Monsieur Linh and His Child

by Philippe Claudel, Euan Cameron, Euan Cameron

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. To begin with, he is too afraid to leave the refugee centre, but the first time he braves the freezing cold to walk the streets of this strange, fast-moving town, he encounters Monsieur Bark, a widower whose dignified sorrow mirrors his own. Though they have no shared language, an instinctive friendship is forged; but Monsieur Linh's stay in the dormitory is only temporary. Sooner or later he and his child must find a permanent home. Delicate and restrained, but with an extraordinary twist, Monsieur Linh and His Child is an immensely moving novel of perfect simplicity, by the author of Brodeck's Report.

Release date: March 31, 2011

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 137

Sample

An old man is standing on the after-deck of a ship. In his arms he clasps a flimsy suitcase and a newborn baby, even lighter than the suitcase. The old man’s name is Monsieur Linh. He is the only person who knows this is his name because all those who once knew it are dead.

Standing at the stern of the ship, he sees his homeland, the land of his ancestors and his dead ones, fading away into the distance, while in his arms the child sleeps. The land is growing fainter, it becomes infinitesimal, and Monsieur Linh watches it vanishing over the horizon, for hours, regardless of the wind that blows and ruffles him like a puppet.

The voyage lasts a long time. Days and nights. And the old man spends all this time on the after-deck of the ship, gazing at the white wake that eventually converges with the sky, peering at the horizon, still searching for the vanished shores.

When they want to make him go to his cabin, he allows himself to be guided without a word, but they find him again a little while later, on the after-deck, one hand holding the railing, the other clasping the child, with the small, worn leather suitcase lying at his feet.

A strap holds the suitcase together to prevent it coming apart, as if there were precious goods inside it. In actual fact, it merely contains old clothes, a photograph that is almost entirely faded by the sunlight, and a canvas bag into which the old man has sprinkled a fistful of earth. That was everything he was able to take with him. And the child, of course.

The child is well behaved. She is a girl. She was six weeks old when Monsieur Linh came on board with a countless number of other people similar to him, men and women who had lost everything, who had been hurriedly rounded up and who did as they were told.

Six weeks. This is how long the voyage lasts. So that when the ship arrives at its destination, the little girl has already doubled the length of her life. As for the old man, he feels as if he has aged a hundred years.

Occasionally, he hums a song to the little girl, always the same one, and he sees the baby’s eyes open, and her mouth too. He watches her, and he observes much more than the face of a very young child. He sees landscapes, bright mornings, the slow and peaceful plod of the buffalo in the paddy fields, the bowed shadow of the giant banyan trees at the entrance to his village, the blue mist that comes down from the mountains towards evening, like a shawl that falls softly over one’s shoulders.

The milk he is giving the child runs down the corners of her lips. Monsieur Linh is not used to this yet. He is clumsy. But the little girl does not cry. She goes back to sleep, and as for him, he continues to gaze out over the horizon, over the foam made by the wake, and into the far distance in which, for quite a long time now, he has no longer been able to discern anything.

Finally, one November day, the ship arrives at its destination, but the old man does not want to get off. Leaving the ship means leaving behind what still binds him to his homeland. Two women then lead him gently towards the quayside, as if he were unwell. It is very cold. The sky is overcast. Monsieur Linh breathes in the smell of the new land. He does not smell anything. There is no smell. It is a land without smell. He clasps the child more closely to him and he sings the song in her ear. Really he sings it for himself as well, so that he can hear his own voice and the music of his language.

Monsieur Linh and the child are not alone on the quayside. There are hundreds of people, like themselves. Old and young, waiting obediently, their meagre belongings alongside them, waiting in weather that is colder than any they have ever known, to be told where to go. No-one talks to anyone else. They are frail statues with sad faces, shivering in utter silence.

One of the women who had helped him leave the ship comes up to him again. She indicates that he should follow her. He does not understand what she is saying, but he understands her gestures. He shows the child to the woman. She looks at it, appears to hesitate, and eventually smiles. He starts to walk and follows her.

The child’s parents were Monsieur Linh’s children. The child’s father was his son. They died in the war that has been raging in his country for years now. They set off one morning to work in the paddy fields, with the child, and by the evening they had not returned. The old man ran. He was out of breath when he arrived at the rice field. It was nothing but a vast hole, bubbling with water, with the corpse of a disembowelled buffalo lying on one side of the crater, its yoke broken in two like a bit of straw. There was also his son’s body, and his son’s wife’s body, and further away, the little girl, her eyes wide open, unharmed and wrapped in a blanket, and beside the child a doll, her own doll, the same size as her, which had had its head blown off by the blast of the bomb. The little girl was ten days old. Her parents had called her Sang diû, which in the local language means “mild morning”. This was the name they had given her, and then they had died. Monsieur Linh had taken the child. He set off. He decided to leave for ever. For the child’s sake.

When the old man thinks about the little girl in this way, it seems to him that she snuggles up even more closely to his side. He grips the handle of his suitcase and follows the woman, his face glistening beneath the November rain.

On reaching a room that is pleasantly warm, the woman shows him to a seat. She makes him sit down. There are some tables, some chairs. It is very big. For the time being, they are on their own, but a little later all the people from the ship arrive and take their places. They are given some soup. He does not want to eat, but the woman comes up to him to make him understand that he must eat. She looks at the little girl who is asleep. He sees the way the woman looks at the child. He tells himself that she is right. He tells himself that he must eat, that he must build up his strength, for the child’s sake if not for himself.

He will never forget the tastelessness of that first mouthful of soup, swallowed down half-heartedly, when he had just disembarked, when it was so cold outside, and when it was not his country outside, but a strange and foreign land, one that would always remain so for him, in spite of the time that would pass, in spite of the ever greater distance between his memories and the present.

The soup is like the air of the city that he breathed in as he left the ship. It does not really have any smell, not really any taste. There is nothing familiar about it. There is none of the delicious tang of lemongrass, the sweetness of fresh coriander, the smoothness of cooked tripe. The soup enters his mouth and passes into his body, and he is suddenly filled with all the strangeness of his new life.

In the evening, the woman takes Monsieur Linh and the child to a dormitory. The place is clean and spacious. Two families of refugees have already been living there for three weeks. They have made themselves comfortable and at home. They knew one another because both families came from the same southern province. They fled together, drifting for a long time on the wreckage of a boat, before being hoisted aboard a real ship. There are two men, both young. One of them has one wife, the other has two. The eleven children are noisy and happy. They all look at the old man as if he is a nuisance, and they stare in astonishment, and with slight hostility, at the baby he is carrying. Monsieur Linh feels as if he is disturbing them. Nevertheless, they make an effort to welcome him and they bow to him, calling him “Uncle”, as is their custom. The children want to take little Sang diû in their arms, but he tells them calmly that he will not allow it. He presses her to him. The children shrug. The three women whisper to one another, then they turn away. The two men sit down again in a corner and get on with their game of mah-jong.

The old man looks at the bed that has been allocated to him. He puts the child gently down on the ground, remove. . .