Villa Triste

Hello Gentle Reader

August invites autumn. Now in the waning days of September the oily haze of summer is beginning to burn off. Though the air has not quite turned crisp yet, life is beginning to set back into its routine trajectory. The first day of school has come and past. As a yellow school bus begins to turn its wheels down the street, doors are already opening, and a twelve year question is once again uttered: “how was school today?” The answers given will most certainly vary. Later on, around the dinner table, stories of the day will be exchanged. Stories of the mundane: the office politics, or the idiosyncrasies of new teachers, who are still tanned and fondly remembering the sand of a few months ago. Each one feels and understands that the summer had once again passed them by, too soon and too fast. Summer as a season is a doomed love affair, one which can only be found but never expected to last. It is an unwritten rule that summer love is to be extinguished in September rains; while autumn’s leaves will most certainly sweep its ashes away. The days itinerary are more rigidly set now. There is no room for the languid air of summer, with its day dreams and lazy afternoons. Everything now must operate in its clockwork fashion. The dawns will brighten with bashful virginal weariness. The sun will rise, and will continue to orbit overhead. By late afternoon the day has already turned weary. Come evening its yawning. After twilight and a final wave goodbye, the crone of dusk with lantern and broom in had sweeps it out in preparation for the night. Then the moon takes its place, and the world shifts its aura in a new manner. The nights should have been reserved for the young; but alas the debauched and the depraved require sanctuary; along with the sleepless and the hopeless, the wanderlust dreamers, as well as the posse of philosophers heading home after their soirée of ideas and ideals, as they’ve concocted a way in which to save the world and the human race; which will alas fade into the dreams and be forgotten come the morning.

It doesn’t matter if the scene is sunny; or if it’s drenched in rain; or overcast with clouds – in the world of Patrick Modiano, there is always a constant threat of doom or unsettling menace which creeps in. The characters are foreign to themselves and to each other. They keep their secrets to themselves, and allow others to keep grasping or trying to find a way to break through their facades, in order to gather a greater appreciation of their character. They are always rebuffed. Patrick Modiano turned out to be one of those surprise writers, in which the Nobel was able to elevate beyond the obscurity in which he found himself in prior. Much like fellow Nobel Laureate: Herta Müller, Patrick Modiano became a delectable literary treat upon his recognition, with the Nobel’s assistance. His writing style is deceptively simple. Landscapes are described in brief and spare strokes. Streets, avenues, roads, allies, neighborhoods, are listed, but never defined. This often gives Modiano’s work a sense of tour guide like brochure air to it. Yet the tour of Modiano’s Paris would be less inclined to the city of lights publicly shining portrait. Modiano’s Paris, often has the sense of being a ghost town.  A place habited by the world weary and shipwrecked souls of history; people best overlooked and forgotten in their squandered apartments and hotels. It’s a place of now demolished garages, and seedy café’s which have been rejuvenated with the spirit of youth. Patrick Modiano’s Paris is also inclined to have memory slips, and strong fits of amnesia, as it often overlooks or fails to remember its own part when it was the setting and battleground the for the arbitrary machinations of history. The world of Modiano is one riffled with criminals, black dealings, drifters, and drinkers; but it’s also known for its savvy  writers and theatrical performers; and those poor naïve and often aimless youth who get caught up in their affairs and predilections, and often end up even more dazed and confused when the entire affair is over.

One such naïve youth is the narrator of Patrick Modiano’s novel “Villa Triste,” a certain young man who hides himself behind the name Count Viktor Charma. He flees Paris escaping the dread and doom which encompasses the city, as the Algerian war rages on in North Africa. He finds himself in a swanky spa town situated on Lake Geneva, bordering Switzerland, which is described as mystifying and ethereal, but exhumes its own sense of dread and forbidding menace. 

“The vegetation here is thoroughly mixed; it’s hard to tell if you’re in the Alps, on the shores of the Mediterranean, or somewhere in the tropics. Umbrella pines. Mimosas. Fir trees. Palms. If you take the boulevard up the hillside, you discover the panorama: the entire lake, the Aravis mountains, and across the water, the elusive country known as Switzerland.”

In this small spa town the young Count Charma comes into contact with two unusual acquaintances: the aspiring young actress: Yvonne and her equally existentially afflicted Great Dane; and a homosexual Doctor René Meinthe. All three from Viktor Charma, to Yvonne, as well as the flighty, sprightly and mysterious Doctor, in typical youthful fashion have two much time on their hands as well as a world of wealth to currently waste along with it. It would certainly come to be a memorable summer; but in Modiano fashion the dread of the mundane slowly begins to creep in and infect their world of lazy summer afternoons, day dreams and youthful carefree bliss. The fake Count, Viktor Charma himself has left behind a life dubious life in Paris, and has fled the atmosphere and the possibility of being drafed into the Algerian war. Mentions of his father are often associated with a world which is overcast in dark and seething undercurrents, where one is not entirely sure, what his father did, but it most certainly pertained to unsavory activities, often involving dubious affairs, which had the glamour of a respectable and luxurious life. Questions are raised about Yvonne’s film, and her own past in which she attempts to escape. This comes at the forefront, when Viktor and Yvonne have dinner with her uncle, who runs a garage out in the spa town, and admits the garage’s early days where when it repaired the planes during World War II; but its respectability came to an end when Yvonne’s father had got himself into some ‘trouble.’ Yet it is the flamboyant and odd Doctor René Meinthe who holds the most secrets in the novel. He often travels across the border into Switzerland, and receives odd telephone calls at night, where he is instructed to meet his cohorts on the other side. It turns out Meinthe is also secretly involved with the Algerian War; what exactly it is, is never elucidated upon any farther. Though it should be interesting to noted, René Meinthe’s father was also a doctor, and regarded as a local hero in the community (where he is immortalized with a street named after him) because of his participation in the French Resistance during World War II. Doctor René Meinthe has either failed to reach the same glory of his father, or is indifferent towards the parochial fame of his father.

Summer does not last forever, and no one is ever immune to this seasonal adjustment. The trio of friends soon begins to realize the haze of summer is coming to its seasonal foreclosure, when the spa days, shut up for autumn and winter, and cease to operate until the next season. As summer burns itself out, and the tourists all but dissipate, from which they’ve come, Viktor crafts a plan in which he can remain with Yvonne; but when its released an advertised with enthusiasm, its met with cool detachment. One of the hardest aspects of youth though most certainly is accepting the disposable nature of relationships and that a flimsy fling of a relationship, has no other existence or substance beyond it.

“Villa Triste,” is one of Patrick Modiano’s earlier novels, where he is still coming into his style, which would haunt his more mature works. The novel is still remarkable on its merits. Its depiction of depraved youth in a small spa town during one summer is evocative of youthful indulgence now past; as the youth of the novel is set in summer with its light and lively atmosphere, which is juxtaposed against the cruel winter which is depicted in later years, and where one character’s sorrow reaches its unfortunate conclusion. The novel however, leaves numerous questions left unanswered, which is typical of Modiano; though in prior works the inclinations answers reverberate from the past, and allow the reader to theorize the answers of gaps and lapses of time and memory. “Villa Triste,” is remarkable and noteworthy more for its atmospheric enjoyment of the indulgence of youth now past; and how fleeting and unremarkable it is. The aimlessness and the naivety, all wrapped up in a hypnotic display of a lazy summer frolicking day dream; now tainted with the bitter sting of time now past. This is one of Modiano’s enjoyable earlier novels; the humour is at times a bit forced, but it begins to show the author come into his own with the atmosphere, the dread and the creeping menace of an unseen predator or memory lurking in the rafters or wings of the action.

 Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary