>>REVIEW
TWO LIVES
Vikram Seth
McArthur & Company, 503 pp.
Although a double biography of his great uncle and great aunt, Vikram Seth’s latest book, Two Lives, is a long reflection on the nature of loyalty, the reverse side of that coin – betrayal – and all the murky areas in between.
In 1969, the teenage Seth was sent to live with Shanti Uncle and Aunty Henny in London while he completed the English portion of his education. Like Seth, Shanti Uncle had grown up in India and then, as a young man, went to Germany to study dentistry, taking lodgings with a German-Jewish widow who had two daughters, Henny and Lola.
Shanti and Henny left Berlin separately before the Second World War broke out and re-established themselves in London, maintaining their friendship. He enlisted in the Army Dental Corps and lost his right arm at Monte Cassino, while she found a job and immersed herself in British life, continuing a correspondence with Shanti.
When he lost his arm, Shanti, struggling to write with his left hand, said, "I dread to think of the future, the present is bad enough." But with Henny’s support he trained his left side to become almost as dexterous as his right and, after the war, became a very successful dentist.
Eventually the two married, although it was too late for them to have the children they both dearly desired. However, in the 17-year-old Seth they found a young person on whom they could lavish some of their quirky affections. Henny died unexpectedly before Shanti, which was when Seth began to interview his great uncle.
Initially, this could have been a very lopsided memoir. Only an aging Shanti was alive to tell his side of the story and Henny hadn’t spoken much, if at all, about what had happened to her mother and sister, both of whom were killed in concentration camps. Besides, the marriage, although strong, did not admit open emotion. Then Seth discovered a trove of Henny’s letters (she had made carbon copies) as well as those from her friends in postwar Germany.
Henny was naturally anxious to discover who supported her mother and sister before the Nazi noose drew irrevocably around them. What emerges is a complex picture of friendship in all its shades (with a hint of a lesbian affair), and acts of individual courage as well as insinuations of betrayal. Even Lola was not exempt from suspicion. She worked for a Jewish community organization whose role was gradually subverted from helping Jews to assisting the Gestapo round them up.
A clear picture emerges of how a fascist regime undermines society, casting suspicion on everyone, turning friends into enemies. Of how small acts of kindness are sometimes large acts of heroism, and how slight betrayals can open the door to unspeakable atrocities. The letters, as quoted by Seth, will have readers pausing to reflect on the unanswerable question of whether they would be able to act selflessly in such circumstances. Seth himself was so upset by what he discovered that he literally became speechless in German, a language he loves, and his appreciation of German culture was temporarily suspended.
Although wartime Germany is an obvious place to examine loyalty, it’s not the only time it’s put under the microscope here. After Henny’s death, Shanti became increasingly hateful towards his extended family, changing his will in favour of a somewhat dubious character, who nonetheless was on the spot helping look after the elderly dentist in a way his family couldn’t.
Seth is himself very conscious of his duty as a loyal nephew, pondering on both the ethics of exposing his relatives’ private lives and on his own reaction to his uncle’s vilification of family members, including his mother. But he need not worry about betraying his dead relatives. With this book he has created a loving and forgiving document about their 60-year relationship, which endured despite their great differences and the fact it lacked passion.
Together, Shanti and Henny forged a bond of great loyalty against the background of some of the most powerful events of the 20th century. Seth has served them and their bond well. He has also served his readers well by provoking us to ask ourselves the kind of important questions that hopefully we will never have to face in Canada. |
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