Masculine melancholy is pretty bleak. It likes it that way. It stoically stands, jaw set and face to the wind, luxuriating in its inevitable isolation. It informs the first novella of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis.
Called The Snow of the Admiral, it’s written in the form of a diary Maqroll keeps on whatever paper is at hand. He records a journey upriver on a boat to three mysterious sawmills, where he hopes to cash in by getting wood he can sell when he goes back downriver.
It’s just an excuse for his wanderlust and another in the many schemes he has had in his life to become wealthy. All his great designs fail. To a large extent, he both expects and wants them to. He simply needs a prompt to move from one adventure to another.
In this case, there isn’t much to the adventure, though there is some mystery. Why is everyone vague when he asks about the sawmills? Who is the captain? Who is the major?
The story can’t help but recall Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Conrad is an influence for Mutis and, on the surface at least, the stories are similar: river journeys into something dark and unknown. However, the similarities more or less end there.
The Snow of the Admiral has many taciturn, evasive characters. It’s ironic that they have so much to say. When they talk, they do so at length. Granted, they spend more time alluding than stating anything specific, but it allows Maqroll to speculate and philosophize as he diarizes his journey.
Throughout, Maqroll makes references to a woman, Flor Estevez, who, from what he tells of her, is as reticent as everyone else. She’s a romanticized figure, the one bright light in the Gaviero’s purposeless life. He has left her behind in an inn called The Snow of the Admiral, somewhere in the cordillera. It’s a symbol for him of what is good and redeeming in life; a kind of spiritual anchor.
Having to recognize the pointlessness of his venture, and returning back from the sawmills, Maqroll’s attention returns to the his beloved cordillera, and the inn known as The Snow of the Admiral, and Flor Estevez.
Spoiler Alert
The spoiler alert isn’t really necessary and I’ll explain why shortly. However, in the strictest sense, here comes the spoiler.
When Maqroll gets to the mountains he becomes lost but eventually finds the inn. It was ramshackle to begin with but now it is in ruins. Flor is gone and, despite desperate searching, the Gaviero can’t find her. Fate would have it no other way.
The novella concludes with four brief notes as appendices. They are written by others (not Maqroll). In the last one, The Gaviero’s Visit, there is a reference to him and his voice as, “…the toneless chant that betrayed his present condition of hopeless defeat. He was a hostage of the void.”
That captures the gist of the story, and it’s tone.
The Snow of the Admiral comes across as a meandering yarn, a bit like Dostoyevsky’s shambling approach, veering off on various asides, eventually winding back to the ostensible story. It’s the least structured of all the novellas and makes me smile because it breaks all the rules of writing, if we’re to believe what some say about how to write stories.
It consists almost entirely of asides, and they’re the story’s appeal. Somehow, with literature’s peculiar sleight of hand, they cohere in the end as a single, and wonderful, story.
Earlier, I warned of a ‘spoiler’ in this review. It was an obligatory thing; it wasn’t necessary because the novella is not about what happens. It’s about those asides which cumulatively create a picture and a meaning. The story is not about what it’s about, but how it is about it, and the image that emerges.
Finally, it’s about what the image communicates to the reader. It’s worth noting that the story began as a poem.