B. Aldiss

Making My Father Read Revered Writings

In the fictions of Pierre de Lille-Sully is much that is exceedingly strange and marvellous. He must have been an animist, although he professed the Christian faith; for him even words have life and spirit of their own.

Unfortunately, I have a poor grasp of the beautiful French language. But in the year 19—, I came across a second hand book which immediately became one of my treasured possessions; it was a translation into English of de Lille-Sully’s short stories, under the title, Conversations with Upper Crust Bandits.

I was spellbound. One only knows such love for fiction when one is young. I dwelt in the stories. Many of them I read over and over. But not the last one in the book. For reasons I cannot explain fully, I was reluctant to read The Prince of Such Things. I knew little about literature, and devoured in the main what I regarded even then as trash; being unversed in finer things, I regarded the title of this last story as a bad one. It seemed to me dangerous, even a little deranged.

The Prince of Such Things... It is the responsibility of authors to give their stories a title which invites one in, or at least promises to make matters clear. Here, de Lille-Sully seemed to be neglecting his duty.

At this period, I was a retarded adolescent of fourteen, and very much under my parents’ thumb. My two sisters were high-spirited and joyous by nature. I felt myself to be the very opposite. My father’s first name was William. He had had me christened William too. As soon as I was old enough to feel the smart of it, I smarted that I had been given the same name as my father. I was diminished by it; did they think I had no separate existence?

Once alert to this injustice (as I saw it), I felt that everything in my father’s behaviour was calculated to deny me an individual existence. In the matter of clothes, for instance, he always selected what I should wear. The possibility never existed that he might consult me. And when I grew large and gawky, I was made to wear his cast-off jackets and trousers.

Evenings in our house were particularly oppressive. My sisters would not remain in the sitting-room. They went upstairs to their bedroom, giggling and whispering to themselves. I was constrained to remain below, to sit with my parents. Now I look back on those long evenings and nights with something like terror. So mentally imprisoned was I that it never occurred to me to go out, in case I should suffer a word of reprimand from my father.

The custom was that my parents sat on either side of a tall wood-burning stove. They had comfortable chairs of a forbiddingly antique design, inherited from my father’s family. I sat at a table nearby, on a hard-backed chair. At that table I read books or magazines, or drew in a callow way.

I should explain that my father would not allow television in our house. And for some reason — it may have been a superstitious reason for all I know — the radio had to be switched off at six-thirty.

Prompted by my sisters, I once dared to ask my father why we could not have television. He replied, “Because I say so.” And that was sufficient explanation in his eyes.

Always, it seemed I was in disgrace — “in his bad books”, as the saying goes. All through my childhood years, I yearned to be loved by him. It made me stupid. It made me mute. The whole evening could pass in silence until, at a gesture from my father, we would rise and go to our beds.

It was my mother’s way to sit almost immobile while the hours passed. Women are able to sit more still than men. She wore headphones, listening to music on her Walkman. The thin tintinnabulation, like a man whistling surreptitiously through his teeth, penetrated the deepest concentration I could muster.

My father sat on the other side of the stove to her. I do not recall their ever conversing. At seven-thirty each evening, my mother would rise and pour him a glass of akavit, for which he thanked her. Father made a habit of reading his newspaper to an inordinate degree. The frosty crackle of broadsheet pages as he turned them punctuated the hours. I never understood his method of reading. It was clear that, having stumped a few coins for his copy, he was determined to get his money’s worth. But the way in which my father searched back and forth among the pages suggested a man who possessed some cunning secret method of interpreting life’s events.

Such was the scene on the evening I decided at last to read de Lille-Sully’s story, The Prince of Such Things. I set my elbows on the polished table-top, one each side of the volume. I blocked my ears with my hands, in order to defend myself from the crackle of paper and the whistle of music. I began to read.

Perhaps in everyone’s young life comes a decisive moment, from which there is no turning back. A decision, I mean, not based on rational thought processes. I hope it is not so; for if it is, then we have no defence against it, and must endure what follows as best we can. The matter is a mystery to me, as are many features of existence. All I can say is that on that particular dreary evening I came upon one of those decisive moments.

The brilliance of The Prince of Such Things flooded into my mind. The words, the turns of phrase, the sentences, the paragraphs and their cumulation, unfolded an eloquently imaginative story. It was a study of ordinary life and yet also a fairy story. More than a fairy story, a legend of striking symbolism, exciting, agitating, and ravishing in its effect.

In a way, its basic proposition was ludicrous, for who could believe that ordinary people in a Parisian suburb had such powers. Yet the persuasiveness of the piece overcame any hint of implausibility. De Lille-Sully gave expression to an idea new to me at the age of fourteen, that the manner in which one thing can stand for another quite different — a sunrise for hope, let’s say — forms the basis of all symbolic thought, and hence of language.

I was swept along by his narrative, as branches are swept along by a river in flood. Never had I guessed that such process existed. Even the preceding stories in the book had left me unprepared for this magnificent outburst of de Lille-Sully’s imagination. I reached the final sentence exhausted as if by some powerful mental orgasm. My mind was full of wonder and inspiration. The sheer bravura of the story gave me courage.

The longing to share this experience was so great that without further thought, I turned to my father. Across the expanse of carpet separating us, I said, “Father, I have just read the most marvellous story anyone has ever written.”

“Oh, yes.” He spoke without raising his eyes from the newspaper.

“Read it yourself, and you’ll see.” I picked up my book and took it across to him. How did I feel at that moment? I suppose I felt that if we could share this enlightening experience the relationship between us might become more human, more humane... That we might be more like father and son. Transformed by the story, I felt only love for him as he condescended to put down his paper and accept the volume. He held it open just as he received it, asking what I wanted him to do.

“Read this story, father. The Prince of Such Things.” I was conscious that I had not approached him to do anything for many years.

He sat upright in his chair, set his face grimly, and began to read. I stood beside him before retreating awkwardly to the table. There I made a pretence of picking up a pencil and drawing in an exercise book. All I did was scribble, while observing my parents. My mother had momentarily shown some interest in my action; or perhaps it was surprise. After a moment’s alertness, she retreated into her music, eyes focusing vaguely on a point above the stove. My father, meanwhile, concentratedly read the miraculous story. His eyes twitched from left to right and back, as if chasing the lines of print down the page. It was impossible to gather anything from his expression. No sign of enlightenment showed.

It took him, I would say, almost two hours to read de Lille-Sully’s story. I had not lingered over it for more than three-quarters of an hour. I could not tell if this meant he was a slow reader, or whether he was deliberately keeping me in suspense.

Finally, he had done. He closed the book. Without looking at me, he set the volume down on the right-hand side of his chair. He then picked up his newspaper, which he had dropped on the left-hand side of his chair, and resumed his scanning of its columns. He gave me no glance. He said not a word.

The mortification I experienced cannot be expressed. At the time I did nothing. Did not leave the room, did not retrieve the book, did not leave. I sat where I was.

Either he had regarded de Lille-Sully’s miraculous tale as beneath his contempt or — ah, but it took me many a year before the alternative came to me — he was unable to comprehend it.

As I have said, this evening wrought a decisive change in my life. Without volition, as I sat there looking away from my father, I found I had decided that I would become a writer.

1. Can we state that the narrator of the story is personified? Does he function as the author’s mouthpiece?

2. Compare how much the narrator lets us know about the actual facts of his life (his background, family relationships, etc.) and about the emotional experience he has got while reading fiction. Analyze the emotional charge of the lexis used for this purpose.

3. In what way do the author’s digressions help to outline the personality of the narrator and contribute to the message of the short-story?

4. What effect does the absence of dialogical speech between the characters produce?

5. Why do you think the readers are not given the account of the foil’s course of thinking, of forming an opinion, of appreciation? Is the choice of I-narration significant for grasping the main idea of the story? In what way?

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