Anno Domini by George Steiner (1964)

 This is three novellas, and very early on in his career. In a sense, there will have always been a lot at stake, given that his reputation rested on literary criticism. "OK, buddy, let's see how you do, eh?" might be an imagined expectation from the world of fiction, which formed one of the centres of his critical work. In two instances, these feel like apprentice work, an author feeling their way into a voice. The third is incredibly fine, as mature and impactful a piece as anyone could ask for. Alongside the work of many a classic fiction writer, it could hold its own. Return No More is the story of the return to the scene of a war crime by the man who ordered it carried out. Set in 1949 in a small village in Normandy, it details a German officer, relying on the use of a stick due to a war wound, alighting on a high road from a truck which has given him a lift, and finding the place where he spent a good segment of the last part of the war. The villagers recognize him, abuse him and chase him out of town. Rattled, he seeks out the farmhouse and family where he was stationed just outside of the village. They are astonished to see him, and the atmosphere, already blunted from the emotional depredations of war, gets immediately and naturally spiky. Behind the action, and quickly revealed, is the crime - he ordered the death of the eldest son of the family, by hanging, in the yard, for resistance activity. Then follows a period of uncertainty about why he's there, and, extraordinarily, a slow defrosting. In a way which slips by real believability, though I guess it's theoretically tenable among rural people who lived by ground-level ethics when it came to marriage, he makes clear that he's come to marry the younger daughter of the family. The odd mixture of expressed hate and allowed intrusion settles unevenly. A time of back and forth over the possibility of his marrying the elder daughter, a set of conversations about what he did, and the varying reactions in the family to Jean, the son who was executed, from adoration to irritation with his radicalism, make for uncomfortable reading. Danielle, the younger daughter, comes round to the idea, seemingly thinking that her options are limited, and it's a job she needs to get done. But at the marriage feast, some villagers and the one member of the family who's never come around, brother Blaise, fall in around the officer and cause him to fall into their midst while dancing. Then they kick him to death. I think the idea with this one was a jagged atmosphere of mixed response, danger at every turn, even when things might have been improving. As it is, it's impressive if psychologically unsure. Cake is set during the war in country France, at a nursing home. An American, who has stayed beyond the invasion both to continue his research into an early playwright, and because there wasn't a lot at home to draw him back, soon realises that things are going to get very tight. He makes various alliances among the resistance, existing on its outskirts. Eventually he needs protecting, and they have found a way, through the assistance of the doctor who runs the home, to have him (and others) placed there as a resident. Then follows a period of worsening circumstances as food gets scarce, and a little black comedy as the residents' opinions come into contest - suspicions of stealing, of moral turpitude, and, more seriously, diffidence toward unmentioned Jewishness, reflect the world outside and its grim preoccupations. Our American falls for a young Jewish woman who has lost the rest of her family to 'transport'. Just after their relationship is consummated, the Gestapo arrive. The young woman is dragged away with them, and his world collapses. He returns after the war, and discovers that one of the residents has remained there, a woman he called The Owl, who was comically over the top about her social superiority and looked askance at many others as being below par. Reminded of the period by her silly talk, and a gift she gives him of an inkstand-prop from a play they all acted, he is overcome and runs. Again, this one has many fine ingredients, but feels uncertain and uneven in its slightly too consciously poetic writing. Sweet Mars drafts a close relationship between two public schoolboys and how it came to mature in the war. Duncan Reeve and Gerald Maune develop a typical schoolboy alliance, which is intensified when Gerald gets a girl pregnant right near the end of their tenure, and Duncan promises (he is much more worldly and practical) to get it sorted. Gerald never sees the girl again, and is assured by Duncan that she just wanted his money, and wasn't really pregnant at all, and scarpered when confronted. Then they grow into full adulthood, and the war comes to each separately. They have some hellish experiences and Gerald, being the more sensitive of the two, suffers a lot for his, hearing the initial screams and then unhuman noises of men who were trapped in a tank in the desert while it burnt, in nightmares long after. Well after the war, Duncan returns from the States and a failed marriage to find Gerald married a little unhappily. They form a group called the Desert Fathers with others of their North African experience and meet once a month to drink and reminisce. But one night, memories clearly playing heavily upon him, Gerald disgraces himself by harping on the theme in an impromptu speech, which goes on a long time. It is clear he needs help. Without telling Duncan, because he knows he'll disapprove, he begins to see a psychiatrist. When Duncan finds out he is profoundly troubled. One, because his ex-wife and her friends in the States had been devotees in a way which excluded him, and anyway felt unhealthy to his British sensibility, the prevalence of Jews in the profession not helping, given his prejudices, but also because it feels like Gerald is slipping away from him into the dominion of another, though this is barely acknowledged in his mind. He berates Gerald and says the doctor is most likely a fraud, as so many of them are, to his mind. To prove it, he asks Gerald to present him with fake dreams (which he will write for him) and see if the doctor can spot them. Gerald agrees with reluctance, in a lowered state. We then get a somewhat stream-of-consciousness section from the doctor's point of view - he does indeed recognize the falseness of the scenarios, and has interesting insights into Gerald's psyche and his possible homosexual fascination for Duncan from way back. Also compassed is a small week of complete happiness Gerald has felt in Cairo during the war with Jan, a Polish soldier, where their companionship did not reach sexuality, but did include sleeping together and great mutual affection, about which Gerald has told no-one, holding it as a sacred memory, not to be touched with other hands. We then see in flashback that Gerald has regretted submitting the fake dreams to the doctor, and has headed to Poland to search for Jan. He finds him, and Jan has moved on, the memory being nothing like of the same importance to him. Gerald, feeling that finally the last reasons for remaining alive have been broken, with Duncan prejudicially enjoining him to lie, and Jan not comprehending any specialness of feeling, can settle quickly and quietly to suicide. He writes the letter to the doctor explaining what has happened by which we learn of these events, makes a short friendship with a lonely and wizened student girl in Cracow for a day seeing the sights, and goes home to his hotel room to end things. The maturity in this piece compared to the others is marked. It has a sense of cleared power, Steiner's capability in recognizing balance so as not to overplay psychology or style being much more subtly poised. This full-flavoured piece fully answers the questions that might have been raised as to whether this monumental critic could write in the field he investigated.