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Lillian Sciberras: Happenstance: Tales of Circumstance. Horizons, 2012. 70pp.
Lillian Sciberras, whose verses in Maltese and English will be known to many readers of this review, has now produced this intriguing little volume of tales, many of which reveal sensitivity in reacting to and describing important moments in human relations.
She is also fascinated by the intrusion of the paranormal into ordinary life. Captivated By a Child is a good example of this last. The narrator, a tourist on a bus in Budapest, is practically mesmerised by a beautiful oriental child who smiles at her and holds her gaze, making the narrator feel as if “two souls from some far-away lifetime came together for this brief precious moment”, and again, “her gaze a blessing imparted from who knows which heights”.
This encounter is followed by other events, not so striking, but suggestive of the concept of reincarnation. The narrative closes with the short sentence: “As if on cue, the trail continues.”
Sciberras is not always interested in writing conclusions that bring the tale to a satisfying close. It is what the characters do or not do that matters to her
Another tale is more like the tales of the supernatural with which most readers are familiar. In Through a Glass Darkly, this narrator too is fascinated by an old man seen through a grimy window, writing at a desk with his back to the narrator. Whenever she passes by that window, she stops and gazes, entranced.
On one occasion, however, after some weeks during which she has not passed by the spot, she first has a premonition of something unusual and then discovers that the familiar sight is no longer there. A modern cafe is now in its place, a cafe which, she is told, has been there at least four years.
Stunned at first, she then sheds tears. Does she feel that her mysterious communication with a man and a building of the past has been inexplicably severed?
Perhaps the tale that remains most impressed in the memory is a very short one, Switching Channels, in which the spirit of a dead friend mysteriously switches television channels as she departs from one dimension, one channel to an unknown other.
Another very short tale, Death Defied, is a traditional tale of a much bereaved man confronting Death personified (“a woman in black, tall and gaunt”) and preventing it from entering the house where his seriously ill son lies. We discover that Death, however, has found another victim…
The author’s feminist streak comes out strongly in The Minister’s Wife, in which the protagonist, whose husband (a cabinet minister) has recently died in suspicious circumstances pointing to suicide, decides to bring together a number of like-minded people. The idea is to organise public events revealing the corruption and inefficiency of the government in office.
Her success is so great that on the eve of another demonstration/satirical performance that promises to outdo all preceding ones, she dies mysteriously. Suicide, the papers say... “murder” say the people close to her.
Sciberras is not always interested in writing conclusions that bring the tale to a satisfying close. It is what the characters do or not do that matters to her.
The minister’s wife symbolises for her what women should try to do to change a Maltese society that is too dominated by men. A society in which, Sciberras seems to be implying, women themselves all too often do very little to empower themselves.
Story of an Ordinary Man shows us the other side of the coin: a man obsessed with working hard so as to make money so he can buy himself an expensive car he rarely uses. He also wants to build himself a house that is described by a visitor as being like “a kitsch museum”, a phrase the owner misapprehends as being complimentary.
Here the woman in the story, the man’s neglected wife, triumphs only when he dies as she plans to enjoy the riches her late husband bequeathed her with the other man she now plans to wed. Can one doubt the author’s view that the wife should not have waited for her first husband to die before beginning to live a good life?
I am not sure I like Feather and Joker, an early tale about the friendship between a puppy and a kitten. The animals are too cute for my taste, and the author’s telling the tale as a first-person narrative told by the kitten sounds a little too much like that of a friendship between two kids.
Celina’s Story and The Substitute are different from the other tales with their Grand Guignol plots gory endings. Like The Minister’s Wife, a much better piece, these two tales were written in the early 1980s when the author, to quote her, was “a more radical and politically charged person”. These two seem to be out of place in this collection.
The author’s real self is much more evident in the subtlety and nuances of The Audition, in which an invented tale told by a woman being auditioned for a stage part and the clever use of her eyes enables an instant rapport to be struck with the person interviewing her. She also writes very evocatively about her memories (real, not fictitious) of Maltese cinemas and some of the films they showed in 1950s.