The stories of Under the Dam are
compelling depictions of singular individuals whose lives are overshadowed by
immanent tragedy. Showing an assured grasp of the power of language, these
stories paint absorbing pictures with a depth that is sometimes astonishing. The
stories are realist in the sense that they belong in the familiar world, but
like the best realist fiction they show us everyday people and places while at
the same time reminding us that behind the façade of familiarity there are
worlds that are deeply imagined. The inner world of imagination seldom emerges
into consciousness with the clarity Constantine achieves in this collection. David
Constantine is a writer with a keenly observing eye; like a forensic
investigator no detail is small enough to go unnoticed. Constantine also
possesses the rare gift of making his observations plainly accessible to others.

What is disconcerting about this
collection is how effortlessly Constantine leads us into these intensely
rendered lives. As easily as leading a child through a haunted forest, Constantine takes us to the edge of a threatening tide, through a market rich with the
stench of blood, to the lounge of a woman stricken with bone disease, shuffling
her way across the floor. We look over the shoulder of a man who talks to his
long dead mother at her graveside; we take a seat on the settee with a family
reliving the grief brought to the surface by a wedding. In all of this there is
a sense that there is nothing odd or unusual. When the narrator of Visiting states:
”I could show you where we went in, at a
little gate behind the church, and I could show you where we came out….” you know he could, and you wouldn’t be able to turn aside. Many of the
characters are resigned, almost fatalistic. Constantine’s characters live in the presence of forces that threaten to
break out and overwhelm them, like the water of the dam that gives the book its
title story.

Language is a feature of
Constantine’s work, from the use of
archaic words such as ‘drouth’, ‘wrack’, and ‘mithering’ to descriptive phrases that are miniature
works of art in their own right, but which combine to create lives and
landscapes that are so vivid they have an almost tactile quality, and are
layered with meanings. This is an example of writing that brings its own
pleasures independently of the carefully controlled plots and finely drawn
characters. There are sentences that make you stop and read again for the sheer
indulgence of recapturing their moments of delight. Several motifs recur
throughout the book. Katya in Another Country has died with an embryo
inside her; Francis’s nervous anxiety in Estuary
is experienced as ”like the excitement
of a quickening”; later she sees an
embryo in the unfurling bud of an uprooted tree. There are many references to
ice, to the untamable power of water, to light, to loss and to time.

In Afterlife Constantine draws together themes of death from antiquity to the present, all as a context
for exploring a man’s jealous love. The
story is set in Athens, with the narrator pacing the city while his lover
visits the alluring Alexandro. Having consented to the visit, the narrator
baulks at the thought of accepting an invitation to meet his rival for a meal
or a drink. As he lurches through the city he reflects on its disembowelment,
on the cripples and drunks on the fringe of the markets, finally, like Dante,
descending into an inferno of slaughter and death, the underground market.
Constantine’s writing is wonderfully rich
and descriptive: ”I was near Thissio,
where the electric slows and goes under and shakes the ground and you know it
is burrowing through the eons of the city’s
life, all the shards and bones and splinters of marble and the stains of iron
and bronze, all the strata, all the generations trampled down”. As the story reaches its conclusion desire
defeats itself, leaving only remorse.

There is an impending sense of doom
with these stories, none more so than the title story. A young couple, Carrie
and Seth, having rented a house under an ancient viaduct move to even more
precarious accommodation at the base of a dam. Long before they move their
future is writ in uncertainty. When they relocate they are joined by Carrie’s lover and the only question is whether the
water that seeps through the cracks in the dam will become an engulfing
torrent, or their lives will give out under the weight of emotional pressure. Either
way they are going to be swept away.

In The necessary strength a
crippled woman is almost stranded attempting to cross a field and avoid a
horse. She doesn’t have the necessary
strength but the horse proves less threatening than she thought. In this
typically layered story the woman finds reserves of strength when faced with
her frozen, obsessive husband. All on video takes place in a single room
with the advantage that video footage of a wedding brings in both a full cast
of characters, and poignant insights into the thin line between pleasure and
regret. Mr Silverman in The loss loses his soul (which weighs precisely
21 grams) and learns to recognize others who have lost theirs. When melting ice
reveals a body an elderly man is reconnected with a past that never really left
him. Constantine is a writer who sees common human vulnerability in widely
diverse situations.

In Self Portrait the friend
of a writer remarks that ”the truth of a
fiction rests on concrete details”, recalling
James Joyce who on hearing his portrait painter wanted to capture his soul told
him: ”don’t worry about my soul, just
get my tie right”. Concrete details,
faithfully rendered, are a feature of Constantine’s
writing. Although the stories could properly be described as poetic they are
not abstract. The people, environments and everyday things that populate these
stories are made of solid stuff, even if, like the sands of Estuary or
the skyscrapers of The Loss, they shift about, or give the appearance of
it. There is simply too much in these stories to do them justice in a short
review. I can only say that if you read one book of short stories this year
make it this one.

© 2006 Tony O’Brien

Tony O’Brien is a short story
writer, and lecturer in mental health nursing at the University of Auckland,
New Zealand: a.obrien@auckland.ac.nz

Categories: Fiction