History chased Hugo Pos (1913-2000) around the globe: Paramaribo, Leiden, Finland (a Jew on the run from the Nazis), Vladivostok, Japan, San Francisco, Canada, England, India, Japan again, Groet, Suriname and finally Amsterdam. Now it is in Joure, hidden in the – nomen est omen, or how do you say it in Frisian – bulging ‘lytse library’ in a front garden on the edge of the center. Well, The mausoleum of inner peace it says, Pos’ collection of stories published in 1989 by In de Knipscheer. Judging from the discoloration of the spine, the book has spent a large part of its 34-year existence in a well-lit cupboard.
Pos already had a professional life as a judge when he published a collection of short stories at the age of 71 and another one a year later. The mausoleum of inner peace is the third: seven stories about older men (in Suriname and the Netherlands) who, scraping carefully, return to episodes from their lives and try to find out whether they have overlooked anything along the way. For example, being a writer who admits that he concealed things in his autobiography “which shifted the emphasis and caused the halo of the successful womanizer to swirl above me.”
Indeed, many of these stories revolve around sex, or rather about non-sex, almost-sex and unwanted sex. And this results in many forms of regret, which Pos makes visible in clear, precise sentences. Such as in the account of a judge who looks back on a rape case in which he never had to rule because the suspect committed suicide in his cell. The highlight of the collection is the story ‘Albina la coquette’ about a district supervisor in northeastern Suriname – in other respects than the colonial atmosphere, Pos is sometimes reminiscent of A. Alberts – who is left alone with his gardener’s lover. She is Indian, probably has an intellectual disability.
One afternoon – clumsily in the hammock – he spills drink on his trousers. She cleans it, rubs away the stain, caresses and finally crawls into the hammock with him. A relationship develops, which continues until the gardener returns, much to the man’s shock. Intense relief follows, because the gardener does not blame the narrator (but does take his marital place again).
The illusion that if men have no problems with a situation, everything else will be fine, does not last long. The supervisor encounters the woman at the market, she looks at him terrified, shouts ‘no fassi mi’, and flees. In this way, he learns lessons about power and abuse that last decades after the publication of The mausoleum of inner peace would come into full light.
Would you like the discussed copy of The mausoleum of inner peace to have? Send an email to [email protected]; the book will be raffled among entrants and the winner will be notified.
A version of this article also appeared in the October 6, 2023 newspaper.