Esteemed Mother

Tranquility by Attila Bartis

…a set of stairs leading nowhere is still something very human.

“Reading like the bastard child of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek,” writes Brian Evenson in his review of this fine 2009 novel, “Tranquility is political and personal suffering distilled perfectly and transformed into dark, viscid beauty.” Indeed there is a relentless, often claustrophobic darkness to this somehow-still-beautiful tale of the tortured relationship between a mother and son. Set in Communist-era Hungary, it is in fact deeply reminiscent of such novels as Bernhard’s The Limeworks and Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher in its smart and literate despair. What distinguishes Tranquility, however, what captivates the reader and holds her, what in fact saves the novel from itself, is the narrator’s almost Christ-like forbearance and equanimity when it comes to his descriptions of his mother. Given all he is forced to endure from her, his lack of cynicism (what is in essence the author’s own empathy for her) is nothing less than extraordinary.

The narrator, Andor Weér, is a beleaguered thirty-six year old writer living with his embittered, shut-in mother, a once-celebrated stage actress, in her wretched Budapest flat, an ‘eighty-two-square meter crypt with a northerly exposure’, an apartment decorated in large part with the props and furniture she has pilfered over the years from the sets of old plays. Included among these relics, these mementos, are a chest of drawers from the bedroom of Anna Karenina, a rug from The Merchant of Venice, a chandelier from some Czech comedy, and an armchair once belonging to Lady Macbeth, one of his mother’s starring roles.  

Compounding this cruel, plainly Oedipal relationship, are the narrator’s sister, Judit, a successful concert violinist and recent defector, and the narrator’s girlfriend, the beautiful Eszter, his only real hope to live.  

At the heart of what makes this otherwise pathetic narrator so compelling is his ardent if twisted devotion to his mother, an affection perhaps best expressed by the imaginary letters he writes to her from her estranged daughter, Judit, letters, posted by friends from places as near if still foreign as Paris, Venice, Zurich, and Cologne and as distant and exotic as Caracas, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv. “Esteemed Mother,” they always begin, a salutation, an entreaty really, that, for all its seeming sarcasm, always feels deeply and painfully real.

Like much of the best Eastern European fiction, this finely wrought roman noir is not for the faint of heart. To see if it is right for you, I recommend that you watch the opening scene from Hungarian director Béla Tarr’s 2011 film, The Turin Horse. While a different story altogether, it’ll put you in the mood of this bleak if haunting tale: The Turin Horse. 

Peter Adam Nash