Sex with an Effigy

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Upchurch continuedfrom previous page fiction , writing his masterpiece,AliandNino (1937), and a lesserbut still fascinating novel, The Girlfrom the Golden Horn (1938). Both were published with the help ofAustrian Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmershof, leading to laterconfusion as to who was behind the pen name. In 1938, with the Anschluss, Lev fled once more, this time to the Italian coastal village of Positano , where he was known simply as "the Muslim." There he died in 1942 atthe age ofthirty-six, a victim not ofthe Nazis or Mussolini, but ofRaynaud's syndrome , "an extremely rare blood disease," Reiss tells us, "that produces the effects of accelerated leprosy andgangrene." He leftbehindhim eighteenpublished books and a vast amount of journalism, along with several unpublished manuscripts. That's the outline of Nussimbaum's life. But The Orientalist is more than a just-the-facts-ma'am biography. It's a detective story, history lesson, and meditation on mutable identity wrapped into one, tricked out with a rogue's gallery of eccentrics. It's also one hell of an adventure story. You start reading it lamenting that the author of Ali and Nino died so young. But as you turn the pages, you're soon amazed he wasn't dead by age fifteen. During his 1920 escape to Europe, for instance, he narrowly escaped a Bolshevik "dragnet" in the Aberbaijani city of Ganja. At times Reiss's historical detail is so profuse that he seems in danger of losing sight of Lev. Yet the history needs to be here in all its intricate detail to bring alive the confusion of choices that confronted Lev. It also sheds light on Lev's political blind spots: "In years to come, contempt forcivilized institutions and individual rights would become part of the internationally recognized definition of fascism. But in 1921, sheer destructiveness, as far as Lev or most other observers yet knew, was the monopoly of the leftist revolutionaries." (Lev, astonishingly, was still rooting for a German war victory right up to 1942.) As for the eccentrics Reiss meets, whether in the archives or on his investigative travels, they almost outdo Lev. Consider Börnes von Miinchhausen, "the Zionist movement's first true lyricist," who later became "an enthusiastic Nazi." Then there's the third wife of Baron Ehrenfels. Reiss, hoping she could shed lightonWife No. Two's role in the writing and publication ofthe Kurban Said novels, finds her holed up in an Austrian Schloss, trying to compose "the French text for a rock musical being put on by an Israeli-German team from Frankfurt." Unfortunately, she's never seen a musical . "How could I?" she protests. "I never had time. I was either in India or fixing up the castle here." He obligingly sings some show tunes for her. Moments like these are the book's fancy flourishes . But Reiss doesn't fail to deliver the goods in analyzing Lev. While acknowledging Lev's "bias for colorful anecdote over hard fact," he points out that the man's books remain readable seventy years after first publication "because Lev narrated even the driest analysis of oil-pricing mechanisms as though it were a Caucasian folktale." The Orientalist is a detective story, history lesson, and meditation on mutable identity wrapped into one. Reiss certainly whets your appetite for such out-of-print titles as Twelve Secrets ofthe Caucasus (1931), which describes a mountain hideaway as though it were one of ítalo Calvino's invisible cities : "A gigantic wall of rock surrounds Khevsuria and separates it from the rest of the world. From the cliffwall down into the void there hangs a long rope. Whoever has the courage can catch hold of the rope and let himself down to the Khevsurs. The police never follow...." The most tantalizing Nussimbaum/Bey/Said book mentioned by Reiss is an unpublished autobiography , The Man Who Knew Nothing About Love, written while Lev was dying, and the source for many of the biographical connecting threads in The Orientalist. Take, for instance, this spooky passage about trying to numb physical agony with hashish: "The pain in my foot slowly fades. I stare dully into space and see the pain wandering down the stairs. The...