Miruna, A Tale

Hello Gentle Reader

“Who we are.” This is what “Miruna, A Tale,” is conceived about and around. It is a question, which finds its explanations and answers in the stories of the grandfather Niculae; states and reiterates as they have been told before him. They are the stories of how a home was formed. How a family came to be. They are personal legends, fairytales and an intimate mythology. It certainly must be easier for individuals in the ‘old,’ country to have an understanding knowledge of “who they are,” and where they came from. They are a generation that has lived there – as the generations before them have. In the ‘new,’ country it is far more difficult to have a comprehensive understanding of one’s roots, when they have been uprooted. Here one must rely on memory of the older generations – those who still exist. What becomes troubling though is that with memory, fact and imagination blur around the edges. With my own family, it is highly understood that the name and the origins are strictly French and came from France. The consensus then agrees: that during the political turmoil of the enlightenment age, and subsequent French Revolution, the family had left the turmoil, and headed west for the ‘new,’ world. Beyond these hazy generalized concepts, the details are lost. It is believed the family ‘came,’ from noble origins and were autocrats who participated in the courts. Though what family does not wish have to believe they came from a life of grandiose, and gentle poverty; rather than the alternative: poverty and peasantry. It is easier to swallow the pill, where one comes from the illusion of greatness and have fallen into the day to day humdrum, then it is to swallow the sack of nails where one came from nothing, and may not acquire that prestige which people in a sense feel a sense of entitlement too. Sometimes the past exists because it is easier to have a sense of nostalgia for such shallow dreams of autocracy and noble air, and living in a castle, then it is to suffer the present in a job, which one works to maintain their life as it stands. Yet they are shallow dreams which do not change the present; they offer the solace of a dream, but have no input or ideas of how to shape the future. Perhaps it is best that one does not always know or even understand or have the resources to answer the question: “who we are,” simply because it allows the future to be molded, and the present to be dealt with, without being distracted by former glory – if it even existed.

“Miruna, A Tale,” is told by the narrator Trajan – who at the time of the story was a boy listening to the stories of his grandfather Niculae, about who they were and how they came to be; Trajan now reiterates the stories of his grandfather, as if he were telling them to his children or grandchildren or nieces of nephews born from his sister Miruna. The stories in this novel make up a larger whole. The entire novel, explores the idea of “who we are,” and “how we came to be,” but intersecting each story are the characters that have shaped the story of the narrators family – the Berca family. Trajan and his sister Miruna, devour the stories readily. Yet it is Miruna who collects them, with the most avid vigor – as she is soon alleged to posse the gift of ‘second sight,’ where Trajan could not see, let alone ready anything – beyond the simplistic realities that the world itself openly reveals.

Bogdan Suceavă has written a novel that is short but beyond simplistic or superficial. Suceavă himself has written a miniaturized version of “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” for lack of a better comparison. The entire novel is written in the form as if it were reiterating the oral traditions of folk tales, and personalized stories or fables. Suceavă himself could be considered a fabulist in the tradition of Italo Calvino or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Fantasy and reality, become blurred. The events of “Miruna, A Tale,” take place in the real world – and are surrounded by historical events, but reality is infused with a mystical wonder. The location of Romania – the Făgăraş Mountain landscape to be more exact; works to Suceavă’s advantage as a writer of the fabulous in the real world. Romania is still that dark horse of Europe. It is still a place, spoken in hushed tones, which is tinted with superstitions and where spells are still recited to ward off the unwanted and unwelcome. It is a place of a tortured brutal history; and made all that more famous by the gothic novel “Dracula.” Romania is still a land seasoned with legends of historical rulers who impaled their prisoners, their enemies. A place shrouded in a draconian history, and a still recovery present from the thaw of communism and the fall of the iron curtain. Suceavă succeeds however, in showcasing how the old world of the fictional village Evil Vale, had resisted modernity, and how it became its own universe.

The novel is written in the form of an oral tale, and the entire novel despite the salt and pepper of violence that is sprinkled throughout the novel – it has the air of being nostalgic. Niculae Berca tells his grandchildren the story of their great-grandfather Constantine Berca and his volunteer service, into the army to fight the Ottoman Empire, in the Russo-Turkish, and help Romania receive its independence. Though it is a dark beginning it is made light by the regional dark and morbid preoccupied sense of humour. A good example would be the colonel:

“The colonel who drank so much vodka before a battle that his guts caught fire when the Turks shot him,”

Still for Constantine Berca’s service he was granted a portion of land outside of Evil Vale; and so “who we are,” began to take form with “where we had come from.” Yet upon Constantine’s arrival to Evil Vale suspicious eyes have already begun to take note of him. Gossip starts and rumors spread through small hamlets, like fire on the wind. Upon arrival in Evil Vale Constantine had brought with him modern practices and even equipment – a Swiss engineered clock being one of them. A device that was foreign to such a place where: “time was infinite and haste was relatively unknown.” Berca’s reputation only grows. Rather than casting spells, to ward off the wolves or push back the forest which imposes its own laws upon the inhabitants of its land; Berca shoots the wolves with his rifle. He becomes known as a madman, and is quickly feared. Still Berca comes to understand the customs and traditions of the land, and quickly adapts at enchanting the land with his own set understanding of spells. Despite his own will imposed upon the landscape, it in itself had imposed its own way upon Constantine Berca. Still the great-grandfather of the story pushes on, and turns what would be considered a barren and unworkable piece of land into something, that can be managed and produced and be called a home. He digs a well – despite the well digger’s dowsing rods, proclaiming that no water existed. He is toyed with by the Fayes; and fights off the bandit Aman.

Despite the fairytale unraveling of the novel – it does begin to showcases its elegiac qualities. Miruna (the titular sister) may take in this entirely new world that their grandfather out lays for them; nothing remains unchanged or unnoticed for long. Though the characters of this novel had appeared to live on as if time had no material grasp on them; the last virgin spot of Europe was not immune to snuffing snout of a mechanical modern pig looking for such a truffle to unearth.

The novel despite its short length, being under one hundred and forty pages long, is filled with dense prose, which moves back and forth through time; with Tarjan and more specifically Niculae being the fulcrums in which time slides to and fro. The book is filled with eccentric and odd characters – reminiscent of “Primeval and Other Times,” by the Polish author (and neighbor) Olga Tokarczuk – Old Woman Fira, who runs the rumor mill: filling the village with latest gossip, spreading it about like chicken feed for chickens, and of course her expertise in spells and reading the future in the grains of the harvest; then there is the priest Father Dimitrie who continues to save the inhabits souls from damnation and eternal fires of hell; and the unfortunate and senile Elifterie who owns nothing – everything is given to him, even the words he uses which have been stowed away in his mind and are reiterated now and then. Yet the main character itself is the place; a place where its customs and traditions have survived and are a continual reminder of a life that was, and a time that can still be found in the habits of the old. This is one such novel that answers the question of why we tell stories. We tell stories to answer our personal questions: of where we come from; of who we are. Sometimes even the most simplistic of lives – are deceptive in the stories that exist there.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
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M. Mary