Diablerie
By Walter Mosley, Bloomsbury, 180 pp., $23.95
Throughout his heralded mysteries, author Walter Mosley has ventured into the pitch-black corners of the human soul. Yet his observations into the evil that men and women do have rarely been as gloomy as they are in "Diablerie."
As bitter and bleak as a New England winter, "Diablerie" is Mosley's first novel since "Blonde Faith," the 10th and, by all indications, final installment of his acclaimed Easy Rawlins series. Mosley is remarkably prolific, with more than 25 published books in less than 20 years, and his latest is more akin to his existential kink-fest "Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel," which managed to be both revelatory and ridiculous.
"Diablerie" also has its share of aerobic, acrobatic sex scenes, and similarly none are intended to be erotic or titillating. For Mosley, such moments serve as a kind of shorthand for the ways disconnected people feign intimacy, only to be left with an even chillier sense of emptiness. It's hardly surprising that this terse, tart novel takes its name from a French word meaning "the domain or realm of devils" or "reckless mischief."
Likewise, the devil-may-care narrator is named Ben Dibbuk (in Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a living person possessed by the malevolent spirit of the dead). On the surface, life looks good for Ben. A computer programmer, he's married to the lovely, successful Mona, with whom he has a college-bound daughter, Seela. He even has a saucy 21-year-old Russian mistress, Svetlana, who indulges his darker sexual fantasies.
Still, misery clings to Ben like a shroud. In his mind, he's never far from the dead-end drunk he once was, and he almost seems to resent Mona for rescuing him. For all Ben has, it's what he lacks - empathy and compassion - that defines him. "I didn't care about much," he says at one point. "I was lucky that way."
His luck, such as it is, runs out when he meets a woman, Barbara "Star" Knowland, who survived a horrific kidnapping 20 years earlier. Seeing Ben at a function for his wife's magazine, Diablerie, she insists not only that he knows her, but that he's been stalking her. Ben doesn't recognize her, but he might have encountered her in his drinking days, when, Ben maintains, he's "forgotten more nights than I remember."
In fact, Ben may have committed a murder, and these accusations send his life careening out of control. At one point, Svetlana, trying to reassure Ben, tells her lover, "You are a good man," but it isn't a compliment he deserves or ever earns throughout this disturbing novel.
In his many books, Mosley has introduced thieves, thugs, and morally bankrupt people capable of heinous acts. Yet Ben is something apart from Mosley's usual parade of lowlifes and opportunists. As a reader, it's impossible to feel anything for this character who's incapable of feeling anything for himself or those around him. He's misanthropic, misogynist, and self-loathing, barely able to mimic human emotion. As a dybbuk, Ben would be the restless wraith inhabiting a living soul.
Perhaps Mosley recognized that few would want to spend more time than necessary with Ben; "Diablerie" is a mere 180 pages. Still, that seems plenty. While the novel's ambiguous ending is even more maddening, one can't help but sense Mosley's desire to echo the frayed messiness of real life, where the most vital questions often remain unanswered.
"Diablerie" isn't Mosley's best work, but it shows a writer still interested in pushing his considerable talents, unbound by genre or commercial expectations.
Renée Graham is a freelance writer.
