The Gift of Narrative

I've had the opportunity to read three great books over the past few weeks. The books were each written by women, with a distinctly feminine perspective. And though each author is unique in their approach and voice, there were some common threads that tied them all together. I have been swept away by all three, their words resonating in my thoughts, their exposition feeding my daydreams.

The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

Turn back time, to one of the oldest stories in our history, of the tribe of Jacob in the story of Genesis. This is the basis for Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent", a narrative told from the perspective of Dinah. The only daughter of Leah, she is best known in the Bible as the object of "defilement" by the prince of Shechem. In Diamant's version, her fateful decision was to bed with Hamor's son Shalem (Biblically referred to as Shechem) before marriage, and more importantly, without asking her father's permission. In Genesis, at least, the story was given short shrift in my opinion. I'm not certain exactly what moral lesson the episode of Dinah's deflowering and the bloodshed that ensued was attempting to convey, but from the tone of every version I can find, it's far worse to sleep with a man before marriage than say, have two of your brothers kill all the males in an entire village in cold blood and steal the livestock and valuables as pillage. Simon and Levi were two rather disturbed individuals, but still, Jacob's failure to discipline his sons may be the greatest sin of all. The Torah, from what I've read, actually goes into more detail, but again, there's only one or two lines of Jacob's regret for his son's actions. It doesn't make sense, but then again, many of the old stories don't make sense in terms of modern morality. Perhaps that's because part of the story is missing.

I suppose that's what occurred to Diamant when she undertook this work. In it, she manages to read between the lines, inventing a convincing narrative that brings these characters to life, while still remaining true to the original story. She portrays the life of a shepherding tribe through the eyes of Dinah with words that almost read like prose at times. Other times, she turns a phrase with a sense for vernacular that reads simple and true. That's a rare skill. I could close my eyes and be among them in the hills. The customs, dress, food, and the stories were all rendered so enjoyably. I suppose that's another thread that ties these books together, they're about stories, and the people charged with telling them.

The red tent was where the women of those tribes would gather to pass the days of menstruation. And, as the women were given these days of leisure, it became the environment where their culture was passed on. Dinah, as the only (and therefore oldest) daughter of Leigh, was charged with keeping and continuing the female narrative of her tribe. Dinah's journey through life is an arc that is sweeping in both emotional and geographical range, from the hills of Canaan to the banks of the Nile River.

We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother. On those rare occasions when I was remembered, it was as a victim. Near the beginning of your old book, there is a passage that seems to say I was raped and continues with the bloody tale of how my honor was avenged.

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whipsering secrets on pillow. Dee-nah.

Empress, Shan Sa

Sa is the quintessential aesthete. Born in Beijing, she moved to Paris and became an understudy of Balthus. In time, she has become a painter of acclaim in her own right. But, in words and paper, she has found a canvas that befits the imagination. The story of Empress spans the life of Empress Wu Ze Tian, or Heavenlight as she is referred to in the story. Heavenlight is born in a village far from court, but her lineage and poise gain her recognition early in life and entrance to the Forbidden City. From just one of 10,000 young consorts serving at the whims of the emperor, she comes to rule all of China. This is a story that, while a first person narrative, is dazzling in its perspective. The scale and opulence of the scenes at court are portrayed with deft strokes; at times I felt as though Sa was painting with words. I have been to Beijing, and walked the streets and courtyards of the Forbidden City. Her words transformed the empty monument of my memory to a bustling, vibrant city in my imagination. Her accounts are indulgent and stimulating. While the details of court and the wealth of the Chinese culture are heady, politics are the heart and soul of the story. Heavenlight is wise, ruthless, and unflinching in her decisiveness. Her passion drives her, and China, to great prosperity and wealth. But the Chinese have an old saying: "Be careful of your dreams, they may come true".

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head. I thought, I listened, I longed not to exist. But life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis. I was blind. My eyes stared into that other world, that other existence that dwindled a little every day. Its colors were extinguished, its images blurred. I was still left with cries of astonishment and feeble sobbing. I was oppressed by the impotence of these vague recollections, burned by their melancholy. Who am I? I asked Death as it crouched at my feet. Death moaned and gave no reply.

Where am I? I could hear laughter, voices saying, "It will surely be a boy, my Lord. He is moving. He is full of life."

I mattered little who I would be. I was already weary of this vastness. I was weary of hoping, of waiting, of being myself -- the center of the world.

I was soothed by the rustle of the wind. I listened to the trickle of rain. Across my sky in which the sun never rose, I could hear a little girl singing. I was lulled by her gentle, innocent voice. My sister, I foresaw great sorrow for her. A hand tried to caress me. But a wall lay between us. Oh Mother, the shadow outlined against the screen of my thoughts, do you realize I am already old, condemned to live within the prison of your flesh?

In the depths of the lake, in the sepia-colored waters, I swiveled round, curled up into a ball, spread my limbs, turned circles. Day by day my body grew, weighing heavily on me, strangling me. I would have liked to be the prick of a needle, a grain of sand, the flash of sunlight in a drop of water; I was becoming flesh, an exploding flesh, a mountain of folds and blood, a marine monster. One breath raised me up and rocked me. I was irascible. I was furious with myself, with the woman who was my jailor, with Death--my only friend.

The waited for me. I heard someone whisper that the boy would be called Heavenlight. The rustle of preparations hampered my meditation. They spoke of clothes, celebrations, wet nurses: plump, white, and sturdy. They were forbidden to speak my name, for fear that demons would possess my soul. They were waiting for me to pick up where there own destinies had left off. I felt pity for these fervent creatures, so affable and eager. They did not yet know that I would destroy their world to build my own. They did not know that I would bring deliverance -- but with fire and ice.

One night I awoke with a start. The waters were seething. Furious waves broke over me. I held myself tightly, struggling with my fear and concentrating on my breathing, on my gnawing pain. When the tide surged, I was launched into a narrow opening. I slid between the rocks. My body bled. My skin tore. My head imploded. I balled my fists to stop myself from screaming.

Someone pulled me by my feet and slapped my buttocks. With my head hanging down, my cries spewed form me. I was wrapped in a cloth that flayed me. I heard a man's anxious voice: "Boy or girl?"

No one replied. The man grabbed me and tried to tear open my swaddling.

He was interrupted by a woman's quiet wail: "Another girl, my Lord."

"Ah!" he cried before dissolving into tears.

Out of Africa, Isak Denison (Danish Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke)

I imagine that most people are familiar with the stories of Baroness Blixen through Sidney Pollack's production of the same name -- given that the movie made from her accounts basically swept the Academy Awards (seven Oscars) in 1985. Though that was 23 years ago, the cinematography and performances of Meryl Streep and Robert Redford will guarantee a long lifespan of awareness. But, as is often the case, the book is so much better.

Karen's writing chronicles her experiences in Africa, from her arrival just before WWI to her departure around the great depression. It was written shortly thereafter, and published in 1937. She writes effortlessly, in conversational tones that are without affectation or contrivance. By the time I finished her book, I felt as though I knew her. Her sorrows and joys were relayed in matter-of-fact tones that nonetheless evoked raw emotion. Personally, I was struck by her outlook as much as the events she describes. In an age of empire largely devoid of common sense or compassion, Blixen's behavior as a European master must have shined like a beacon of enlightenment. Even when, in many instances, she ascribed characteristics to races or cultures on a stereotypical basis, these observations were devoid of bias or prejudice. Above all, she was a humanist.

I have been to Africa, to Mombasa, and traveled west to Ngorongoro Crater and Tanzania. I have seen what's left of the proud Masai on the game preserves, the migration of the Wildebeest, and the great plains of the Serengeti. I spent just two weeks in the area that she had come to love so deeply, but that was enough time to instill an understanding of her passion. But even if you haven't been to Africa, she'll make you feel like you had. The book is broken into several chapters, defined by the periods in her life in Africa. Each chapter contains short vignettes, tales of individual occasions or events that can be read within a single sitting. At the end, I don't know what made me more sad: the fact that she had to leave her farm and the tragedy of loss, or that I had reached the end of her book.

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across the highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent. The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which was different from that of the trees in Europe; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to the palms, or a heroic and romantic air like fullrigged ships with their sails clewed up, and to the edge of a wood a strange appearance as if the whole wood were faintly vibrating. Upon the grass of the great plains the crooked bare old thorn-trees were scattered, and the grass was spiced like thyme and bog-myrtle; in some places the scent was so strong, that it smarted in the nostrils. All the flowers that you found on the plains, or upon the creepers and liana in the native forest, were diminutive like flowers of the downs,-- only just in the beginning of the long rains a number of big, massive heavy-scented lilies sprang out on the plains. The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility.

The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air. The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects, and created great Fata Morgana. Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.

It's unfortunate that our culture has largely lost the skills of oration, allowing radio and television to fill the void. That's something that we should struggle not forget as a people, the gift of narrative. Who we are is not so much the facts and events as we are the voice that brings that history to life.