The Black Isle

The boy’s eyes light up; but before he is served he must listen to an eulogy of the old man who has bequeathed him, besides certain physical traits, this posthumous taste of rose on which he is about to gorge himself.

“Such an excellent fellow, Grandpa Jules! Sober, hard-working and prudent. He walked to Paris in his clogs and always managed to put a bit aside even when he was only earning a hundred francs a month. He wasn’t the sort of man to lend out his money without security and without interest. He was no fool! Business before pleasure! Cash down! And what respect he had for money and those who had it! Consequently, he died revered by his children, to whom he left investments befitting a family man, all in gilts!”

“Can you remember Grandpa, my darling?”

“Yum-yum! Grandpa!” clamors the kid, who is smearing the ancestral cream all over his face and nose.

“And Grandma? Can you remember her too, my pet?”

The child has to think for a moment. Every year a rice cake flavoured with the deceased’s corporeal essence is served to mark the anniversary of her death. She had always smelled of snuff when alive, but by some curious phenomenon, had exuded an aroma of orange-flower ever since her death.

“Yum-yum! Grandma, too!” rejoices the child.

“Tell me, which do you like best? Grandpa or Grandma?”

Like all brats, who prefer what they haven’t got to whatever is placed before them, the boy longed for the far-off cake and admitted that he liked Grandma best; but he nonetheless pushes out his plate towards the dish with Grandpa in it.

“For Christ’s sake, hold on; no, no, to the right; the bugger weighs a ton!”

Suddenly, an enormous slimy ball, smeared with glair and lochia, began to unravel on the pile of straw which had been prepared for it, while the red slash which had opened under the cow’s croup slowly closed as if operated by a spring.

“Bloody hell! I’d better not let go of the bugger!” grumbled Antoine as he wiped down the calf which was trying to raise itself up on its front legs and was butting the air with its head in every direction.

Norine came in with a steaming bucket full of wine.

“There be no oats in this?”

“No, Francois.”

“That be all right then, because the beast be sweating, see; hemp-seed, if we’ve got any, that would be fine, but not oats.” He showed the bucket to Lizarde who had climbed to her feet, her vulva still oozing stalactites of pink mucous.

Lizarde lapped up the wine in an instant. Then Norine knelt beside her and started to milk her; she resembled a bell-ringer as her fingers, damp with drops of milk, manipulated the cow’s teats and drew out a frothing yellow slush.

You begin (at the risk of using too many words, like Hemingway) with language of extreme simplicity (like Hemingway), enough to draw attention to your style. From time to time, to remind people, you can do a very simple, verbose paragraph. In between you can relax. When the going gets rough, when difficult or subtle things have to be handled, the clichés will come tumbling out anyway; the inadequate language will betray itself; but not many will notice after your very simple beginning and your later simple paragraphs. Don’t forget the flashback; and, to give density to a banal narrative, the flashback within the flashback. Remember the golden rule of writing-school narrative: a paragraph of description, followed by two or three lines of dialogue. This is thought to make for realism, though the dialogue can’t always be spoken. Chinese and Indian and African experience sifted down into this writing-school mill comes out looking and feeling American and modern.