Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova's Els països del tallamar: A Review

Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova, Els països del tallamar (Palma: Documenta Balear, 2013). 323 pages.

Pa, as my father-in-law was known to my children, was born in Fairfield, in the western suburbs of Sydney, four years before the second world war started. Fairfield is, coincidentally, the place where Joan-Carles Martí, the author of this book inspired in very real events, ended up in the early 1970s, in the company of his immigrant family. They spent barely five years in Australia, but it was long enough to leave an indelible mark in young Martí.

Fairfield Station in south western Sydney. Many Spanish-speaking migrants lived there and pronounced the name of the suburb as "Far-field". Photograph by J Bar.

Els països del tallamar, which could arguably translate as The countries overseas, is not your average novel about migration, even though one of its main subjects is migration. To begin with, there is no first-person narrator, which would be expected for a narrative on the migration experience. There is of course an omniscient narrator, but the story follows the whims and travels of the character in possession of a black-and-red opal. This is Gabre, whose mission is to render an account of the lives of three generations, between the end of the 19^th century and the first decade of the one we’re currently in.

One of the strangest things about this book is the choice of names for all the family members. They’re all birds: there’s the parents, Baldrigot (the Great Shearwater) and Calàndria (the Lark), and Gabre’s siblings, Coloma Alba (the White Dove), Damisela Grua (the Damsel Crane), Aguiló Auri (the Golden Eaglet) and Gavina Vori (the Ivory Seagull). Maybe Martí wished to disguise the names of his relatives, or perhaps it is mere artifice, but the strategy feels a little forced, somewhat contrived. Although the overall effect may have been engineered, it does not harm the narrative at all. As I said, it feels somewhat odd.

The other big issue in Els països del tallamar is, perhaps surprisingly, language. Language defines us inasmuch as it is the result of asking ourselves the eternally existential question, “Who am I?”. There is a twofold insight into language in the novel. On the one hand, the Martí family was the upshot of a migratory mix within Spain in the late 19^th century; the  descendants are part of the big post-war migration to Europe. Baldrigot and Calàndria move to Marseille, the Occitanian part of southern France. So we have an unmistakable linguistic connection, as the historical links between Occitan and Catalan are evident.

But on the other hand Martí wants to direct our attention to the fact of language as the tool the migrant needs to truly master in order to survive wherever he/she goes. Unless you communicate, you will not succeed. This, presumably, is the author’s experience: Martí is a reputable translator and interpreter, and has made his living through the ability to use languages, in plural. Like yours truly. Here’s a poignant paragraph on the migrant experience, in his case a fifth generation migrant: “For the migrant, the future takes ages to come. Quite often, it never comes, even though at the end of the day everything comes and goes. Time does not exist because we can fly over a continuous line where there is neither past nor present nor future. Only when it becomes far too late does every generation realise they haven’t achieved everything they could have achieved: that’s their fate. All things considered, the children of migrants are often, at birth, sentenced to becoming migrants again, just like their parents, their grandparents and great-grandparents. That steep road of return to the mythical country they have so often heard about at home begins the moment their parents leave. Going back is a much crueller migration. The children of their parents’ longing never quite knows where they belong. Nowhere do the natives ever quite consider them their own or their equals, and even those who leave for a few years return as hybrids, scarred by the fire of longed for lands.” (p. 46, my translation) The notion that the return to the place of origin can be “a much crueller migration” is at once interesting and troubling, and it should be further explored. Consider the case of the numerous young men and women who have been expelled back to their parents’ countries from the USA, sometimes without any basic knowledge of the language.

“The immigrants were astonished to see a military camp, copied from a photograph taken during a war that had occurred a generation before. No one had in any way imagined anything like this. In fact, many had mixed up ‘Hostel’ with the word ‘Hotel’. Given its semicircular shape, made from corrugated iron sheets, the Nissen Hut had been designed during the First World War so it would divert bursts of shrapnel and bombs, and for that very reason it was the perfect shelter close to the battlefield.” (p. 242, my translation). Un exemple reconvertit de Barraca Nissen a Leeton (NSW). Fotografia de Bidgee.

But back to Marseille. The couple have four children, and after a few years in France the opportunity to go to Australia is there for them to take. From London they fly the kangaroo route (as it was known in those days because of the many refuel stops that were needed before reaching Australia). They are placed in a migrant hostel and face the usual difficulties and hardships migrants faced in those days. How things have changed in the 21^st century!

While the years in Marseille make up most of the first two parts of the novel, their five years in Sydney constitute the most remarkable part. In the second, Martí imagines the possible lives the characters may have lived in ancient times across the globe. Personally, I do not believe in reincarnation or previous lives or stuff like that, and so this section is, in my opinion, gratuitous and makes what is a good story needlessly longer.

In Fairfield, the family go through the migrant experience of the 1970s. They are taken to the migrant hostels where the most basic needs are taken care of, but that’s about it. While the parents and the eldest son take jobs wherever they may happen to be offered, the children go to school and have to learn English from scratch. Their lives are shaped by the Great Return Plan to the Promised Land of origin, in their case Elx, the big industrial city south of Alacant.

Torrades amb mantega i Vegemite. L'esmorzar australià més popular. A la majoria dels emigrants no els agrada gens. Fotografia de Tristanb.

There would be an irreparable loss after their return to Elx, the death of Coloma Alba. Those who are free from such grief and sadness can count themselves lucky indeed. Els països del tallamar is an extremely valuable contribution to the account of migration from Franco’s Spain to other lands and places. It would have benefitted from a stricter editor’s hand, in my view. The question remains: will there be any narratives from the current generation of Catalan-language youth who have been forced to migrate? Let’s hope so.