Like father, like son

It is an imaginative journey of the path someone might take while trying to find their own soul.

By ELAINE MARGOLIN
ROSES ARE placed on a bronze sculpture of a shoe on the banks of the River Danube in Budapest, part of a memorial to the thousands of Hungarian Jews shot into the river during the Holocaust (photo credit: KAROLY ARVAI/REUTERS)
ROSES ARE placed on a bronze sculpture of a shoe on the banks of the River Danube in Budapest, part of a memorial to the thousands of Hungarian Jews shot into the river during the Holocaust
(photo credit: KAROLY ARVAI/REUTERS)
Mark Sarvas’s second novel leaps well beyond his first one into a spectacular realm of imagination and daring. Memento Park has everything in precisely the right proportions: pace, plot, suspense, intricate characters and meditations on the loneliness of a secular Jewish life that are heartfelt. It also delves deeply into the realm of resentment; particularly towards aging parents whose long-ago hurts and slights still sting and color everything with their lingering toxicity. It looks, too, at what it means to become successful – but not as successful as one imagined one might become. In short, Sarvas has somehow managed to nail down in this novel what it means to truly come to terms with a difficult past. He accomplishes this feat through the engaging voice of his first-person narrator Matt Santos, who seems to come to us directly from Sarvas’s aching heart.
It is impossible not to think that much in the novel is mined from Mark Sarvas’ own traumatic family history. His father is a Hungarian Jew who was born in Budapest, and managed to survive the Nazi assault by living under false papers with his family during the war. His mother was born in Vienna and much of her family was murdered in Auschwitz. Sarvas does not recall either parent dwelling on their past experiences; it felt to him as if life started with his own birth in America which occurred soon after they arrived.
Sarvas recalls being an overweight and unpopular kid, and an nonathletic one.
The novel begins when Matt receives a call from the Australian consulate telling him that they believe a certain painting by Ervin Kalman called Budapest Street Scene had been recovered and they believe he is the rightful heir. Kalman had quite a following among the avant-garde before blowing his brains out as the Nazis approached Budapest. The work of art is believed to be worth several million dollars.
Matt is stunned by the phone call and asks why they have not contacted his father first. They tell him they have and his father wants nothing to do with it for reasons he will not specify. Matt is puzzled by his father’s reluctance to claim something so valuable; he sees him as a hustler of sorts; who would never miss an opportunity to enrich himself.
The incident throws Matt into a frenzy; one preoccupied with thoughts he has always pushed away regarding his relationship with his father. He describes him harshly: “My father taught me nothing….There is no judgment in this, merely observation, though I know how it sounds.”
But Matt also saw how similar he was to his father; a fact that disturbed him more than any other. They both loved dogs, and hated to shave. They loved to drive fast, and kept their private thoughts close to the vest. Most importantly, he felt they were both impostors of a sort; distant from others; and plagued by the realization that their accomplishments were at best second- rung. In more intimate matters, Matt also felt deficient. He felt something was wrong with his relationship with his gorgeous shiksa girlfriend Tracy, but he couldn’t really identify what it was. They were together; that was certain; but somehow not together in a way that was uncomfortable for him.
The prospect of getting the picture overtakes him. He is distracted at work and directors are losing patience with him.
He realizes how little he knows about his father’s life in Budapest. He travels there with his Jewish attorney, Rachel, to gather evidence for his case, and finds himself inexplicably drawn to her; not just physically but emotionally moved by the peaceful seriousness with which she pursues her religious life; something he now realizes his parents denied him.
When leaving her office he experiences an epiphany as he watches her graceful hand reach upwards to touch the mezuza affixed to her office door.
Matt and Rachel visit the Danube where his maternal grandmother was shot, and he is breathless at the reality that his father’s mother lost her life there. He finds an old woman near his father’s childhood home who knew his father intimately and shares with him a different portrait of his father as a young man: someone who was vibrant, full of life, irrepressible and good-looking. He begins to understand things that had never occurred to him before, all that was stolen from his father’s life, the horrors his father tried to shield him from.
Sarvas’s novel is a literary tour de force of the highest order. It is autobiographically tinged, but it is not an autobiography.
It is better. It is an imaginative journey of the path someone might take while trying to find their own soul. It explodes with unbelievable surprises that rip open his protagonist’s life, leaving him struggling with new feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. We, as readers, remain transfixed as he fights to find a way back.