Across the Bridge - Mavis Gallant [91]
Her dream topples. She must make it up with the deadly Arnaud. In the end she finds a shadow of happiness, and we hope that it will illuminate, however feebly, the life before her.
This is comedy, but of a special sort which may be described as comic because it is not tragic. And why not tragic? Because, as Sir Philip Sidney reminds us, “tragedy concerneth a high fellow” and there are no high fellows in this tale; they cannot rise high, and thus they cannot fall low. We are invited to see them as they are, and they are set before us without any nudging by the author to turn us for or against her creations. They are set out simply as they are and all they are is implied by brilliantly chosen detail. This is true social comedy, and as well as making us laugh it provokes our pity and causes us some pain. We cannot take Sylvie as a heroine, done down by Fate; with the best will in the world we cannot imagine a destiny for her much better than what lies ahead with Arnaud. Is hers, then, to be a life of quiet desperation? No; she is not strong enough to despair; she can only endure. She has not the swollen egotism, the sense that her destiny is a mirror of mankind, that makes the truly tragic figure.
We are very sorry for Sylvie, but the sorrow is ours. The author is not sorry on our behalf. She lets us pity, if that is our choice. Or would we prefer to laugh?
This is art of a special kind. How is it done? By suggestion. By implication. We see it at work in the first three stories in the book. Not a word can be said against the Carette family except perhaps that they are utterly unendurable. Not unendurable on a great scale; they do not cheat greatly, betray largely, or eat their young. That is to say, they do not eat their young corporately; psychologically, things are quite different. But in lives so sodden with orthodox religion, psychology, as turned within, is not a factor. We may think that they create their own hell, but we are wrong. The hell they create arises in our own understanding; to them the lives they live are dutiful, impeccably moral, in so far as morality can be squared with financial prudence, loving in so far as love can be offered and accepted in their world. We read of them with fascination, and – no, no, never let it be said – some measure of self-recognition.
And what does the author make of it? She does not say: she reports. She does not pursue anything to its conclusion; she implies what is to come. The result, by some magic that I cannot pin down, is delightful. Its quality is shown by the fact that I cannot “pin it down.” If it could be explained, it would not be magic, but conjuring. We are complimented in having been introduced to a mind so serene, so unjudging. And so sly.
Yes, that’s the word. Sly.
BY MAVIS GALLANT
DRAMA
What Is To Be Done? (1983)
ESSAYS
Paris Notebooks: Essays and Reviews (1986)
FICTION
The Other Paris (1956)
Green Water, Green Sky (1959)
My Heart Is Broken: Eight Stories and a Short Novel (1964)
A Fairly Good Time (1970)
The Pegnitz Junction: A Novella and Five Short Stories (1973)
The End of the World and Other Stories (1974)
From the Fifteenth District: A Novella and Eight Short Stories (1979)
Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981)
Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris (1985)
In Transit (1988)
Across the Bridge: New Stories (1993)
The Moslem Wife and Other Stories (1994)
The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (1996)
Paris Stories, ed. Michael Ondaatje (2002)
Montreal Stories, ed. Russell Banks (2004)
Going Ashore (2009)