Last Vanities

Hello Gentle Reader

The mundane is riddled with suppressed urges, and is governed by oppression. Everything is directed by the clocks hands; on the springs of schedules and itineraries.  There is work in the week, which takes up eight hours of the day—not including of course morning rituals and commutes. The evening is for dinner and quiet relaxation—of course this is if you are lucky. You may need to work late at the office. The project deadline is closing fast, and in the corporate world there is no time for extensions, and forgiveness is in short supply. Of course there is always the dreaded shift work, rotating from day to evening. Days off present no rest for the wicked, there is work that needs to be done around the house. First off the place needs to be cleaned. When was the last time it received the required love and care? Then there is laundry which needs to be done. While the clothes are in the wash, might as well get the yard work started or complete.

Yard work itself always appears rather violent; with all that mowing, chopping, pruning and clipping involved. There’s the wife kneeling in the dirt and freshly mowed grass. Armed with a trowel she opens a surface wound in the dirt. She plops in a petunia, and thinks of her husband. He’s off gallivanting on one of his business trips. Upon his return he flops on the bed. He’s too tired to talk that evening. Besides it was just another boring conference. The kind where its business discussions in the day, while in the evening ties are loosened up and drinks abound. Last time though, she found a suspicious stain on his clothing. Maybe it was her imagination, but it looked like faded lipstick. Ties loosened up in the evening, which always moves down to the belt buckle and the zipper of his pants. Before long he smells of shame and cheap perfume. A shower is required immediately after the deed; and no, this other woman was not invited. She knew were the door was she could leave. The shower is not a sign of remorseful grief. Rather it was the intention to destroy evidence; to wash away her perfume, her bought kisses and cheap compliments. They all do it, would be his excuse and defense. While he watches the evidence pour into the drain, he knows in the rooms next door another man is finishing up. By morning, zippers are zipped; belts are buckled; and ties are tight. She pats the earth back into place, while the taxi arrives. He gets out with his suitcase and waves. She pulls the petunia out for the prick. All that remains is a bundle of roots and dirt, and a crumpled flower.  

Fleur Jaeggy’s short stories in “Last Vanities,” trace the topography of the otherwise normal and mundane relationships of her characters. The landscapes may differ and change from the concrete garden of the impoverished, to the ashen ruins of the well off, to the charitable homes of a good Samaritan, to an apartment complex  for the elderly—they are all governed by the same mundane practices and routines of daily life. Under her binocular perspective, Fleur Jaeggy spots the subtle cracks and forming chasms in their relationships. From those hairline imperfections and inconsistencies of daily routine, dark fantasies, suppressed thoughts, and muted desires threaten, and do shatter the comforting worlds of her characters apart. Leaving the burned down remains to smolder, and the blood on the pavement to dry while the hammer is busy being washed in the sink. Not out of guilt, but—much like the husband—is a cold analytical impulse to remove evidence, and as much as possible, remove association from the item and the crime, as well as the victim.

Fleur Jaeggy is a Swiss-born Italian language writer. She currently resides in Italy, but her short stories in “Last Vanities,” are salt and peppered with German phrases, reflecting Switzerland. Fleur Jaeggy is one of those writers whose nation belongs to language more than geographical location. Unlike Patricia Highsmith, who had uprooted herself from the United States of America and took up residence in Europe (mainly France, and later in life the Italian speaking region of Switzerland) she always identified as a citizen of the United States of America; despite Europe being her home for her adult life, as well as being the main stage where she found her success; unlike the United States, which more often than not, rejected Highsmith and her novels. Now it only turns out, she was certainly farther ahead of her time. Beyond these personal superficial details, there is no real connection between Fleur Jaeggy and Patricia Highsmith. They are worlds apart as writes and as individuals; but with Jaeggy’s stories I often glimpsed a little bit of Highsmith in how there is the probing the mundane realities and fantasies of destruction which haunt the backs of our minds. The difference being Jaeggy does it with sparse and poetic prose; while Highsmith was abrasive and blunt about her depiction of the moral decomposition and decay of the everyday person.

Jaeggy’s friends and acquaintances range from Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard to Joseph Brodsky. She is married to Roberto Calasso a prominent Italian intellectual, publisher, and writer. With friends as large and well known as these it would be easy to overlook the “piccolo leone,” or little lion, as Ingeborg Bachmann had often called her. Yet, when one discovers Jaeggy’s work they are immediately impressed and secretive of their new found treasure. Jaeggy is most famous for her novel “Sweet Days of Discipline.” The novel traces with precise observations the life of a girl at the age of fourteen at a boarding school, and her new found obsession with the new perfect girl. Despite the lesbian like tone which I had just outlined, the novel lacks the homosexual experimentation. Rather it traces the idea of obsession and delusions incubated in the world of the boarding school; as well as nostalgia of childhood, and the rupture of childhood burning into adulthood. Those who read the novel praised it, enjoyed it, and the Literary Times Supplement even named it one of the most notable books of the year.

“Last Vanities,” eschews and tosses nostalgia to the wind. It boils the themes of obsession and delusion down to their ethereal elements and essences, and spices them up with themes of malice, cruelty, vindication; as well as cruel and violent acts, wrapped in the uncomfortable cellophane guffaw of irony. The seven short stories are very short, but in their brief and lyrical passages, Jaeggy take the steel precision of a fountain pen nib, and etches out the unfortunate fates of her characters and annunciates their secret thoughts before turning them into cruel acts which are depraved of humanity. In the opening story “No Destiny,” we encounter Marie Ann, aggressively pruning the hedges of her concrete garden, in her depilated little home. The opening line sets the tone immediately:

“Then she hated her.”

This line would later reflect Marie Ann’s feelings towards her infant daughter. Marie Ann has no sense of maternal love or instinct to spare with regards to her daughter. The infinite has been born without a choice, and is obviously a mistake. Now it is sentenced to life with a mother who despises it and will most likely suffer disadvantages and poverty because of her mother and absent father; and both parents lacking any foresight into the consequences they unleashed on another human being they created. Yet, Marie Ann has the opportunity to relieve herself of her infant burden. A wealthy couple would love to share their wealth and their love to the child, as their own was tragically removed from the world. Selfishness comes in many forms, and Marie Ann is a selfish character. She wishes relieve herself of her child, but at the same time: why should it have a better life then herself?

The best short story of this collection is the titular story: “Last Vanities,” of the married couple living in their senior’s apartment complex, enjoying their retirement and reflecting on their years of marriage as their golden anniversary approaches. It is in this story that we learn as readers in the nest of love their does lie the sweet thought and dream of mourning ones spouse; that out of the two of you: one of you will die first. Rather than being mortified by this prospect, the elderly couple rejoices in this thought of burying the other. The ceremonious thought of caretaking of someone you loved deeply and dearly through their life, now reaches its final stages in some grey hospital room, beneath fluorescent lights, IV’s in the arms, medication being brought in like a seven course meal, and nurses and orderly’s always enacting the changing of guard, and acting as medical servants as need be. Then the time comes and the chosen spouse slips off into the void. Afterwards began the process of grief and mourning. At this point though it’s been thought about, planned through, rehearsed and even reveled in. Church bells ring with grief; while deep down you rejoice. All relationships sour. All apples have worms. All nests begin to disintegrate. Even if time plates the anniversary with gold—it too will tarnish and fade. Never underestimate apathy and vindication; and as they say: as you get older, you careless and you obtain freedom; and freedom means decisions and choices, however ghoulish and ghastly they are.

Fleur Jaeggy’s sentences are whipped off with whiplash intensity, where they spit and hiss venomous emotional intensity, showcasing the anger, vitriol and malice which has been suppressed in her characters’ lives. With stainless steel precision they glitter and flash the dangerous flash of a knife, as it is slowly slipped between the ribs and left to heal over. Her prose is poetic at one point and frank the next. She details where destiny passed each individual by, and depicts their current state with objective fact, deprived of emotional empathy and attachment. It’s not lighthearted reading; but its excellently crafted. Fleur Jaeggy has a morbid interest in the downtrodden, unfortunate and poor; people who have been forsaken by society and destiny; and are now placed in her short story collection like figurines in a curio cabinet, for display of their abnormalities and their sad, pathetic circumstances and lives; which they their spleen on one another in an attempt to justify and mitigate their own failings both in life, spirit, soul and shadow.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary