I finally finished reading The Three Comrades, a German book considered to be a Soviet classic—or at least enough for the film Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears to show it being read on the metro, although that’s not the reason I picked it up. I picked it up because I saw at least two people reading the Russian version in real life, which is a solid endorsement. I began reading the novel in Russian last December and finished it last week. It took nearly a year of slow slogging to finish, though by the end the process had become smooth.
Themes
I’ll jot down some of the themes with the intention of keeping them as potentially meaningful jumping points. It’s not intended to be fancy; I’ll sketch out memorable scenes and imagery (to the best of my understanding through the language barrier and already-fading memories).
There are spoilers.
There’s nothing to do in life
The story takes place in Germany during the aftermath of World War I. It focuses on the daily life of the protagonist Robbie (Bob, if you will, in the English versions). The depiction of daily life hint at the undertones of depressive listlessness in that period. What do the boys do all day? Drink, mostly. There’s a lot of drinking—more than my simple description suggests. They race cars. Sometimes, they work, fixing up cars at their auto workshop. They hustle to sell fixed-up cars, they drive taxis. They fight. They talk to their neighbors. They hit up their friends. And they drink with those friends.
Hey, what is there to fill the long day, before we had social media and TV?
Shenanigans
There’s a lot of shenanigans with the three bros. It’s a book that in many ways is just about chilling, although the circumstances their lives, rife with unemployment and PTSD, are not very chill—but that’s the point. No matter how unchill life is, there’s always shenanigans with the bros.
And just as in real life, such shenanigans are augmented by shenanigans with the lady. One of the primary plot lines follows his romance with an upper-middle class woman named Patricia. They go on dates, each of which provides a framework for flirtatious and tense scenes. They serve as opportunities for the author to showcase Robbie’s immature side. He’s killed many a men in battle but shows a juvenile, envious side in his dating behavior, and the touch of a woman causes him to nearly lose his shit.
Love drives away apathy
Our protagonist’s life feels pointless until he falls in love. The big message here seems to be this: falling in love provides some semblance of meaning to life. In my own life (I don’t claim this be a unique perspective), I always thought of it as such: if I’m not in love, I feel more apathetic toward death, and if I am, I definitely don’t want to die.
Hard times
I’ve mentioned this already a few times, but it deserves a special highlight. The drinking, the post-war trauma, and the general absence of life goals are conveyed well in the slow, slice-of-life portrayal.
One thing that struck me was Robbie’s hustling. In a few scenes he plays the role of the quintessential used car salesman. For example, he tries to sell cars with all types of flattering, at times resorting to tactics that leverage the wife or girlfriend of the potential client in order to get that extra push. There is no camaraderie between salesman and client. In another scene at an auction, he dupes a potential client into thinking that they’ll cut a deal at an auction, and then pushes the price of the car as high as possible.
It’s not only Robbie that finds life to be suffering, but those around him are stuck in equally hopeless circumstances. For example, his neighbor works long hours to satisfy the consumptive tastes of his wife, who ultimately leaves him. This results in his suicide.
Before the suicide, Robbie had spotted the wife getting into an expensive car, presumably cheating on the neighbor with some man who can provide better. The fate of his neighbor provokes the question: what’s the point in working so hard, especially for somebody else, when it’s just going to fuck you over later?
Support your bros
There’s a baseline level of support throughout the story, but no more than most good friends would do for each other. Over time, the acts of support escalate.
One of the comrades is shot in the street by a political fanatic. The remaining two comrades and their bartender homie spend the next two weeks hunting the perpetrator, who is hiding from the police without knowledge that the victim’s friends are seeking to enact vigilante justice.
Another example of constructing meaningful sacrifices comes with the last comrade. He loves his car, and the author spends significant storytime solidifying the comrade’s obsession with racing and cars. All this culminates into the ultimate bro sacrifice: he sells his car to send money to Robbie, who is too broken stay with an ailing Patricia at a sanitorium in Switzerland.
Anything for the bros.
Writing style
The prose is very “poetic” (in quotes, since that word can be taken in many ways). My take on it would be something along these lines: “The light hit her face and illuminated her jutting cheekbones, and in watching her slow chewing movements of her jaw, my heart gave the slightest shake, like branches under the autumn breeze.” I could see why it would be at the border of cringe—but the difference between cringe and not cringe is a matter of fine execution.
With respect to my own writing journey, it was enlightening because I hadn’t seen a writer write a sustained piece in that style. That flowery, somewhat cheesy style is something that most modern writers shy away from. In many ways, it epitomizes what I imagine to be grandiose, old-timey writing.
But like any art, one can never say if a certain approach categorically works or not. The style works fine here (although I’m a certified five-star-everything five-star-prose I-see-what-the-intent-was reader). It’s always nice to have concrete validation that an approach is feasible so long as its execution works. It’s perhaps significant that I was not reading this in my native language. Being exposed to the nuances of the prose could change my mind about the cringe-level.