Going native

© C A Lovegrove

The Tremor of Forgery
by Patricia Highsmith.
Introduction by Denise Mina.
Virago Press, 2015 (1969)

‘There were moments here in Hammamet, days and weeks, in fact, when I hadn’t any letters from you or from anybody, and I felt strange even to myself, as if I didn’t know myself. And part of it, perhaps – I know from a moral point of view – was that the Arabs all around me had different standards, different ethics. And they were in the majority, you see. This world is theirs, not mine.’

Chapter 20

The enigmatic title, supposedly the title of a novel the protagonist is writing, in fact indicates a key thread in this subtle tale of suspense. Handwriting experts can apparently identify telltale hesitation in a faked signature; and when author Howard Ingham dissembles or denies involvement in the disappearance of an individual, his behaviour also betrays the tremor of forgery.

Set in the summer of 1967 at the time of the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, The Tremor of Forgery speaks of a period of waiting, increasing heat and frustration. And yet living without monetary worries in a Tunisian beach resort could, perhaps should, on paper be an ideal existence.

Patricia Highsmith’s novel is carefully wrought: nothing much appears to happen yet we have suspense, murder and mystery – all understated, it’s true, yet though narrated in a matter-of-fact way it still draws the reader in and sustains their interest right to the last page.

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Ingham, a novelist from New York, is in Hammamet, a resort on the east coast of Tunisia, waiting for a filmmaker to arrive so that they can finish a script together. But for weeks there’s no news from John Castlewood, nor any missives from Ingham’s girlfriend Ina Pallant. He whiles away the time either swimming, eating out, sightseeing, or  writing a story about a man who embezzles from his firm only to give it, Robin Hood fashion, to those he thinks deserve the money. Finally he hears why John Castlewood hasn’t replied to letters or, indeed, turned up.

Meanwhile, he befriends, or is befriended by, a Danish artist called Anders Jensen and a strangely moralistic American called Francis J Adams (he promotes ‘Our Way of Life’ and consequently is known as OWL); Ingham is on friendly terms with a member of the hotel staff called Mokta, and feels antagonistic towards Abdullah who he suspects of thievery. And as the weeks draw on he wonders if his moral point of view was adapting to the “different standards, different ethics” of the Tunisians he comes into contact with. Whether he is, in effect, “going native.”

I was strongly reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Huis Clos, in which a trio of individuals find themselves in a strange room, attended by a valet, which they discover is Hell. Here instead is Ingham, in a world very different from his daily life in New York City; on the one hand is Jensen who tells him to forget about an act he feels both justified by and guilty about, and on the other is OWL who is like the angel on his other shoulder, his conscience perhaps. And then, out of the blue, Ina announces she is coming to visit. Will she be the cat to set among the pigeons?

I found The Tremor of Forgery a fascinating and intriguing psychological thriller. As Denise Mina says in her insightful introduction, the novel is to a large extent about truth-telling, and I agree – Ingham has to confront not just lying to others but also to himself. But there is an element of metafiction and possibly autobiofiction in these pages. I don’t know if Highsmith actually spent time in the country to research it – could she really have picked up all she needed from a Guide Bleu, Ingham’s go-to bible for Tunisia? – but the notion of an American writer writing about a writer working abroad when she herself had relocated to Europe is a striking one. And the fact that a typewriter has a starring role shows humour of a really dark kind.

Grahame Greene declared this Highsmith’s finest novel. I haven’t read enough of her work to agree or disagree, but I was sufficiently impressed to think it rather good.

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