The return of the Buddha
The Return of the Buddha (original title: Возвращение Будды) is a novel by the Russian exile author Gaito Gasdanow from 1947, which was also published in German in 2016.
content
A young Russian student lives in Paris in the late 1920s . He suffers from delusions that repeatedly let him slip away into a world of illusion. One day in a café he meets a man whom he had already met two years earlier: at that time he gave the beggar 10 francs. The beggar is now remarkably well dressed and is talking to a young woman. The - nameless - student speaks to the man, his name is Pavel Alexandrovich Shcherbakov, and learns from him how he came to his improbable wealth. The young woman at his side is his lover Lida, a young woman from the poor and beggar milieu. She speaks of love, but the student sees only one purpose: money against society. The student learns more about Pawel, Lida and their backgrounds from other homeless people. One evening he sees Lida with her younger but consumptive lover, a poor, uneducated Tunisian named Amar. He does not speak of this encounter with Shcherbakov.
When he was visiting Shcherbakov one evening, he noticed a conspicuous Buddha statuette : it did not depict the well-known, quietly sunk Buddha pose, but a previously unknown, relaxed, standing representation radiating bliss and rapture. A ruby is set into the golden figure.
That evening he pauses on his way home and ponders death. In his mind, he builds what he calls a “logical construct” that comes to the conclusion that the right time to die for Shcherbakov has come right now.
The next morning he is arrested while leaving the house. He spent the next few weeks in custody; he is charged with the murder of Shcherbakov, whose body was found the morning after his visit. He vehemently defends his innocence, but initially fails to provide evidence. He is also burdened by the fact that Shcherbakov has appointed him as the sole heir. In the course of an interrogation he describes the exact course of the evening, the conversation about death, nirvana and the Buddha statuette, which he can remember in every detail. That leads to a turning point in the investigation. The statuette is not at the scene, the killer must have taken it with him.
The police determined Amar as the perpetrator via detours. He confesses and the student is released. Amar is sentenced to death, although he is terminally ill anyway, marked by tuberculosis.
The student has meanwhile moved into Shcherbakov's apartment and lives on his inheritance. He remembers his former love, Catrine, who, as he soon learns, left the country a year ago. On the spur of the moment, he packs his things and travels to see her, which would not have been possible without the inheritance.
reception
The reviews are almost entirely positive. Particularly impressive is the "ancient, calm language", which represents an effective contrast to the hero's lack of stability. Similarities to Gasdanov's previously published novel "The Phantom of Alexander Wolf" as well as to his own biography are noted. Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld ( Die Welt ), however, sees the novel's “forced happy ending” as a weak point.
expenditure
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Возвращение Будды . 1949/50
- The return of the Buddha . German and with an afterword by Rosemarie Tietze . Munich: Hanser, 2016. ISBN 978-3-446-25047-5 .