The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje, (pseudonym of Anjet den Boer) author; David McKay translator
The time is 1921. The place is The Ghislain Asylum, for the insane. Who is Noon Merckem? Merckem is a soldier who was named by the friars at the asylum, but once he was known as Amand Coppen, the photographer! Amand had been missing for 4 years, and most women and wives would have given up searching for their husbands or relatives by that time, but not Julianne; she would not give up. She believed Amand was alive. In the eighth year, since he had departed for war, she discovered him at the asylum. He had been suffering from amnesia and remembered nothing of his past or about their relationship.
Julianne and Amand’s relationship had been star-crossed from the beginning, although it had blossomed into a deep love. Amand’s mother, for whom Julianne worked, had done her best to terminate their friendship, but she was unsuccessful. They married, in spite of her and their class differences. Now, after he had been missing, and thought possibly killed in action, they were reunited because of her loyalty and fortitude. As they tried to rebuild their lives, based on the stories that Julianne told Amand about how their relationship had developed and how it had grown, he sometimes doubted that she was telling him the whole truth. Sometimes, in his own mind, he silently disagreed with the way she talked about their mutual life before, although he had no memory of it. He suddenly had two children too, Rose and Gus, but he knew nothing of them either. Was she telling this story of their past in the way that she wished it had occurred, instead of how it had really occurred? He did not remember anything and relied on her to fill in the blank spaces in his mind, but as he learned bits and pieces of contradictory information, he wondered, once again, if she was being entirely truthful.
Noon/Amand, was haunted by his nightmares of the war. His fear in his dreams sometimes became actions that threatened Julianne’s safety, but she remained unperturbed. She endured his nighttime struggles, endured his frustrations and his violence, and she comforted him. Those moments are when her enduring love for him truly shone through. Subsuming her own fear and discomfort, she consoled him until he calmed down. Often, their lovemaking afterwards provided the much-needed solace and reconciliation needed. After a disagreement or misunderstanding, it brought them back together. It was sometimes tedious in its redundancy, as were their arguments occurring because Julianne and Amand sometimes imagined the other to be something other than they were. Although many of the scenes became repetitive, because the novel is so well-written, if the reader is patient, the effort will be well-rewarded.
The insights presented, the dialogue, the human experiences, the unfolding details of relationships, all make this novel an example of literature at its finest. In the photography studio, as Amand tried to reinvent himself as the man Julianne described, he gave life to her fantasy of her missing husband and even of all the fantasies of the missing husbands and their grieving wives. In this effort, though, he was often frustrated by his own thoughts and actions. He simply did not know if what she told him was true or if he would ever remember the truth. He knew that he was once a photographer; his name was on the window of his studio. He knew that he had taught her how to run it when he was forced to go to war, because she had been doing so since he left and went missing, but that was all he knew.
This novel is a story about two lost people, one lost in her hopes for a different reality and one who hopes to find his forgotten reality. Is their confusion a symbol of the problems in the broader world around us? Amand cannot get beyond his memories of The Guislain Asylum, for the insane, the place that had housed him for four years. He only remembers his life there. He remembers the people, the work he did, the friendships he made, the church he attended, but before that, his mind is empty. As Julianne kept trying to resurrect the memories of their past, their marriage and their children, Gus and Rose, of whom he had no memory either, he too, tried to restore his memories, if only to make her happy. As secrets were revealed to him, as his nightmares hinted at his past, he questioned some of the tales she had told him. Were they both reinventing each other into the ideal spouse they would prefer?
I don’t know if this novel is for a broad audience, because it is a difficult read with all of the emotional turmoil the characters experience. It requires the reader to examine each sentence, each paragraph, each page, as it develops and surrounds the lives of the characters, but I saw each scene in the theater of my mind, as I actually could visualize what was taking place, giving a face to each character, an image to each location, and an emotion to each moment. The story was slowly and eloquently told, about two individuals working toward falling in love again, rekindling their past, and rebuilding the memories they wished to preserve as they discarded those they wanted to forget. Would they be successful? How would this all end?