Inheritence

The second section of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is entitled Inheritance. What has been inherited, you ask? Let’s continue, searching for answers.

It begins: “In November of 1959, when I was twenty-eight, after some years of what had felt like wildness, I bought a home for myself in a Suffolk village that could be reached by a few hours train-ride from London.”

A short digression on craft. Mr. Ondaatje lets we the readers know when and where we are in a direct and masterly way. The reader, it is said, should always know where and when she/he is in a story.

The new time of this section of the story has jumped far ahead from the early post-war years. What has Nathaniel been up to? We are not told, only that it was wild. Where has his mother been during this time? His sister, the Darter? Arthur McCall?

More questions than answers, best B. We shall see.

We quickly learn that Nathaniel bought this house from a Mrs. Malakite and that, “It was a house I loved.”

Nathaniel has been in the house before and knew both Mrs. Malakite and her husband, well. After the attack in which The Moth was killed, Nathaniel and his sister were sent to different boarding schools, he’d return on holiday and stay with his mother, who now lived in an area of England known as The Saints, in her parents’ home, and Mr. Malakite, Sam, becomes a trusted guardian.

“It was a time when my mother and I were not close. The domestic ease we loved during those weeks before she abandoned my sister and me no longer existed. I could not erase my distrust, given her deceptive departure.”

But at this time, Nathaniel still does not understand the reason for his mother’s disappearance. It is clear to the reader, and this irony helps to establish Nathaniel’s likability as a character; he is angry at his mother, mistrustful but still loyal.

“I did not know at that time that my mother, Rose Williams, after the attack on us had ended all contact with Intelligence. Although the fracas at the Bark Theater had been quickly hushed up by authorities, there were hints of my mother’s wartime work in the newspapers…”

This is the adult Nathaniel reporting—at the time, he was unaware (he didn’t read newspapers). Or did he actively avoid awareness? We are told immediately after the attack, that Nathaniel realizes his mother was doing some secret work and that, given the Moth’s fate, the stakes are life and death. He seems to approach the truth but always stops short. “The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out. But during my late teens when I would stay with my mother at White Paint (her house), I discovered no clues. Until one day I came home from work, walked into the kitchen where she, in shirtsleeves, was scrubbing a pot in the sink…I saw a row of livid scars like those cut into the bark of a tree by some mechanical gardening tool…I was never to know how many other scars there were on her, but here were those slate-red ones…evidence from that time. It’s nothing, she muttered. Just the street of the small daggers…She said nothing more about how she got those wounds.”

‘Kay. There is a real gulf between son and mother that neither wishes to cross. Many sons or daughters would say, “Holy Schmoley, Ma, how did you get those scars?” Nathaniel does not tell us he does. After the deadly attack on Nathaniel and Rachel and their mother’s re-appearance, many would say, “Ma! Where you been? Who are these people who murdered The Moth? What’s wrong with your arm?” And many mothers would say, “Look, I’ve been a secret agent and have been tortured, but I’m going to stop and try to be a proper Mum.”

The fact that Nathaniel and Rose do not say these things tell us that Nathaniel doesn’t want to know. (at this time) and that Rose doesn’t want to tell. Why? Perhaps Nathaniel (more than his sister, who’s angry and distances herself from the family) tries to help keep his mother’s secrets out of loyalty.

A paragraph break signals a leap in time: “A decade after my mother’s death, I received an invitation to apply to the Foreign Office.” This is, I believe, the first mention of Rose’s death, although there’s been plenty of foreshadowing. The Foreign Office is the Intelligence section of the British government—spies, my dears. Nathaniel is recruited to work with the same group that his mother worked for. “I assumed that nepotism and my bloodline must have been considered a reliable entrance into a profession that trusted lineage and the possibly inherited quality of secrecy.” His job is to review secret documents from the war and post-war years. Nathaniel concludes that this may be golden opportunity to find out what his mother was doing when she abandoned him. “It was the possibility of an inheritance.” The job is known as ‘The Silent Correction,” and its purpose is to review archives in order to judge which espionage activities worked and which did not. Nathaniel learns that in many ways, the war continued after the surrender of Germany in 1945. Fascists and Communists continued to battle each other, particularly in southern Europe.

A new chapter jumps ahead to the previously referenced time of 1959 when Nathaniel buys the house from Mrs. Malakite who does not remember him. “…I decided to write down what little I knew of her (his mother) time in this place…When you attempt a memoir, I am told, you need to be in an orphan state. So what is missing in you and the things you have grown cautious and hesitant about, will come almost casually towards you. ‘A memoir is the lost inheritance,’ you realize, so that during this time you must learn how and where to look. In the resulting self-portrait, everything will rhyme, because everything has been reflected…So I believed something in my mother must rhyme in me. She in her small hall of mirrors and I in mine.”

Let’s stop on this beautifully written note. We have several mentions of inheritance here to explain the use of this title for the section. Nathaniel seems to be rushing toward an understanding of his mother—years after the fact.

A not so unusual state, eh?

Till next time.

#Warlight #MichaelOndaatje #AlanBray