Killing the Second Dog
Marek Hlasko, Lesley Chamberlain
Language: English
Pages: 138
ISBN: 1939931118
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull."—The Washington Post
“His writing is taut and psychologically nuanced like that of the great dime-store novelist Georges Simenon, his novelistic world as profane as Isaac Babel's.”—Wall Street Journal
"Spokesman for those who were angry and beat . . . turbulent, temperamental, and tortured."—The New York Times
"A must-read . . . piercing and compelling."—Kirkus Reviews
"A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue."—Roman Polanski
“Marek Hlasko … lived through what he wrote and died of an overdose of solitude and not enough love.”— Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There
"A glittering black comedy ... that is equally entertaining and wrenching."
— Publishers Weekly
"The idol of Poland's young generation in 1956."
— Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
Robert and Jacob are down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1960s. They're planning to run a scam on an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, adrift in the nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the woman, whose heart is open; the men are hoping her wallet is too. What follows is a story of love, deception, cruelty, and shame, as Jacob pretends to fall in love with her. It's not just Jacob who's performing a role; nearly all the characters are actors in an ugly story, complete with parts for murder and suicide. Marek Hlasko's writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
Marek Hlasko, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe, was exiled from Communist Poland and spent his life wandering the globe. He died in 1969 of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills in Wiesbaden, Germany.
“Have you got a picture of her?” “I can find one.” “She’ll be his old mother who died a year ago,” Robert explained. “She had cancer, so he went heavily into debt to send her to a Swiss clinic where she was operated on by a famous surgeon. But it didn’t work and she died three weeks after the operation. Her constitution was so weak she had no chance. Now she’s buried in a small green cemetery and he has to pay off his debts. Do you see it now? He needs his passport to leave Israel, but his
for the first time from under an overturned stone. He was pale beyond belief, and I thought of the bouncer with his brown, dry skin. Robert opened his deck chair and settled into it, breathing heavily through his mouth; then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and handed it to me. He had scrawled on it: “An American?” I gave him a light and nodded my head. So did he; this meant that we would speak English only. “It’s a hot day,” Robert said. “Yes,” I said. “How clever of you to have noticed.”
cruelty exacerbated by the biting cold of winter, although occasionally, for moments, the misery was redeemed by the beauty of the mountains. In Israel it was the heat, unbearable for European immigrants, and the maddening dry wind, that enveloped his characters in existential languor. The seaside settings for Killing and All Backs Were Turned have to remind us of Meursault, Camus’s anti-hero in The Outsider, blinded by heat and light just before he shoots dead an innocent man on an Algiers
hermaphrodite. It can be quite funny. I don’t care. I just want to put something on.” She tossed me her bathing suit and I squeezed into it hastily. I overheard two men talking about me: one said that in California there were lots of men who were attracted solely to members of their own sex, and the other said he had once been to a men’s beauty parlor and it was absolutely disgusting. Looking at me pointedly, they both expressed concern for the future of the American nation, which had so quickly
“You won’t get a purebred for less.” “I’ll try.” “Spot cost us a hell of a lot of money, too.” “But just think what a dog he is,” he said. “Like a forest fire or a typhoon.” I glanced at Spot; little Johnny was chasing him. “I can’t think about him,” I said. “Every time I see him, I begin to feel dizzy. The dog we had before was nothing compared to this one.” “Yes, Spot is an exceptionally lovable beast. But it can’t be helped.” “Let’s leave out that part.” “No, that’s impossible. We