The Bird Tribunal (Fugletribuanlet) was first published in
Norway in 2013. It is the second
novel by Agnes Ravatn (1983-). She is a journalist and a writer with an
interest in the psychology of uncomfortable situations and relationships. Her
first novel Veke 53 (Week 53), published in 2007, is a tale
of a middle –aged man taking stock of his life in the run-up to Christmas. Her
latest work Operation Self-Discipline
(Operasjon Sjøldisiplin, 2015), is a self-help book to rid yourself of
the need for instant gratification.
The Bird Tribunal was
made into a play in 2015; it also reads very much like a play. The chapters are
unnumbered, untitled and short, sometimes two pages or even less than a page
long. The dialogue uses short sentences and quotation marks are not used. The
characters do not explain or describe, rather they interrogate each other and
give short evasive answers. This makes for an easy and quick read.
The plot is minimal. Television presenter Allis
Hagthorn has escaped a sex scandal and a failed marriage and taken up a post as
a gardener and housekeeper for mysterious, Rochester-like Sigurd Bagge, whose
wife is “away” (pp2, 12). He lives in a cottage by the fjord in the middle of
the woods and spends his days in a workroom: “You won’t see much of me and I’d
like as few interruptions as possible.” (p4). There is not much for Allis to
do: she works in the garden and she cooks. They drink a lot of wine (pp28, 35, 45, 50, 52, 53, 56, 66, 72, 140, 163).
The setting is the house and the garden, a few trips to the
local shop, and a handful of scenes elsewhere: the beach, the boat, a petrol
station and one street in town. Sigurd occasionally goes off
stage on short trips. These absences add to his air of mystery. They give Allis
the opportunity to explore the house alone and whip herself into a frenzy of
melodramatic angst. We go along on Allis’s half-hearted attempts to escape, and
see her always drawn back to Sigurd’s house. These movements lighten the
claustrophobia of the closed setting, but it is not clear how Allis’s trip to
town or to the petrol station contributes to the plot. They feel like distractions
from the main objects of inquiry: Sigurd, his secret and what Allis will do
about it.
Only three characters appear on stage: Allis Hagthorn, Sigurd Bagge
and the unnamed woman who runs the local shop, who like a chorus in a Greek
tragedy provides the local community’s view: “The grocery shop was my only
contact with the outside world.” (p20) There are some extras: the bird tribunal
(real or imagined), an old university friend and a woman Allis meets at the
petrol station. There are also two significant characters that remain off
stage: Baggis’s wife Nor and Allis’s husband John.
Against this quite bland backdrop, Allis’s interactions with
Sigurd become the story; whenever the man emerges from his workroom, both
Allis and the reader pay attention and strain to interpret his every move.
Every time he speaks, Allis and the reader seek to analyze his mood and the
workings of his mind.
Such a minimalist approach to a story is brave: it relies
entirely on the power of the two main characters to engage the reader. This requires
skill and imagination from the author. Ravatn does not quite succeed in this.
She creates an ominous and claustrophobic atmosphere in the narrative, which is
good. She creates characters that clearly have something to hide, which is also
good. She creates a relationship between them that is riddled with tension and
contradictions, which equally sounds good. Unfortunately, the characters do not develop.
We end up with a series of see-sawing narrative movements of the characters getting along
and getting into conflict. Naturally, when a man and woman spend a long time
alone in such an apparently closed environment, two things are to be expected:
sex and murder. The story does not disappoint on this score, but how we get there
is muddled.
There is much symbolism, perhaps too much. Allis tells Sigurd the story of the Norse god Balder (pp46-48, 148-149,
170-171): “I was so obsessed with Balder when I was a girl. … He was my first
love.” (p46). We are invited to find parallels between this story and that of
Sigurd. Is he Balder or Loki? “It is easy to love Balder, everyone did. But
imagine loving Loki,” Allis says (p149). The saga ends with Ragnarök and the creation of a new
world, like the one Allis and Sigurd are fashioning for themselves (pp170. 185) at the remote house.
There is the garden with its cycle of life, death and
rebirth, and the way Allis masters gardening (pp6, 14, 18, 86, 163). There is
Allis’s cooking. At first Sigurd tells Allis not to sit at the table: “No, you
eat afterwards.”(p4), then she finds his wife’s recipe book (p20) and mealtimes
start to reflect their vacillating emotional distance (pp23, 101, 140, 161). There
are Allis’s clothes that range from inappropriate ones when she arrives
(p24) to dressing in clothes Sigurd provides (“I would be a miniature version
of him.” [p26]) and finally to wearing Sigurd’s wife’s nightdress (p127) until
she is “dressed as his wife” at the dinner table (p140). There is also some
nakedness in the garden (p35). When Sigurd saves Allis from an adder, you
wonder if this was Adam saving Eve from the serpent (p19). There is even some
significance to be found in the hair of the two characters (pp 83, 142, 164,
185). And of course, there is meaning hidden in the eponymous bird
tribunal and the symbolism of birds sitting in judgment (pp105-106, 146). For
one interpretation of this scene and the title of the novel, see Leviticus 14,
4-7 and “The Judgment of the Birds” in The
Immense Journey (1959) by Loren Eiseley.
All this detail pregnant with potential meaning adds another
layer of detective work for the reader. It is too much of a good thing as this
layer becomes too thick and the story is in danger of getting lost in the
porridge of secondary meanings
Allis Hogarth is the first person narrator and the only
point-of-view character in the story. Her self-confidence is fragile to an
alarming degree. When she first arrives, Allis says: “I had to become a woman
in possession of a firmer character.” (p11) This is a wish the reader comes to
share as the story progresses. “No, a lost child , that’s what I am,” (p20)
Allis says; she is “like a little girl” (p28). She seeks a new beginning,
purity and atonement (pp15, 66). She dreams of transforming herself: “I could
create a sense of self, mould a congruous identity in which none of the old
parts of me could be found.” (p14) Allis’s sense of self-worth almost vanishes.
On her birthday, “I was nothing and I have nothing.” (p60, also p53). A little
later, alone in the house, Allis has an angst-filled night “Lying in my bed, I
was gripped with an intense, inexplicable anguish.” (p77) She imagines unknown
assailants were coming to get her: “naked and feeble, I cowered beneath the
sheets, hoping they’d get it over with quickly, just shoot me in the head
through my covers and be done with it.” (p78) In order to be re-born, you must
die first. But Allis’s self-recriminations become tedious (pp10, 29, 32, 40, 47,
50, 60, 63, 70, 77, 98. 121, 122, 164). Any glimmer of warmth and attention
from Sigurd transform’s Allis’s mood. An invitation to a fishing trip causes “a
wave of elation” (p62) in her. When he returns after three days’ absence she “trembled
with delight” (p80, also 125). Sigurd is truly a god in Allis’s new world. With
Allis showing such tendencies for masochism, the reader is led to expect Sigurd
to reveal his sadistic side (his Loki-side).
The last scene of the novel is effective. Despite all the
preceding emotional roller-coasting, Ravatn’s narrative has engaged the reader
and the last scene carries a punch.
Sigurd Bagge remains mysterious to the end. He lies, first
he tells Allis that he has studied “law and order” (p55), later he tells her he
is a joiner (p158). He keeps saying that his wife has gone away (pp2, 12), and
only later admits that she is dead (pp 113, 130). Allis refers to him as a wolf
(pp 70, 91, 102). He is exotic and alien to her, but also attractive and
appealing. Allis seems to think him safe and comforting and dangerous and
threatening at the same time. She feels inferior to him and constantly tries to
make herself worthy of him. He makes her feel shame and desire in equal measure.
She imagines they are married (p87) and that he is going to kill her (p101). From
this morass of emotion, no firm image of the man is consolidated. At the
denouement of the story he does reveal his true colours, or so it seems. But we
do not understand Sigurd Bagge any better at the end than we did at the
beginning. And yet he is the key to the mystery in the narrative, he is the character
who is judged by the Bird Tribunal.
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