Drama in Madagascar

Read 'The Rivals' written by Andrea Lee, published in The New Yorker on December 28, 2020, for the January 2021 issue. The standalone story is apparently Part 7 of a series of stories joined together to form the author's new book, 'Red Island House' slated to be released in March 2021. 

'Red Island House' is a novel about "neocolonialism in the African island nation of Madagascar. The book centers around an Italian and American couple, Senna and Shay, and their grand house on a paradisiacal Madagascan beach." It's meant to be one of those epic stories spanning two decades. Wow. Okay, I'll deal with one story at a time. As it is, the language runs with a flourish, happily engaging in details of every day life, that to me, is a tad tedious to remember and imagine with every sentence. 

Another story 'The Children' that was published in The New Yorker in June 2019, is another such vignette belonging to the upcoming novel too. I had to read that too. In fact, I only learnt about 'The Children' when I did a cursory search about 'The Rivals' before fully starting on it.

Luckily I did that. Reading 'The Children' first, provided helpful background and context to 'The Rivals'. At least I knew when Shay and Senna got married and how they ended up in Madagascar, instead of being thrown smack in the middle of family and business drama.

At Christmas, when Shay and Senna travel to Madagascar, Shay is pregnant with their first child. This makes her the center of attention, but she still keeps up with the gossip, and the first thing she hears is that Harena has married a half-Chinese musician, who has taken her to Mauritius, where his band plays in the smaller clubs and hotels. It is a love match, and Harena is said to be always dressed up and much admired, but drinking more than ever and doing hard drugs. Shay is told that, when some visiting Italian finally gave Harena the news of her father’s death, she flung bottles, clawed her own face, and screamed that it wasn’t true; that even now she talks about Leandro as if he were coming to fetch her. Her husband is patient with—maybe even proud of—what he calls her European behavior, but people on Anjavavy say that she is possessed. Nothing good, they say, will come of her.

As for Harena’s half brother, Didier, the phone number he gave Shay is out of service, and no one can discover his whereabouts in Mahajanga or Morondava, though there can’t be many mechanics like him. So the lost heirs who came into Shay’s life are just as suddenly gone.  

Now that I had read 'The Children', I began again with 'The Rivals'. 'The Rivals' is a vignette on the tensions on the island of Madagascar, the run-ins between the locals and the foreigners, the sex tourists, the long-stayers, and of course, the criminals and those on-the-run. Shay and Senna live on Madagascar, an island they never thought they would call home. But they did. Senna is a wealthy Italian businessman, and Shay is a black American professor who met, fell in love, married, lived in Milan, and then moved into a sprawling villa in Madagascar named 'Red House' where they spent over two decades together raising children.  

The owners of the Red House, Senna and his wife, Shay, have left Madagascar and are back home in Italy at the time, but there are plenty of witnesses to give them, later, a detailed report of the fight between their resident accountant and their old friend and next-door neighbor. There is Madame Rose, their neighbor on the opposite side and their chief informant. There are the gardeners and maids from the Red House, including the formidable head housekeeper, Bertine la Grande. There are several Antandroy market women heading up the beach bearing baskets of vegetables on their heads. There is a boy driving a herd of zebu up the side path from their morning bath in the sea. There is an oyster vender in a straw pillbox hat.

The maids and gardeners rush to separate the struggling old vazaha while other people stop and stare, but with a notable lack of astonishment. Everybody up and down Finoana Beach knows the history of the trouble and the name of the woman behind it.

I was a tad confused overall. There were too many characters, loads of plotting and power play, and plenty of intrigue going on. I couldn't remember who is what, and which is what. Okay, it's not my kind of story, so I didn't give it that much due attention. It kinda played out like a television soap.

Methinks these stories are fine on their own although there isn't going to be much explanation given. But I'm not interested to know how the saga eventually plays out in a book, or to read all the different stories till the last one. Two short stories are more than sufficient for me to get a taste of 'Red Island House'. 

In an interview with Deborah Treisman on 'Fictionalizing Madagascar', in reply to a question on the power struggle in 'The Rivals', the author explained how she depicted the power struggle in this story, 

The story of two old European men competing for the affections of a much younger, much poorer Malagasy woman would seem to be a meditation on power. In fact, at the climax of the story, the question is asked: Who won? What kinds of power are you thinking about in this story, and who does have the upper hand?  

“The Rivals” explores several different types of power—economic, sexual, cultural—and the dynamic between servant and master, between male and female, between youth and age. By the end of the story, it is very clear who has the most power in this odd trio of relationships: Noelline. She survives her two lovers, who initially had every advantage over her—survives and thrives. Indeed, perhaps the reason that she is disliked by so many of her own people, including Shay’s redoubtable housekeeper, Bertine la Grande, is that she is so enviably brilliant at surviving. I wanted to turn the literary norm on its head, to disrupt the conventional narrative of the exploited indigenous woman victimized by the colonial man, and its tragic ending. I personally don’t like to overuse tragedy, and I love tales of people who triumph in unexpected ways.