The collection’s final novella, Triptych on Sea and Land, is made up of three short stories: 1) Appointment in Bergen, 2) A True History of the Encounters and Complicities of Maqroll the Gaviero and the Painter Alejandro Obregón, and 3) Jamil.
Appointment
One of the most significant of the Maqroll stories as far as understanding what’s at the heart of the character is Appointment in Bergen. Relatively short, it’s narrated by the Gaviero and concerns a Sverre Jensen, a quiet Norwegian who shares Maqroll’s world view.
They find themselves in the seaside resort of Brighton, England. Both are repelled by it and we’re treated to a great deal of narrative scorn:
…We have to leave this awful city. It has brought us nothing but misfortune. The Victorian buildings, and the less ominous architecture of the illustrious heir, attract bad luck. Do you know why? One of the many reasons is that they face the sea, and that is an insult the gods do not pardon. All the bleached out, avid faces of people who walk the streets of Brighton like zombies, trying to forget their London ennui, tell us we are in the land of the dead … There is nothing here but death; it hovers over the great domes of coloured glass, the wrought iron trying to recapture times that are gone forever, the flock of human sheep who don’t know why they’re here.
That’s just one of several passages. In Brighton, they find themselves the targets of a crazily scheming woman named Cathy, but eventually are able to flee, to their great relief. But it’s not so much Cathy they escape from as it is the place itself. Maqroll says,
…I felt I was in paradise, knowing we had escaped the sinister nightmare of that refuge for a middle class that is actually starving to death while it attempts to preserve its fictitious dignity.
While many words are spent expressing disdain for Brighton, and for England generally, it is not what the story is about, at least not directly. The contempt is reflective of something else and that is made apparent in the character of Jensen, who is another variation of Maqroll.
The story concludes with a suicide note Jensen leaves for the Gaviero. It reads, in part:
Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that I’ve been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don’t interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn’t sound absurd, I’d say I’m leaving because I can’t stand the noise the living make.
This is the essence of Maqroll: A self-destructive personality that blames the external world for an internal nausea. It is something existential in the character causing him to swing between loathing for the world and self-loathing.
It’s the fatigue of a personality worn down by an internal battle. We call it world-weary, but it’s really self-weary.
Alejandro Obregón
The second of the stories has the lengthy title of A True History of the Encounters and Complicities of Maqroll the Gaviero and the Painter Alejandro Obregón. Of all the stories that make up the collection, be they a complete novella or a story within a novella, this is the slightest. It’s almost a throwaway.
Alejandro Obregón is an inside joke, or at least a story for insiders. It hasn’t much substance and reads as if it was written to amuse friends.
There was a Columbian artist named Alejandro Obregón (1920 to 1992), and I suspect he and Álvaro Mutis were friends. His character appears in previous stories and it seems that here, in this one, Mutis decided to add a bit of flesh to the character — though not a great deal.
It may have been intended as a kind of homage that is also a light hearted ribbing of a friend. Mutis also uses it as a vehicle to muse on and praise the art of Obregón.
It’s not restricted to the artist either. Mutis also takes a moment to include, and also praise (even as he kids) another of his great friends, Gabriel García Márquez. The Nobel recipient makes a brief appearance in the story, though as someone the author refers to as a friend to both himself and Obregón. He doesn’t actually appear as a character.
(An interesting aside: Speaking of his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Márquez has been quoted as saying, “Most critics don’t realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends…” The idea of an insider’s joke within a piece of writing is not something exclusive to Álvaro Mutis.)
But Alejandro Obregón, as a story, doesn’t have much meat on its bones. It’s more an amusing curiousity than anything. It’s interesting however, to see in the later stories of the collection how Mutis includes an increasing number of people from the non-fictional world, such as Obregón, Márquez, and of course the author himself, Mutis, as well as his wife, Carmen.
Jamil
The last of the Maqroll stories takes us, and the Gaviero, into an area of his life that has been untouched and, at first, seems an extremely unlikely one given the character. But as we read, we find it may be one of the most significant, as far as unravelling the enigma named Maqroll.
Jamil is the son of the Gaviero’s great friend, Abdul, who is now dead (see, Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships). Maqroll has been asked by the child’s mother to take care of him for a while — until she can find a way to take Jamil with her. She plans to join the Bashur family but needs to make enough money so she won’t be dependent on them for support.
She can trust no one but Maqroll to care for her son as she does this. She has heard of him from Abdul and knows the Gaviero is the only person Jamil’s father would trust.
And so Maqroll, with trepidation mixed with a great sense of responsibility, takes on the task. It proves to be no task at all. Rather, it is a revelation to him.
… It’s something I can’t explain, but as I held Jamil’s curly head in my arms, I felt a live current emanating from him, a kind of messenger who led me through the forsaken disorder of my life to a newly created world, a fortunate beginning over again that wiped out past errors and troubles and returned me to a state of willing enthusiasm that was close to intoxication.
In Jamil, he discovers an area of life, and of himself, his fatalistic philosophy and wanderings have kept hidden from him, making the inevitable defeat he has always sought an even greater loss. But rather than being the bitter conclusion of life he has always anticipated, it is bittersweet.
While defeat is all he had expected, and confirms his vision just as a self-fulfilling prophecy confirms itself, it is also more. It’s not absolute. While dark, it is not only dark and that is the revelation Maqroll discovers in Jamil.