'Tomorrow Pamplona' - Jan van Mersbergen

‘A boxer is running through the city. He heads down a street with tall buildings on either side, darts between parked cars, runs diagonally across a junction, down a bike path, crosses a bridge and follows the curve of the tram tracks. Anyone passing would think he was in training. But he’s running faster than usual. His breathing is out of control. His eyes are wide.’

The first paragraph of ‘Tomorrow Pamplona’ by Jan van Mersbergen, my favourite book published by Peirene Press so far, is written in a style that reflects the physical actions of Danny, the boxer character who is being described. The first, short simple sentence ‘A boxer is running through the city’ contains an even number of syllables and when read with exaggerated stress, replicates the rhythm of the steady, strength building run. A box-er is run-ning through the cit-y.

The second sentence is long, but punctuated by commas and this creates different sized sections, which sit within the sentence. Every time a comma is used in this sentence, it creates a slight jerk, giving the reader a physical feeling like Danny is darting, or turning corners as the words describe. The different sized sections enhance this rhythmic feel of physical movement, mimicking the different sizes of the stretches of his run and indicating that Danny has passed into a different area, just as the text describes his passage through the landscape. As the text informs the reader that this is not, as they might have first believed, a normal training run, short, simple sentences appear one after the other. Each sentence is smaller and faster to read than the last as the paragraph nears its end, emphasising the feeling that his behaviour is getting wilder, perhaps more violent.

‘Tomorrow Pamplona’ (translated by Laura Watkinson), is an example of a novel where the content of the story is enhanced by the use of a sympathetic writing style. While the rest of the novel isn’t written using the same strict style rules that appear in the first paragraph, where the rhythm and sentence structure of the prose mirrors what is happening in the plot, there’s a simple clearness and cleanness in the prose of this first paragraph which is present in the rest of the text. I could say that this kind of writing seems to be used to present a text that is stylistically in sympathy with the sport of boxing, but that feels too general and open to misinterpretation. Saying all that and then calling the writing powerful, or forceful, is correct, but that makes ‘Tomorrow Pamplona’ sound like a heavy weight affair of raw masculine aggression about the kind of sock to the jaw boxing seen in comics about super heroes. It’s not like that at all.

There are moments where the prose feels like a forceful jab, for example this teasing section that comes right at the start of the novel:

‘Stop.
He lands a punch.
Stop that!
He lands another punch.’

Such sharp, short prose, describing punching is another example of the writing style mirroring the action that the text is portraying. Here is writing which feels like the widely understood meaning of a word like ‘powerful’, when it’s applied to a novel about boxing. It hits hard, like a sharp shock.

This jabbing prose is different from much of the rest of the text, which is powerful in a different way. I’m tempted to call it quiet, but that implies meekness and ‘Tomorrow Pamplona’ is always assured and smooth, without allowing arrogance to permeate it’s writing, or the personality of its central character. Maybe quietly strong is a better description of its prose.

The style of the text I quoted above, where someone shouts ‘Stop that!’ is designed to show an explosion of power, the use of energy. The more common style of writing is the one in this paragraph:

‘The rain sweeps against his face. He runs past a supermarket and sees a black kid pushing a line of shopping trolleys inside. He passes beneath a viaduct with drops of rainwater clinging to its solid metal girders. Reflections of the posters on the walls ripple dimly in the puddles. He stops in the shelter of a tree by a big roundabout. On his right, a railway line hangs high above the street. He sees the station just beyond the roundabout. A long train is pulling in, its wheels screeching. The boxer puts his hands in his pockets. His keys, his loose change, his mobile – it’s all still in the changing room at the boxing school.’

The imagery in this passage is mundane: rain, shopping trolleys and dimly rippling puddles. The landscape is unspectacular, filled with girders and roundabouts. Yet each image is carefully positioned to excite curiosity in the reader, without being flashy, kind of like an art movie’s opening scenes. The reader wants to know why they are being shown such ordinary places, when they have been teased with the idea that the boxer may be running erratically. There is tension below the surface of these images; tension created by the ordinariness of the story, the readers lack of understand as to how this average sounding landscape scene will shape into a story worth reading. Sentences are carefully used, placed in a particular order to create an interesting prose texture out of lengths. Words and descriptions, such as ‘drops of water clinging to its solid metal girders’ are chosen to display the power and potential of the ordinary and reflect the containment of energy subdued after a run that doesn’t quite exhaust a highly refined athlete.

Maybe I’d be better off saying that the writing is in sympathy with the particular boxer Jan van Mersbergen has chosen to portray, rather than in sympathy with boxing in general. That makes it easier to describe exactly what I mean. When I say Mersbergen has created a novel where the writing style reflects the physical power of Danny, the boxer I don’t want to conjure a Rocky like character, or a boxer lithe with panther like fluidity. The novel flicks back and forth from the present where Danny is feeling unknown consequences and the past where he is training for a big fight. In the present storyline Danny, is extremely self-contained and mildly vindictive. He possesses the kind of obvious sense of physical confidence that he probably never even thinks about, because it’s been part of him for so long. He could hurt anyone easily, but I wouldn’t call him powerful and yet he’s not exactly vulnerable. He’s just very in his head; the kind of character who makes you want to read on in case the mystery of his state is ever revealed, although you doubt it will be. He’s like a box full of potential, but unlike other boxing protagonists he seems to have no difficulty containing and channeling that potential into productivity.

And that’s how he remains most of the time, in the present day narrative stream. Danny is running from something and he happens to get picked up by Robert, a man on his way to run with the bulls in Pamplona. Why yes, this is a male road trip book, but it’s often the opposite of the traditional male road trip story, which is usually full of bonding moments. There’s an active resistance to bonding from Danny, although things slip out and he does share some details. Robert is veeeery talky and at the same time spectacularly bad at drawing Danny out. There are moments like the one I quoted above, where memories and feelings from whatever has caused him to run, bubble up and break through for the reader to see but mostly present Danny is closed, or busy quietly ruminating on anything but what he’s escaping. Personally, I think he’d be an intriguing character to read about without any extra information. I sometimes like characters that are closed off to the reader, just as much as I like characters whose psyches are unrolled piece by piece for the reader in painstaking analysis.

To further illuminate Danny’s character Mersbergen has included flashback scenes, which show a slow, chronological build up to whatever Danny has done. These sections show a different Danny, one still contained and focused, but willing to open happily and easily to people he cares about. While developing his boxing career, building to the big fight (again without any of the soul searching drama that implies, instead he’s building calmly and carefully increasing his training) Danny starts to see the assistant of his new promoter, Ragna. The relationship is touching, easy and appears to be growing stronger each day (and the sex scenes are niiice). However, in the present sections, the reader learns that whatever terrible thing Danny has done, probably involves Ragna.

Mersberger nicely flips the attitudes of Danny and Robert’s present day characters by including these flashbacks. Danny’s story is revealed, while on the journey with Robert he angrily conceals himself. Robert is verbose in the present, but by the end of the book the reader knows little about his situation. Why does he routinely leave his family to pick up hitchhikers and run with the bulls? Based on his reaction to women they meet on the trip, his repeated remarks about Kim Wilde’s sexiness, the reader might make some assumptions about his trips away, but he genuinely seems to love and respect his wife. I have some theories of my own. Maybe these comments speak of male posturing, rather than a genuine attitude. I think he needs this trip to forge a space between him and his family in order to return to them as a loving father and husband. There’s a homoerotic background vibe to the story sometimes, for example there’s a moment where the two stop for the night that flicked my male/male slash sensor:

‘Danny lets Robert pour him a drink. The whisky warms him and makes his thoughts flow smoothly. He says: You sleeping in the car?
There’s room for two. Or would you prefer to sleep outside?
I don’t know.
It could get cold, says Robert. He hesitates. You’re not scared to sleep in the car, are you?
A cold breeze blows across the small of his back. He tugs down the jumper.
I’m not scared….
Robert rubs his forehead. Then he blinks at Danny and says: If you want to sleep under a tree somewhere, go right ahead.’

The reader never finds out what the background to Robert’s story is, because Danny quickly leaves his house when they return from Pamplona and the chattiest of the pair is almost denied a voice by Danny’s disinterest in his life. Robert’s uninvestigated life fills the end of the book with as much mystery as Danny’s narrative has put into the rest of the novella.

‘Tomorrow Pamplona’ is a really spectacular novella, although I’m finding it hard to parse my feeling about the ending, the violence and Danny. ( Slight spoilers and questions that will only make sense to people who have read the books )

I hope we’ll see more books by Jan van Mersbergen translated soon, soon, soon.

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