Jans i
Seghers was a German/East German author, writing from 1925 to 1965. The stories in this collection are of two varieties – realistic and very somber, and magical realism or mythic tales. Some of the first sort weren’t bad, but I really enjoyed those of the second sort.
The title story is one of the second type. The narrator is traveling through a German village when gradually she begins to remember a field trip her class took here, years ago, before the war. As she thinks back on her old friends, she also remembers the changes they went through, and their eventual fates. It’s done in a wonderfully dreamy way, and you see the young girls alternating with the women they became.
Then there are the Tales of Artemis. An old hunter, known to the other villagers as he who “has seen her”, tells of a hunting excursion, long ago, that added a young boy at the spur of the moment. As the group pauses to eat their dinner, a young girl joins them. The boy can’t keep his eyes off of her, and as he eats, she asks him, “Did you like this? … Is everything the way you hoped it would be?” to which he answers, enchanted by her, yes. Later there is bad weather, and the group is separated, and the young boy is accidentally shot and killed. Later the old hunter recalls, “For it wasn’t for my sake that she had decided to rest by my fire.” But that is not the last time he sees her.
Be prepared for the sad ones, though, like the first story, Jans Is Going to Die. A young boy, playing on a trestle bridge with his friends, slips and strikes his head. And from then on, he is sure that he is going to die. He fades into the background, no one pays him much mind, and as soon as his mother has another child, he does just that. Wow.
