Problems of Single Mother: Two different Approaches
A.Charumati Ramdas
In the 10th issue of Druzhba Narodov* for the year 2005 there appeared two stories- one long and one short--about single mothers.
The first one , " A Tashkent Novel", is written by Suhbat Aflatuni and the second, "A Rattle" , by Galina Dzugashvily.
Suhbat Aflatuni is a young prosaist from Tashkent. He writes by two names: while writing poetry he uses the name Abdullaev Evgenyi Viktorovich and while he writes prose his name becomes Suhbat Aflatuni. Aflatuni was born in 1971 in Tashkent.
No information is given about Galina Dzugashvily in the journal. Galina is a young female writer from Georgia, she has only a couple of works to her credit. There is another Galina Dzugashvily, Stalin's granddaughter, who has become famous because of her memoirs about her grandfather. This Galina should not be mistaken for the granddaughter of Stalin.
The two stories under consideration deal with the problems the single mothers face while bringing up their child.
Aflatuni's " A Tashkent Novel" is the story of Lagi, an emancipated woman of the east, who lives in Uzbekistan in the 1980's and looses her husband as well as her passport before giving birth to her son. She is left in the company of her mother in law who supports her and shows the way to live her life.
" A Rattle" is a moving story about a nearly deaf and dumb child and his mother who believes in miracles and does witness them.
Seemingly very simple theme and the subsequent plots are treated differently by both the writers. We shall see in detail how do Aflatuni and Dzugashvily narrate the ordeals of their protagonists.
Suhbat Aflatuni's " A Tashkent Novel" is not easy to read. Aflatuni does various experiments with the form of the story which remind us of the great masters of the Golden and the Silver ages of Russian literature. The plot expands to around sixty pages. While Dzugashvily's narration is linear in terms of chronology of time and events and is limited to just twelve pages.
" A Tashkent Novel" consists of five chapters. The chapters are named as Lagi, Rafael, Yusuf, Arthurik and Martha.
As in M.Yu. Lermontov's " A Hero of Our Time", here also, each chapter describes the events of life of that particular person during that period. The connecting link between them being Lagi, like Pechorin in Lermontov's novel.
In addition to these there are a few supporting characters who serve as the backdrop for the developement( if we could see such developement) of the plot.
The first chapter "Lagi" describes Lagi's life which is depicted in the colours of melancholy and gloom. Lagi is about to give birth to a child. She rushes into the house with unbearable pain. The dark and humid flat on the ground floor seem to be her saviour.
By this time lagi had lost almost everything except her mother in law. Her ALMOST LEGAL HUSBAND disappeared in the western Kazakhstan. Then vanishes her job. Then came her father just to curse her, and after that he left her for ever and then she found that even her passport was missing.
The clue to Lagi's name takes the reader to her past. In the passport Lagi's name was written as Luisa. Nobody except her father addressed her by this name. While applying for the new passport Lagi decides to bury this name. She is always curious to know why she was " Luisa" and this search takes her to the years of Second World War. But that does not happen soon. Aflatuni applies the devices of "Retardation" and "Making Strange" to solve this mystery.
The child, Sultan, filled all the empty corners of her life. Even the mother in law is happy.
When Sultan is one month old , a young mystic healer, Majus, who lived in the opposite building meets her. Majus is a strange person. Whenever he talks to someone he falls terribly sick . Majus sends his younger brother Malik to take Lagi into the underground cellar. Lagi is lashed just once on her arrival in the cellar because that is the ritual. There , infront of three candles, Lagi comes to know of her true self. She comes face to face with her sharp, transparent thoughts, with her formulae which constituted Lagi.
Lagi is described by the author much in the same way as Lermontov describes Pechorin.
Again a flash back! But these flash backs are also not continuous, they are intercepted by present day events.
When Lagi's stepmother dies suddenly of heart attack while cutting onion in the kitchen, Lagi who consisted of only memories, finds that her memory has branched out into two similar parts like the stream of a river when it meets an obstacle on the way. Since then she never had sound sleep and most of the time , during night , " saw only memories".
She as well forgot to cry!
This tearless Lagi had made a house of books for herself. Though she did not understand much of what she read , the books gave her a feeling of security. In this house of books she invites Yusuf. She gets intimate to him and informs father about him only when she is expecting the child.
The marriage did not take place in the Registrar's office. A mulla performed the ritual. And even before the son was born Yusuf leaves her and goes away.
Aflatuni has an absurd way of describing his characters.
Lagi's mother in law's life is build on " Science and Life". Each of the characters (like probably every human being) has an Angel of Sleep. Mother in Law's Angel listens to the concert on Radio. Beethoven's " To Alice" is being aired everywhere. This is heard by Lagi's father in a hospital. Lagi's father loved this composition. This reminded him of the woman he fell in love with in Germany during the World War. The vision of snow clad city, the curfew, the firing during that hour always accompany Lagi's father.
Aflatuni gives the life story of each character bit-by-bit in almost all chapters. The plot moves very slowly. The backward and forward swing of time makes the plot not easily comprehensible.
The time goes backward and forward not only by a few years, but it goes to ancient times, when some Buddhist monks are also introduced in the fabric of the plot. The presentation looks like a collage of bits and pieces of life of characters.
Aflatuni's style reminds the reader of the style of symbolists, oberiutians, faktoviks. It also reminds of the modern " Zhyostkaya Proza".
Let us go back to Lagi.
Lagi receives a telegram that her father is in a hospital in Tashkent. She has to visit him. At the same time Yusuf sends her a letter informing why he was leaving her. His so called " Midnight sickness" was getting severe day by day. He leaves Lagi and joins a group of archeologists.
If Yusuf is not unfaithful to her, why don't they unite again?
Using the device of "Retardation" Aflatuni shows why Yusuf's letters do not reach Lagi, why Lagi goes into the kitchen precisely at the same moment when Yusuf is being shown on the television along with other archeologists. Finally Lagi meets Yusuf only when she is supposedly in love with another person. He divorces Lagi in a restaurant by uttering " Talaq!" thrice.
Majus had told her, "You will have lots of worries and even men--worries, definitely more,-and men-exactly two. One of them will be a helper and the other -a charmer.
Lagi meets this helper, an elderly man, in the aeroplane when she is going to Tashkent to visit her father. His name is Rafael. He proposes to her, she refuses and he goes to Israel.
Lagi goes to her father who is on the deathbed. He forgives her.
Lagi inherits from her father his old ancestral house and a big box of books. While going through the old papers left by her father, Lagi comes to know about the mystery behind her name. But Aflatuni does not take us there so soon. The reader has to pass through absurd and abstract memories of Lagi's father and his friend. The way to reach them is through the dial of a cuckoo clock . As an hour strikes on the clock a Turkish soldier comes out of the window on the dial and the whole drama, which took place during the war unfolds...
Lagi's father, Nasreddin Umarovich Khojaev was born in the year 1918. Aflatuni emphasises that the year of conception was 1917. He had fought the Second World War. He remembers his life....again and again.
Once Lagi is in Tashkent she decides to reconstruct her life. She is scared to stay alone in the old house of her father but she also knows that " Cowardice is inability! and " Fear is a disease!" ( How much like Bulgakov and Chekhov!!).
One very interesting thing in the novel is that answers to many problems are suggested in dreams. (Readymade recipe!)
The backward and forward swing of time is not depicted in terms of real life incidents. Instead, there are symbols everywhere, there is darkness, drowsiness...And on top of it is Lagi's imagination. Her understanging of " Men's world" is depicted in very harsh, not at all aesthetic way. Here is an example:
" The world of Man, attraction towards which Lagi resisted, was hanging above her like a ship of strangers. This world is full of jungle-laws, bloody football matches and obscene photo sessions where special dolls ( Lagi initially did not guess that these were living girls) showed themselves up silently. This world was shameless-victory, like the smell from the school toilet "M",...."
Lagi has a constant friend-semi transparent dream. This friend accompanies her when she is awake. Lagi gets clarifications about various problems from him.
Now, from chapter 2, the dream asks her to repeat the verb "Budh" (meaning of this sanskrit verb is to wake up, to learn, to know). While doing so she enters the world of her dream....but the interesting thing is that this dream is shared by one and all. From here begins the theme of Buddhist monks, which occupies a prominent place in the novel.
Lagi in her semi transparent dream holds Sultan in her hands, who was playing flute. And suddenly the space tranforms into underground monasteries. There is an unnoticeable swing from real to the unreal and we see the sleepy Buddhaghosha Vinayaka, who took the sound of flute as arrival of winter and he got scared. " Lotus is frozen", but there was no need to get frightened as here, in the country of northern monks, where he was a guest and was going through books, there was no lotus.
Carrying the books with him Vinayaka had come to this place where the monks were living in the hand-made, underground caves.
The theme of monks seems to have a sub-structural significance, with which we shall deal a little later.
Coming back to Lagi: She decides to continue her studies in the University at the Eastern faculty.
In chapter 3 the author tells about Yusuf. Yusuf had also been a victim of the underground cellar. He sees his dead father in the cellar...the uneasiness, this so called " Midnight sickness" grows so severe that he has to run away from his house and from his wife. He sends letters to Lagi explaining about the whole thing and about his present work but the mother in law does not show these letters to Lagi. Once Yusuf was even shown on the television along with other German excavators with whom he was working, but Aflatuni sends Lagi into the kitchen precisely at the same moment when Yusuf was shown on the screen.
Finally, when Yusuf comes face-to-face with Lagi he utters "Talaq!" thrice and goes to Moscow for further studies.
The younger brother of Majus, the mysterious healer, Malik is also interested in Lagi. But no special chapter is dedicated to him in the novel.
There is Arthurik in the team of excavators. Arthurik is a German. He is given a letter by Rafael for translation. The letter is written in German by Lagi's father. Through this letter Lagi comes to know that her father fell in love with a woman called Luisa in Austria. she was killed by some other soldier during the curfew. Lagi's father loved her so much that back home he named his daughter as Luisa.
Lagi becomes intimate with Arthurik. She spends the New Year eve with him. Later Arthurik also goes away.
With all these things going on Sultan does not seem to be getting any attention from Lagi. One year passed by and again there is a forward swing of time by twenty five years.
The last chapter "Martha" sums up everything that had happened with each character.
Sultan is twenty five years old. They all assemble at a festival, where even the dead are present.
Lagi's father tells Sultan who has done his master's in Vienna, " All that you came to know about me in Vienna took away a lot of your time. And that which requires a lot of time is not 'real'...You should frequently converse with your memory. It has every thing that a man needs". Then he advises Sultan to go to the young peoiple ( "Don't dig into the past, go ahead with the river of time).
Even Sultan's grand mother who was present there tells him, " I am not dead. The old guard does not hang its nose."
Sultan tells that he was looking for the epigraph for his novel " A Tashkent Novel".
This was the marriage of Hasan's daughter. Hasan was younger brother of Yusuf. Grand mother also asks Sultan not to forget the blood relations. It is unpardonable.
Majus is still healing...he is famous and rich.
In the end Lagi is seen going with her husband...Yusuf or Malik...could not be clearly seen.
Beneath this story which seems full of absurdities, lies a serious theme, that of the country of the author. The sentence " Uzbekistan is a country of great future" makes one believe that this is not a simple story of the single mother. Single mother is just a metaphor. In reality it is the story of Uzbekistan through ages, since the time immemorial.
A look at the biography of Lagi's father tells that he was born in 1918. Aflatuni also stresses that he was conceived in 1917. (The year of the Great October Revolution). So this phase begins with the Revolution. And it ends with the death of Lagi's father, in the beginning of 80's, when one after the other the Republics were declaring their independence. What follows in the next twenty five years is the uneasiness and uncertainity in the life of the country.
Does the assertation that "the old guard does not hang its nose" points towards a possible return of the pre-80's regime? Also the young generation, Sultan, who is declared as the king of the future is advised not to break relations with the past...it is unpardonable. The ancient past is described through the theme of the monks.... The author leaves a note of uncertainity at the end. Lagi is seen going with her husband...who was he? Yusuf, who had left Uzbekistan and gone to Moscow for further progress or Malik who remained in the country? This seems to again start a debate about whether the country should look westwards or look into its tradition for the progress.
Aflatuni's story does not at all throw light on the difficulties Lagi faced while bringing up Sultan. As if the things happened automatically and twenty years pass by just like that. But Galina Dzugashvily's story is the story of real struggle of a single mother, Asya.
When Asya was expecting her child, Galina Dzugashvily says that like every expectant mother she did not want to have a daughter ( " I don't need any girl....I myself am a girl...if she takes birth, I shall not take her, just leave her there itself and that's all...")
And then ,to her delight, a boy is born.
The child had some defect. His mouth was a little distorted...the doctors assured her that massage and physiotherapy would set things right in future. Asya did not look at the defect seriously. For her it was more important that the child was a boy, not a girl, and for a boy the defects do not matter.
Even at three years the child could hardly speak 'mama', he seemed even deaf. His eyesight too seemed a little abnormal.
Asya started teaching him with the help of toys...the progress was very slow. He was sent to a special school, but this too did not help much.
Asya's husband remained indifferent to the child. Though initially he would buy things necessary for the education of the child, slowly he started disappearing from the house. Then he opted for a job at a far away place and detached himself from Asya and HER child. He would come to see Asya just once a year.
The child was growing--only physically, the mental progress is very very slow.
Then Asya approaches a healer about whom she came to know from a television programme..
Asya and the child watch a television programme, in which people from another planet healed a boy from Georgia. After watching the programme Asya's child asks her, " Why don't they heal me?"
Since then he started waiting for a miracle to happen, he started wating for the arrival of a healer from the other planet.
He visualises his arrival.
Once he feels that someone has entered his room and he is confident that it is the " Other planet man." The belief that someone had visited him makes him feel better.
But when for many days, there was no further miracle taking place, the boy started getting restless. Asya felt that he HAD to feel the presence of an unseen stranger in order to get normal. Then she recorded an unknown whispering voice in the cassette recorder and started playing it for a fraction of a second. The child would feel that someone is talking to him, someone is healing him! And slowly he became almost normal. He even finished the arts faculty in the university, he draws landscapes, is working in a departmental store.
He is now 28!
The struggle and determination of Asya made the child normal.
The miracle was performed by none other but by Asya herself.
" A Rattle" is a very realistic story devoid of any absurdity. The narration is simple, chronologically straight.
Thus we see that though the theme of both the stories is the same but the authors have made them look entirely different.
Perhaps that is the difference between the style and approach of a male and a female author towards the problem of a single mother.
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* The quotes are taken from Druzhba Narodov, No. 10, 2005.
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