The first two stories/sections we’ll be discussing this week, “The Plunge of the Brave” and “Flesh and Blood,” are both set in 1957. During the course of the novel we see Nector Kashpaw, Marie Kashpaw/Lazarre, and Lulu Nanapush/Lamartine from their youth to their very old age. But in 1957 we find them on the verge of middle age, and the triangulated desire between them that has been banked for so long, here explodes.
You may remember that I earlier noted that Nector as narrator spoke in the present tense, precisely because of his incapacity for self-reflection, for looking back. He has been a man of the moment and of his passions. Here, however, he tells the tale of his success and disillusionment in the white world beyond the reservation and his ultimate return and success here as well, all in the past tense. He has been married to Marie for seventeen years. His life has been rich, but he is suddenly aware of how the current of life–and time–have carried him along so swiftly:
“What I saw was time passing, each minute collecting behind me before I had squeezed from it any life. It went so fast, is what I’m saying, that I myself sat still in the center of it. Time was rushing around me like water around a big wet rock.”
As if of necessity he begins to think of Lulu. “The truth is I had never gotten over her,” he admits. And as sometimes happens in real life, and even in novels, on that very day he is forced as chairman of the tribe to deal with an emergency: “a delivery of 17 tons of surplus butter” that must be preserved and distributed. Who should drive by but Lulu Lamartine, “riding slow and smooth on the luxury springs of her Nash Ambassador Custom.”
“‘Hey, Lulu,’ I shout . . . “Could you spare a couple hours?'” Oh, and by the way, we’re abruptly back in Nector’s present tense. This is happening right here and right now and there’s no time to consider. Not even when, much later in the day, she smears some butter on his face. “I’m so surprised,” he says, “that I just sit there for a moment.” Not for long. And there’s plenty of butter.
This story, as so much with Louise Erdrich, veers from such human and humane comedy to much darker moments. Nector is deeply unsettled by this first smooth encounter with Lulu. Perhaps he’s spread himself a bit too thin? In any case, there seems to be no possibility of re-establishing the equilibrium of the last 17 years. So he writes one letter to Marie, explaining that he has “found true love” with Lulu and is leaving, and another declaring his passion and determination to Lulu in turn. The one letter he leaves in the kitchen. The other he intends to hand deliver.
In case you haven’t gotten this far, I won’t give away the outcome of the story. Let’s just say it is startling and destructive. Nector is a powerful man in many ways, but he seems totally out of control of his own life.
The last two stories in our section for this week are “A Bridge” (1973) and “The Red Convertible” (1974). The first story concerns Albertine Johnson again, but this time she is only 15 and running away from home. In Fargo she meets someone we have heard of before, Henry Lamartine, Jr. He is a former Marine, deeply scarred emotionally from his experiences in Vietnam. The two of them spend the evening drinking and eventually having sex, of a sort.
Most of the story is told from Albertine’s point of view, although we do occasionally delve into Henry’s thoughts as well. These glimpses only betray his slender grasp on reality or on his own emotions, his own self:
“Weak, he thought, holding the smoke in his lungs. But now he was used to the shaking, this kind of shaking, which meant that the tightness was lowering, lowering him. He lit one cigarette from another and dropped the ends in the bowl beneath his hip. As he watched her, his breathing gradually calmed. The blackness edging his vision dropped away.”
“The Red Convertible” is narrated by Henry’s brother, Lyman. As boys they had been exceptionally close, but since Henry’s return from the war, there has been a chasm almost impossible to cross, not just between the brothers, but between Henry and the rest of the world.
The point I’d like to discuss here, however, is one of the lesser noticed beauties of Louise Erdrich’s art. We see many of the characters from a variety of points of view and perspective. Perhaps no character is so fully seen this way as Henry, Jr. While in some ways he remains a mystery to his own family, we readers get a complex portrait woven from multiple perspectives on this deeply wounded, almost silent man. As a result, he takes on a kind of three dimensional reality or solidity, as if we were able almost to walk about him and observe him as a sculpture, as a character existing in narrative time and, in this strange, wonderful way, in space as well. We may not come to know Henry all that much better, but we can witness his tragedy–a word I tend to avoid–with clear eyes.