Who Knows?

Robert Wexelblatt’s new collection displays formal mastery, lucid exposition, and a sure way of stimulating the reader’s curiosity. Characters and situations raise questions, some to be answered, others to be left widening into further mystery.

In the title story, “Heiberg’s Twitch,” an outsized marine creature washes up on the shore of a remote Scandinavian island. What is it? A detailed description only reveals what the animal is not:

…approximately seventeen meters in length, predominantly black in color, with eyes set forward on a rounded head at the end of an elongated neck, rather than on the sides, as with whales. Its mouth had three sets of teeth which…were those of a carnivore. Instead of the flukes of a whale its body tapered to a single lateral fin three meters across and shaped something like a manatee’s. It had … a curiously depressed aperture on the dorsal surface that, though apparently too small for the purpose, might have served as a blow hole. From one unmistakable indication Evastina concluded that the beast had been a male.

Having presented this enigma, the story shifts attention to other, more compelling, unknowns: We become less interested in whether the great fish has a name than in whether anything will occur between Evastina, a bright local girl, and Heiberg, the invalid academic she serves as companion, maid, nurse, and research assistant. We wonder if the reclusive old man will find relief, if not for his failing constitution, at least for his isolation and for the persistent twitching of his eye. We wonder whether the monster’s frozen but “unmistakable” masculinity has any bearing on the human characters’s situation. A touching final scene doesn’t solve the oceanic mystery but addresses the even greater puzzle of human loneliness.

Wexelblatt’s second story, “The Tale of Pu’i Chu-Wo,” also bears the sign of the question mark. It is a work reminiscent of Kafka and Borges, purporting to come from ancient legend, but almost certainly invented. The supposedly legendary protagonist launches his career by answering a royal riddle and continues it with exploits in a town called Ku’an—an echo of the riddling koan.

The delightful tale of “Edith Février,” is set in present-day Boston. As it opens, an inquiring detective and an eleven-year-old witness to a bank robbery perform a chamber duet of questions and answers:

“So,” I began, “you saw the robbers?”…“Think I’d be bothering you if I didn’t?”“How many?”“Two.”“You saw them coming out of the bank?”“Sure. Wasn’t here when they went in.”“Moving pretty fast, weren’t they?”“Wouldn’t you be?”

The duet-duel between policeman and boy is augmented by another between the boy and his teacher, Sister Rose Emelda. Challenged by her labyrinthine vocabulary assignment (“use encumbered, anxieties, meander, oblivious, etc. in a sentence”) the sixth grader responds by using all her words in a single brilliant sentence: “Edith Février, lonely but encumbered by few anxieties, meandered through the Jardin des Tuileries, oblivious of the disporting children…” Paul’s exploit impresses the detective, infuriates the sister, and deeply amuses the reader.

Wexelblatt sometimes furnishes clues to his own narrative art. Here, in “Urbs Fabula Sine Argumentum” (“The City is a Novel Without a Plot”) we find the account of a young photographer’s weekly telephone ritual:

When his parents called each Sunday, he gave short answers to their questions, sometimes told them a joke. It was an art to reassure while disclosing nothing; it had taken him years to perfect it.

The author is describing one of his characters, not himself. Still, an artful rationing of information is a necessary skill for the storyteller, who knows the whole plot but must decide: How much, in what order, should readers discover it? How much should remain unanswered? Wexelblatt apparently wants us to seek and find knowledge while retaining a sense of all we cannot know. Behind the witty prose, I hear Montaigne whispering...