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Short Fiction

The Secrets of a Fire King,

Kim Edwards, Penguin, p.272, Rs. 250.

It’s never a good idea to have a peek at the author’s photo before reading a book, you will then tend to judge it. John Kennedy Toole would have looked like a serial killer, instead of a man who wrote immortal prose. Kim Edwards looks like a sweet housewife who probably bakes wonderful apple pies…not. Her The Secrets of a Fire King are such sublime shorts that I haven’t read one last piece. I’m saving it for when I need to remind myself that this world matters, which is probably tonight.

But that is what her writing evokes; it is so spare (and dreamlike) that people and situations shine through and so global that she can fly like a bee from America to Indonesia to France without naming these places, suck the nectar from each and drop little pearls our way as she flies some more. Her honeycomb of tales is dark gold, as we imagine an imploded star would be after shining its brightest, and then turning indescribable black. At the same time, Edwards can’t keep away from the light everywhere in her prose as her world stays teetering.

There isn’t a single one of her dramatis personae you will forget: A young woman who discovers that gender is destiny, a Japanese wife who comes to a foreign land and remains forever foreign herself, an expatriate whose determination to think herself above locals leaves her open to utter humiliation after 30 years. Everywhere there is a sense of loss, in all the unique situations and searing characterisations; yet nowhere is there a hint that life is not being lived as close to the bone as faulty humans (and one non-human) dare.

Take the young girl in “The Way it Felt to be Falling”. Her moorings have come loose. Her father’s business fails and he is committed, her mother works as a secretary and makes cakes on the side. She is a loner whose friends would make good cast members for Les Miserables. Then she takes to skydiving and strangely enough, finds her moorings again as she discovers courage and humour, not bad companions to go through the years with.

In “In the Garden”, a man finds the elixir of life, (the mix is echoed in “A Gleaming in the Darkness”, a homage to Marie Curie), and realises the adage about the two tragedies of existence; one, never gaining your heart’s desire, the second, gaining it. So Andrew Byar achieves immortality with the person he loves but wonders “what if, in the uncountable days that lay before them…his companion turned out to be a woman he despised?” Beatrice is a fascinating supposition herself. After her brother’s death she realises that the world has no mystery and is instead a dastardly place, so she does what the grief-stricken do, she becomes fearless and pushes the boundaries of experience. But the problem with a free spirit is that you cannot hold onto them. And the elixir turns out to be unexpected as well, even a kiss, as Beatrice’s tongue slides into a lover’s mouth, “bloomed like a flower struck by light”. That is not the only thing that is struck as Andrew becomes “as hunched and gray as a comma”, while Beatrice’s own body begins to “lose its form, cascading into the unstill world like petals falling…like every minute particle of light”.

The born-again preacher woman’s daughter Nichola “has seen the light” too, but not the way her mother would have wished; she echoes the heartbroken sigh of mothers the world over, in every century: “We used to have such fun”.

There are so many nuggets to choose from, but the retelling of “The Little Mermaid in Thirst” (and aren’t all women just like her?) is potent. For the sake of a man, she takes human form and lives in the twilight before returning to her true self. The imagery of salt and flesh and a huge aquarium filled with adulterous souls is horridly fascinating.

While she surges between air and sea, Edwards is the mermaid in the end. Her words are like a siren’s song. And her mastery of them is not of this world.

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