The Heart Is Katmandu. (Hebrew).
Cohen, Leslie
Yoel Hoffmann The Heart Is Katmandu Peter Cole, tr. New York New
Directions. 2001. 144 gages $22.95. ISBN 0-8112-1465-6
A POSTMODERN NOVEL set in Haifa, The Heart Is Katmandu gracefully
transcends its physical location to draw a universal map of love. Its
characters are denizens of the boundless universe in their thoughts and
feelings. With one foot stumbling "in infinite space, across the
crust of a star," and the other wandering through the measureless
realm of dreams, the protagonist is a twenty-first-century Everyman.
Yoel Hoffmann's novel is a quintessential love story:
Yehoahim, a forty-three-year-old divorced man, and Batya, a young
unmarried woman with a baby, simply fall in love. What distinguishes
Hoffmann's writing is the way he explores their mutual enchantment,
considering it from the vantage points of the infinitely large, the
minutely small, the eminently serious, and the positively trivial. Like
the bilateral symmetry of a pair of hands, Yehoahim and Batya are a
perfect match. Even in their separate apartments, the lovers are in
tandem: "Each of them (Batya individually, and Yehoahim
individually) is taking steps at home, but together they're dancing
a tango. The dance hall is the universe, with the great lamps hung on
high, and the music is the sound of the steps themselves."
Typical of the postmodern novel, the story line here is incidental:
halfway through the book we learn that Yehoahim's wife has left
him; until that point, the source of his depression is unclear. Hoffmann
prefers to focus on his special use of language, and to accentuate the
discontinuous quality of thought. He offers a philosophical perspective
through which the ideas and actions of the characters may be
interpreted.
Hoffmann's poetic prose functions like a musical accompaniment
to the characters' discovery of the miraculous in the mundane. At
the beginning of the novel, Yehoahim is seated at an outdoor cafe,
drinking coffee. Suddenly, "(from the edge of his head) a chimney
opens out and his thoughts run through it like the Orient Express."
Thus, the novel unfolds in the form of brief and fragmented chapters
depicting Yehoahim's innermost thoughts and feelings, which travel
at enormous speed and cover infinite distances.
Yehoahim's express train of thought frequently switches
tracks: it zooms back and forth between his daily routines, his delight
with the order in the cosmos, and his recognition of the inevitability
of death. Initially, he dwells on his loneliness, contemplates suicide,
and even muses that "happiness, too, sends a crack through the
heart." But as the novel progresses, Yehoahim's emotional and
sexual involvement with Batya builds to a climax in which he discovers a
beauty he had never anticipated.
Despite their romance, Hoffmann's characters are not portrayed
as wide-eyed innocents; the obvious pitfalls of mawkishness are
skillfully avoided. While love is sweet and all of Creation miraculous,
still there are bills to pay, a rental contract to sort out, dirty
laundry, a furious ex-boyfriend, and a baby whose father is unknown. The
lovers view these as trivia through the lens of their gripping emotions.
Thus, Hoffmann's novel is a radiant but not a naive description of
the power of love over both heart and mind.
Leslie Cohen
Kibbutz Ein Hashofet, Israel
