The Ballad of the False Messiah     by Moacyr Scliar Original title: Balada do Falso Messias Original language: Portuguese Country: Brazil   Published by Ballantine Books, Inc. Pub. Date: 1987 Format: Hardcover, 89 pages ISBN: 0345349040 Edition: 1st Edition List Price: $4.95, £3.15 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £3.15

In Ballad of the False Messiah we get eleven of Moacyr Scliar’s best stories, mostly on Jewish or Jewish-Brazilian themes. The title piece is a bittersweet, brief re-telling of the Shabbatai Zevi story ‘transferred to a Jewish agricultural colony in Southern Brazil. Shabbatai Zevi was one of the ‘False Messiahs’ who appeared during a desperate period of Ashkenazi Jewish history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, promising to lead his compatriots out of tzuresdike golus (painful exile) to dwell with the Lord in Eretz Yisroel (the land of Israel). Needless to say it didn’t quite turn out as prophesised, and nor did the high hopes of the Jewish colonies in Brazil.

‘Don’t Release the Cataracts’ is a snippet of black humour, mild and Thurberesque like many of Scliar’s pieces. ‘New Year, New Life’ is more of the same, and satirizes the Yiddish saying ‘nayes yor, nayes lebn’ (New year, new life) with the story of a ‘bum’, a madcap ‘hippie’ who scrapes along in idleness and cupidity. ‘The Scalp’ is a very strange little story, very short but rich in its exploration of resentments based on social class, gender and even looks... While in ‘The Spider’ we catch another whiff of ingrained resentment, surely a very common emotion, here between a woman and her porky lover who bribes her affections with snacks from his grocery store. Moving away from the theme of ‘love’, in ‘Eating Paper’ Scliar manages to be funny, ironic and noirish on the subject of Life Insurance.

‘The Evidence’ is a thoughtful tale of cruelty and avidity, where ‘invisible currents of hatred, of repressed hostility... flow in the moments of silence’ while ‘The Offerings of the Dalial Store’ is a surprising story of everyday perversion but also somehow magical, while the final longer piece here, ‘The Short-Story writers’ is a writer’s self-parodic investigation on every possible type of short story writer including Helena, a manicurist short story writer; ‘The characters created by Helena, a manicurist, were fingernails: «I write about what I know», she would say...

I caught sight of short-story writer Volmir. Whenever short-story writer Volmir wanted to write, he would closet himself in his study for two or more days. When he reappeared, he was changed but happy. He would invite his wife and daughters into his study, where they would stand around the desk upon which lay the typed pages held together with a brand-new paper clip. Full of jubilant respect, they would stare at the short story for several minutes.

‘What’s the title?’ they would ask, and when the short-story writer disclosed it, they would hug one another, overcome by joy. Short-story writer Murtinho organized the production of his short stories in accordance with the assembly-line principle: outlines in the top drawer, half-finished short stories in the second drawer, finished short stories in the third drawer. Short-story writer Manduca, quite soused, hugs me whimpering:

‘1 can only write under the influence of bennies and lately they haven’t had any effect... I’ve been taking the weirdest things, I’ve even tried deodorant...’ ‘The Short-story Writers’ 47