Death in San Fernando

COMPANIONS OF THE LEFT HAND (338 pp.)--George Tabori--Houghton Mifflin ($2.75).

Hungarian-born George Tabori, 32, is almost unknown as a novelist. Educated in Germany, trained as a journalist in the Balkans and the Middle East, he now lives in England, has worked for the BBC since 1943. Companions of the Left Hand,* his second novel (the first: Beneath the Stone, 1945), is a sardonic political parable, overwritten in spots, preachy in others, but crafty, speculative and Koestler-like in its ambiguities and undertones.

In outline, the story resembles Thomas Mann's Death in Venice: an aging writer goes down to the Italian seaside to rest in the sun. Tabori takes this theme, twists it around to fit a modern situation and his own ends. The aging writer is Stefan Farkas, noted Hungarian dramatist. His train reaches San Fernando one day in the summer of 1943. He has been told that San Fernando will be "safe" for months to come. He wants a vacation and a rest. The war has made him nervous.

Nazis & Fascists. The Fascist station master greets him: "Ah, Signor Farkas, welcome." At the Hotel Paradiso, the manager bows and scrapes. Three Nazi officers staying at the Paradiso are impressed, try to make conversation. "Herr Farkas," says one, "my wife has just written me. She went to see a play of yours. In Dresden. She enjoyed it tremendously." Farkas stares, smiles coldly, answers in French. He has no love for Nazis or for Fascists.

Or for Communists, either. He meets an Italian in San Fernando who talks like a Communist. "I knew Trotsky in Vienna," Farkas tells him; "I didn't like his accent and the way he played chess. I regard Communists with the same suspicion as Jesuits." Farkas laughs, takes off his monocle and wipes it with his silk handkerchief. The Italian seems to be a friendly, good-humored fellow. All Farkas wants is the friendly, good-humored world he has always known. The Italian reminds him that such a world no longer exists, that for some people it never existed. Farkas shrugs his shoulders, smokes his cigar, drinks the rich local red wine.

When the news of Italy's surrender finally comes, San Fernando celebrates. Farkas' Italian friend is in fact a Communist, and sets up shop as the local commissar. Rumors fly fast: Mussolini has killed himself; Hitler has taken poison; the British will arrive any minute, accompanied by the Chief Rabbi of London and the entire Navy. San Fernando strings up a few Fascists, hangs out homemade Allied flags, dances in the streets.

Order & Death. But the Allies are still hundreds of miles away, south of Rome. The German Army arrives instead; Farkas hears its motorcycles and tanks roar into the village. "These wretched peasants," sighs the German colonel; "I am here to restore order." In spite of himself, Farkas is caught up in the troubles of the Italian Communist, and is swept to death in the "restoring" of order.

The conclusion is the most original part of Companions of the Left Hand, also the most dubious. From one angle it reads like a sermon on the fatal rigidity of the Communist mind, from another like a bright red Sermon on the Mount. Novelist Tabori's own views are obviously far to the left, although he denies that he is a member of any party. Whatever his politics, he has written one of the season's most striking novels.

* "The companions of the right hand . . . shall have their abode among lote-trees free from thorns. . . . And the companions of the left hand . . . shall dwell amidst burning winds and scalding water"--The Koran.

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