The Company of Ghosts

Louisiane is doing her best to deal with a bailiff who's taking inventory of her possessions prior to seizing them for unpaid rent, but her deranged elderly mother keeps butting in, convinced that it's 1943 again and the bailiff has been sent by Pétain (always "Putain" to her) and Darnand (the head of the fascist Milice). The story keeps gliding backwards and forwards between the bailiff's systematic progress through the two women's claustrophobic flat and the wartime village in Haute-Garonne where Louisiane's mother grew up, and where Louisiane's uncle Jean was brutally murdered by fascist thugs when he was eighteen.

It's constructed more like a stage-play than a novella, but it's an original — and surprisingly witty — look at show more modern France's relationship with the Vichy era, and the way individual human lives (and thus, by extension, society as a whole) get broken when we attempt to sweep past injustices under the carpet instead of looking for a true resolution. show less

Can injustice be atoned for? Is there a point at which nations can, and should, forgive themselves and move on for atrocities committed decades before? What obligations do the survivors of atrocities have for keeping the memories alive in the public consciousness? These are some of the questions that arose for me as I made my way through this short but difficult book.

The story is much like a one-act play. The setting is a small apartment and the entire action takes place in the space of perhaps three hours. There are only three actors: Rose Mélie, a survivor of the Jewish Action in Vichy France; her eighteen-year-old daughter, Louisiane; and the government official sent to inventory the Mélie's apartment prior to their eviction for show more failure to pay rent. The scope of the novel, however, is much broader and multi-faceted than this simplicity implies.

Rose was six when her brother, Jean, is killed in a brutal way that forever changes the way she views the world. Rose is unable to psychically leave 1942 and replays the events of that year, and the way they effected her family, endlessly in her mind and aloud to her daughter. Louisiane has spent her entire childhood listening to the historical ravings of her mother and trying to keep things under control. When things get too bad, her mother is institutionalized, and she is sent to foster care. Hard for a young girl who would rather watch soaps and learn about sex. The arrival of the official sets off Rose, who mistakes him for a Vichy militia member, and Louisiane who wants desperately to make things appear normal in the hopes that they might be given a reprieve.

I was unable to fully engage with the novel, despite this rather interesting premise, for a couple of reasons. First, I didn't connect emotionally with any of the characters, all of whom are "difficult to love". Second, the novel is written almost entirely in dialogue, but without the punctuation that makes it easy for a reader to follow along. Finally, the book is just plain difficult. Woven around the plot described above is the analogy of the present representing the collaborationist atmosphere of the past. Just as Rose confuses the two, the reader is led to imagine Rose as the French citizen who does try to speak out against the regime, but is silenced. Louisiane is the person who appeases rather than confronts, hoping to overt disaster. Finally, in the the short piece, "Some Useful Advice for Apprentice Process-Servers", included in the book I read, we hear from the perspective of the official, whose voice only confirms the analogy. show less

Set in Paris a process server arrives at an apartment in a housing estate with the view of making an inventory of the goods of two women, a mother (Rose Melie) and her daughter (Louisiane), to sell off for non-payment of rent. The Process Server for his part goes about his business with one objective in mind--valuing all the goods worthwhile to be sold whereas Louisiane attempts through a variety of tactics to win him over--to get him to show even the teensiest shred of compassion. Nothing doing of course. Rose Melie for her part is somewhat deranged from some traumatic experiences during the Nazi occupation in World War II actually takes our Process Server for a Gestapo agent and frequently blurts out this belief. The fact is that he show more might as well be and that is more or less the rationale behind this story. It's narrated mostly by Louisiane whose rather coy and sometimes sly demeanor is often upended by her mothers rather blunt assessments of this Process Servers motivations. Salvayre as a writer has a very sharp and anti-authoritarian wit. Not only sharp but telling. She has a point to make and that is that Fascism isn't necessarily dead in the West like many would have us believe. It's alive and well and finds its home very often in government bureaucracy in the rigid and dogmatic beliefs of its adherents. In the end though she gives the Process Server the final word which he uses in his own way to chilling effect. He of course sees himself as a positive factor to the society he lives in and those he processes are negligible and deserve what's coming to them without exception. show less