Suspense and mystery surrounding a missing painting

Dimitra Rouboula | To Ethnos | Saturday 6 July 2013 The stories of objects and people’s lives are often intertwined and entwined in strange ways. But to what extent does the oral narration of a true story, one that may accompany us throughout our lives, reflect the truth?Dorina Papaliou builds her second novel around this question; she made a splash with her literary debut in 2007, when she published ‘Gatter’ (Kedros), featuring a teenage comic book artist and a police-style plot.Her new book is even more ambitious, with equally intense suspense, covering a wide range of themes and a vast historical canvas, from the exodus from Smyrna, the Occupation and the Civil War to Athens and London in 2006, and from the pioneering Scottish painters of the 19th century to the much-discussed artistic generation of the 1930s and the theft of artworks by the Nazis during the Second World War. The characters who pull the strings of the plot are two women, a grandmother and her granddaughter, united by the mystery of a painting.The young Louisa Lascaratou, an anthropologist, temporarily puts aside her preparations for an exhibition in Oxford and returns to Athens to find herself confronted with a strange photograph—a document left to her by her father before his sudden death. It is a photograph of her grandmother, her father’s mother, Louise Hatzilouka, as a young woman, standing in front of the self-portrait of her famous great-grandfather Jonathan Dodson, one of the pioneering painters of 19th-century Glasgow. Her husband gave this painting to a German officer in exchange for her salvation in 1944. However, the Greek-Scottish painter Louise Hadjilouka, a member of the 1930s generation who sought to capture the Greek light in her work, was ultimately executed on the eve of the December events, on charges of espionage. What went wrong? And if the painting was not handed over at the time, what became of Dodson’s unique self-portrait, reminiscent of Van Gogh, the discovery of which would have been a significant event for the art world?A wounded child of divorced parents, with roots in Asia Minor and Scotland, Louisa Lascaratou carries with her, like a fairy tale from her childhood, the story of the painting supposedly stolen by the Nazis. The narrative, however, differs from the actual truth, which she is now discovering. The gap between what has happened and what is subsequently described, between past and present, loss and memory, lies at the heart of the book’s central theme. The heroine embarks on a quest to find the ‘missing’ painting, turns her attention to the theory of works stolen by the Nazis, and finds herself in Greece during the Occupation and the Resistance, realising that the mystery of the self-portrait is inextricably linked to the execution of her grandmother, who had been involved in the struggle of the Greeks and British against the Germans. And whilst the granddaughter discovers her grandmother’s secret love affair with a Greek resistance fighter who initiated her into the Resistance, her own love blossoms for her father’s colleague, whom she had until recently hated.Love and memory may be the dominant themes, yet ‘The Essential Light’ is also an elegy to artistic creation and to the work of art which, once it leaves the creator, acquires an independent existence, travels to the ends of the earth and takes on stories unknown to him. ‘How strange the painter’s art can be, when one considers that whilst he pours his soul into every painting, the moment it leaves his hands it takes on a life of its own, defined by others...’. Although historical references to the period of the Occupation and the Resistance form the backdrop to the plot, their extensive coverage testifies to Papaliou’s interest in this field, and specifically in the fragmentation of the Resistance according to political objectives, and its appropriation by the Left, as she puts it.The well-structured plot and the gradual build-up of the action towards the final resolution, the intense suspense and the careful portrayal of the characters’ psyches, especially those of the two leading ladies, make ‘The Essential Light’ an enjoyable read, despite its excessive length.Bookmark‘The only thing that will ever define people is their actions. All her life, Louisa had longed for certainty, for a balance between what exists and what she would like to exist. But in the face of this quest for absolute truth, she saw more clearly than ever that what exists is nothing but narratives of the truth, infinite interpretations—some plausible, others improbable, some closer and others further from the truth— nothing more than an illusion of the truth. The real truth will always remain hidden in people’s souls’. (p. 606) DORINA PAPALIOU: ‘THE ESSENTIAL LIGHT’ Novel, Publisher: ‘Ikaros’, Pages: 632, Price: €18.90