The Red-Head Who Knows

Franziska is 30, married (sort of) and well off, but she is not happy, and it is this theme which makes another good translation this month —Alfred Andersch’s The Red-Head, which has been translated from the German.

THE Red-Head is one of a new series of translations now being brought out by Heinemann’s in the Blue Passport Series. The series aims at presenting high quality fiction from other languages, and this one is interesting for those who like their adventure stories to build slowly through atmosphere. There is good writing, but there is no fast action—in fact, very little action at all, and the interest in the novel is held mainly because of the author’s comments on the passing parade.

By the time the novel opens, Franziska has been in and out of several beds, and admits that she likes it. A classy red-head, she is now in Venice on the run from her last bed. She has no illusions that she’ll get into another one just as soon as the right one turns up (as it does before the end of the book), but in the meantime she examines herself, her attitudes, and the atti tudes of others.

Sitting in a Venetian restaurant, for instance, Franziska takes time off to sum up a lady who is there with her husband, who is a poet, and her latest boy friend. Everybody gets on very well. The poet is not at all con cerned about the boy friend, and nor is the poet’s wife (“hot stuff and very experienced”, Franziska notes).

Their game has been accepted, long ago, Franziska thinks. In these

circles marriage has lost its terrors, the poet is no cuckold and Olghina isn’t a woman who puts horns on her husband, they simply have reached an understanding; it’s possible they even still sleep with one another oc casionally; she’s hot stuff enough to bring about such situations. The situation is embarrassing only for the young man—the young man with a face of Greek perfection, with the unsure gaze, who holds his cigar ette a trifle too elegantly in his nobly moulded hand. The situation is em barrassing only for him, the lover she has got herself with the complete assurance of her money and her special position, the senselessly hand some young man and the small, mus cular, hot woman who will soon give him the push, that’s obvious; the fact that she didn’t exchange a glance with him isn’t just due to their being so used to one another; she knows that she has no further need to con sult him; she knows exactly what he is like in bed, her curiosity is satis fied and she is already waiting for a new lust that will push Giancarlo into obscurity, into a life no longer lived in the limelight, where he will fail because he has become too deeply caught up in illusion.

That’s the way of the world. Time and again this novelist shows he knows how it ticks. (THE RED-HEAD. Published by Heme mann. 20/-.)