‘Pavel & I’ is a hybrid of literary writing and spy novel – a kind of postmodern pastiche of Raymond Chandler that is irreverently humorous and inventive with language. The detective plot is damn near impossible to follow, yet your interest in the novel is not much affected by that flaw.
The grim setting is Berlin in the freezing winter of 1946. Pavel, a sickly and solitary ex-soldier, has remained in Berlin in his apartment full of books instead of returning to his wife and child in America. His attempt to buy penicillin on the black market results in a bodged mugging by a gang of kids, one of whom, Anders, cautiously follows him home and befriends him.
Pavel is a terrific, enigmatic character. He seems simultaneously dense and intelligent, weak and yet immutable. One night, an old army comrade of Pavel’s called Boyd White, a caricature of an American noir pimp, turns up with a trunk containing the corpse of a Russian midget and an unlikely story. He doesn’t come back for his grim package and Pavel grows even more ill, falling into a fever.
In the apartment above lives Sonia, the glamorous mistress of a corpulent English colonel, and it is to her that Anders goes for help when he realises how sick Pavel is. This act of friendship deeper embroils them in the intrigue that the dead midget had precipitated and breaks through Pavel’s reserve as he begins to fall for her.
The bleak backdrop is relieved by a dark, coarse humour that delights in bodily functions and gross description and plays interesting games with imagery. The knowing tone that Vyleta adopts about traditional noir creates a sensation of disassociation, at the same time as the story creates a genuine interest in Pavel, who is the real enigma at the centre of the novel.
