The Voyage of the Short Serpent

by Bernard du Boucheron
translated from the French by Hester Velmans
(Overlook Duckworth)

Can a novel that features cannibalism, amputations, burning at the stake and the devouring of children by wolves be a comedy? Tackling the gruesome and the grotesque with gleeful abandon, “The Voyage of the Short Serpent” is an eccentric, slightly maddened and often brutally funny tale of a colony of Roman Catholics marooned in medieval Greenland by the encroachment of a new ice age. Much has been made in France of the fact that its author, Bernard du Boucheron, was 76 years old when “Voyage,” his first novel, was published, and there’s something oddly triumphal about the way the narrative takes direct aim at death — which, despite its omnipresence (the bodies pile up rapidly) is never entirely conceded to.

It’s not clear if the letter of instruction that opens the novel — from a Norwegian cardinal-archbishop to the abbot Insulomontanus, appointing him the new bishop of Gardar, “at the Northernmost reach of the world” — constitutes a reward or a punishment. Although the priest has what sound like sterling qualifications (including a diploma in exorcism and hands-on experience in “the pursuit and extermination of heresy, witchcraft and apostasy”), he’s also a bit of a maverick, aiding children orphaned by the Inquisition and dipping into church revenues to build an infirmary for lepers (“for which We rebuke you but mildly”). Worse, he’s acquired a certain worldliness, sampling culinary delights “other than the barley soup and salted herring so dear to Our flock” and reading books outside the sanctioned realm of religious manuscripts.

This imaginary ecclesiastical document is a tour de force of bureaucratic desiccation. In Hester Velmans’s translation, you can practically hear the creak of its author’s thin, querulous voice warning against hiring Germans as shipbuilders (due to their “lumpish skills” and tendency to “bark out orders harshly, in the military manner”) and muttering against the infiltration of spies from the Hanseatic League. The cardinal’s primary concern is for Insulomontanus to assess the wealth of the Gardar See and collect tithes accordingly. Within certain boundaries, he is also instructed to address the state of the settlers’ souls. (“You will investigate if wives are faithful to their husbands, and whether the husbands stay within the bounds of acceptable debauchery.”) The cardinal is particularly concerned with the various methods Insulomontanus will employ to put sinners to death, including “the stake, the wheel, the head vise, drawing and quartering, the slow hanging, suspension from the feet or carnal parts (only for men, since the female constitution does not lend itself to it), immersion in boiling oil, or stoning.” Again, however, there are limits:

“You will disdain, as too expeditious or indeed too gentle, the use of poison, fit only for politics; the sword, which turns the criminal into a gentleman; drowning, which, in those climes, will cause the condemned to expire of the cold ere he can experience the suffocation; or the beer funnel, for not only will intoxication muffle the pain, but it is also a waste of a scarce commodity and abases the executioner to the vile office of a common innkeeper.”

The chapters that follow form a report on his voyage by the new bishop, who proves an increasingly suspect narrator. (His account is interrupted by two italicized sections in the third person, which may or may not represent the “true” story.) During the sea voyage to Greenland, his sailors’ teeth fall out and their skin peels. When he forbids his men to eat their frostbitten limbs, “one of them replied that the season was not Lent, and proceeded to devour his own toes.” These horrors are just a prelude to the desperate poverty and near starvation that await in Gardar, where the colony’s gaunt survivors wear “the haunted air of people on intimate terms with their own death.”

Although the bishop professes sympathy for their plight, he immediately begins ferreting out fornicators. But executing them by the preferred method, burning at the stake, is tricky, owing to a lack of firewood. Still, the bishop soldiers on, substituting peat and seal oil, and deciding to punish child sinners not by amputation but by gouging out an eye, “preserving the abilities they would need (with the exception, perhaps, of archery) for hunting, fishing, herding or plowing.”

Inevitably, the bishop himself strays from righteousness, and his oblique account of his downfall — a halfbreed girl accuses him of fathering her child — maintains a perfect pitch of cruelty and farce. (Claiming a need to get the facts straight, he asks her to elaborate exactly “in what position, illicit or lawful, she had had amorous encounters ... upon the understanding that when performed out of wedlock, even the lawful positions are a crime.”)

Throughout, du Boucheron steers clear of overpsychologizing, staying true to the medieval worldview even as he slyly creates a modern morality tale. The result is a portrait of a society destroyed by its inflexibility, by its obstinate faith in its superiority. History tells us how the story ends: by the year 1500, the Norsemen of Gardar had vanished. Perhaps they abandoned the site for warmer shores or were slaughtered by the more adaptable Inuit. Or else they simply starved to death, having eaten their livestock down to their hooves.

The New York Times Book Review, February 3, 2008

Comments

[marilyn levy]

Dear Ligaya,

I've read your reviews in the New York Times for the past few years, admired your writing and wondered if you were, by chance, married to Ahrin. When I asked my daugther, Samantha, she said that you were.

Several weeks ago, I noticed that at the end of your review, it was noted that you are the editor of the online NY Times review of Y.A. novels.

I'd like to introduce you to my lastest Y.A., a controversial book published by the Jewish Publication society. (Neither my last publisher, Houghton Mifflin, nor the publisher of my other books, Ballantine, would touch it.)
"Checkpoints" is, I think, an even-handed look at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict seen through the eyes of an Israeli girl and her Palestinian friend.

You can find a Q&A and the first two chapters of the book on www.jewishpub.org. If you are interested in reviewing the book, please let me know, and I'll have the publisher send you a copy immediately. My email address is: marilynlevy@verizon.net.

Now to the personal -- I love Ahrin, and I was so pleased when Samantha said that he was happily married. And I see that you have a child. Please give my very best wishes to him -- and they go out to you, as well. I know I speak for my whose family when I say that we would love to meet you and Calla when you visit L.A.

Best,

Marilyn

[marilyn levy]

I mean -- my whole family. Sorry for the typo.

Marilyn