Future anthologies will borrow from here
Samra Rahman

Intelligent Endings
by Richard M. Rothman Rupa. Rs 295

THE stories in this collection are set either in that land of dreams, the US of A, or Nazi Germany. Even those located in the States paint such a dismal picture, of a sort of dystopia, that they should be made required reading for those of our compatriots who are willing to give their eyetooth to migrate to that El Dorado. Not that it would prove an effective antidote since the lure of the dollar can overcome everything else besides. In case you wondered, the author is not some unregenerate communist, but an American diplomat, who had earlier worked with a major multinational.

The title story deals with the outcome of the all-pervasive worship of that bitch goddess, "Success". Horowitz is a colorless, lifeless blob, an out-and-out failure. "Failure" in that Land of Opportunity is one sin that is utterly unforgivable. (We need not preen our feathers with superior satisfaction since we, too, in our own way, worship success. Except that in this land of infinite contradictions, we also worship "failure", when it takes the extreme form of renunciation). When Horowitz comes across a high-pressure offer from some sinister operators, promising to transport a person to a choice life situation - a sort of technological reincarnation - he opts out of his failed life. His family's reaction, or rather the lack of it, is brought out with uncompromising realism.

The best of the bunch is Men as God, a mystic tale, where an old Jew, facing the firing squad during the Holocaust, effects a psychic transfer of his 'gift', setting off a chain reaction leading to an unexpected consummation. The story exemplifies Carlyle's observation: "A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one." One may venture the prediction that this story will find a place in future anthologies of short stories. Another deeply moving story is The Living Doll. It shows how the certitudes of a lifetime crumble when the love of one's own offspring supervenes. The Commandant of an extermination camp, who has been conditioned to believe in the supremacy of the Aryan race and hence has no compunction in presiding over the killing of young Jewish children, makes a horrific discovery.

Secret Secret reverses the methodology of the secret service. Here the motto is not to conceal vital secrets, but to give these out. The sort of situations that arise in this spoof remind you of the comic rigmarole Peter Ustinov spins off in his delightful play Romonov and Juliet. Double-crossing as a fine art and an accepted norm in business, as also in life, is depicted in Head of the Class. Its ending is indeed a surprise and can rightly be called an "intelligent ending".

The stories are of somewhat uneven quality and on the whole not calculated to cheer up a convalescent, but the flow of language and narrative skills are of a high order. The stark black and white illustrations by Bill Negron complement the stories.

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