Wasting a good story in such a climate would be the worst of crimes, then, would it not?

But that is precisely what Natasha Illum Berg has done with her offering, “Tea on the Blue Sofa”.

As a writer, I’ve always suspected Illum Berg of teetering on the verge of an unforgivable amateurism, but given the path she has chosen for herself in life, I was quite prepared to give her another try. In case you are not familiar with Illum Berg – she is the contemporary Amazon incarnate. A wonderful sort of anachronism that I, verily cannot bring my self to un-admire, no matter how much effort I put into the task.

Illum Berg was born in a family of Swedish-Danish adventurers – and if there is any truth to the assumption that genes have a memory it might explain how she chose to become a professional hunter in these modern times, where the random hunting of game animals as past time or career is seriously frowned upon. In between (or while?) taking clients hunting in Kenya, she writes.

The combination of hunter and writer is a paragon of mine ever since I read José Ortega y Gasset’s “Meditations on Hunting”, a seminal position that everyone interested in the scorned (often justifiably so) craft of hunting should read well before ever thinking of depriving anyone, or anything of its lifeblood. And to this combination Illum Berg, self professedly places herself.

With “Tea on the Blue Sofa”, Illum Berg returns to world of literature with a promising story indeed. It is the tale of a bereft woman, living in the aftermath of having the love of her life shot to death (through his heart, no less), at dawn, outside the gates of her Kenyan estate. As it happens, the man  in question, one Antonio Trzebinski – painter, bad-boy socialite and wayward aristocrat was at the time still married and their love, as it were, still in that very delicate time – the beginning.

The theme of love is certainly not new in literature. But the theme of love before love is not at all as exploited. And to my mind at least, so very much adventurous ground (you will forgive me, I’m sure, for calling the tragedy of one the adventure of another?). Interesting stakes, to say the least then.

Unfortunately, Illum Berg makes an utter mess of it. The story is thin, ranting and riddled with ridiculous, meaningless, metaphors – inferior choice of vocabulary and other, as inelegant, prose. It reads like a poorly written diary, penned in anger and rancor. Adding insult to injury, the thin volume is poorly proof read – though I won’t attribute this to the writer. Worse still – and of that we can hold the author responsible;  the incoherent story all but relies on the reader having a prior knowledge of the facts of the case – which are not only obscured but purposefully left out of the tale. While such a strategy might work for some writers, it certainly doesn’t do this novel any good. Morever, what props Illum Berg chooses in her African setting only serve to further confuse the reader. A pity, since those have always been her most reliable literary assets.

There really is no need to append the book any further criticism on a literary level as Illum Berg clearly is no writer, in spite of her own personal wish to brand herself so (in all fairness, many less talented “authors” have done the same). Though I suppose some may be entranced by her cryptic musings – a deeper, critical look unveils “Tea on the Blue Sofa” for what it really is: A bucket of unedited despair, emptied in public.

Having finished the book the reader is left with questions that should have, at least in parts, been answered. One is no nearer the essence of who the murdered Tonio in fact was, or any other of the surrounding events. Nor is one any closer to Illum Berg herself as she effectively closes herself off in a bubble of self-pity and mourning. A grave mistake and an indecency towards the reader, as the marketing of the book hinges on the gospel that Natasha recognised that Tonio was the love of her life and in the brief time they spent together presumably got to know him in more sagacious ways than, say his wife, had. A fact endorsed by none other than Tonio’s own mother – at the back cover of the book.

And this is where I must admit that I was intrigued. How can it be that the mother of the murdered Trzebinski endorses the account as told by the mistress – and not the wife?

You will forgive me if I forgo the contemporary right of the Internet – to slander and speculate on the matter. However, while researching the question, I found that the actual setting for the murder was a much more baffling piece of machinery than the blunt advertising of the novel did justice to.

An article in the March 2002 issue of Vanity Fair, A Murder In Kenya – on tragedies occurred in the Happy Valley in Kenya, as it is called, and its white, vintage aristocratic inhabitants – finally filled in the blanks. Little is the reader told that the young Trzebinski who’s short life itself would render one or two Hollywood epics, was killed in exactly the same manner as another notable aristocrat in the very same area – Lord Erroll, assistant military secretary of Kenya, in 1941. Who, by chance, had also been having an extramarital affair with Diana Broughton, the young wife of Sir Jock Delves Broughton.

To confuse matters further – in a bizarre coincidence, Trzebinski’s mother is also named Erroll Trzebinski – and had the previous year written a book on the 1941 murder of Lord Erroll,  the events of which inspired a motion picture, starring Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance: “White Mischief”. A title that would become synonymous with white people living hedonistic lifestyles in Africa. Also, there were other, equally mysterious coincidences, making the story just a tad too good to leave alone. We can stop there. For the purpose of this brief article, there is little point in retelling the entire story – once again. It has been well chronicled and entrancingly written by James Fox (above link).

However, it does seems that the matter exploded in both Kenyan and English press. The link to the murder of Lord Erroll was just too tempting not to become fodder for scandalizing headlines. Given half the knowledge of just how base the press has become, one can but imagine the verbal beating Illum Berg must have been subject to as she was caught in the crossfire of the Kenyan Jet Set, aflame in murder och adultery.

To this date, Antonio Trzebinski’s killer has never been found, and so, it might be natural to assume that Illum Berg, for her own part, could be seeking some sort of closure. In the shape of a novel of love lost, perhaps?

What better way then to both acquit the murdered lover as well as scorn those who hounded her in the aftermath?

In reality, if this is in fact the case, it accomplishes neither.

Perhaps – Illum Berg should have kept her peace on the subject. In the book, she is ever the immaculate gentlewoman – and every angle possible is endeavored not to demean her lover’s name or character. A noble posture that unfortunately serves to create a lifeless picture of Tonio Trezbinski – and ends up just short of drawing a vile caricature of herself.

A sad fact that I prefer to think was purely unintentional and a consequence of, presumably, misguided counsel – and if we in fact dared to speculate just a little bit, we might even suspect Trzebinski’s mother to have been instrumental in this.

The only trouble with this assumption is that a random shooting of the wolf population does next to nothing to improve the overall genetic health of animals. It does, however, vastly improve the trophy collection of the lucky shooter. Both scientists as well as the general population have agreed on this point: The only realistic way of improving the genetic pool would be to remove flawed cubs and to introduce new individual wolves into the breed. The first is practically undoable (since the only realistic way of finding out if a cub is indeed substandard genetic material is to kill it and do a full autopsy), but in order to sanction the event, the Swedish Hunters association agreed to the second. Something that they’re now backing out of, threatening to kill off the remaning wolves as well.

I won’t go into the public debate or any right or wrongs; because what Guillou so brilliantly describes in his article is the actual heart of the matter:

1. The hunters care nothing for the health of the animals: They covet the trophy alone.
2. In the rethoric employed by the Hunters Association is something infinately worse than any random bloodhunt: The ancient controversy between an everbleeding, dying, rural Sweden and the evergrowing urban population.

For the first point, there is nothing much to be said. Trophies are a fact of hunting. They are however, far less philosophical than they used to be. I will get back to that in a few paragraphs.

And as to the second, the articles in the Hunters Associations periodical, speeches and other public media are statistically biased to the point of outright lies and the rethoric is one seething with anger, humiliation and hate for the urban population of Sweden. The rurals accuse the urbanites of being “ecohuggers” and “idiots”, or even worse, “Stockholmers”, referring to the preposterous idea of living in the nation capital.

The rethoric is understandable, and forgiveable. Rural Sweden has fared exceedingly ill after the economy shifting towards industrialism around the 1950’s, thus leaving a culture based on agriculture, then a few years later moving on to a service economy and in the process almost completely eradicating any basis for economic growth in the rural areas. The best minds, and able hands, left for the cities, or other nations, the factories slowly bled out; what is left are those who would not, or could not adapt – and those violently opposed to the changing times. The conflict of the wolf shooting is not about ecology and it is not about the fate of a few animals, it is the cultural divide between an almost ancient and dying, rural culture – and the urban shift towards an urban one. If one would be that way inclined, it could even be called the rigor mortis of the rural subculture.

What further complicates the conflict is an almost neofeudal, Swedish tax structure. The proceeds and taxes earned in the three major urban areas are redistributed to keep the vast rural areas alive. In essence, levies from wealthy cities pay for investments, healthcare and other municipal expenses in parts of the country unable to sustain themselves. Too few people live rurally and those that do, are statistically at least, further detrimental to the state budget in various, less charming, ways. The system is a yoke put on urbanites and has done little to further the relations of the two groups. For all intents and purposes, this way of governing has furthered the economical divide, seeping into all areas of cohabitation.

Both rural and urban sides struggle with their identities. The ways of one are the camp jokes of another. Urbanites struggle with the reigns of economy in an accelerating pace, demanding an almost pervese attention (Lang’s Metropolis comes to mind); and the rurals struggle with the receeding end of that very same chain. If the past 50 years are indicative of anything I’d say the rurals are at the losing end. Economy isn’t a patient lover at all. The life support of the major cities will continue as long as there is anything to be gained and once even what small progress can be acheived will dwindle, there will no doubt be voices raised, impatiently, proclaiming in so many words, even if they will be more eloquently put: “Fucking die, already”.

A few final words on hunting, and the role of it in any modern society. Hunting, the sport of kings – is in as much ethical turbulence as are the two groups practicing it. The essence of hunting has changed greatly over just a few years. From survival to sport, from sport to… recreation. Because what is blatantly apparent is that hunters of today, care little for ecology or nature. Most of the modern hunters are too absorbed by their rifles than they are in forestry, or ethics. Historically, the best hunters are those that cared for nature and animal alike, understood the delicate balance and when it was their place to intervene – and when to step back. Hunting was as much a scholary activity as it was a necessity. You had to know something about an animal and its life in order to end it. In short, ethics, morality and ecology were in balance.

Today, in order to become a hunter, there are no such requirements. The process is easy and most of the emphasis is on the actual handling of the gun. The Hunter as archetype is dead and what has taken his place is a gleeful individual, much more at home in the NRA (National Rifle Association, the home of gun-toting “freedom-loving”, Americans who just cannot understand the concept of not shooting things) than in the forest. Ecology is biology, ethics and philosophy. These things take time to understand because they affect us in far deeper ways than an instruction in how to clean the muzzle of your rifle. The idea is that by the time you learn the ethics, and the system, you will no longer feel the need to drive out to the woods and kill something and then have a beer over its carcass. I suggest that anyone, absolutely anyone – who feels the need to become a hunter, should be made to undertake a lengthy education into the ecosystem that they’re so eager to pull bounty from. If, by the end of that education, preferrably completed in one of Swedens agricultural universities – that individual has fully understood what it truly means to hunt – then that person should be awarded the rank and license of hunter. I’m betting that we’d see far less hunters in the future than the roughly 270 000 individuals who have a license like this today.

A brilliant starting point for this journey, would be Josè Ortega y Gasset’s “Meditations on hunting”. While pointing out that hunting is in man’s nature, he is often misquoted by the bloodthirsty hunting mob of today as advocating what is a modern hunt. Far from it. What Ortega y gasset in essence writes about is the ethics of hunting and the responsibility of the hunt. This is not to be confused with easy pretexts to go and kill something. Finally – what the author presumably also knew, is that man changes and the premises for what being a man is, also change. Perhaps, we finally need to stop killing for fun.

Now, how about that, rurals?