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'The Mayor's Tongue'

By | Sunday, July 6, 2008

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The title tells the tale in Nathaniel Rich's debut novel, (Riverhead Books, $24.95, 310 pages). Part fable, part magical realism, with a touch of the grotesque, "The Mayor's Tongue" is a delightful, literate novel about communication, or the failure thereof - the literal communication of speech and language, and the emotional communication between father and son, man and woman, friend and friend.

Nathaniel Rich, the son of New York Times writer Frank Rich, has a talent for storytelling. Language, eccentricity and surrealist absurdities are his - and the reader's - delight.

The novel consists of two stories unconnected except for locales - New York and Trieste - with both culminating in the Carso, the wild limestone plateau north of Trieste, with its mountainous roads, tunnels, caves and underground rivers. Both cities are multilingual: New York with international immigrants and Trieste where Slovenian, Italian and a Venetian dialect are spoken.

There are stories within stories of lovers seeking one another in dreamlike circumstances, of missed connections and misunderstandings.

In the main story, Eugene Brentani, estranged from his immigrant Italian father and working in New York as a furniture mover, befriends Alvaro, a libidinous Dominican who speaks Cibaeno, a dialect spoken only in the farming communities of the Cibao Valley in the Dominican Republic. Alvaro speaks no English; Eugene no Cibaeno, but Eugene nevertheless agrees to translate Alvaro's novel believing he understands the gist of it.

Eugene is an admirer of the works of Constance Eakins and is thrilled to find himself moving furniture for Abraham Chisholm who not only has a collection of all Eakins' works but knows the writer. Eugene is taken with Chisolm's daughter, Alison, and follows her to Trieste where she has gone to look for Eakins who may, or may not, be alive and may or may not be working on his 26th novel, "The Mayor's Tongue."

Once in Trieste, Eugene discovers that Alison, who "also goes by Sonia, Alicia, Alice, or Agata" has disappeared. He traces her up into the Carso where he finds her with a "gargantuan" being whom he assumes is Eakins, the mayor of a strange town called Idaville peopled with characters from Eakins' books.

Eakins is a voracious eater; his huge tongue appeared to Eugene "like an infant . . . reaching its leg out of his mouth; it was muscular and seemed to be coated with very fine down." Eakins tells Eugene that "every time you reveal a secret to someone . . . part of you dies. . . . If you reveal everything, you're empty - just a collection of facts in other people's minds." Alison rejects Eugene and remains with Eakins in Idaville.

The second story involves two friends, Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Rutherford, who met during the war in Italy. Now, many years later in New York, they are inseparable. Rutherford decides to return to Italy. Letters become postcards; English becomes Italian. When Schmitz' wife dies, he goes to find his friend in Milan.

Rutherford has forgotten English and speaks only Italian, when he speaks at all. Schmitz notices a "purple tongue-shaped mark down [Rutherford's] jaw." After Rutherford has a stroke, Schmitz surreptitiously removes him from the hospital and takes his friend to a small town in the Carso above Trieste where he tries to animate Rutherford's brain waves by talking about all the cities he knows.