Awaiting the Final Journey

...He opened the little box standing by the lamp and put the card away, as he did whenever he got one There were six of them there, and a little pile of yellowing letters [from his old girl triend, Ruth Kraus] It was a black ebony box and looked like a coffin where sad memories are laid " One of several imaginative devices is Fuks' creation of the shadow, Mon, Mundstock's alter-ego and occasional interlocutor—a division that symbolizes the split in the protagomst's orderly, humdrum world A flashback shows us the birth of Mon One day Mundstock arrives m the office and to his surprise finds the place expropriated by the Germans He is called an unmarned Jewish sow and thrown out At this instant, when Mr Mundstock's orderly world crumbles, the shadow emerges And since the world is whole no longer, Mon tags along with Mr Mundstock to the very end There are a fine series of parallels, and spintual antinomies, to this split of person (though not necessarily of personality) In another flashback we learn that Mundstock loves to watch Greta Garbo films, but when the blank screen thrusts him back mto the mundane world, he wants to marry the rather homely Ruth Kraus Again Mundstock wants to survive, yet the phantom rabbi whom he visits counsels him to become part of the historic process of Jewish suffering—for the Jews as a people have survived and will survive, says the rabbi Despite his lackluster exterior, within, Mundstock is perpetually aglow He is constantly thinking about Jewish destiny and the sad fate of others He begins to think of himself as a seer, a messiah—yet his actions belie his confidence The only thing he "sees" is his eventual deportation, and m a moment of almost prophetic inspiration, the unobtrusive Mr Mundstock arranges dress rehearsals for the day the letterbox is not empty Yet how ironic is all his planning, rising early, sleeping on a plank instead of a sofa to toughen himself, even learning to take physical punishment For Mundstock is unaware—his very being would refuse to believe it—that the Jews' destination is not relocation to work camps, but the final journey that ends m ashes and smoke Mr Theodore Mundstock is in the tradition of Central European literature, with accent on psychological insights and fidelity to detail Events are filtered through Mundstock's imagination and sensibility, almost as if a perceptive camera were imbedded m his mind Indeed, one of the strongest impressions one receives is the narrative's cinematic immediacy—like watching an Ingmar Bergman film, where dense, palpable, tear-laden atmosphere is superbly created, reality slightly distorted, and detail enlarged (the sound of a sliplock clicking shut, the texture of the S S man's leather jacket) Successful in both conception and execution, the work is excellently translated by Ins Urwm (translator of The Bitter and the Sweet, by the late Ivan Olbracht, another talented Czech-Jewish wnter) Mr Theodore Mundstock is a powerful novel about an ordinary man thinking extraordinary thoughts in a world so orderly, efficient and unjust...

...THEODORE MUNDSTOCK By Ladislav Fuks Grossman 214 pp $4 95 Reviewed by CURT LEVIANT Instructor, Hebraic Studies, Rutgers, editor and translator, Sholom Aleichem's "Old Country Tales" Holocaust literature, which deals with the most cataclysmic event in Jewish—perhaps in world—history, speaks in many tongues Over the past 25 years, writers have sought to deal artistically with this event that transcends imagination Whether the works have been in Hebrew, Yiddish, English or European languages, the artist's basic problem has been how to objectify the tragedy's emotional impact into purely literary terms, for no fiction concerning genocide can out-imagine the fact Among the many talented authors who have wrestled with this thankless theme, Jakov Lind (Soul of Wood, Landscape in Concrete, Ergo) has used savage humor and grotesque caricature to delmeate the depraved world of Germany-Austria, Peter Weiss has modified courtroom transcripts (The Investigation) to create the concentration camp, and Ehe Wiesel (Night, The Town Beyond the Wall, The Gates of the Forest) has realized the terror of the holocaust by poeticizing autobiography via symbol, legend, and philosophical speculation Now we have before us another addition to this literature, Mr Theodore Mundstock, a remarkable and sensitive novel by a young Czech writer, Ladislav Fuks But neither concentration camps nor crematoria appear in the novel The province of the narrative is an unnamed, German-occupied Czech metropolis in the 1940s Physical presence and geography, however, are constantly subordinated to their metaphysical essence, the weight of a street, a building, a mailbox in the balance scale of memory and of fearful anticipation The introspective stance of an average man an Everyjew, if you will Theodore Mundstock?the slow length of the name alone indicates his plamness—conveys the horror of a man who any day will be doomed In none of the superficial catena for success—wealth, talent, love, social station—is the kmdly Mundstock distinguished Note his catalog of nonachievements All his adult life the now gray man had been a bookkeeper in a firm that sold rope and string, the girl he loved did not marry him, he remained a lonely old bachelor with no relatives and few friends, his only constant companions are his shadow and Chicky, a little housepet But it is precisely because he is a plain man with inconsequential accomplishments and a rather dull life pattern that Fuks has chosen Mundstock as his protagonist Drabness here heightens the sense of tragedy, for it shows that everyone no matter how small, is affected Moreover, in addition to being Mundstock, he is also a Jew in the 1940s, bearing within him the legacy of a moral and spmtual tradition that enables him to achieve heroic dimensions At the outset of the novel, Mundstock is inspecting his mailbox?leitmotif, bearer of tidings good and (mostly) evil—to see if the notice for deportation has amved When he finds his box empty, he realizes he has won a reprieve for another day We now know at which point of the moral umverse we stand, and this determines our reaction to everything that follows We see him at home, observing Chanukka, as a streetsweeper wearing a yellow star, and we are touched by his dignity and values in the face of impossible odds Although the basic story line—a good man trapped by the irrational nightmare of evil—is symbolic enough, Fuks provides brilliant touches, images that have the compressed symbolic energy usually associated with poetry Typical of these images is the following passage descnbing Mundstock's thoughts as he looks at the farewell postcards from fnends who have already been deported "Did he really want to know where Mr Vorjahren [his colleague at the office] had gone to...