Making a Pass

Easter Notes from Andorra...

(The view from our balcony this morning, looking up the valley toward Engordany. Photo: Dear Wifey)

“You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Joel Bowman with today’s Notes From the End of the World: Les Escaldes, Andorra...

Our offices are closed today in observance of Easter Sunday... plus it’s Dear Daughter’s birthday. Still, we didn’t want to leave you empty handed, so...

Considering America’s most famously concise author, your one-armed writer wondered whether Hemingway’s signature, sparse style was developed on purpose... or he had merely broken his arm at some point? It’s not easy, you know... this staccato-style tap… tap… tapping away… alone in the early morning light.

Still, there is a certain peace that settles on the shoulders, when the valley is asleep and the sun spills over the range...

We’re in Andorra, the Pyrenees-to-Pyramids chapter of this year’s walkabout. Given the mountainous backdrop outside, and the holiday weekend, we thought it might be nice to break ranks from the dreary, quotidian march and share with you something a bit different…

As you may know, in addition to your regular Notes, we also write rarely read novels. It’s a labor of love. Herewith, a passage from our next pre-award winning work, titled Cyclone Charlie. The subject: reading between the lines. Enjoy...

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From Cyclone Charlie, Chapter II: Making a Pass

By Joel Bowman

Charlie grinned in unspoken agreement. He was relaxed now, comfortable in his skin. At ease. “So what about Fiesta, then? What made you think of all that?”

Amis recalled the sloping grass out back of Charlie’s boyhood home, the cleared brush down the hill a ways (which Charlie’s father still owed them for working, three consecutive summer Saturdays), opening up to a panoramic view of the coastline, far in the salty distance. He thought of how they used to race up and down the steep and winding road to the property, clocking their respective runs in Charlie’s mom’s Japanese hatchback, throttling the choking engine around the fierce chicanes, the dappled morning light streaming through the beech trees and racing across the trembling bonnet.

“There’s a scene in the book, midway through, when Jake and Bill are taking the bus, en route to Burguete. They’re going to fish some, before heading on to the bull fights.” Watching Charlie, Amis lipped a sip of his drink, then continued. “Anyway, they’re joined by a few Basques, all of them boozing, as usual. The language, the description, the dialogue, all of it, is characteristically sparse. But it’s all there, the message, the intent, in the negative space. There’s one part, where they’re climbing higher up the mountains. ‘Looking back, we could see the country spread out below,’ he writes. It’s their past, of course. Their journey thus far. From the disillusionment of the Paris cafe scenes, Stein’s irredeemably Lost Generation, floundering in the wake of the Great War, their impotent yearning for purpose and direction, for meaning in the darkness, everything that has brought them here, right up until this very moment. It’s an inflection point. An important one, both inside the novel and outside of it, too. And it’s purposefully underwritten. Anyway, he goes on, does our Jake, looking ahead, pointing out the horizon, noticing how it changes the higher they climb, remade by new and strangely-shaped mountains. There’s the future, the unknown. Then the key moment comes. A foreshadowing. Jake points out, over on the shoulder of the first dark mountain, the monastery of Roncesvalles. ‘Way off there, where the mountain starts,’ he says. To which Bill simply answers, ‘It’s cold up here.’ ‘It’s high,’ responds Jake. ‘It must be twelve-hundred meters.’ Echoes Bill, ‘It’s awful cold.’ And there it is, all there, suspended in the unspoken, raging in silence.”

Charlie stared intently at his friend, his eyes milky but unblinking in the chalky barroom glow.

“What’s left unsaid,” Amis forged ahead, in something of a trance himself now, “was the sordid and bloody history behind that particular pass. It was there that Charlemagne's army was ambushed by the Basques, his rear-guard completely obliterated, cut down to the very last man. He made his getaway, sure, but the story of betrayal entered the realm of the epic. In old French literature, there’s a kind of medieval mythology, in which a knight named Ganelon, Charlemagne’s brother-in-law, is nominated by his step-son, the boastful Roland, to undertake a dangerous mission as messenger to the Saracens, essentially Arab muslims with whom Charlemagne was at war. Disgusted and offended at being so capriciously dispatched, Ganelon commits the ultimate act of treachery by tipping off the Saracens and helping plot their brutal ambush against his very kin.”

Eyes quiet, Cyclone Charlie focused on the deep past, on Mountain passes, on slow passing time. Three mouthfuls later he managed an uncertain response. “Well, I’m sure I don’t remember all that.” And he laughed, reaching for his jacket.

“Right,” concluded Amis, “because it’s not there. It’s left out, merely implied. Contemporary European readers, certainly the French, and probably some Americans too, they would have known the story of Roncesvalles Pass when the book came out. It was Charlemagne’s only major military defeat, after all. They would have made the connection, understood what Ganelon’s betrayal portended for Jake and Bill. They would have read all that in the negative space around the scene, in the curtness of the dialogue. Readers who arrived empty handed, who grasped only what the book gave them, directly, would have missed it entirely. And plenty more besides. They might as well have read another book altogether.”

“Hence the question about loyalty.”

Amis let a slow smile creep across his face. “He is truly a mighty artist who can say everything, without saying anything. Consider the impressionists...”

“Hold on a sec,” Charlie interrupted, sensing the rising waters of another sermon. “Whatever happened to this Ganelon fellow, then?”

“Dante had him banished to the fiery depths of Hell,” Amis flashed a crafty grin. “The French merely drew him limb from limb, the four horsemen galloping off to the infinite ends of the compass.”

On his feet now, Charlie was punching through the lifeless arms of his trench coat. “So what of our evening then, huh? You really need a longer day tomorrow?”

“What do you reckon?” volleyed Amis, reaching for his own coat and scarf.

They were nearing the fireman’s exit when the fencing foursome in the corner let forth a jovial refrain that filled the room.

“Brett and her manly suitors,” remarked Amis, as he made to nudge his old friend. But Cyclone Charlie was already out the door and into the building squall.

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And that’s all for this Easter Sunday. We hope you’re celebrating the day with friends, family and loved ones.

We’ll be back with your regular Notes From the End of the World next week.

Cheers,

Joel Bowman