Jana Juráňová - Clips

Jana Juráňová's Clips laughs at death. The short story is comprised of eighteen distinct pieces, each sectioned off from one another, each complete in themselves, though they are all very short. The smallest is two sentences and twelve words long; the longest runs to perhaps a third of the page. A narrator, perhaps Juráňová herself, and the repetition of themes (death) and scenes (old women; pigeons; a little girl) retain coherency in what could be, but isn't, a fragment of a larger work. No, this is a complete piece, such as it is.

Clips opens in a old cemetery. It's autumn, and the leaves are falling on the vacated graves of the exhumed dead, shifted elsewhere. A gravedigger takes off his jacket and throws it over the shoulders of a statue of an angel standing guard over a plot, and then he removes his cap and adds it as well. “This suits the angel very well” writes Juráňová, and the piece, scarcely longer than this paragraph, concludes.

In another “clip” an old woman becomes confused and enters the wrong apartment. In another, a little girl skips happily along a avenue filled with the pictures of distinguished citizens; as she skips, the medals from the pictures fall to the ground as well. In another, an old woman feeds pigeons, and becomes frightened of the crows stealing all the food from themselves. Her fears come from the fact that they are nearly as tall as she. In all, the ridiculous merges with the ordinary, and the inherent smallness of a person in the face of nature, the city, history, death, becomes clear. Juráňová's sense of fun is gentle, and her understanding of irony is deep. Take this, my favourite from the 18 clips:

A quintet of young men enter a cafe. They have old, absurd berets on their heads, little hearing aids in their ears, glasses with old-fashioned frames over their eyes, and are all leaning on crutches. They sit around a table and call over a waiter. The waiter refuses to serve them. He threatens to call the secret police on them. In response to the question “Why?” he says, “You offend decent people with the way you look.” The boys get up and leave. From another table, three pairs of eyes, all slathered in make-up, watch the waiter with approval. These women are smoking, having some drinks, their bracelets and earrings jingling – all trying so hard to look you. The waiter goes over to their table and politely asks, “May I help you?”

We laugh at the young men, and then at the older women, and then we see the uncomfortable truth of the matter. Why is pretending to be young by way of garish makeup and lewd glances acceptable, but pretending to be old by way of prosthetics and clothing is not? There's no reason for it other than it is, and here Juráňová is asking the question as to why.

Repetition is key to understanding Clips. The little girl in white stockings who danced while the medals fell appears more than once, and the story of the forgetful old lady is repeated as well. The story closes back in the cemetery, as the man takes the cap off the statue. These reminders keep the story together, even as the other clips veer about this unknown city, looking in on what we do to be who we are. Juráňová's use of the word “Clips” to title her story is appropriate, and is obviously no accident – these are small snippets, largely without context, presented as is without judgement, moral, or decision. They are questions without answers, and often aren't even questions, but simply the stuttered shuttering of a camera, clicking where it will, seeing what it sees.

See Also

Other stories from the The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. XXX, #2 Slovak Fiction issue include:
---Hochel, Braňo - My Best Story
---Johanides, Ján - Berlin in the Afternoon, at a Quarter to Winter
---Karvaš, Peter - Xerox of a Document about One Half of (the Art of) Life
---Kompaníková, Monika - Slávko
---Kovalyk, Uršuľa - Mrs. Agnes's Bathroom
---Rankov, Pavol - The Period in Which We Live
---Šimko, Dušan - Excursion to Dubrovnik

Also of interest:
---Other titles under review from The Dalkey Archive Press
---Index of short stories under review