“M” is for “Mulos”
By Phyllis Knox
This blog is part of a very special series created and written by Phyllis Knox, “Alphabetic Musings”, whereby she chooses a word starting with a particular letter from the alphabet and injects it with her storytelling magic.
Mulos is the name of a wonderful book which I will always cherish among my “Keepsakes”. This novel (2022 Editions Druide inc.) was written by Ms. Johanne Pothier and is fresh off the press. With the addition of this novel, Ms. Pothier, the author, has written a total of four novels, the first three are:
Le Reveil de la Bete, roman,VLB editeur, 2013.
1779: Trois Betes a sept Tetes, Tome 2, roman, La Bagnole, 2010.
1779: Trois Betes a sept Tetes, Tome 1, roman, La Bagnole, 2009.
This particular book has a theme that is most likely common to all humans. We probably all deal with and process our lives differently... but, do we really? Are we all really so different? We all experience events, whether good or bad as well as happy or sad, that we would probably have wanted to avoid at all cost. Life is what it is and we really don’t get to CHOOSE every turn it takes. In all honesty, getting to the fork in the road might stop us in our tracks or we may run to what we think is the ‘perfect’ decision. Only time will tell, as years may pass, before the true nature and the consequences of our decisions, on any given day, may truly show its face, so to speak! We may want to, but we soon find out that some doors open to us while others close. Does our past haunt us, or follow us, determine our futures, and make us who we are, or who we become?
The author explains that: “In Romani, the word Mulo signifies the return of one who has died or is now, a Vampire.” (my own translation and...I am NOT a translator!) Ms Pothier simplified the use of the plural by adding an “S” to her chosen word. Wiktionary uses the Etymology: Dead Man. The story presents the problems we all deal with when the ghosts of the past resurface today!
On the back of her book (as mentioned above), the author has added these words in order to give a little background to the story (once again, my translation/my personal words). In a few sentences, the author explains the gist of her story in this way:
There are two children, both of whom have experienced extremely difficult pasts. Suzanne, the blond one, is the result of Lebensborn des Ardennes, a Hitler-run ‘baby factory’. She is a child whose sole purpose for having been born was tightly connected to the glory of the Fuhrer and to the Aryan race. And Jeanne, the brunette, is a survivor of the “death camps”. She has no name and no date of birth. She is a war orphan with a musical gift...a genius violinist, she will perform in all the great halls of the world. Her love affair with Onur, who is a free spirit and also an imaginary fantasy, is important to the story since it will lead her to believe, for a time at least, in a simple and good life. This, of course, leads to a dark place within her self-imposed ‘cage’…..that closed-in space is always present in her spirit and in her mind and in her soul and eventually the bars would once again, close in on her and her personal mulos would reappear and finally, her past would take over and pull her back into the big black hole of her being!
Noteworthy is the fact that the background to this story is not surprising when we find out that (my translation from the cover) the author herself has roots in world-class music. Her melodious and carefully-chosen words envelop the outlines of these two ladies whose destinies are interlocked, both pulled by the tides of the 20th century.
The very first chapter brings us all the way back to 1942, to a time when World War II was at its height, a time of extreme hate and injustice when all was ‘impossible’. I would be born just a few years later into a time and a world which was vastly different from the one that Suzanne and Jeanne would have known. Or was it so different? Everybody ‘tried’ to move on and in that way, wanted to leave his or her own personal “mulo” behind!
Some 15 years ago while in France, I visited a cemetery in the area around Dieppe in the northern section of that country. I was deeply touched by the number of crosses in the Poppy fields nearby. The names of the young men and their ages stunned me as my own dark thoughts took over. The seriousness of the moment was overwhelming as I studied our Canadian Maple Leaf engraved on each headstone. So it is that I believe that our distant pasts and our yesterdays become entangled in our todays. Our pasts are just below the surface as we work our way through our trials and tribulations and we “strutt and fret our hour upon the stage” as William Shakespeare once wrote. We walk and run our way through the ups and downs of our routines “and then, are heard no more”.
As I mentioned in a former blog, I went to a French-language school (St. Jean de Brebeuf) for the first three years of my education. That wonderful school is here in Three Rivers. Need I say that reading a 336-page novel, EN FRANCAIS is quite a challenge for me? While I was able to zero in on the main idea of each word, each line, and of each paragraph, it was a difficult, if not (sometimes) an impossible challenge for me, to truly understand the ‘message’. Johanne is a close friend of mine (and so, I have been given the publishing rights to use her words and ideas as I see fit and she is taking a chance, EH?) and I wanted to know what she thought of such a deep subject. I wanted to know the who, what, where, when and whys of it all. Her ideas, I knew, would touch me to my very core. When I was given a signed copy (no less) of her brilliant rendition of a time long past, I was thrilled. Within a few days, I decided that now was the time...I would conquer this challenge. But, it was not to be that easy. In fact, it would be very, very difficult for me. I thought that my love of words from the English language would walk me through the pages in a language which I (sort of) speak and understand the details of in its spoken form... No, no, no… that is not at all the way it ‘happened’. I am even today after many months, stalled within the first 50 pages of her book. A fear took over and the past was right there with me as it haunted me and made me feel incapable of the task at hand. Our past creeps in when we least expect it. It makes moving forward or getting over our fears and insecurities a monumental task, EH?. With some luck we may actually finally conquer it.
I want to be able to converse with Johanne about the spirits which live between the pages of her novel but, alas, not a moment before I can fully understand the details and the true meaning of events hidden within the chapters of this marvelous book. That day will come. I must make it happen. I want to experience that exchange of ideas so much...a meeting of the minds!
Bye for now and believe in yourselves, EH? Phyllis.
P.S. What is the lesson here? Perhaps our own insecurities prevent us from making decisions each and every day which could make our lives a little better and a little easier. Those haunting negative voices tell us that...well…that we can not really accomplish such and such a task when, if we were able to believe in ourselves, we probably could!
We all have a little of Suzanne and Jeanne in us and only ‘we’ can turn on the voices that will carry us through to a happy, contented life and which will make it possible for us to turn off the destructive voices of our own “Mulos”.
