Good Men

Arnon Grunberg, Sam Garnett

Description

Brilliant absurdist chronicle of a hapless outsider’s struggle to do the right thing. 

Arnon Grunberg’s fourteenth novel charts the downfall of Geniek Janowski, a Polish-German firefighter doing his best to be a good father, husband, lover and colleague, only to fail on all fronts.

 Geniek leads a seemingly unremarkable life with his wife, Wen, and their son, Jurek, in the sleepy Dutch province of Limburg, where everyone simply calls him “The Pole” because they can’t pronounce his real name. He is the only foreigner and the only vegetarian at the fire station, yet to him the crew feels like a band of brothers.

 When he discovers that the wife of his colleague, Beckers, is dying, The Pole is reminded of the role she played in his own life following the death of his eldest son, Borys—namely, by providing consolation in the form of unorthodox sexual acts. Racked by guilt, The Pole confessed the affair to his wife, and the retreated to a monastery for a year, where he ended up living in the henhouse. On his return, he is allowed to rejoin the fire brigade, though everyone in town has their doubts.

 Grunberg has lost none of his edge in this acutely absurdist account of the powerlessness of human beings to alter their fate. Comfort, salvation, love, and solidarity seem out of reach. In the world of Good Men, illusions about humanity and, above all, brotherhood will never prevail.

1

 

The Polack did what he’d always wanted to do, all his life: he was a fireman. His name in fact was Geniek Janowski, but everyone called him “the Polack”, and at a certain point he had relegated himself to that nickname, the way you might relegate yourself to having bushy eyebrows. He started forgetting his real name. In his life, that name no longer played a role of any significance; it was only to government agencies, banks, insurance companies and to his father that he was still Geniek Janowski. It was a tricky name, at least for non-Poles, and most of the world consisted of non-Poles. Had he simply lived in Poland there would never have been a problem, but now he had to keep explaining to everyone that it was Geniek and that the “g” was pronounced hard, like in the German “gut”, and then “yek”, Gen-yek. His colleagues had started calling him the Polack from the moment he joined the department, more than sixteen years ago. There he had received training as lineman backup and lineman backup first-class. They had tested him for fear of heights and fear of depths and for claustrophobia, they had tested to see if he was a team player. He had fear of neither heights nor depths nor was he claustrophobic. In addition, he was something of a team player, but the men of the C squad felt that the name Geniek was too tricky, and it was Beckers who had said: “That name doesn’t fit you anyway.” If only for that reason, Geniek had come to regard “the Polack” as a badge of honor, the men felt that that name fit him. And after a couple of years on the squad he was the Polack, from head to toe, as though he had finally become who he had been all along.

Now, on this misty November morning, he was sitting around in the squad commander’s office with his colleagues, waiting for Beckers to open his mouth. The Polack liked the mist, he liked all kinds of weather, but he had a weakness for mist. The landscape was already beautiful, and the mist made it even more so. The trees, the hills, the fields; the Polack enjoyed walking in the mist. The sooner he could get out of the city, the better.

The squad commander had called his men together because Beckers had something to say, and even though the C squad knew more or less what it was – the squad commander had filled them in, leaving out the details: two sentences, that was all he’d needed – still they sat around the table in suspense. As though they were there to take a test, without knowing what for. All the men looked at the Polack. Were they expecting that he, and not Beckers, had something to say?

Neel from admin walked by and waved cheerfully. A couple of years ago a woman had joined the C squad, for the first time ever, but she hadn’t stuck it out very long. Not because she was a woman, but because she didn’t fit in with the group, because she was difficult, because she criticized the meals the firemen had prepared with such dedication. Then they had played a trick on her. They had stuffed the room she slept in full of old furniture and mattresses, so she couldn’t get in the door anymore. Fire department humor. Beckers was the instigator. Practical jokes, Beckers was good at those. The way they had once looked at their female colleague, that’s the way they were looking at the Polack now.

He felt that he knew exactly which words Beckers would use; they had joined the C squad at almost the exact same time. If there was anyone on the team he felt connected to, it was Beckers, despite all the differences between them. Beckers, for example, was a true carnivore. A good guy. They belonged together, they had worked together for so long.

The way they were sitting around this morning was different from the way they sat around the firehouse together around seven o’clock on other mornings. Different, too, from the evenings when they ate dinner at the same firehouse, hurriedly, because you never knew when a call would come in. And when they needed you, it often happened that you came back only hours later, barely remembering that there was a plate of cold food waiting for you there. Sometimes the meat was already starting to turn blue, because the quality wasn’t always up to snuff, which was no big surprise in view of their budget.

There were always a few men who spoke little, preferably not at all. They did puzzles or watched a movie on their phone. Usually the same faces, the silent ones, but it was never as quiet as it was now. As though they were in church, even though they never went there. Even their parents barely went to church anymore, except for the Polack’s father; you could barely drag him out of church. He liked going to church more than going to the cafe. His God wasn’t dead, his God was still alive and kicking.

The Polack ran a finger over a scab on his nose. He didn’t know how it got there. Maybe from the cat he’d taken down from a tree three days ago. The animal didn’t seem to want to be rescued, or at least not by the Polack.

At the far end of the table sat Beckers, who had been on care leave for a while already and who was here to say something to them now, but he didn’t speak a word. He was holding a plastic cup of cappuccino from the machine and he stared at the cup, even though he was supposed to tell them something. The men felt it was inappropriate to egg him on, and even more inappropriate to start telling stories of their own, even though they were good at that – even the silent ones always had a story ready. Even young Nelemans, although they all agreed that Nelemans, who in his free time sang songs he’d written himself, had little to say, and they shut him up regularly but always teasingly, never in a mean way. They weren’t mean, the men of C squad, if anything they were good, they thought of themselves as good men. The C squad was the best squad, and although every squad probably thought the same of themselves, they felt that they had more reasons to believe it, because they were decent men, each and every one of them, who wanted nothing but to be decent, with their hearts in the right place. Nelemans, though, was more ambitious than that, he was trying to break through as a singer-songwriter, with happy songs, songs that made you laugh, because there were enough sad songs already, there were already enough funeral dirges. He had sworn that he would always remain faithful to the C squad, even after his musical breakthrough. He didn’t know of many other singing firemen, and he was determined to become the first of his kind. Yes, Nelemans wanted to be a singing fireman.

The Polack looked at Nelemans, the youngest of the group. The singing fireman hardly had a beard worth shaving, maybe he would never really have to shave, and he looked dejected, as though he was expecting a reprimand, as though someone was going to shut him up again. The Polack wished that Beckers would finally get around to telling them what they already knew, then it would be done with, then they could get back to work. Even though their work, of course, consisted largely of waiting, there was a difference between waiting for a fire or an accident and waiting for Beckers to say something. The Polack thought about his son, Jurek, who would turn twelve in ten days’ time. They had named him Jurek because Wen thought that Geniek en Jurek sounded so good together, Geniek and Jurek, Jurek and Geniek, but no one called him Geniek anymore. These days, even his own son called him “the Polack”. When Jurek came home from school, he would ask his mother “Is the Polack home?” Even though the kid should have known that his father was at home, the Polack was on for 24 hours, then had two days off, then another 24-hour shift, a rhythm he liked, a rhythm that not only he but the whole family had integrated into their lives. The father had the feeling that the boy only asked that because he knew the father could hear him, so the father would know what they called him, even right here in his own home: the Polack.  

He took it as a term of affection; it was adolescence, or pre-adolescence. When the son asked the mother: “Is the Polack kicking up a fuss again?” or “Aren’t things going the way the Polack hoped they would?”, the father let it slide. Adolescents were like that, boys that age were like that. Girls, apparently, were very different, but he had no experience with that.

“You could also just call me Dad, you know,” the Polack had said once. “Just plain Dad, the way you used to.” But pre-adolescence was tough and, according to some experts, indistinguishable from adolescence itself. The Polack couldn’t remember ever having been a teenager like that. From the age of eight he had been alone with his father, a good, virtuous man who tolerated neither rudeness nor contradiction.

What he’d been like as an adolescent didn’t matter, you shouldn’t take yourself as the measure of all things, he’d read that in a book about raising teenagers and so he didn’t do that, he didn’t take himself as the measure of all things. Even without that book, it would never have occurred to him to do that.

Once, the Polack and his son had been inseparable, he had been like a god to Jurek. Jurek wanted to be a fireman too. Everything had to be extinguished. As a child, the Polack had felt drawn most of all to the flashing lights, the shiny trucks and the he-men in their uniforms who came to save both man and animal. A he-man, that’s what the Polack wanted to be, and he was that too, in his own fashion, unflinching, he wanted to save whatever could be saved. He wanted to offer the helping hand; when no one else dared to go inside, he wanted to go in.

Jurek had wanted to be like his father, he climbed on his father the way other children climbed in trees, but in the same way the weather can turn, Jurek turned. Pre-adolescence arrived, heavy weather in the midst of summer.

By now, Geniek Janowski had resigned himself fully to his son calling him “the Polack”, as though even in his own living room he had to remain the foreigner he already was, merely by virtue of his name. The most important thing was that he loved Jurek, flesh of his flesh, his own son, and that Jurek loved him. He knew it was love, the teasing, the wheedling, the surliness – the love of a child, of a pre-adolescent who no longer knew how you had to do that, express love, show love. It was hard, after all, love.

Sujets

• World Literature
• Literary
• Humorous
• Países Bajos
• Literature
• Black comedy
• Netherlands
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Open Letter
• Date de parution: 23 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781948830959
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE FOR ARNON GRUNBERG
“The wit and sardonic intelligence that shine through Arnon Grunberg’s prose make it a continual pleasure to read.”
—J. M. Coetzee
“A gold mine.”
— New York Times Book Review
“A self-deprecating, desperately funny, achingly longing voice.”
— Boston Globe
“Absurdist humor, grotesque situations, and snappy rejoinders reminiscent of Saul Bellow or, rather, Woody Allen. … Mr. Grunberg is without question a talent to watch.”
— Economist
“First rate. … Inspired.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer
“Both hilarious and tragic, but always readable. … It is utterly unlike anything written by British or American novelists.”
— Times (London)
ALSO BY ARNON GRUNBERG IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Blue Mondays
The Jewish Messiah
Phantom Pain
Silent Extras
The Story of My Baldness
Tirza
GOOD MEN
by Arnon Grunberg
Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett
Originally published in Dutch as Goede mannen by Nijgh & Van Ditmar
Copyright © 2018 by Arnon Grunberg
Translation copyright © 2023 by Sam Garrett
First edition, 2023
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available upon request.
PB ISBN: 978-1-948830-65-2 / eBook ISBN: 978-1-948830-95-9
Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.
This publication has been made possible with financial support from the Dutch Foundation for Literature
Cover design by Anna Jordan
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press: Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627
www .openletterbooks .org
I The C Squad II He Refused to Call the Animal Manya III A Miracle IV French Comfort A Letter— Intermezzo V Homecoming VI The Tenth Year VII You Should Have Been There Acknowledgements
I THE C SQUAD
1
The Polack did what he’d always wanted to do, all his life: he was a fireman. His name in fact was Geniek Janowski, but everyone called him “the Polack,” and at a certain point he had resigned himself to that nickname, the way you might resign yourself to having bushy eyebrows. He started forgetting his real name. In his life, that name no longer played a role of any significance; it was only to government agencies, banks, insurance companies, and to his father that he was still Geniek Janowski. It was a tricky name, at least for non-Poles, and most of the world consisted of non-Poles. Had he simply lived in Poland there would never have been a problem, but now he had to keep explaining to everyone that it was Geniek and that the “g” was pronounced hard, like in the German “gut,” and then “yek,” Gen-yek. His colleagues had started calling him the Polack from the moment he joined the department, more than sixteen years ago. There he had received training as lineman backup and lineman backup first-class. They had tested him for fear of heights and fear of depths and for claustrophobia, they had tested to see if he was a team player. He had fear of neither heights nor depths nor was he claustrophobic. In addition, he was something of a team player, but the men of the C squad felt that the name Geniek was too tricky, and it was Beckers who had said: “That name doesn’t fit you anyway.” If only for that reason, Geniek had come to regard “the Polack” as a badge of honor, the men felt that that name fit him. And after a couple of years on the squad he was the Polack, from head to toe, as though he had finally become who he had been all along.
Now, on this misty November morning, he was sitting around in the squad commander’s office with his colleagues, waiting for Beckers to open his mouth. The Polack liked the mist; he liked all kinds of weather, but he had a weakness for mist. The landscape was already beautiful, and the mist made it even more so. The trees, the hills, the fields; the Polack enjoyed walking in the mist. The sooner he could get out of the city, the better.
The squad commander had called his men together because Beckers had something to say, and even though the C squad knew more or less what it was—the squad commander had briefed them: two sentences, that was all he’d needed—still they sat around the table in suspense. As though they were there to take a test, without knowing what for. All the men looked at the Polack. Were they expecting that he, and not Beckers, had something to say?
Neel from admin walked by and waved cheerfully. A couple of years ago a woman had joined the C squad, for the first time ever, but she hadn’t stuck it out very long. Not because she was a woman, but because she didn’t fit in with the group, because she was difficult, because she criticized the meals the firemen had prepared with such dedication. Then they had played a trick on her. They had stuffed the room she slept in full of old furniture and mattresses, so she couldn’t get in the door anymore. Fire department humor. Beckers was the instigator. Pranks, Beckers was good at those. The way they had once looked at their female colleague, that’s the way they were looking at the Polack now.
He felt that he knew exactly which words Beckers would use; they had joined the C squad at almost the exact same time. If there was anyone on the team he felt connected to, it was Beckers, despite all the differences between them. Beckers, for example, was a true carnivore. A good guy. They belonged together, they had worked together for so long.
The way they were sitting around this morning was different from the way they sat around the firehouse together around seven o’clock on other mornings. Different, too, from the evenings when they ate dinner at the same firehouse, hurriedly, because you never knew when a call would come in. And when they needed you, it often happened that you came back only hours later, barely remembering that there was a plate of cold food waiting for you there. Sometimes the meat was already starting to turn blue, because the quality wasn’t always up to snuff, which was no big surprise in view of their budget.
There were always a few men who spoke little, preferably not at all. They did puzzles or watched a movie on their phone. Usually the same faces, the silent ones, but it was never as quiet as it was now. As though they were in church, even though they never went. Even their parents barely went to church anymore, except for the Polack’s father; you could barely drag him out of church. He liked going to church more than going to the café. His God wasn’t dead, his God was still alive and kicking.
The Polack ran a finger over a scab on his nose. He didn’t know how it got there. Maybe from the cat he’d taken down from a tree three days ago. The animal hadn’t seemed to want to be rescued, or at least not by the Polack.
At the far end of the table sat Beckers, who had been on family leave for a while already and who was here to say something to them now, but he didn’t speak a word. He was holding a plastic cup of cappuccino from the machine and he stared at the cup, even though he was supposed to tell them something. The men felt it was inappropriate to egg him on, and even more inappropriate to start telling stories of their own, even though they were good at that—even the silent ones always had a story ready. Even young Nelemans, although they all agreed that Nelemans, who in his free time sang songs he’d written himself, had little to say, and they shut him up regularly but always teasingly, never in a mean way. They weren’t mean, the men of C squad, if anything they were good, they thought of themselves as good men. The C squad was the best squad, and although every squad probably thought the same of themselves, they felt that they had more reasons to believe it, because they were decent men, each and every one of them, who wanted nothing but to be decent, with their hearts in the right place. Nelemans, though, was more ambitious than that, he was trying to break through as a singer-songwriter, with happy songs, songs that made you laugh, because there were enough sad songs already, there were already enough funeral dirges. He had sworn that he would always remain faithful to the C squad, even after his musical breakthrough. He didn’t know of many other singing firemen, and he was determined to become the first of his kind. Yes, Nelemans wanted to be a singing fireman.
The Polack looked at Nelemans, the youngest of the group. The singing fireman hardly had a beard worth shaving, maybe he would never really have to shave, and he looked dejected, as though he was expecting a reprimand, as though someone was going to shut him up again. The Polack wished that Beckers would finally get around to telling them what they already knew, then it would be done with, then they could get back to work. Even though their work, of course, consisted largely of waiting, there was a difference between waiting for a fire or an accident and waiting for Beckers to say something. The Polack thought about his son, Jurek, who would turn twelve in ten days’ time. They had named him Jurek because Wen thought that Geniek and Jurek sounded so good together, Geniek and Jurek, Jurek and Geniek, but no one called him Geniek anymore. These days, even his own son called him “the Polack.” When Jurek came home from school, he would ask his mother, “Is the Polack home?” Even though the kid should have known that his father was at home, the Polack was on for twenty-four hours, then had two days off, then another twenty-four-hour shift, a rhythm he liked, a rhythm that not only he but the whole family had integrated into their lives. The father had the feeling that the boy only asked because he knew the father could hear him, so the father would know what they called him, even right here in his own home: the Polack.
He took it as a term of affection; it was adolescence, or pre-adolescence. When the son asked the mother: “Is the Polack kicking up a fuss again?” or “Aren’t things going the way the Polack hoped they would?,” the father let it slide. Adolescents were like that, boys that age were like that.