Now this is a story I did not understand! In The Spell, we are presented with a first-person narrative, and according to Persephone’s suggestion, the story is based on a Ukranian family Némirovsky used to visit when she was eight.
The family Némirovsky visited with her aunt and nursemaid was a very hospitable one. Day and night the family was ready to welcome anyone who visited them, and even let their visitors stay indefinitely – Némirovsky talks of a tutor who had come to teach her friend Nina’s two brothers who never left; he had been sleeping on two chairs in the hall for the last ten years. Even though the house was enormous, Nina’s family had friends, poor relations, old governesses staying with them, so it was completely full always!
Among friends who stayed with Nina’s family were Klavdia and Serge. Klavdia was Nina’s mother Sofia’s friend since childhood. Both Klavdia and Sofia had been in love with Nina’s father when they were young, and Nina’s father in love with Klavdia. But ultimately he had married Sofia when his parents opposed the marriage between him and Klavdia. So how come they all live together under the same roof? It turns out Klavdia was an orphan who was brought up by Nina’s father’s mother, and before dying, she made her son promise he would marry Sofia, but have Klavdia live with them! Strange now, isn’t it? However, that’s not the only thing out of ordinary with the living arrangements in this house – Serge, an old family friend living with them was possibly Sofia’s lover.
Now the spell which is at the heart of the story is one cast by Klavdia. Klavdia casts a love spell on Lola, Sofia’s eldest daughter, and Serge, and at the end of the story when they run away together, to the young Némirovsky it seems like the spell has worked. But the older Némirovsky is less inclined to believe this elopement had anything to do with witchcraft. I too agree that the spell had nothing to do with it, but at the same time, I find it hard to believe Lola and Serge were in a relationship before the spell was cast, so what brought them together? I’m clueless, just as I was when I read Spade Man from Over the Water by Frances Towers!
Advertisements Share this:
