Earlier this week we were in Buffalo for a day and made a stop at the nice little Talking Leaves bookstore in Elmwood Village. We don’t get there very often, maybe once a year, but they have an especially nice section of translated literature, and I generally come away with a couple of new titles. This time, one of them was a short novella by Henri Bosco entitled The Child and the River, translated by Joyce Zonana and published by NYRB, which tempted me with its back cover description.
I had never heard of Bosco, which I suppose is a mark against me, since (I learned) he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature four times and received numerous other awards. But I think I will have to make it a rule here in From My Bookshelf not to conceal the many gaps in my knowledge! Bosco appears to have led an interesting life: related through his father’s family to Saint John Bosco (about whom he wrote a biography); a teacher of classics and editor of a literary journal; service in the First World War; time spent living in Algeria, Italy, and Morocco.
As for The Child and the River—what a wonderful little book! The kind of discovery that makes one happy to have succumbed to temptation once again in a bookstore. It tells of a young boy named Pascalet, growing up with his parents and an aunt, Tante Martine, in the Provençal countryside. Nearby is a river that he is forbidden to approach, lest he get swept away and drown. Prohibition increases the boy’s desire to see the river, which is also home to a mysterious fisherman named Bargabot.
One day when his parents are away, Pascalet visits the river. He discovers a rowboat moored to the shore and climbs inside; captivated by the water flowing past, he suddenly realizes that the boat has broken loose and he is floating toward a nearby island in the middle of the river. He runs aground and discovers a small Gypsy hut. That night a group of men arrive with a boy whom they tie to a tree and whip. When night falls, Pascalet frees the boy, whose name is Gatzo. They find a boat and make their escape.
What follows is a week-long idyll of boyhood friendship in an almost paradisiacal world of natural beauty. Though very different—Gatzo is the practical one, who “never made a useless gesture,” Pascalet the contemplative dreamer—the two immediately share a deep bond. “He was my first friend,” says Pascalet, who calls their relationship “the most beautiful friendship of my life.” They catch fish for their meals (“not ordinary food—bought, prepared, and served by others—but our own food we had fished ourselves”), explore the woods and waters, and spend long hours watching the birds and other animals around them. Looking back, Pascalet says, “The first day on the backwater was beautiful. It remains the most beautiful day of my life.”
Bosco’s descriptions of this Edenic landscape, populated by warblers, orioles, and doves, kingfishers and herons, otters and badgers, butterflies and dragonflies, plus countless plants and flowers—the translator Zonana must have needed a botanical dictionary always close at hand—are among the book’s delights. They are deeply evocative, mixing together images of youthful innocence and unspoiled nature, summoning echoes of a half-forgotten paradise. Before describing these days, Pascalet casts a kind of preparatory spell over the reader:
Now, all this took place a long, long time ago, and today I am very nearly an old man. But for the rest of my life, however long I may live, I will never forget those early days when I lived on the water. Those beautiful days are still with me in all their freshness. What I saw then I still see today, and when I think about it now, I become again the child enchanted by the beauty of the world he discovered upon awakening.
The boys’ backwater idyll, lovely though it is, is not quite a paradise: they are occasionally tormented by the fear of discovery, and they worry about a mysterious animal they hear nearby, which they decide must be a ferocious “Racal,” a creature of their own invention, no doubt one of the last members of its imaginary species. The book is haunted by the image of Eden, an Eden real enough that it can break in upon our world but evanescent enough to be always insecure.
The fragility of their joy is intensified when the boys move on, seeking a new place to hide. They stumble upon an old, apparently deserted chapel, Our Lady of Still Waters, with a faded statue of the Virgin above the door. At night, the boys hear a stranger nosing around, who turns out to be a girl, Hyacinth, coming to the chapel secretly by night to pray for the return of her grandparents, who have gone on a long journey to a sad, far away land. “I know you,” Hyacinth tells the boys. “They are looking for you in all the villages.” One stranger in particular is looking for them—Pascalet is certain it must be Bargabot—a stranger who arrived in town at the same time as an old man who returns each year to put on a puppet show with his marionette theater.
Separately, unknown to each other, both boys go to watch this “puppeteer of souls” put on his show, with which the story moves toward its conclusion. Bosco’s description of the townspeople assembled to watch this remarkable puppet again evokes a sense of unfallen humanity, though this time as a vision of civic harmony rather than pristine nature. The town’s “dignitaries,” such as the mayor and priest, sit in front; behind them are three groups of women, the grandmothers, wives, and young girls; the men gather in groups; on small benches, boys to the right of the marionette theater, girls to the left, sit the children.
The curtain rises for a show that echoes once again the two great images that animate the novella. One is the vision of Eden I have already described; the other is a series of variations on the parable of the prodigal son. These mingle with hints of Pascalet’s and Gatzo’s own stories. The puppet show includes parents with a garden that bears glorious fruit (sometimes meant to be eaten, sometimes not), the son of whom they are proud, a visiting saint in disguise who is turned away hungry, an angry God who allows the son to be captured by Gypsies, the son’s eventual return to his repentant parents. The villagers are entranced by this story that weaves together three worlds—of myth, of Christianity, and of the boys’ own adventures—so that we hardly know where one lets off and another begins.
One final surprise accentuates this interweaving of myth, parable, and reality. The puppeteer, Grandfather Savinien, announces that this will be his last time visiting the town. He is old, accompanied only by his dog; he once had a grandson, but the boy was stolen by Gypsies. The townspeople are surprised to hear sobs coming from a tree. It is Gatzo, who is in fact the old man’s lost grandson. The two march off together with all of the village in joyful celebration. Pascalet, watching in secret, is left alone. But not quite alone, because now his old acquaintance Bargabot also appears, ready to take him home to Tante Martine, who—like the parents in the puppet show—has cried at his loss and hoped patiently for his return.
There is one last twist to the story, a happy one, but I will leave it waiting as a surprise for anyone I’ve tempted to read the book. The Child and the River is remarkable for its ability to conjure up the longing for a pure, unspoiled, peaceful world, where friendships blossom, families are reunited, and mysterious forces, perhaps vaguely frightening, work ultimately for our good. It is not quite an Eden—or perhaps it is a bit like Milton’s Paradise Lost on the verge of the Fall, where Satan is roaming the garden but has not yet conquered. This too is a world with dangers: a boy can get lost on a mighty river, Gypsy kidnappers (no doubt not quite politically correct any longer) are a threat, the fearsome “Racal” lurks in the bushes. But those dangers ultimately dissolve. The “Racal” is a creature of the imagination, a nighttime stranger proves only a young girl named Hyacinth, the somewhat rough and foreboding Bargabot shows himself a friend and rescuer. In a way that is difficult to analyze but very effective, Bosco casts a kind of fairytale spell over reality, keeping us worried about what could happen but without ever quite losing faith that in the end good will prove stronger than evil.
I quoted Bosco earlier describing a vision of great joy right on the verge of our experience but just ever so slightly out of reach: “For the rest of my life, however long I may live, I will never forget those early days when I lived on the water.” Reading The Child and the River, I found myself reminded again and again of C. S. Lewis’s description of what he calls “joy” in his memoir Surprised by Joy. Joy is a kind of longing for a happiness that we do not quite experience but that points toward our intended ultimate fulfillment: “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” It is that kind of feeling—of which Lewis says that “anyone who has experienced it will want it again”—that Bosco manages to evoke in the story of Pascalet and Gatzo. Perhaps we might say of his own novella what he says of the villagers’ reaction to the simple wisdom conveyed by the puppet show:
This true knowledge, if truly alive, is never bleak. It makes itself known and inspires our imagination. And so it becomes, as in this tale, an entertainment, and what it teaches is so lovely that its wisdom enchants us.
Thanks for reading. See you next week for another installment From My Bookshelf.