Natalie Natalia
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Natalie Natalia is a novel by Nicholas Mosley first published in 1971 about a middle-aged British MP who, while seemingly on the brink of insanity, conducts an adulterous affair with the wife of a colleague.
Anthony Greville, married with two children—Adam is seventeen and Sophie is eight—, is having an affair with Natalia Jones, an enigmatic mother of two working as a sculptress whose cheating husband is also in politics. With his wife securely away at their country retreat for weeks on end and his children at their respective schools, Greville can enjoy being together with his lover without any major risk of being found out. When he is introduced to a girl called Madeleine he has a brief fling with her as well.
But in spite of his easy lifestyle, Greville is not a happy man. Although Natalia does not make any demands on him and his wife prefers not to see what is going on, Greville is torn between the two women, wishing to be with Natalia when he is with his wife and vice versa. What is more, he sees two people in his lover—an angelic figure but also, diametrically opposed, a demonic one: This makes him call her by two different names (Natalie and Natalia).
Disillusioned with politics, which, as he sees it, frequently prefers a stalemate to partisanship and real change, Greville announces that he is going to resign as soon as possible, even though he comes from a family of politicians and his son is already active in grassroots politics. His final mission as an MP is a trip to Central Africa to meet Ndoula, a controversial freedom fighter who has been imprisoned by the colonial powers. Greville spends the rest of his time in Africa writing and trying to make sense of his own life.
He returns to England only to find out that both his wife and his son, in whom a desire to help has been instilled, are leaving for Africa. Greville sees them off at the airport and then, although she has not answered his letters from abroad, he returns to Natalia.
Natalie Natalia is not an easy novel to read, in particular where Greville's thoughts (or maybe dreams and fantasies) are narrated. This is an example (from Chapter 7):
[…] I had rowed into the harbour from the sea; the oars had made whirlpools. A light appeared in the window: your breast, above the candle, burned. We wrapped our cloaks round us: ran with our shoulders against the drawbridge. Hands came through the door and held us; they were tendrils through the stone. You watched from an upstairs window. We were in the hallway of the castle. You stood with the candle and one hand against your breast. The candle burned: it made blood against the snow. The man with the beak of a bird put his head down to embrace you: with one arm round his neck, you were a tunnel through which he could breathe. On the stairs were figures in suits of armour. Firelight flickered. You were laid on a table with one leg raised. The man with the mask of a bird rummaged inside you. He was looking in you like a suitcase. I had been in the cell all winter alone. Turning you on your front, you had been split up the back by an axe. Men in white coats stood around you. They had instruments in their hands with which to handle coals. They flipped them over. You had your face to the wall and were fastened to iron rings. The man with the beak of a bird tore the lining. Hands had come through the wall and held me. Your arms were round the neck of the man with the mask like a swan. He reached to the entrails and the liver. Men leaned over tables and shovelled coal. Their pink cheeks glowed. You stood with a hand at your breast and the candle burning you. On the stairs were men in armour; their swords flickered. With your back towards them, they heated irons in the coal. They lifted your leg up and put it on the table. Moving with my hands behind me, I felt an iron ring in the stone. If I pulled, there would be a tunnel: I could put an iron bar across the hole. At the end of it would be a cell. There I had been all winter. […]
Read on
- A. N. Wilson's Scandal and Josephine Hart's Damage are two other British novels depicting extra-marital affairs of politicians which eventually lead to their downfall.
- The protagonist of Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King also travels to Africa to find enlightenment there.
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