Morath cranked the window down and let the sharp city air blow in his face.Ĩ, avenue de la Bourdonnais. He started his cab and sped along the quai toward the Seventh Arrondissement. "Number eight."įoreign, the driver thought. Morath tossed his bag on the floor in the back and climbed in after it. The first driver in line watched him for a moment, then briskly folded his Paris-Midi and sat up straight behind the wheel. Nicholas Morath, traveling on a Hungarian diplomatic passport, hurried down the platform and headed for the taxi rank outside the station.
And later that day there'd been difficulties at the frontiers for some of the passengers, so in the end the train was late getting into Paris. In the station at Vienna, a brick had been thrown at the window of a first-class compartment, leaving a frosted star in the glass. There were storms in the Ruhr Valley and down through Picardy and the sides of the wagon-lits glistened with rain. "On the tenth of March 1938, the night train from Budapest pulled into the Gare du Nord a little after four in the morning. And while this "falling into" approach to story development might work well for some, I find it a bit on the passive side. And while this is surely due at least in part to the WWII setting and the relative powerlessness of any individual to do much to fight the inevitable, it does tend to give a sense that the novelist is somewhat adrift along with his protagonist. Where I find a Furst story lacking is in the fact that his protagonists always seem to be carried forward by external forces, rather than internal ones. Imagine a cross between Graham Green and Eric Ambler, with a bit of Orson Welles thrown in for good measure, and you get something of an idea of what's waiting for you here. And like his previous works, this one is full of interesting minor characters brought to life in an excellent narrative from a master of the genre. I know of no one who does a better job of evoking a time and a place than Furst does with his WWII stories, and this one is no exception.
Through the course of the vignettes, we watch as Nicholas Morath, the protagonist, gets drawn more and more into the world of his uncle, who is a Hungarian nobleman, diplomat and Hitler antagonist. Like his earlier books, this one is something of a series of vignettes that could stand on their own as superior short stories and which combine to make a fine novel. In my experience, a new novel by Furst is always a treat.
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