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The Realism of Sound and Touch
In her essay “Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown,” Virginia Woolf writes that, “It is only if the
characters are real that the novel has any chance of surviving” (749). While Woolf herself
acknowledges the contested nature of that which constitutes a realistic character, she writes that a
real character will “make you think not merely of itself, but of all sorts of things through its
eyes—of religion, of love, of war, of peace, of family life, of balls in the country towns, of
sunsets, moonrises, the immortality of the soul” (750). In Anne Michaels’s novel Fugitive
Pieces, the characters of Jakob and Ben are made realistic through the expression of their
emotions in terms of the physical senses, particularly sound and touch. The technique of
juxtaposing abstract emotions with physical capacities grounds the intangible and immortalizes
the depth of the characters in regard to all humanity.
Throughout Jakob’s narration, sound functions in such a way as to authenticate the
despair he feels after his family is murdered by the Germans. Jakob does not see his family
perish; rather he is “a prisoner of sound” (17). He is subjected to “Noises never heard before,
torn from my father’s mouth” and then “the spray of buttons, little white teeth” (7). Following
the destruction of his home, Jakob is left forlorn and describes his throat as physically “aching
without sound” (9). For Jakob, silence reverberates the loss he feels over the death of his sister
Bella, who was a skilled musician. He reminisces that “Awake at night, I’d hear her breathing or
singing next to me in the dark, half comforted, half terrified that my ear was pressed against the
thin wall between the living and the dead” (31). Toward the beginning of the novel, Jakob
characterizes sound, or its absence, as haunting and doleful. Gradually, a shift takes place that
results in his growing appreciation for verbal resonance. He is comforted by Athos’s stories and
comes to enjoy the expression of sound in relation to music and language once again. He
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specifically embraces the sound of the English language, perceiving it as method of forgetting
the past: “The English language was food. I shoved it into my mouth, hungry for it…for which
each mouthful the past was further silenced” (92). Eventually, Jakob is able to face the sounds
of the past. With Michaela by his side, Jakob preemptively advises his children to “never be
deaf to love.” Jakob uses sound in his narration to concretely convey that which is inexpressible.
Emotions which may have seemed unreal due to the horrific nature of the Holocaust are granted
substance in the mind of the readers through their concrete conveyance.
Used to explicate Jakob’s release of emotion, the sensation of touch lends further
credence to him as a realistic character. Early in the novel, Athos’s touch represents safety and
tranquility. Jakob describes Athos’s hand as “heavy on my head. His left arm reaching down to
earth, his right arm reaching up, palm to heaven” (21). At the age of thirteen, Jakob narrates that
“His [Athos’s] touch felt natural to me, though all else was like a dream” (60). It is not until he
is older that the significance of touch as an emotional catharsis is truly embraced. Estranged and
lonely following the death of Athos, Jakob meets and marries the fiery Alexandra. Her body
becomes the center of Jakob’s reflection and insight, but falls short of being fulfilling: “Now she
is still and light as a shadow, her head on my chest, her legs on my legs, her narrow hips and the
touch in the cold wooden bunk in the dream—revulsion—and my mouth is closed with fear”
(141). Later, when Jakob is married to Micheala, the excitement that arises in relation to their
physical nearness is reflective of a needed emotional release. Upon experiencing physical
intimacy with Michaela, Jakob no longer senses the presence of the dead: “Instead of the dead
inhaling my breath with their closeness, I am deafened by the buzzing drone of Michaela’s body”
(180). Toward the end of their life together, Jakob watches Michaela role the pastry dough and
he relates that “Unknowingly, her hands carry my memories” (192). Because Jakob relates his
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emotions in terms of the physicality of others, the reader is able to better grasp and relate with
his character. His emotions are not simply abstract; they are literally felt; they are grounded in
something real and physical.
While Jakob acts as the raconteur for the first half of Fugitive Pieces, the latter half of the
book is narrated by the character Ben. Like Jakob, Ben utilizes the elements of sound and touch
to convey a somewhat painful but redemptive past. Ben also comes across as a character who is
able to elucidate his feelings through his corporeal experiences. Ben initially describes the sound
of music in reverent terms, reflecting upon his father’s love for it. While listening to music with
his father, Ben records that his father “dissolved each piece to its theoretical components like an
X-ray, emotion the gray fog of flesh” (215). Later, however, the narrator recollects how he hated
music lessons with his father. His feelings toward music bring to light his struggle to sympathize
with what his parents have gone through while embracing his own lifestyle. Later on, Ben uses
sound to reflect his state of restlessness. He recalls when his wife first sang to him: “a ghetto
lullaby, a sadness that seemed to me confusingly sweet” (137). This sweetness is replaced eight
years later with a pronounced silence. Even his dreams are soundless, and he is plagued by the
music his father used to listen to: “a reflection in the still surface of a lake smashed by a stone”
(249). Through the constant references to sound, emotions that would normally remain
undisclosed are clearly explicated to the audience.
The intimacy and meaningfulness of physical touch plays a significant role in Ben’s
narration. Jakob gradually becomes enlightened as to the freedom gained from experiencing the
physical touch in harmony with sincere love; however, Ben’s expression of physical intimacy
reflects his struggle to find contentment and purposefulness. At one point, he describes his wife
as laying on him and feeling “heavy and cold as wet sand” (202). In contrast, he describes his
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intimacy with Petra as satiating: “souls seeped into the extravagance of sheets and flesh. Having
emptied myself completely, I slept as though to full to move” (278). When Petra abruptly leaves
him, Ben is once more thrown into a state of confusion. This can be seen in relation to his
memories of Naomi’s body. The very curvatures of her body, of which he remembers little,
indicate all that has been missed or neglected on his part. It is in this way that Ben’s feelings,
though not overtly expressed in accordance with his physical acuteness, are conveyed to the
reader in a tangible manner.
In her essay, Woolf writes, “The writer must get in touch with his reader by putting
before him something which he recognizes, which therefore stimulates his imagination, and
makes him willing to co-operate in the far more difficult business of intimacy” (753). In the
end, it is the physical elements of touch and sound that lend Jakob and Ben traits of authenticity
and intimacy in the mind of the reader. Whereas we cannot all empathize with certain emotions,
we can all relate on some level with the memories and experiences associated with our own
physical senses. We see, feel, hear, smell, and taste; and often these capacities foster in us an
inexpressible joy or pain. This is the timeless principle so well instilled within the pages of
Fugitive Pieces, the common link that all people share: it is the remembrance and preservation of
memories through our own physical awareness.
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Bibliography
Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces. New York: Vintage International. 1996.
Woolf, Virginia. “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” Theory of the Novel. Ed. Michael McKeon.
Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000. 749-53.