The Bay of Silence

By EDUARDO MALLEA

THE rebellious, truth-seeking spirit of universal youth runs through this first-person story of a young Argentine who batters his head against the stone wall of corruption in his native land. It is the same spirit which has found voice in the literature of other countries, for in the years prior to this war Argentina was not the only land which could be described as “an enormous country sunk in a gigantic orgy of colossal self-complacency.”

It is against this self-complacency and other rather vague ills that Tregua, the “I of the novel, launches his attack. And the reform movement faces the same difficulties in Argentina that Tregua later finds throughout Europe. Tregua will not admit defeat; he finds himself and his insurgent fellows throughout the world “ardent and insufficient, full of will and incapacity! . . . Young, anxious, and disheartened mariners . . . waiting for their ship in the bay of silence.”

Unfortunately the novel, like its heroes, is often “ ardent and insufficient.” In this translation it is a disjointed tale, a strange potpourri of episodes, short stories, and somewhat too lengthy dialogues on politics all jumbled in with affairs of the heart. The piece is ostensibly a history of Tregua’s association with the rebellious movement against corruption, written by himself for a lovely, inspiring woman whom he has admired from afar but to whom he has never spoken. This raison d’être for the narrative seems forced, and the lady, the “you" of the novel, makes her appearances in unexpected places in the story. Married to a husband who prefers wealth and position to her, she stands somewhat, I imagine, as a symbol of Argentina, as Mallea sees her, betrayed by her politicians.

The first of the three novelettes into which the novel divides concerns Tregua and his circle of friends who lament the fate of Juan Argentino (a kind of Argentine John Doe) and publish for his rehabilitation a reform newspaper, Enough. In the second novelette Tregua appears quite unaccountably in Europe, where he sees in the refugees from Italy and other countries the same futile contest against powerful overlords that he undertook in Argentina. The third part of the story brings Tregua back to Argentina, where he becomes involved in a love affair with a tragically introverted young woman upon whom life has shut all the windows.

What unity there is in the novel, aside from the obvious unity in the teller of the tale, is in the transition of Tregua’s spirit from rebelliousness to frustration to a final vague hopefulness that at some future time the ship will discover all those who have fought and failed huddled together in “the bay of silence.” Knopf, $2.50.
L T . (j.g.) ROBERT W. ANDERSON