“Such Cruelty Had No Name.”

(Post #22; Menuet & Air pp. 841-913)

The pages of Max’s time alone in sister’s house feel interminable. Too much detail as he reaches new heights of sexual depravity. Although at this point he is only committing violence against himself. Or is he?

The patent allusion to the Furies in the novel’s title has been discussed by my various TBBP video guests: Tom Flynn, Dorian Stuber, and Brad Costa. It seems that Max, like his fellow countrymen with respect to the war, is finally face-to-face with a reckoning we’ve long anticipated. Based on my rather sketchy knowledge of Greek myth, the parallels between Max’s history and that of Orestes are striking: Clytemnestra kills her husband (Max accuses his mother of “killing” his father); their children Orestes and Electra, in turn, kill their mother and her lover; the Furies pursue Orestes to avenge the murder of Clytemnestra.

Enter Athena who asks a court to determine Orestes fate. The court’s tie vote means that Furies’ previous reckoning against Orestes for his crimes is now replaced with civil justice, and the Furies become “Kindly Ones,” guardians of justice.

Perhaps the Kindly Ones have thus far protected Max, helping him evade conviction despite the dogged attempts of the two German investigators--Clemens and Weser—who are determined to prosecute him for the murders of his mother and Moreau? We know from this week’s reading that the investigators discover incriminating letters that Una wrote but never sent to Max, helpful evidence, no doubt, in their case against him. But we also know (from the novel’s opening section) that Max becomes a husband, father and successful business manager following the war. It seems that Max escapes the reckoning of a long prison sentence, in the end.

Alas, I’m jumping ahead. The Furies have not yet been called off by Athena. Max is suffering now. His mind is sick, his body debased by self-abuse. He is a tormented man. And at this point it is almost impossible to foresee under what circumstances he will manage to transform his debauched state into that of the successful lace factory manager in France.

The three Furies that haunt him in that huge, rambling house are Una, his mother, and the hanged woman in Kharkov. Max imagines that he sees the latter woman her lying in the snow outside the house, or rather he sees, “the mirror of the girl’s body in Kharkov.” But then this very mysterious bit that ends the chapter:

“And I knew that the body of that girl, that her twisted neck, her prominent chin, her frozen, gnawed breasts, were the blind reflection not, as I had thought then, of one image but of two, intermingled and separate, one standing on the terrace and the other down below, lying in the snow:

Is Una actually with Max in the house? Her presence not just a product of his fevered hallucinations? And, equally puzzling, is there a dead girl lying outside in the snow? If so, who is she?

Lot of questions remain for the final sixty pages of this novel!