15.54
We're playing host to Hamzah et al later this afternoon. Noi is busy making sure that our guests will be well fed and I'm endeavoring to free myself from the pleasant torpor that has gripped me for the past week or so. It will be good to get back fully to the land of the living.
Even as I was indulging in my bit of a moan yesterday about the stresses of home ownership I was experiencing a deeply nagging sense of guilt at doing so. This had its considerable roots in the fact that I'd been reading the opening chapters of Zola's Germinal and couldn't help but be aware of the deep disconnect between the luxury of my life here and the utter misery of that of the workers in and around the Mountsou mine that the novelist painstakingly itemises in Part One of his novel.
Zola takes his readers so fully inside the mine in terms of everyday agonising detail as to engender a painful claustrophobia. And does so in what seems to me an almost flat style, a kind of journalistic recording of the facts as they are: The mine never lay idle; night and day human insects were always down there burrowing into the rock six hundred metres beneath the fields of beet. You are forced to witness that burrowing in inescapable close-up, right next to one of the insects involved. And it's painful. In fact, more than one; making it relentless also.
Should the suffering of those working down French mines in 1866 impinge upon a twenty-first century consciousness? Well, Zola leaves the reader in no doubt of the reality of that suffering and the fact that it called for some kind of attention. And it doesn't take much to draw parallels with the equally real experiences in our time of those whose lot is similar exploitation. So I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that I have at least some awareness of my own inadequacies as a citizen of the world.
Today we've had a couple of workmen around: one to install an updated filtration system for the water; the other to get Noi's oven working again. Both endeavours seem to have been successful, though it's generally best to wait for a year or so, I find, before a final declaration on this front. By which time a couple more things will have managed to go wrong about the house. As always I remind myself we're lucky to have what we've got and as long as the place remains livable there's not much point in moaning.
And perhaps I should be even more positive than that. The fact that the old fridge has kept going since we last repaired it is surely cause for great celebration. The first attempt at putting in the spare part required didn't go well and I thought we'd need to find somewhere to dump the old model and buy a new one. But it's functioned perfectly since the second attempt. Indeed, the guy who came to repair our oven remarked that we were lucky to have it since this make is no longer available despite it being known to be an excellent refrigerator. Odd that - a manufacturer discontinuing a line on the grounds that it's so good at what it does.
Spent the last couple of days adventuring with Robert Louis Stevenson on Treasure Island. Odd that I've never read the full novel before. I seem to remember as a kid getting up to the bit where Jim is hiding in the apple barrel on board the Hispaniola and hears Long John Silver plotting mutiny and finding the whole thing pretty heavy-going. It's certainly not an easy read at any level. Silver himself is a deeply ambiguous figure and the action is often surprisingly complex. I'm still not sure exactly how Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey and the rest of the good guys got themselves into the abandoned stockade on the island after the mutiny. Or why Jim suddenly took himself off to sea in the coracle. But there's enough going on in terms of raw characterisation for me to have enjoyed the outing.
And it was nice to reach the final chapters not being at all sure how the story would be concluded, and then quite enjoying the good guys winning in the end, whilst still feeling more than a touch of sympathy for the mutineers left stranded on the island. Gosh, the Victorians were fierce in their sense of right & wrong, especially when calling such conventional morality into question. It's notable that Stevenson makes sure Silver gets away with it all, including a reasonable amount of the money.
It's the ordinariness of the characters in The Makioka Sisters that made the novel engaging on a simple level for this reader. For example, the four sisters themselves, Tsuruko, Sachiko, Yukiko and Taeko. None of them especially impressive or special in any way. All decent enough individuals, and loving to each other, though prone to bouts of irritation given the usual points of difference likely within any family. Yukiko's passive-aggressive behaviour in the various elaborate attempts to secure a decent marriage for her as she moves into her thirties is mildly puzzling, I suppose, and it's not at all clear the extent to which the most obviously 'modern' of them, Taeko, has exploited her various boyfriends, especially the weak-minded, over-privileged Okubata. But the ladies seem likable enough such that the reader wants things to turn out well for them.
And the family's sense of the importance of following their socially-sanctioned but semi-private customs results in sequences that are easy to relate to, despite their particularity to Japanese culture: the viewing of the cherry blossoms; the capturing of the fireflies. The reader is happily drawn into the significance of it all.
But why does the writer so subtly undercut their sense of family importance? And why hint at terrible things happening at the borders of the family's reasonably comfortable lives - in China, in Germany? And why so feature so much physical illness, sometimes genuinely deeply painful, as in the case of Itakura losing his leg and, eventually, life to the gangrene that sets in as a result of a simple operation?
I just can't figure it out. But what I can say is that the blending of ordinary, everyday aches & pains & sadness & happiness is balanced against the gathering dark in a way I don't think I've come across in any other novel. Perhaps the uncertainty is the whole point?
It's always slightly nerve-wracking when we arrive at the homestead here in KL as to the condition the place is in. I harbour less than fond memories of arriving here years back with various nieces in tow only to find that there was no power at all on the premises. We ended up spending the night in a hotel much to their delight. But, happily, we experienced no such trauma yesterday. Indeed, we even found ourselves with an ample supply of hot water which I'd not expected at all given what I assumed was the failure of our solar panels the last time we were here. When we departed in December last year we did so in the belief that we were lucky to have enough tepidly warm water left to allow us to shower without freezing and that we'd most likely struggle on returning until we could get the company who installed the panels to do some fixing. Mind you, the hot water we enjoyed yesterday wasn't exactly of the red-hot variety so it could be the panels have only partially failed. Or the days have been hot enough to heat whatever water is stagnant in the tank. We'll see.
But we were able to enjoy a reasonably seamless transition to these quarters, which meant I found myself with time enough to read the final pages of Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters. This was quite a relief, I can tell you, and not just because I was able to tick off Item 3 on yesterday's checklist. The relief stemmed from now being able to set aside a novel that paradoxically I very much enjoyed yet somehow became something of a trial for me.
When I last posted here about it at the end of April it was with some enthusiasm for a great read and I can remember thinking then that I'd probably finish the tome towards the end of a busy May by reading a few pages every evening as a way of winding down. That was not to be, and it wasn't the fault of the novel. Being impossibly busy meant not reading anything at all of literary note other than what was required for work. Which meant that I was only able to pick up the book again in late May having forgotten ninety percent of the detail I needed to remember of an extremely detailed text.
So getting going again was difficult and, unfortunately, I was still busy. And I also realised it wouldn't be wise to spread my reading over the June break since at some deep level I was fed-up with the book despite its rewards. The possibility of abandoning my reading faintly occurred to me, but I felt that would be to let Mr Tanizaki and his engaging characters down. So I got down to some deliberate, forced, I will-concentrate-and-get-through-this reading and that worked, I suppose.
Since I've been able to close the book I've found myself considering with quite a degree of puzzlement just what kind of novel it is. At one simple easy-going level, a soap-opera-ish tale of a typical Japanese family doing what families do in a way that means the reader feels you come to know them almost as friends and want the best for them. But then there's so much to contradict that way of seeing the text, not least the implication that there's something deeply wrong with these people and they're wilfully, witlessly, walking through the years into a kind of disaster. How many stories end with a key character about to be married (finally!) yet suffering from persistent diarrhoea?
I'm continuing to operate on a checklist each day, despite now being well into holiday territory. Partly this is out of habit; but mainly it's because if I didn't it's likely that nothing would get done.
Today's list comprises three items. The first, accomplished this morning, involved completing my examiner's report for IB, rounding off my work for them in this session. It's not exactly an onerous task as I try and reduce it to statements that might be genuinely useful for all, but trying to ensure the generalisations involved have some real weight and are not just fueled by temporary irritations takes some thought. This time round I needed to ask myself was my perception that there was a distinct quantitative deterioration in the quality of handwriting real, especially since I'm well aware that I've been moaning about the challenges of reading poorly written scripts for several years. My answer to myself was, yes, it has. And I said so.
The second item, now ticked off the list, was attendance at Friday Prayers - in this case, walking down the road to the masjid at Sungai Petai. It was raining as I set out, and I expected to be a bit damp after the ten minute walk, but the rain eased and I enjoyed a refreshingly dry session.
The third task involves completing the novel I'm reading at some point in and around making our way to Maison KL. More on this tomorrow, since we're now packing up our bits & pieces here ahead of the move north. (I didn't include the big move on the checklist for some reason. Which just goes to show the limitations on lists and plans and such like, even for a semi-addicted lister like myself.)
16.07
We're notably in no rush to set off for Melaka today. Noi decided this morning it was better that she supplied an order of her famous curry puffs today for Kak Kia, which she's now preparing, so we'll be travelling in the evening. All very fine by me. After a month spent rushing it's time to ease up as much as possible.
Mind you, if we end up in a jam later on we might regret this display of insouciance.
23.30
As it turned out, no regrets at all. Now safely ensconced at Mak’s house, munching pizza (me) & mee goreng (Noi.) Easy journey - for a change.
