Dunkelblum by Eva Menasse- unearthing secrets in Austrias’ borderlands

This huge novel by Eva Menasse is a stunning tour de force. Set in the summer of 1989, the novel takes place in Dunkelblum, a village on the eastern border of Austria. The village and its residents hold dark secrets, which hover in the background, and then surface when a body is dug up on the Rotensteinwiese, a meadow outside the village. The secrets relate, indirectly and obliquely at first, to the experiences and memories, some deeply buried, some half-remembered, of the Second World War and the Nazi period. But the novel has a reach beyond the immediate story and tells us something about Austria more generally too: its treatment of the Jewish community in this region, its ambiguous attitude to its own history, the experience of living in its borderlands.

The novel opens in a somewhat folksy tone, giving us a sort of panoramic 360 degree tour of the village. Its historical legacy can be seen in the centre, with its castle ruins, its plague column, its once stylish Hotel Tüffer. But it’s all a bit naff and come down in the world now: the two silly walls built after the war flanking the remaining castle tower, the Art-Nouveau bar ruined by its rustic pottery, its rush seating and the receptionist’s cheap dirndl. The narrator describes the village as a place where time has stood still—it’s as if life has passed them by, and indeed the group of men who drink regularly at the Hotel Tüffer, or the Café Posauner, have been doing so for decades, their loudest member Alois Ferbenz, holding forth about God and the world, while scheming against the mayor and other local dignitaries.

The regularity and predictability of village life is shaken up a little with the arrival of a visitor, known, to start with, simply as der Fremde, the stranger, though he seems vaguely familiar to some. He takes up residence in the Hotel Tüffer and snoops around a bit, asking questions. A second new arrival is Lowetz, who’s returning to his native village after the sudden and unexpected death of his mother, Eszter. She was from Drüben– Over there- but soon dropped her drüberisch to speak Austrian German. Her son is sorting out her affairs, but can’t find the file of documents about local history she’s been working on with Rehberg, the tourist office proprietor and hobby local historian. Then there’s a group of young students who’ve arrived to clear and tidy up the Jewish cemetery, run down and neglected for decades. Oh, and there’s also the recent incident of  a barn belonging to the Malnitz family burning to the ground—while the local fire brigade were drinking nearby, apparently oblivious to the emergency call-out. Funny that, when the Malnitz daughter, Flocke, is interested not just in local history, like Rehberg, but keen to set up a Grenzmuseum- a Borders Museum where Dunkelblumers and their neighbours over the border would be exploring their past as a joint enterprise.

You can see where I’m coming from when I say huge novel. The narrative viewpoint switches between a huge cast of characters, allowing us insight into their personal histories, motivations, relationships and understanding of others. ( Thankfully there’s a glossary of characters at the back). There’s a delight, almost exuberance, as well as humour, in the depiction of some characters in the early part of the novel. There’s Rehberg, gently mocked for the inflatable cruise liner in the tourist office window, his sycophancy towards the countess when he visits her in Lugano. There’s beautiful Leonore Malnitz, ever one for the fancy pet names, with her first dog called Koloman for the Hungarian martyr. I laughed out loud at the vision of her striding the fields round Dunkelblum calling for her second dog: Hilde!  Hilde!—named of course for Hildegard von Bingen! But we don’t smile for long. There’s nasty stuff going on in this village: Rehberg has been beaten up several times by the drinkers after hours in the narrow streets, mocking him for his high voice, and the insurance company are absolutely dragging their heels on the Malnitz’ claim after their barn burnt down. And of course there’s nasty stuff in the past hinted at too: there’s that man called Horka, a violent Nazi thug who terrorized the community back in the day and whose legacy of fear still lives on.

Things come to a head in the second section, when a body has been found buried in the Rotensteinwiese up near the border. The gender is as yet unclear, which opens the way for a range of possible identities to be mooted for this poor unfortunate. There’s a tense scene, when the whole village is gathered up there at the site. Memories are triggered about events on that night at the end of the war when the castle was burnt down, the narrative carried not just by the characters, but by the narrator too, intervening more now to give us context and background, for example about Jewish history, or to remind us that, of course, prior to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire there was no border here at all. There’s another interesting development in the writing here too:  things start to be called by their name. So instead of those references to drüberisch, the language is referred to as Hungarian. The poor chap sheltering in the Heuraffls’ hunting cabin is suddenly referred to as a DDR-Flüchtling –a refugee from East Germany ( it’s late summer 1989). And der Fremde is finally recognised for who he is and called by his name. It’s as if the digging up of the body is allowing things to be named for what they are for the first time.

This theme of greater openness continues into the third section which seems to me to look to the future, partly because the younger generation now move into the narrative space. It’s film student Martha, working with the Jewish students clearing the cemetery, who extracts an extraordinary confession from one of the older Dunkelblumers on his activities in the war. There’s the confrontation between students and the mayor on finding that some Jewish graves have been desecrated. The mayor puts this down to vandalism, says it’s criminal damage, while the students insist he calls it out as the anti-Semitism it plainly is. These are young people with agency and different values from those of the older generation. Can the older, established Dunkelblumers change? There’s a moving scene at the border where a hundred or more East Germans, mostly young adults and children, are waiting to cross into Austria and the west. The Dunkelblumers face them on the other side of the border. They welcome them. And if they do charge them a bit more for accommodation, well that’s a drop in the ocean in comparison to the overall cost of doing away with the Iron Curtain. But we mustn’t forget there was still that desecration. Not to mention the anxiety around the proposals for improving the village water supplies. Which involve digging. As the narrator says, It’s not over yet.

So I really enjoyed this novel, though it took some concentration to keep all the characters and their stories in mind, especially as there’s a lot of dialect, more towards the beginning. And given this huge cast of characters, there were one or two plot developments which felt a little contrived as the writer attempted to get all her ducks in a row. But she painted such a convincing picture of a rural community covering up their part in the war, with shame, suffering and loss just simmering under the surface, the old power structures still holding sway, but being challenged now by a younger generation. And there was something so particularly Austrian about Rehberg’s fascination for the aristocracy (think Hofburg, think Sisi) : is that all an attempt to fudge their participation in more recent history? I loved the whole questioning of borders here too: their artificiality, their arbitrariness, the way they are used by human beings to keep others out. Others, who only last year, were our neighbours. As I said, it’s a vast novel, which requires time and commitment. But it is a tour de force.