Lino Spiteri: Island faces: four novellas from Malta, translated from the Maltese by Joseph Agius. Allied Newspapers, 238pp.
Lino Spiteri, who has published short fiction in Maltese since 1968, is skilful in his writing of short stories.
Some Spiteri habitués will prefer the restraint of his best short stories, but many others will find the present volume a good summer read- Paul Xuereb
Some of his more recent volumes have included not just short stories but also novellas, and it is these that are now being published in idiomatic English translations by Joseph Agius, also the translator of a volume of short stories by Spiteri, Honourable People (2001).
It was remiss of the publisher not to indicate the original Maltese title of each novella and the volume in which it appeared, so for those Maltese readers who might be tempted to read any of the pieces in their original language, I shall give the necessary information in this review.
Spiteri is perhaps more skilful in the short story than in the novella. In the latter form he is often too leisurely, as in the very lengthy descriptions he gives of fishing techniques in Under A Dying Moon and of tree grafting in The Innocent.
The one technically most satisfying of the four is certainly A Death Out Of Season, and in Wild Clover, with its rural Gozitan setting, the descriptions of farming are never allowed to run away with the reader.
The translator describes all four novellas as Gothic and one of them – I imagine he means Wild Clover - as “grand Guignol”.
I think he is wrong about A Death out of Season (original title Mewt barra żmienha, from Meta Jdellel Il-Qamar, 2005), the one piece in which there is no physical violence or mayhem of any sort.
The story is about a young woman with a past of unsatisfactory love encounters, who falls under the influence of a middle-aged smoothie. He pretends he is drawn to the woman only in a paternal or avuncular manner but succeeds in attracting her physically to the point where she tries to cut loose of him by going out with a nice young man who does not excite her at all, while he tries the old trick of telling her that their friendship must come to an end – but invites her to go away on a trip with him that will exorcise the demons in the situation.
The tale is told from three points of view: those of the young man, the young woman, and the would-be seducer, and the ‘death’ of the title is the fiction used by the woman to the young man to symbolise, to herself at least, the end of her infatuation.
Spiteri is subtle in depicting the older man’s psychology, self-deception and all, and makes us doubt if the woman will ever find happiness in a sexual relationship. The other three novellas are characterised by criminal behaviour, some of it very violent. Murderous violence provides climaxes for Wild Clover (original title, Mal-Ħmura Tas-Silla, from a volume bearing the same title, 1993) and Under A Dying Moon (original title, Meta Jdellel Il-Qamar, the title story from a volume published in 2005).
In the first story, the protagonist is a young Gozitan woman, Maridor, who has a tempestuous but short-lived relationship with a Maltese seducer, remaining pregnant.
A friendly person arranges for her to marry a widowed farmer, Kieli who, despite his suspicions, brings up the son she bears as if he were his own son, and Maridor ends up truly loving him.
Disaster comes when an English couple – a sexy young woman married to an elderly and unprepossessing man – comes to live nearby. Maridor’s son, Frans, is now a handsome teenager to whom the English couple takes a strong fancy.
They give Frans a job in their house, despite Maridor’s opposition, but she remains ignorant of their bad influence both on Frans and on Kieli until the day she returns from a stay in Malta and finds to her horror her men engaged in passionate sexual encounreres with her neighbours. Driven out of her mind, Maridor carries out murderous acts akin to those of Jacobean tragedies.
In Under A Waning Moon, the violent ending is the work of another woman, this time an elderly fisherwoman and matriarch, but this time the act is committed in cold blood and is merciless. Tona has four sons, three of whom are sturdy fishermen, while the fourth, Toninu, is puny and a little simple, so the mother is anxious about his future.
As a remedy she finds him a wife,a girl who is mute and so not easily marriageable. Rita, however, is carrying a child she has had with her former British employer, when she is married off to Toninu. The child turns out to be a beautiful fair-haired daughter and this leads to the reaching of some quick conclusions by Tona, her other sons and all the neighbours. Tona is incensed, but she wants to keep the child in her home where she is a general favourite. This leads to her taking a decision to get rid of Rita once and for all, a decision she carries out during a night-time fishing expedition to which Tona has forcibly brought her hated daughter-in-law. In Tona Spiteri has created one of the most hateful characters in modern Maltese fiction.
In The Innocent (original title, Fejn Jixrob Il-Qasab Fis-Sajf, the title story in a 1996 volume) the criminal behaviour is a man’s, but it is a reaction to a woman’s thoughtlessly amoral behaviour.
Randu, a sexual innocent, is seduced by his cousin Gerit, a sexual libertarian, and for a time becomes her slave, only to discover that all she wants is sex with anyone who strikes her fancy.
His disillusionment is so great that he decides to have his revenge on her by having sex without protection with several persons, including male homosexuals, and then pass on any diseases he might have contracted to Gerit who still believes she is his only love.
This tale of passionate love and hate is played out in a beautiful rural setting, the love-making counter-pointed ironically with Randu’s skilful grafting of fruit trees. The greatest victim, however, is Randu himself whose peaceful life is now over.
Some Spiteri habitués will prefer the restraint of his best short stories, but many others will find the present volume a good summer read.