Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil ..

Yann Martel – “Beatrice and Virgil” a novel – Publishers – Hamish Hamilton an imprint of Penguin Books – Novel 190 pages + 16 pages for Games for Gustav = Total 206 pages

Surprise comes suddenly, at the least expected moment.  Well, only if it comes suddenly, it qualifies as a “surprise”.  We wouldn’t be one to walk down the road to find the usual supermarket in the same place. 

Long ago, I gifted my son Yann Martel’s award winning book “Life of Pi” to fuel his reading spree, which he continues, albeit at a higher league.  Though initially he scoffed at me saying that Life of Pi was too hum-drum for his taste, but on a subsequent visit, he did agree that he was amazed by Yann Martel’s writings.  When I was leaving from Chennai to Sharjah, not too long ago, he offered me some novels, which he had finished reading and wanted to know if I wish to take them with me.  I didn’t even remember whether I said yes or no, but apparently he had put the book “Beatrice & Virgil” alongwith my baggage. 

Two days ago, on a clean-up spree here in Sharjah, I found this book lying in one of my suitcases (and I was surprised!) and having nothing much to do started reading it.  Just after 2 page of conscientious effort to read, this novel sucked me into it and after that there was no turning back, except for impatient turning of pages.  Here are my views.

This book had all the elements of “Life of Pi,” like the vivid description and wholehearted feeling, but it’s a lot more resistant to summary. “Beatrice and Virgil” is allusive, teasing, fragmentary.

The protagonist, Henry, a famous novelist who has won much acclaim, many readers and a lot of awards for his second novel, which featured wild animals. (Actually, the story starts straightaway without any prologue or intro and it took me about 10 pages of reading to realize that I am already into it).

In his next book Henry, attempts to write about the Holocaust, in a new way, but his idea is unceremoniously rejected by his publishers.  So, he stops writing and moves to a new city, though mentions it as only “one of those great cities of the world that is a world unto itself, where all kinds of people find themselves and lose themselves.  Perhaps it was New York.  Perhaps it was Paris. Perhaps it was Berlin”, leaving it to our choice of imagination.  

One day he receives a strange piece of fan mail: a photo­copy of Flaubert’s short story “The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator” — about a saint who in his youth enjoys massacring wild animals — accompanied by an enigmatic scrap of dialogue between two characters called Beatrice and Virgil. Enclosed alongwith the package is a plea for Henry’s help.

Henry tracks down the source of this mysterious package and discovers it to be a taxidermist’s shop. (The novel is also deeply self-referential: the reader is plainly invited to identify Henry with Martel, but the taxidermist’s first name is also Henry.) And Beatrice and Virgil — a donkey and a red howler monkey — turn out to be two of the specimens in the workshop behind the showroom. The taxidermist is trying to write a play that consists mostly of conversations between the monkey and the donkey, circling around events they refer to as “the Horrors” taking place at “A 20^th Century Shirt”.  As the play is further revealed, there are increasing intimations of atrocity.  (Readers.. beware – there are some gruesome episodes here that outdoes the “hyena devouring the live zebra” in Life of Pi.)

 “B&V” is filled with historical and literary references. In “The Divine Comedy,” Beatrice and Virgil are Dante’s guides to paradise and hell.   As Henry counts off house numbers, while trying to find the taxidermist’s house — 1919, 1923, 1929, 1933 —is a reference to the timeline in the rise of Nazism – a perception that came after completing the novel.

With just about 30 pages to go, I got exasperated if there is anything to be revealed ultimately.  All that I read till now was some story about a Hospitator, who enjoyed killing animals and howling monkey and donkey having some unconnected, uninteresting chats.  If you feel the same while reading this, I urge you to hold your patience and continue till end.  You will be amazed by the way Martel connects all these seemingly unconnected stories into one big knot, leaving you spell-bound.

My ratings: 3 out 5

Excerpts from Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil...(which I liked..)

(Virgil and Beatrice are sitting at the foot of the tree. They are looking out blankly. Silence.)

Virgil: What I'd give for a pear.

Beatrice: A pear?

Virgil: Yes. A ripe and juicy one.

( Pause.)

Beatrice: I've never had a pear.

Virgil: What?

Beatrice: In fact, I don't think I've ever set eyes on one.

Virgil: How is that possible? It's a common fruit.

Beatrice: My parents were always eating apples and carrots. I guess they didn't like pears.

Virgil: But pears are so good! I bet you there's a pear tree right around here. ( He looks about.)

Beatrice: Describe a pear for me. What is a pear like?

Virgil: ( settling back) I can try. Let's see . . . To start with, a pear has an unusual shape. It's round and fat on the bottom, but tapered on top.

Beatrice: Like a gourd.

Virgil: A gourd? You know gourds but you don't know pears? How odd the things we know and don't. At any rate, no, a pear is smaller than an average gourd, and its shape is more pleasing to the eye. A pear becomes tapered in a symmetrical way, its upper half sitting straight and centred atop its lower half. Can you see what I mean?

Beatrice: I think so.

Virgil: Let's start with the bottom half. Can you imagine a fruit that is round and fat?

Beatrice: Like an apple?

Virgil: Not quite. If you look at an apple with your mind's eye, you will notice that the girth of the apple is at its widest either in the middle of the fruit or in the top third, isn't that so?

Beatrice: You're right. A pear is not like this?

Virgil: No. You must imagine an apple that is at its widest in the bottom third.

Beatrice: I can see it.

Virgil: But we must not push the comparison too far. The bottom of a pear is not like an apple's.

Beatrice: No?

Virgil: No. Most apples sit on their buttocks, so to speak, on a circular ridge or on four or five points that keep them from falling over. Past the buttocks, a little ways up, there's what would be the anus of the fruit if the fruit were a beast.

Beatrice: I see precisely what you mean.

Virgil: Well, a pear is not like that. A pear has no buttocks. Its bottom is round.

Beatrice: So how does it stay up?

Virgil: It doesn't. A pear either dangles from a tree or lies on its side.

Beatrice: As clumsy as an egg.

Virgil: There's something else about the bottom of a pear: most pears do not have those vertical grooves that some apples have. Most pears have smooth, round, even bottoms.

Beatrice: How enchanting.

Virgil: It certainly is. Now let us move north past our fruity equator.

Beatrice: I'm following you.

Virgil: There comes this tapering I was telling you about.

Beatrice: I can't quite see it. Does the fruit come to a point? Is it shaped like a cone?

Virgil: No. Imagine the tip of a banana.

Beatrice: Which tip?

Virgil: The end tip, the one you hold in your hand when you're eating one.

Beatrice: What kind of banana? There are hundreds of varieties.

Virgil: Are there?

Beatrice: Yes. Some are as small as fat fingers, others are real clubs. And their shapes vary too, as do their taste.

Virgil: I mean the regular, yellow ones that taste really good.

Beatrice: The common banana, M. sapientum. You probably have the Gros Michel variety in mind.

Virgil: I'm impressed.

Beatrice: I know bananas.

Virgil: Better than a monkey. Take the end tip of a common banana, then, and place it on top of an apple, taking into account the differences between apples and pears that I've just described.

Beatrice: An interesting graft.

Virgil: Now make the lines smoother, gentler. Let the banana flare out in a friendly way as it merges into the apple. Can you see it?

Beatrice: I believe I can.

Virgil: One last detail. At the very top of this apple-banana composite, add a surprisingly tough stalk, a real tree trunk of a stalk. There, you have an approximation of a pear.

Beatrice: A pear sounds like a beautiful fruit.

Virgil: It is. In colour, commonly, a pear is yellow with black spots.

Beatrice: Like a banana again.

……….

……….

Beatrice : But what does it actually taste like?

Virgil: A pear tastes like, it tastes like…. (He shruggles. He gives up with a shrug).  I don’t know.  I can’t put it into words.  A pear tastes like itself.

Beatrice: (sadly) I wish you had a pear.

Virgil: And if I had one, I would give it to you

(Silence)