Jean-Christophe Rufin, as in his Goncourt-winning Rouge Brésil, is interested in culture conflict. Le Collier rouge is more about the conflict of two political ideologies, or is it really? Maybe the conflict between the animal and the human world, to the detriment of the human? Or what exactly is the main theme?
Whatever the conclusion reached, the origins of this short novel began in Jordan in 2011, when Rufin, working for an unnamed weekly magazine, was enjoying one of his many idle moments with the late photographer Benoît Gysembergh. The photographer spoke about his grandfather who had received the Légion d'honneur during the First World War, but was afterwards arrested and tried following a transgressive drunken act.
And so we have Le Collier rouge, set just after WWI, in which Morlac (also Légion d'honneur) has been imprisoned for (we don't discover until the end) decorating his dog Guillaume with the medal during the 14th July ceremony. The story takes place in Berry, near Bourges, and the military judge Lantier has the problem of carrying out a series of interviews with Morlac, who's the only prisoner in this unnamed small place. The excessive wine-drinking jailer Dujeux sounds as if he's going to be an interesting character, although he just fades into the background as Morlac's actions and beliefs come to the fore, as well as his relationship with Lantier (and specifically the character of the judge himself).
All this notwithstanding, the main character in the book is the dog Guillaume: faithful and extraordinarily intelligent. Guillaume is the thread which runs thoughout this novel, from the first sentence when his howling is disturbing Dujeux, to the final sentence when Lantier takes him home to his wife and children in the back seat of his car, when Guillaume seems to smile at the idea of his being a present.
In between all this is the uneducated Morlac transforming himself into a pacifist anarchist largely through his lover Valentine's books (Marx, Phoudhon, Bakunin); and Lantier's determination not to go out on a negative note.
And the winner? Fidelity, of course: case dismissed.
My other Jean-Christophe Rufin posts:
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Jean-Christophe Rufin: Sept histoires qui reviennent de loin
Jean-Christophe Rufin: Rouge Brésil | Brasil Red
Jean-Christophe Rufin is a medical doctor who has done a great deal of humanitarian work overseas. Much of his fictional work, including his Goncourt-winning Rouge Brésil, involves the meeting of different cultures, of which there are several examples in these seven stories from far away, although not necessarily (only) far way geographically, but perhaps far away psychologically, in different concords or conflicts, perhaps of generation or language.
'Passion francophone' is an interesting example of Rufin's multilingual confusions. Here we have a woman from Germany in a hotel in France speaking French, although no one understands her: in fact she is speaking neither French nor German. No, the language she thinks she has been taught as French is Hungarian.
And then there's 'Les Naufragés', set in what seems to be Mauritius or L’île Maurice, but post-colonial Mauritius, where the native population has taken over, where the tourists flock to their tourist hotels where everything is done for them and they don't even have to leave their tourist ghettos and meet the true people who belong to the country, where they believe implicitly in the harmony that the guidebooks suggest exists: in a few words, Rufin demolishes the self-deception, the mindlessness of tourism. Meanwhile the native Indians increasingly express their birthright on the few existing post-colonists, who are ready for physical escape (like the narrator's husband) or suicide (like the narrator herself).
Set in the Dolomites, 'Le Refuge Del Pietro' is a kind of conflict between generations, when the old meet the young in a restaurant in the Alps, where a solitary Englishman (dressed in bizarre Alpine gear) tells the two other (young) diners about (almost) dragging his mainly ailing family through snow to find an inn, even lying to them, until they reach the place and find it in ruins.
'Nuit de garde', set in an unnamed place (mainly a hospital) where there is a hierarchy of staff with a cleaner from Guadeloupe and a junior doctor who makes the decisions about the deaths of patients, seems as if it has come from previous experience of the author.
'Les fiancés de Laurenço Marques' examines a capital city (now called Maputo) which preserves its nineteenth century history in the name of its beer and its colonial and Soviet communist of Marxist past in its street names, as if it wants not to forget its history. The narrator thinks likewise: he originally came to the city with his fiancé forty years before, although they went their individual ways, he as a musician, she as a writer, although now their spouses have died they are re-living the past, coming together in Maputo as if still twenty rather than sixty.
'Garde-Robe' too is about the return of age, with a businessman-turned humanitarian UN worker in war-struck Colombo in Sri Lanka telling the story of the Buchenwald uniform his father (a survivor who later killed himself) once wore that he's kept all the time as a reminder of man's inhumanity to man. Nazi-style inhumanity seems to be returning, though, he learns of the atrocities of civil war.
Finally we have 'Train de vie' in which a young African woman who works as a server in a restaurant in Paris goes off on a train to meet her German fiancé from a very wealthy family. The story is told from a young white French narrator's point of view, who comes to learn all about the woman's problems, her potential mother-in-law's opposition to the marriage, but her son's resolution to marry if she becomes pregnant. Looks that things will fall flat as the train loses hours and Rokaya will miss her connection on the very day of peak ovulation. Unless, of course, narrator Paul becomes (quite casually) a kind of surrogate lover for the night.
Judging by these highly readable stories, I'd say that the principal interest that Jean-Christophe has is difference, in its many varied forms.
Jean-Christophe Rufin's Rouge Brésil won the Prix Goncourt in 2001, and concerns a rather obscure time in France's history: when an attempt was made to conquer a small part of Brazil around Rio, in 1555, by forces led by Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon (1510–71).
At 600 pages, this is a long story, and a substantial part of it is taken up by events that happened before the long voyage and during it. Particularly significant here are the roles of Just and 'Colin', two people who were chosen for their youth and therefore their supposed facility with languages, indicating that they will be able to communicate with the native Indians and quickly serve as interpreters for the French. However, they turn out to be a little older than expected, and they (unknown even to themselves) are not the siblings they were initially thought to be – and (to the surprise of the crew) 'Colin' in fact being the female Colombe.
Colombe does in fact mix with the Indians very well, learning the language quickly, joining them in their nakedness, and forming friendships with them. She sees herself on equal terms with them (and certainly they don't eat French people!), unlike her arrogant European counterparts, who at first see the Indians as potential slaves, savages who should wear clothes to conform to Western standards, etc.
Indians are also useful, of course, for trading purposes. And trading is vital here. The rouge doesn't only allude to the Indians' skin and cosmetic colourings, or to the great amount of blood that will be spilled here, but also to the highly esteemed red wood from which Brazil takes its name, and a great deal of which loads the ships' cargoes for return journeys.
This is a Foulcauldian universe in which diverse powers strive for dominance, where people act as double and triple agents, the duplicity can be cut with a knife, the 'reinforcements' brought from the continent bring about even more of a war of religions, more bloodshed, more tension. Here there is traffic in convict slaves, the existing French interpreter Le Freux can sell the local Indian-made alcohol (partly made from the women chewing manioc) and the local girls to sexually service the crew, boiling the religious wrath of Villegagnon: And this is really just the start of the problems: the Portuguese haven't even come to have their say in the invaders' activities, for instance. An interesting book about interesting events, and the author's Afterword attests to his assiduous researches behind this novelization.
My other Jean-Christophe Rufin posts:
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Jean-Christophe Rufin: Sept histoires qui reviennent de loin
Jean-Christophe Rufin: Le Collier rouge
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