Review of Cole the Magnificent, by Tony Williams, pub. Salt Publishing 2023

[sheenaghpugh]

“So Gaddi began to describe the imagination. He said that it was a lawless place much given to extremes of weather. It was extensive and offered vast opportunities for conquest but most people’s visits there were concentrated in a small number of dismal slums. Its inhabitants seemed more beautiful and more virtuous than those in the real world, but were not to be trusted.”

I’m tempted to describe this novel as a compendium of all the folk tale motifs to be found in the world. Certainly it would be hard to assign to a genre. It begins in the manner of an Icelandic saga:

“The sheep parted as the riders approached, but a shepherd stood at the head of the track and barred their way. He said no guests were expected at Harald’s place that day. Brand said, ‘I have come to give Harald something which every man receives in the end.’ The shepherd replied, ‘You will not go down to give Harald his gift as long as I am standing here.’”

Far away though, in an Eastern city, another story is unfolding in Arabian Nights style:

“She learned that the city’s thirty-eight aqueducts were all designed by different architects, and that the waters they carried, all minutely different in mineral composition, were each named after their author: Jacob’s-water sat heavy in the mouth; al-Shatir’s-water was sweet as apricots; Musa’s-water dried the throat as if it were sand; Oswaldt’s-water tasted refreshing but smelled of eggs; Vlad’s-water petrified conduits, ewers, goblets, tongues; and Nahid’s-water burst forth like a hibiscus and trickled with the sound of her murmured reproaches.”

While on the road that leads from one to another, the relic-peddler Islip invents legends of more and more unlikely saints:

“Whether he was tailoring the story to suit his audience, or simply keeping himself amused, was not clear. Thus he gave to a minor jarl the heel of Saint Huberic, who was smothered by heathens but continued to preach to them for six days after he was dead. He gave to a rich widow the jawbone of St Anna, who refused to lie with a housecarl even though he kept her in gaol and starved her, and eventually turned into a summer greensward so that when he opened up her cell he was met by a million bright petals, and the waft of flower scent, and a swarm of midges.”

And at regular intervals in each story, we are reminded that most stories exist in many versions, none of which is definitive:

“Abulcasis says they travelled for a hundred years without a single minute going by. Edith of Malmesbury agrees it was a century, but says that the Cole who set out was the great-grandfather of the Cole who finished the tale. Ouyang Xiu says nothing about how long they rambled for, and instead gives at this point a recipe for stewed hare. But Walafrid Strabo, the most reliable of sources and also the dullest, estimates that the Men Without Bonds travelled about a half a dozen years in this aimless fashion.”

Some readers may be reminded at this point of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, in which one tale continually spins off from another. But to my mind this is far more readable. I gave up on The Manuscript Found in Saragossa because its cast of thousands got too much for me. I do get what Potocki was doing: he was imitating the real world, in which everyone we meet has their own story, which in turn depends on many others, and which we can never hope to know in full. But the continual nesting of narrative killed the momentum. Cole the Magnificent is a “journey” story, amongst other things; for most of the time Cole is on his way from his past to an unknown future, and even when his physical travels are over, “Niven could see that his gaze was not on the steading and the work at hand, but on an inward landscape and a journey to the time of long ago”. This gives it enough momentum to withstand the constant digressions.

In fact, where Potocki replicates the structure of real life, Cole the Magnificent replicates that of story, which is frankly more interesting. Some of its humour is that of fantasy and hyperbole; “By now King Egg was so great that he had been divided into parishes. His left leg was stretching in spring sunlight while his right arm was still snoring in the depths of winter. If a man walked round him with a basket of cherries he was liable for a customs charge.” At other times the humour recalls rather the laconic style of saga, as in the unfailing sarcasm of Sigrid’s edgy relationship with Saul:

“The next morning Sigrid was put on a mule with her things, and Saul took up the reins to lead it. ‘I hope you will not think yourself a princess just because you are saved the effort of walking,’ said Saul. ‘I hope you will not think yourself the master just because you hold the reins,’ said Sigrid.”

Yet when Saul feels his death coming on, the same dry, laconic style can be, as it often is in saga, powerfully moving:

“‘It looks like I will be leaving the steading earlier than we thought,’ he said. ‘Will you sing a charm over me so that my farewell is not lonely?’ Sigrid said that matters were not that bad, but if things took a turn for the worse then she would do as he asked. ‘It would be the first time for that,’ said Saul.”

The end of the book at first seems to offer the obvious explanation that “story” is fantasy dreamed up by its creators:

“But Mariana of Warburg asserts that Cole, ‘an old Breton king much given to laziness,’ sat down on a bundle of withies and fell asleep. He dreamed the lives of Sigrid and Niven, Svinkeld and Ludo, Colrick and Gaddin, and while he dreamed his body caught light and burned in the green flames of summer; and his ashes drift down to earth every year as dandelion seeds.”

But we have already, much earlier, been given a strong hint that story can be, or become, more real than this:

“‘Imagine that you and I were to sit here on this terrace forever, talking of astronomy and eating oranges, with no yesterday and no tomorrow, only you and I forever in this conversation.’ Niven thought about this for a long moment, and felt what Gaddi had said actually beginning to happen. Birdsong filled the shade under the trees. There were – three, four, five, six – oranges in the bowl. A bead of condensation clung to the jug. The birdsong went on, and Niven and Gaddi sat in silence as the moment lengthened. There was a spasm of eternity.”

This is an absorbing, entertaining read with a lot to say about the relationship between reality and imagination and the nature of story.