I lately had occasion to introduce an elderly niece to a Malayalam poem by the late N.V. Krishna Warrier. Speaking about the poet whom I had known personally, I told her about one of his early works, Ezhu German Kathakal (Seven German Stories). I had only a vague recollection of the book which I had read 70 or more years ago but one of its stories, Adrishyamaya Chithrasamaharam ( The Invisible Collection) by Stefan Zweig stirred in my memory. I remembered being thoroughly impressed by it.
That night I tried to recall the details of the story but mostly drew a blank except for its core: how an old art collector gone blind was once humoured all the way by his wife and daughter as he held forth to a visiting art dealer on each of the many precious paintings and etchings in his treasured albums. The wife and daughter had earlier taken the visiting art dealer into confidence about their sad state of affairs. The dealer played along sportingly, even offering occasional comments to enliven the proceedings.
The old collector knew every item in each of his albums and, tracing each tenderly with his hand, would describe their details. He had no clue that the post First World War devastation of Germany had over the years impoverished the family and that after the man had lost his eyesight the family had been forced to sell the contents of the albums piecemeal to maintain at least the semblance of a normal life! The collector was showing the dealer blank pages!
Electric response
The next morning, I Googled and got Stefan Zweig’s The Invisible Collection in English. I read and reread it and could not resist the temptation to download it and share it with a few friends. The response was electric. None had heard of Zweig but all had greatly enjoyed the story. Some had looked up Zweig on the net and realised what a great and popular writer he had been during the 1920s and 1930s. He had fled Nazi Germany and eventually settled in Brazil where he and his wife committed suicide in 1942.
The very humane dissembling in the story reminded me of another, Mashi, by Rabindranath Tagore, translated into English. It is the story of an aunt humouring her dying adult orphan nephew with accounts of his bride’s great acts of love for him. The bride had actually ‘escaped’ to her parents’ home. When a servant divulges the truth, the nephew understands what his aunt had been up to. He loves her all the more and dies soon after with his head in her lap.
I bow to the memory of the late N.V. Krishna Warrier but for whom I would never have known The Invisible Collection.
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