#60: Counternarratives, by John Keene

The title suggests an academic exercise, the work of a tenured PhD who’s in the habit of referring to a book or story as a narrative. But this is a book of “stories and novellas,” not a work of literary criticism. So perhaps then it’s fiction with a critical agenda? It’s more a cultural agenda. Keene is writing from the perspective of the non-white people invariably assigned to supporting roles in the standard histories—or cut out entirely. In his stories, he looks through the eyes and speaks through the mouths of the people who have been muted by the ethnic biases of five hundred years of American history. (And not just North American history—some of Keene’s stories are set in South American and the Carribean.) He doesn’t just bring these people into the picture—he puts them at the center, gives them agency (another word from the academic lexicon), the power to frame and control their narratives.

The most obvious example of this agenda is a tale narrated by Jim, Huck Finn’s black companion from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I would guess that most people reviewing Counternarratives would mention this story, titled “Rivers,” in the first paragraph or two because it’s such a perfect example of what Keene means by a counternarrative. Jim meets up with Huck twice in the years after they ride down the river together. The first time Huck is with Tom Sawyer, somewhere in Illinois in the years just before the Civil War. Huck is cordial enough, but Tom is more a man of his time:

“When did you get yourself down this way?” Sawyer said, his razor lips cutting me a smile. “Cause I reckon soon as you knew you had got your freedom we all woke up to find you gone.”

I’m not sure Mark Twain would acknowledge this Tom as his own. But that’s kind of the point.

The second encounter is down in Texas toward the close of the Civil War. Jim is now in a black Union regiment. He spies Huck on the Confederate side as the opposing forces close for battle:

I looked up and he still had not seen me, this face he could have drawn in his sleep, these eyes that had watched his and watched over his, this elder who had been like a brother, a keeper, a second father as he wondered why this child was taking him deeper and deeper into the heart of the terror, why south instead of straight east to liberation, credit his and my youth or ignorance or inexperience, for which I forgive him and myself but I came so close to ending up in a far worse place than I ever was, and I heard Anderson or someone call out in the distance, and raised my gun, bringing it to my eye, the target his hands which were moving quickly with his own gun leaned against his shoulder, over his heart, and I steadied the barrel, my finger on the trigger, which is when our gazes finally met, I am going to tell the reporter, and then we can discuss that whole story of the trip down the river with that boy, his gun aimed at me now, other faces behind his now, all of them assuming the contours, the lean, determined hardness of his face, that face, there were a hundred of that face, those faces, burnt, determined, hard and thinking only of their own disappearing universe, not ours, which was when the cry broke across the rippling grass, and the gun, the guns, went off.

“Rivers” is a fine story, but it almost feels obligatory. If Counternarrives were a movie, you know that “Rivers” would make up the bulk of the trailer. The best stories in the book, to my mind, are the two longest ones—the novellas—where the reversal of perspective is just one element in the mix. These tales have a delicious element of the macabre in them. They remind me a bit of Isak Dinesen’s gothic tales. One is titled “A Letter on the Trials of the Counterreformation in New Lisbon.” Keene uses his knowledge of languages and history to frame his stories as documents from earlier centuries and cultures.

The story is in the form of a letter, from one Jesuit priest in 16th century Brazil to another. It is a report on what happens when a young priest, one Dom Joaquim D’Azevedo, is assigned to manage a small mission at the edge of a small settlement that is itself on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. The priest finds the mission in a rundown condition, and the three other clergymen somewhat lacking in zeal. The employees of the mission are natives and African slaves who have been converted to Christianity—or at least given Christian names. D’Azevedo does his best to bring order and a sense of purpose to the mission, even establishing a religious school for the Portuguese children of the settlement. But there are strange things happening—especially at night:

As he closed the door he [D’Azevedo] could again hear the drumming, faint but now accompanied, he perceived, by a low wail, like an animal caught in the crevice of a deep shaft, or wire upon wire. […] It was as he was opening the door to go back indoors that he again heard drumbeats and, our of the corner of his eye, he spied a shape, a shadow, moving along the rear wall, and he turned to spot something, someone, its hair fanning over its shoulders, gliding over the stone barrier.

Native drumming at night—is Keene teasing us with this classic cliché from the heart of darkness? The story is a first rate spooky tale, but when you add Keene’s particular theme of inverted history, it flips in a fantastic and unexpected way: nobody is who they seemed, not even our central character, Dom Joaquim D’Azevedo. There are occult elements, but when the story flips what had seemed sacred becomes superstitious and what had seemed superstition becomes sacred. And those converted natives? Not so much.

The other long story bears the rather intimidating title “Gloss on a History of Roman Catholics in the Early American Republic, 1790 – 1825; Or the Strange History of Our Lady of the Sorrows.” Three paragraphs into this pseudo-document we are directed to a footnote, and that footnote then comprises the remainder of this 100-page novella. It’s the story of a young Haitian woman who lives as a slave on a Haitian plantation. As a revolt sweeps the countryside the landowning white family escapes to Maryland, taking the young woman, called Carmel, as a companion for their daughter, Eugénie. But Eugénie is possessed of an “innate rebelliousness” and exhibits a “libertine attitude,” and so she and Carmel are dispatched to the western frontier of the young republic:

In the late summer of 1806 Eugénie de L’Ècart entered the Academy of the Sisters of the Most Precious Charity of our Lady of the Sorrows, near the village of Hurttstown, Kentucky. The small and elite order had originated in southern Wallonia in the waning years of the Counter-Reformation. It was known for its industry and thrift, as well as for its effectiveness at spiritually molding young women of means.

All this brochure-like prose notwithstanding, the school is little more than a prison for Carmel who is thrice-subjugated: she is a black girl in a slave territory, a Catholic (at least by association) in a land that sees Catholics with suspicion and hostility, and most immediately, the victim of an unscrupulous and sometimes cruel companion in Eugénie.

Keene outdoes himself in this story, trying out a whole range of effects. As Carmel is oppressed and enclosed and muted by her circumstances, so the telling of her story is constrained and occluded. For several pages, Keene gives us her diary entries:

V hot today men loadd up wagons we put in preservs sev trunks of cloaths also got much merchdse from east mlle E up and abt she doesnt eat look ill but face flush I combd her hair some fall out she big as a calabash v quiet stared at me but say noth when wagons & men leave PH and I hid und the stairs so we cd talk I gave her dr hid it in my hair & she sd your power is in here & touches my brow later mlle E sd where was you dont lie to me then she wd not talk again tryd a night visit no luck latin sentences & 2 rosaries

Lots of things are going on. Eugénie is carrying on with a man from the town and becomes pregnant. A flood devastates the town and the townspeople hold the Catholics in the school accountable. We know that Carmel is the daughter of a sorceress, but if she has occult powers, what are they and how can they help her as things come to a head? Once again there are goings on at night—whispered conversations on dark staircases and the like. The ending is suitably apocalyptic.

After this mad ride, the remaining stories in Counternarratives seemed anticlimactic. Not that they aren’t interesting and imaginative, but sometimes they felt a bit self-conscious and contrived. I hope that in future writings John Keene journeys as far into the dark country of his mind as he does in the two longer stories in this book.