.  He becomes part of the household of Paulina and her husband.  He will worship her the rest of life, putting her above everything else. He buys prpoprrties in 

Paris, Venice, Baden-Baden and Rome to be able to attend her performances.  Paris becomes his spiritual home..

1852 - publishes A Sportsman’s Sketches

1862 - Father and Sons

Much of his time was spent in Paris.  He became good friends with Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and other Paris based writers and artists.He was an important figure in the Russian Émigré Community.  He was fluent in French as were most aristocratic Russians  He became very involved in the Paris centered European opera world.  He maintained residences in Paris while periodically traveling back to Russia to deal with business matters from property holdings and concerns over his very extensive publications.  There was unsubstantiated gossip that he was the father of two of Pauline’s four children.  A child he had with a serf woman was moved to Paris to join the Viardot household.  He never married. Davidow depicts him as having a number of casual relationships with Russian women from his social caste.  The serf mother of his daughter was paid by him for sex and to give up her daughter to be raised as a Turgenev.

His relationship with Paulina lasted forty years.

Died September 3, 1883 - Bougival, France 

Paulina Viradot

Born: 18 July 1821 - Paris - her fsther was a fsmous singer 

1840 to his death 1883 she was married to Louis Viradot.

Louis Viardot was a French writer, art historian, art critic, theatrical figure, and translator. He managed his wife’s very succesful career as an opera singer 

Died: 18 May 1910, - Paris. She had four children and acted as a mother to Turgenav’s dsughter.

An Unofficial Marriage has much to offer besides just facts of the lives of a great author and famous opera singer.  Opera singers were the super stars of the 19th century.  The opening sequence in which Ivan first encounters Paulina is very lushly  done.  Paulina is not a conventional beauty, if anything a bit plain.  Why did Ivan fall so deeply Under her thrall on first encounter?  He is portrayed as mesmerized by the power of her preformance.  He arranged a meeting with her.  He knew and respected that she was married. He got along very well with her husband, almost an  older brother, they both loved hunting, they collaborated on Pushkin translations.  Ivan had his own suite in the Paris mansion.  Louis knew Ivan loved Pauline, he wondered is Ivan my wife’s lover?  As time went by he knew of the gossip.  Davidow shows us how full of gossip the Parisian opera seen appears.  At least two of the children strongly resembled Louis so they did have a passionate connection as well as practical.

Davidow’s narrative does include several very powerful sexual encounters between Paulina and Ivan. (In her epilogue she acknowledges there is no way to know if they ever had sex.). Paulina has a very strong attraction to Ivan as potrayed.  

As the forty plus years covered pass, much happens. Ivan’s daughter turns into a nearly spoiled brat.  Paulina’s children marry.  I enjoyed learning of their futures.  Louis dies, then Ivan and Paulina no longer has great drawing power but enough to live comfortably.

There is a lot to be learned about the business side of 19th century European opera here.  These are  tumultous times in French and Russian politics and Davidow takes us there. Davidow tells us How Turgenev treated Family serfs after his mother died.

I loved this book.  

It is said that Turgenev is the most French Russian writer.  Maybe we can see a bit why now.

There is a detailed bio of The author on her website 

http://www.joiedavidow.com/index.html

“The Life of Madame Duclos” - A Short Story by IRINA ODOEVTSEVA -translated by Irina Steinberg ‘The Life of Madame Duclos’ (Zhizn´ madam Diuklo) first published in Zveno 6 (1927), pp. 336–60.

“The Life of Madame Duclos” - A Short Story by IRINA ODOEVTSEVA -translated by Irina Steinberg ‘The Life of Madame Duclos’ (Zhizn´ madam Diuklo) first published in Zveno 6 (1927), pp. 336–60.

This story is included in Russian Émirgé Short Stories from Bunin to Vanovsky - edited by Brian Karetnyk.  I highly reccomend this wonderful collection

This is part of my Participation in Paris in July 2021 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

Works read so far for Paris in July 2021

1. Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson - 2021
2. Loving Modigliani by Linda Lappin - 2020
3. Russian Émirgé Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnky. 2018 - an overview 
4. Pancakes in Paris - Living The American Dream in France by Craig Carlson - 2016
5. The Paris Apartment by Kelly Bowen- 2021
6. The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure - 2013
7. “Requiem” - A short story by Gaito Gazdanov - 1960
8. The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesieski - 2021
9. Two Short Stories from the 1920s by Teffi
10. “Dimanche” - A Short Story by Irene Nemirovsky - 1934- translated by Bridget Patterson 2015

Irina Odoevtseva

Born -June 15, 1895 - Riga,Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire)

1922 - with her husband the poet Georgy Ivanov, she emigrates to Paris 

She wrote several novels which sold well. She also authored two commercially successful memoirs, On the Banks of the Neva (1967) and on The Banks of the Seine (1983).  Her final book caused a good bit of controversy do to her remarks on famous Émigre artists and writers, including Ivan Bunin.

In 1987, she returned to Russia, living in Leningrad.  New editions of her memoirs sold over 200,000 copies and sh was a frequent guest on cultural Tv shows.

Dies - October 14, 1990 - St Petersburg, Russia 

“The Life of Madame Duclos”, set in Émigré Paris in the 1920s, is just a wonderful mini-history of the life of a Russian woman in Paris. 

Manechka,an orphan, was sent to an exclusive St Petersburg girls boarding school by her aunt.  Right after graduation her aunt marries her to a very wealthy Parisian, 33 years her senior.  He has business that takes him to St. Petersburg every few months.  He saw her preforming in a ballet and fell in love with her.

“In the very first winter following her graduation from the institute, Manechka Litvinova got married to Monsieur Ducious…. So, on that morning, when the aunt walked into her room – a white room, covered in pictures of her girlfriends from the institute – pinched her cheek and said: ‘Now listen up my dear, I’ve found you a husband. A Frenchman. A rich one. You’ll have your own house in Paris. How about that?’ Manechka curtseyed just as gracefully. ‘You’re an angel, ma tante! Merci!’ They were married a month later. Monsieur Duclos was fifty, Manechka was seventeen. Monsieur Duclos would come to Russia on business, staying for no more than six weeks at a time. He had seen Manechka at the ballet and had fallen in love.”

He was fifty, a widower, and she 17.  The house turns out to be a huge mansion. Manechka is proud of her status and her girlfriends are jealous.  The house has numerous tenants and even a concierge.  Her husband is not at all a bad man, affectionate and generous.  She learns what is expected of the wife of a wealthy Parisian businessman.  They settle into a routine.  Then one day she finds him dead in his room.  She becomes a devoted widow for years, very affluent from her husband’s businesses and rental income.  She wears black for three years.  Then, she is only 21,

throws of her widows clothes and has an extensive new wardrobe made.  The servants are scandalized by her.  

She begins notice a young Russian man her age who has recently become a tenant.  She finds he is a student.  She becomes infatuated with a man way below her station in society.  She is dismayed to find he has moved out. She hires a defective to find him.  

The story closes in a very romantic fashion.  

 

“Dimanche” - A Short Story by Irene Nemirovsky - 1934- translated by Bridget Patterson 2015

 

“Dimanche” - A Short Story by Irene Nemirovsky - 1934- translated by Bridget Patterson 2015

Website for Paris in July 2021- Hosted by Thyme for Tea 

This is part of my tenth year of participation in Paris in July 

Suite Francaise is the acknowledged master work of Iréne Nemirovsky.  I first read this book during Paris in July in 2015.  I loved that book so much that I added her to my read all I can list.  Since then I have read and posted on eleven of her novels and four short stories.  On her way to Auschwitz in a cattle car she carried with her a copy of the notebook of Katherine Mansfield.  She died there after a month at age forty.  She was a very prolific writer with about a novel a year.  The Germans cheated the Reading Life world out of at least thirty wonderful works.  I cannot find a way to forgive or forget this.

I am happy to be able to post on one of her set in Paris short stories “Dimanche” - (“Sunday” in English) from 1934.  The chief characters are a Middle aged Parisian couple, married for twenty years plus, and their twenty year old daughter Nadine.  The father has long been a philander, making little effort to hide things from his wife.  As he story opens he gives her a vague explanation as to why he Will not be home tonight.  His wife wonders who he is meeting.  She thinks of The days when he once had a passion for her,  

Nadine has her first love.  He seems like her father in that The man laughs  when he tells her he sees other women.  Nadine wonders if her mother, who she sees as past the years of passion, has any clue how she feels.

Nemirovsky skillfully lets us see the family dynamics, a younger daughter and the servants.

To those new to Nemirovsky start with Suite Francaise.  

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and immigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne in Paris, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with David Golder, which was followed by more than a dozen other books. Throughout her lifetime she published widely in French newspapers and literary journals. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. More than sixty years later, Suite Française was published posthumously for the first time in 2006. - from Vintage Press 

Two short stories by Teffi set among Russian Émigrés in Paris in the 1920s

 

Paris in July - 2021  - hosted by Thyme for Tea

Works read so far for Paris in July 2021

1. Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson - 2021
2. Loving Modigliani by Linda Lappin - 2020
3. Russian Émirgé Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnky. 2018 - an overview 
4. Pancakes in Paris - Living The American Dream in France by Craig Carlson - 2016
5. The Paris Apartment by Kelly Bowen- 2021
6. The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure - 2013
7. “Requiem” - A short story by Gaito Gazdanov - 1960
8. The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesieski - 2021

Two short stories by Teffi set among Russian Émigrés in Paris in the 1920s

Teffi was The Pen name of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya

May 21, 1872 - Born St Petersburg, Russia

1920- initially a supporter of The Revolution, she soon turned against The Bolsheviks.  She came to live in Paris and never returned. She was an important part of The Russian Émigre community.  She published extensively in Russian language publications, including 100s of Short stories and feuilletons. 

October 6, 1952 - Dies Paris, France

“Que Faire” - 1923

“We—les russes, as they call us—live the strangest of lives here, nothing like other people’s. We stick together, for example, not like planets, by mutual attraction, but by a force quite contrary to the laws of physics—mutual repulsion. Every lesrusse hates all the others—hates them just as fervently as the others hate him.”  - from “que faire?” 

Our narrator tells us every Paris based Russian Émigré calls others a crook as a matter of course 

““that-crook”, placed before the name of every lesrusse anyone mentions: “that-crook Akimenko”, “that-crook Petrov”, “that-crook Savelyev”. This particle lost its original meaning long ago and now equates to something between the French le, indicating the gender of the person named, and the Spanish honorific don: “don Diego”, “don José”. You’ll hear conversations like this: “Some of us got together at that-crook Velsky’s yesterday for a game of bridge. There was that-crook Ivanov, that-crook Gusin, that-crook Popov. Nice crowd.”

Émigrés divide each other into two categories- those selling Russia and those trying to save it.  The sellers are getting rich as middle 

persons, the other seen themselves on a holy mission to restore Tsarist era culture.

The tone of this charming story is comic with Émigrés attributing crazy actions to other Émigrés such as selling a Black Sea port to Chile.

You can also tell Émigrés are totally wrapped up in their own world.

“MARQUITA” - 1924 - set in a Russian Cafe in 

Paris - 

How can you not like a story that opens like this:

“The waitresses, all of them daughters of provincial governors (did we ever imagine our governors could end up with so many daughters?), pulled in their stomachs as they squeezed between the tables, abstractedly repeating, “One chocolates, two pastry and one milk…” The café was Russian, which is why it offered music and “entertainments”.”

(Ok maybe the ex-governors probably did not find this real amusing in 1924)

The characters in this story are all preforming in the club to survive.

The club is also a spot where richer Émigrés come looking for a mistress.

A rich Tarter has sent a box of candy to one the women working at the club.  Here is the advise an older woman gives her:

“A woman must be a mysterious flower (honest to God!) and not give anything away about her domestic arrangements. Men all have domestic arrangements of their own—and that’s what they want to get away from. Or do you want to go on singing romances russes in this teashop until you’re an old woman? Until either you or the teashop come to the end of your days?”

There are four other set in Paris stories in the collection.  These two were my favorites.

I read these works in TEFFI SUBTLY WORDED AND OTHER STORIES - Translated from the Russian by Anne Marie Jackson with Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, and others. From Pushkin Press

There are 23 works in the collection.  The New York Review of Books has published two collections of her work.  In is my hope to do a full read through of these collections.

Mel u

The Reading Life 

The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesielski - 2021

The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesielski - 2021

Website of Paris in July - 2021 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

This is part of my participation for this year

Works read so far for Paris in July 2021

1. Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson - 2021
2. Loving Modigliani by Linda Lappin - 2020
3. Russian Émirgé Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnky. 2018 - an overview 
4. Pancakes in Paris - Living The American Dream in France by Craig Carlson - 2016
5. The Paris Apartment by Kelly Bowen- 2021
6. The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure - 2013
7. “Requiem” - A short story by Gaito Gazdanov - 1960
8. “Paris” - A Short Story by Ivan Bunin -1942

This year I am focusing a bit on Russian Émigrés in Paris, people driven out by the Revolution.  About 75,000 or so went to Paris.  The classic figure is a former Grand Duke working as a waiter, or like Gaito Gazadanov, writer by day and Paris cab driver by night. Many at first thought they would soon be going home when the Russian Civil War was won by the White Russian Armies. Of course this did not happen

The Ice Swan by J’neil Ciesielski, just published this week, is an exciting romantic account of the life of a Russian Princess who fled Saint Petersburg with her mother and younger sister to avoid being killed by Bolsheviks.  They had jewels sown into the lining of their clothes.  Used to being very rich with servants doing everything, they are reduced to just surviving in Paris. The “The Reds” had agents looking for aristocratic Émigrés to be taken home for execution.

Petrograd - 1917 - Princess Svetlana Dalsky, about 21, along with her mother and younger sister Marisa barely escape death by the Reds onto a train bound out of the country. Her father and her brother Nicky remain in Russia fighting to restore the Tsar. They arrive in Paris with little more than the Jewels in their corsets.  They have to live almost in hiding from Bolshevik agents.  They have to give a ruby for a loaf of bread. 

The male romantic lead is a Scottish Doctor, from a very wealthy family, working in a military hospital in Paris. Wynn MacCallan is the second son of a Scottish Duke but his passion is his work as a surgeon, taking care of wounded soldiers. One day he sees Svetlana injured by some glass thrown at her and he treats her. She is, of course, very beautiful, he is intrigued he followers her into an underground Russian nightclub. This club is owned by a sinister Russian who knows everything going on in the Émigré community.  The club is the social hub of Émigre 

Paris, full of dancing, vodka, and shady deals.  The doctor had earlier treated the owner’s son when he was shot so he has an in.

Svetlana begins to run up debts to the club owner, made worse by her mother’s bar tabs.  She agrees to marry the doctor who will settle her debts and get her to his castle in Scotland.

What made the story exciting for me were the numerous plot lines, the development of relationships, watching the Russians adjust. There are lots of surprises and cliff hangers to keep you eagerly reading on.

“J’nell Ciesielski

Inspirational Romance Author

With a passion for heart-stopping adventure and sweeping love stories, J’nell Ciesielski weaves fresh takes into romances of times gone by. When not creating dashing heroes and daring heroines, she can be found dreaming of Scotland, indulging in chocolate of any kind, or watching old black and white movies. Winner of the INSPY and the Maggie Award, she is a Florida native who now lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and lazy beagle.”   From https://jnellciesielski.com/. There is data on her other books on her website.

Mel u

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