No Bigger Than a Peanut

MATRYOSHKAS
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Unicef Photograph ~ Odesa, Ukraine
"Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds.
Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world."
(463)
What a good turn of events it was for me to receive a copy of Kate Atkinson's novel -- One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery -- as a souvenir of Edinburgh from Gerry's Cousin Jonny. I had watched a few seasons of Case Histories, the British crime drama set and filmed in Edinburgh; but this was my first time sitting down to actually read one of the Jackson Brodie mysteries upon which the series is based. One Good Turn turns out to be the kind of thriller that you start reading on one day and finish the next, with only a few brief hours of sleep in between.

In addition to the primary investigation, numerous distracting and entertaining subplots captured my attention: the Edinburgh Festival playing around the clock, a dear old cat named Jellybean, sadly, in failing health, and -- most intriguing of all -- a set of nesting Russian dolls whose presence in the text provide a constant reminder of hidden worlds and secrets.

Introductory Montage & Theme Song: Case Histories & One Good Turn
When the character Martin Canning, a successful author of crime novels, becomes involved in a real crime, he peers into the travel bag of the mysterious man whose life he has inadvertently saved:

"He had seen inside the bag and there was nothing that revealed anything about Paul Bradley, just a black plastic box, a mystery within a mystery. Perhaps the box would contain another box, and inside that box another box, and so on, like the Russian dolls. Like his own Russian dolls, the prelude to his brief courtship and consummation with the girl from the matryoshka stall."
(One Good Turn 155 - 56)

I myself have long been a student and a collector of matryoshki, and once upon a time totally immersed myself in Susan Stewart's cultural study On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. With ultra - simplicity, Stewart (scholar and poet) captures the mystery of the matryoshka in three simple words: "within within within," a phrase to open your mind and send a quick shiver down your spine. I felt those same goosebumps when Atkinson describes Martin's trip to St. Petersburg:

" . . . there were dolls, thousands of dolls, legion upon legion of matryoshka, not just the ones you could see but also the ones you couldn't -- dolls within dolls, endlessly replicating and diminishing, like an infinite series of mirrors . . . Martin had never given matryoshka much thought before but here in St. Petersburg their ranks seemed omnipresent and unavoidable . . . big ones, small ones, tall ones and squat ones . . . dolls in the shape of cats, dogs, frogs, there were American presidents and Soviet leaders, there were five - doll sets and fifty - doll sets, there were cosmonauts and clowns, there were crudely made dolls and ones that had been exquisitely painted by real artists. By the time he left the hotel shop Martin felt dizzy, his eyes swimming with endless reflections of dolls' faces . . . ." (One Good Turn 232 - 34, emphasis added)

"You can think of the universe as a set of wooden Russian matryoshka dolls, with each doll having a smaller one inside of it. The entire visible universe is the outermost doll, and nested inside it are galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets -- right down to the smallest doll, which is you. But inside of you is an even smaller doll that somehow has the biggest doll inside of it. When you figure out this riddle, you will have discovered the key to your ascension!"
~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet

This ethereal, eerie, enmeshed elegance is what Stewart calls the "profound interiorty" of the doll / dollhouse (61); and philosopher John O'Donohue refers to as "the infinity of our interiority."

Martin is mesmerized by both the "profund interiority" of the colorful stacking matryoshi and the charming salesgirl at the matryoshka stall. When he ventures out once again in search of souvenirs, the salesgirl Irinia "started picking up different dolls, opening them up, cracking them all like eggs" (OGT 236). Like eggs! I love that! After all, there are similarities between the two! Everyone knows that an egg -- especially an Easter Egg -- can contain a surprise!

As a keepsake, Martin chooses "an expensive fifteen - doll set . . . attractive things, their fat - bellied stomachs painted with 'winter scenes' from Pushkin. Works of art really, too good for his mother, and he decided he would keep them for himself. 'Very beautiful,' " On the way home, he thinks of the nested dolls he has just purchased, tucked away, out of sight, in "the thin plastic carrier bag that contained his newspaper - wrapped dolls, snugly inside each other now" -- minatures within miniatures within miniatures. It crosses Martin's mind that in picking out the Pushkin set he had devoted "more contemplation than either the task or the dolls merited" (OGT 236 - 237).

Curiously though, his thought process aligns with Susan Stewart's theory of the miniature and the gigantic, especially when it comes to "tourist art," tchotchkes that don't cost much money and serve little purpose: "Use value is transformed into display value . . . Those qualities of the object which link it most closely to its function in native context are emptied and replaced by both display value and the symbolic system of the consumer." Of course, one might rightly observe that nesting dolls don't really serve a purpose; but, as Stewart explains, "Even the most basic use of the toy object -- to be played with -- is not often found in the world of the dollhouse" or in the world of "tourist art":

The miniature comes into the chain of signification at a remove: there is no original miniature; there is only the thing in "itself," which has already been erased, which has disappeared . . . the miniature typifies the structure of memory, of childhood . . . from its petite sincerity arises an "authentic" subject . . . . (Stewart 62, 149, 171 - 72, emphasis added)

For a fleeting second, Martin thinks about a nice set of nesting dolls for his mother but rejects this impulse, resolving instead to buy "something ordinary . . . because she deserved nothing better than ordinary -- a little peasant set, aprons and headscarves." Then he reconsiders even this downmarket gift, knowing that whatever he picks will end up neglected "amongst her other cheap knick - knacks." Instead of the peasant dolls, he moves down yet another rung on the souvenir ladder, purchasing at last "a fridge magnet for his mother, a little varnished wooden matryoshka" -- the merest echo of the real thing. In keeping with Stewart's observation of tourist art, this lone wooden trinket cannot even perform the sole function of the matryoshka -- to be nested within a set.

A few years later, back in Edinburgh, Martin's housecleaner Sophia admires his Pushkin matryoshki:

"He had a set of Russian dolls, matryoshka, the expensive kind. . . . The writer's dolls were lined up on the windowsill [display value!], she dusted them every week. Sometimes she put them inside each other, playing with them like she had done with her own set when she was a child. She used to think they were eating each other [!]. Her matryoshka had been cheap, crudely painted in primary colours, but the dolls that belonged to the writer were beautiful, painted by a real artist with scenes from Pushkin -- so many many artists in Russia with no jobs now, painting boxes and dolls and eggs, anything for tourists. The writer had a fifteen - doll set! How she would have loved that when she was a girl." (OGT 220 - 21)

Imagine Sophia's shock to enter Martin's well - kept house for a routine cleaning, only to find the dolls "scattered everywhere, little skittles knocked flying. She picked one up without thinking and put it in the pocket of her jacket, feeling the smooth, round, satisfying shape of it" (OGT 222)

Perhaps drawn to its "petite sincerity," both Sophia and, later in the day, Jackson take the opportunity to pocket a miniature matryoshka, as a kind of talisman to sustain them through the stressful criminal investigtion process that lies before them. Coincidentally, the word keeps coming up throughout Jackson's day (as my sisters and I have discussed previously). When investigating a suspicious "Import - Export" business, he comes across a "wall of boxes, all stencilled with one mysterious word, 'Matryoshka.'" When he stops by the Edinburgh Festival, he notices a circus act entitled " 'Matryoshka' . . . The word of the day," he tells himself.

Jackson . . . spotted something on the carpet, a tiny painted wooden doll, no bigger than a peanut. He picked it up and peered at it . . . 'What is that?' he asked, holding the little doll up for her inspection.

Louise: "It's from one of those Russian doll sets,' she said, 'the ones that nest inside each other. Matri - something."

Jackson: "Matryoshka?"

Louise: "Yes."

Jackson: "This one doesn't open."

Louise: "That's because it's the last one. The baby."

Jackson pocketed the doll. . . .

He felt the peanut - baby doll in his jacket pocket. The layers of the onion. Chinese boxes, Chinese whispers. Russian whispers. Secrets within secrets. Dolls within dolls. (320, 342 - 43, 363)

****************
dialogue from One Good Turn (2006)
by Kate Atkinson (b 1951),
scholarly, spell - binding British novelist
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SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 28th

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