La gueule du loup*
Max Servais
Noir de Noir, Espace Nord, Belgique,
Editions Labor
2006 • 240 pages
Etienne Borgers
Translation: Christine Tipper
The thriller and the Belgian
surrealists
The
lion's jaws, a
thriller originally published in 1944 by the famous thriller collection ‘Le Jury' that was launched
in Belgium during the Second World War by Stanislas-André Steeman,
one of that era's masters of the genre, was a thriller (before the
term existed) written by Max Servais, one of the surrealists of the ‘Groupe
Belge'. Servais was an experienced writer and journalist before the
war, but he was best known for his drawings and surrealist collages.
He had very close links with the other surrealists of the time from
1928 onwards and counted amongst his friends René Magritte
(a great reader of thrillers), Paul Nougé and Louis Scutenaire.
The French and Belgian surrealists'
infatuation with primary art forms and all sorts of popular literature
is well-known. However, in Belgium, the thriller, which was growing
in popularity, caught the attention of the francophone surrealists,
although, as Léo
Mallet recounts in his memoirs, Breton did not like the genre at
all and Mallet went about his activities on the quiet so as not to
upset the ‘Pape André' during the Groupe's reunions…
Several Belgian surrealists also wrote
thrillers, in a range of styles from parodying pastiche to outright ‘whodunits',
but they always included doses of light or black humour. Their
inclusion of allusions and veiled references to themes explored
by the surrealists meant that their books could be read on several
levels.
Max Servais began writing thrillers in 1941
and, until 1947, produced a dozen books, all published in Belgium
. He was also, in 1942, the scriptwriter for a cartoon: Le
secret du Mastaba.
His last attempt at thriller writing dates from 1982 when he wrote
an erotic thriller that his editors refused to publish: La
Salope de Neanderthal – The Neanderthal Whore.
The lion's jaws
A violent murder takes place in a small building where eccentric
tenants live. The photographer Dorlet, the victim, soon turns out
to have been a supplier of photos to charm magazines, and a dedicated
skirt-chaser. Even one of his neighbours, married to a Russian refugee,
is one of his conquests - and the subject of some of his photos.
All the tenants had seen Dorlet, as they lived in the same building,
but some, for a variety of reasons that were not always respectable,
knew him a lot better than others. They range from a particularly
lucid fortune-teller to old Mr. Jules. There is also the weak and
spendthrift heir who is madly in love with a young female sculptor
living in the building; he also seems to know the photographer better
than he is willing to admit.
The investigation is given to superintendent Edmond Roy, who is
called Dragonfly because of his small size. He's an unusual policeman
with interests in books, art in general and literature. He even likes
modern poetry and Marcel Schwob. He quickly moves into an empty apartment
in the building to be closer to these people of questionable habits.
By flitting around Dragonfly sizes up the tenants and their relationships
and it soon emerges that they live in a world of debts, adultery,
revenge, blackmail and fake appearances. But although he seems reasonably
confident, in order to finally reach a bitter and sombre conclusion
that allows him to identify the killer, the superintendent has to
follow leads that he finds unpleasant.
Max Servais' writing captivates us
by its unusual style with its mixture of old-fashioned forms, some
pastiche, and acute observations of most of the characters. The
story is set in a narrative where the direct tone and twists are
more closely linked to characters than to conventional plot intrigues
of a regular ‘whodunit'; intrigues
which normally – in a conventional story – would be central to, and
the driving force behind, the plot. Here the intrigues change our
detective into a Rimbaud-like figure, fluttering around his discoveries
and his fantasies before finally finding the trail that leads to
the heart of the labyrinth constructed by the mystery. We are also
struck by a certain ‘calm duplicity' displayed by most of the players,
who each have a dual personality - the two faces of Janus. A dance
of masks takes place. For a large number of them their hidden side
is dark, if not black. Even the superintendent has two distinct sides:
his official role and that of a cultured gentleman. Equally the narrative
is interspersed with clues, allusions that allow it to be read on
two levels. There are quotations from Apollinaire, Max Jacob and
other modern poets that the superintendent uses in a range of situations.
There are also allusions to Max Servais' surrealist friends, who
share a ‘private joke', and references to subjects that interested
the surrealists during the 1930s and 1940s (such as Jazz, photography
etc.). The list is long.
The author was quite open about his
characters' social interaction if one takes into account the period
described in the book (1940s). We share – without seeming to – in
the dismantling of bourgeois taboos of the era: abortion, modern
art, liberated women, sexuality and violent death. These taboos
were targets for surrealists, who as artists, strove to break them
in their work. Or even in their lives.
But do not worry, in The Lion's Jaws,
Max Servais does not expound on philosophical theories or highlight
his erudition. He makes the most of the possibilities that a thriller
offers him to play with the symbols of duality and appearances and
displays a certain sombre derision intermingled with a light humour
intended to put one off the scent, whilst constructing a well-structured
and interesting thriller.
This book is well-served by Servais style that is vastly superior
to that which one finds in a book of this era. It is a book that,
still today, exerts a definite fascination.
The edition published by Labor has a very
interesting text (Lecture)
by Paul Aron (who teaches literary history at the Université Libre
de Bruxelles, and who is himself interested, amongst other things,
in popular literature and thrillers). He retraces the context and
the main themes in Max Servais' oeuvre, as well as his career as
a thriller writer. His very pertinent points of analysis concerning The
Lion's Jaws are extremely helpful for the reader who is
not familiar with Max Servais and Belgian surrealists. (We have
found several facts in his work concerning Servais' oeuvre that we
have used in this present article – EB)
* The lion's jaws
