Things that Lurk in the Shadows

I’ve got something of a fetish for stories about the fantastic and non-existent creatures of the night like werewolves and ghosts and vampires. Especially vampires. In fact, my vampire fascination stretches as far back as to when I was about 8 (and that is quite a long time ago now) and I used to dream about being a vampire. Then, it wasn’t so much the blood-sucking business that appealed to me, but more the supernatural powers like super-human strength and the ability to fly and see in the dark. Nowadays it’s more what the seductive and shadowy vampires of literature represent that interests me (although I still wouldn‘t say no to supernatural powers). It’s the expression of uncontrollable and therefore terrifying sexuality and the awfully alluring call to glut oneself on the “dark” things of this world that the vampire represents which I love.

So you can imagine my glee when, one rainy afternoon in a dingy Parisian bookstore, I stumbled across an unassuming little tome entitled Histoires de Vampires which boasted Baudelaire, Dumas and Maupassant (amongst others) as authors. I snatched it up and discovered, upon reading the introduction twenty minutes later on the metro, that these stories were important contemporaries and precursors to later more well-known vampire novels such as Dracula (please let's not mention the Twilight saga here. Oops. I just did).

I’m not going to go into an in-depth account of each of the stories (even though I would like to) but I will tell you about my favourite amongst them: “Le Horla” (1887) by Guy de Maupassant. One of Maupassant’s first stories dealing with the fantastic and also one of the first stories marking his descent into madness, “Le Horla” is the unfinished diary of a man who is gradually overtaken by an invisible but overpowering presence he names the “Horla” (a vampiric entity in the sense that it feeds off the life-force of humans). The story documents the protagonist’s transition from happy-go-lucky and independent young man to the smothered, terrified and oppressed object of the invisible but irrefutably more powerful “Horla”. The complete domination of the protagonist plays out that old human fear that there is someone or something more powerful than us, someone or something that will come to take over the world and make of us their livestock.

To use the protagonist's own words (in my very rough translation) upon realising his plight: “Now, I know, I’ve figured it out. The rein of humanity is finished. He is come, He whom the very first fears of primitive people dreaded, He who was exorcised by disquieted priests, He who was evoked by witches in the dark of the night, and to whom, without yet seeing Him appear, the presentiments of the wary travellers of this world gave the forms of gnomes, ghosts, genies, fairies, pixies”.

“Le Horla” is an unsettling tale that sweeps you up in its gradual approach towards an all-consuming terror of that which we can’t see and the absolute loss of hope when faced with a foe more powerful and intelligent than we could ever be. So probably not a story to read if you’re prone to nightmares …

Caca Boudin!

It says a lot about my time living in France that this is one of the books that really stuck with me. Yes, it's a children's book and yes, the humour is accordingly puerile but I love it! I only regret that there is not an English version (yet anyway) to share with everyone at home but I'll do my best to explain ... because I loved it too much to keep it to myself.

Basically, it's the story of a cheeky little rabbit who replies only and always to anyone and everything "caca boudin!" (a common thing for French kids to say which kind of equates to saying "poopoo sausage!"). One day, the big bad and green wolf crosses the little rabbit's path and eats him. The greedy green wolf is struck by a strange affliction - a sore tummy and the inability to say anything besides (you guessed it) "caca boudin!". Which of course gives the game away. The little rabbit's father discovers that the wolf has eaten his little rabbit and quickly extracts him from the beast's belly, hailing his child with an affectionate "there you are, my little Caca Boudin!" to which the slightly offended little rabbit replies "why are you calling me that, Dad? You know perfectly well my name is Simon". However, upon returning to the house and being told to eat his spinach, the little rabbit embraces a new word ... "prout!" (fart).

I read this book over and over and over with one of the little girls that I looked after, both of us yelling at the top of our voices "caca boudin!" each time the book demanded (I'm not actually sure who enjoyed it more, her or me). The unfortunate side-effect of this though was that, come dinnertime and spinach, she would invariably tell me "I'm not eating that, it's caca boudin!" (or "green eggs and ham" but that's another, more self-explanatory story). And all authority would go out the window because I could never stop myself from laughing.

I have also since discovered that Stéphanie Blake does currently have one book in English: I Don't Want to Go to School featuring yet again the cheeky little rabbit. Clearly in the same vein ...