The Daughter of Palnu
Cerebus: Jaka’s Story
Issues 114-136
August1988-July 1990
486 pages
While rereading Jaka’s
Story, I reconnected with a friend with whom an almost twenty-year abyss of
silence stretched. No sinister betrayals, thwarted bank robberies, or demon
control extended the silence to so many years, but rather each of us moved in
different directions at 18 to live our own lives.
So, while very pleased to gulf the abyss and be in touch,
the plaguing question arose of how do you convey a life of almost two decades
to someone?
Jaka’s Story
treats this same challenge and Sim and Gerhard apply graphics and paragraphs
alongside bent facts and time spans to deliver a semblance of the life, and at
the same time character and identity, of Jaka. Conventional biographies corset lives
in time; Sim and Gerhard cut the laces with words and pictures and loosen temporal
constraint.
Jaka’s Story[1]
picks up after the final desolation at the end of Church and State and averts its focus from the minutia of political
action and intrigue. With a setting limited to a single-room tavern, the street
in front of the tavern, a small apartment shared by Jaka, her husband Rick, and
house-guest Cerebus, an apartment of Oscar [Wilde], a prison cellblock, and the
quasi-fictional memories of a young Jaka’s rooms and playground in Lord
Julius’s palace, the geography varies little.
While narrating the biography of Jaka, it simultaneously
suggests that versions of an individual’s past remains in the present moment and
shapes how individuals perceive themselves and how others perceive the
individuals with as much force as actions in the present. Art shapes these
perceptions into some sensible form that allows for some greater understanding
and/or investigation.
As Wilde assembled in his Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, “One should
always be a little improbable.”
How to Tell a Life: While
the main concern of Jaka’s Story is
Jaka, like any good biography, its revelations extend like tendrils of gravity to
influence readers, illuminating shadowy realms of their own lives along with
the life of Jaka. For this shedding of light, the medium shines the message…or
at least part of the message…of this work.
Sim applies a split narrative, where a section of Jaka’s
present life (living on the side of a mountain with her husband) and her
childhood (raised in Lord Julius’s palace) unfold simultaneously (or at least
as close as printed works can achieve) to the reader. Past and present occur
alongside each other.
Memory works in a similar way, it has the focus of just one
event tale, or scenario to be carried out, yet the conjuration or consideration
of an idea spawns an associative complex web of remembrances of things past.
When transporting the reader to Jaka’s past, the sequences of sequential art
become steeped to a single image parallel to a thin column of dense text that
opens swaths of white space to sprawl leisurely upon the page. These moments of
white space function as a focus for the actions in the pillar of text, but also
figuratively represent memory. The one image symbolically becomes a scrying
surface for an entire experience and works as powerfully as lime tea and a
madeleine to recall previous events. All else fades into the white space haze—unimportant.
That white space lets the reader focus on the narrated event
just as the speaker focuses on the single tale being relayed, while at the same
time suggesting more occurs than any page can hold…to attempt to portray all
the details in a life, even in a moment, is impossible, and would weaken the
moment. The use of white space encompasses the infinite, letting the reader’s
mind construct the details without restriction. Portraying Jaka’s past with
this method ensures that less specific information results in more information.
Accompanying the swaths of white space, Sim works
reflections and repetition to a similar end. Two scenes best capture this
technique. Pages 193-195 depict the tavern/grocer owner Pud mopping the
Jaka is drawn in a similar reflection on pages 62-65,
321-323, 413 and the final age 486 of Cerebus Book 5.
On pages 62, 64, and 65 Jaka dresses for dancing. She tries
on different outfits and applies makeup, each time checking the mirror for the
result, to make sure her reflection portrays the desired image. Biographies
work in similar way, the actual person
can’t be captured in a written record, but some reflection, a chimera of the
person, a hint at what the individual arises from reading the pages of
another’s life. Oscar writes to the critic Mr. Hendricks on page 287:
“…As to whether my
story is “true,” it really depends on what you mean by that term. Any
well-written article of prose is “true” because it touches one’s emotions and
illuminates one’s thinking. To whatever extent the facts related within the
story are not at variance with that intention, they remain unmodified.”
The chosen image finally selected by Jaka and Oscar as they
dress and prepare for the public (on pages 321-313) contains the truth they
want to convey about themselves and hope the public will perceive, but as any
struggling biographer knows, truth of a person extends far beyond any image
that can be reflected or depicted.
Which brings consideration to the image of Jaka looking out a window on
page 413 and 486. This reflection depicts the inner reflection on Jaka, after
her imprisonment, after being told she is hated by her husband, after the end
of her dancing, after a return to the very palace she escaped at 16 years old.
The reflection, in window glass instead of a mirror, is ephemeral and allows
the outside world to show through and obscure her face. This reflection doesn’t
allow choice for a self to portray, but rather has the world fade distinctions
of self, the world exerting its truth on the individual. Somewhere between the
lines of these reflections, the truth that Mr. Hendericks seeks about Jaka
exists, but such a truth, without a “touch on one’s emotions and illumination
of one’s thinking” is nothing more than an ink stain festering on the page.
[1] The
events in Jaka’s Story seem
restrained when compared to the far-reaching sprawl of Church & State. The
summary for each section of Jaka’s Story
consists of:
Prologue: A
morning routine of Jaka and her husband Rick is shown, where they rise from
bed, dress, and Rick, after a rough reminder, goes to look for work. A split to
the past narrates the childhood of Jaka and her doll Missy while growing up in
Palnu.
Book One: Pogrom’s Progress: narrates the arrival
of Cerebus in the house of Jaka and Rick. The daily routine of Jaka buying
groceries from her landlord (Pud Withers), then going to his tavern to sit and
wait to dance for customers (none arrive), before she returns home. Rick hunts
for work with a lackadaisical zeal and attempts to initiate marital congress
with Jaka with a more dedicated zeal.
Cerebus sits around and daydreams of running off with Jaka.
Book 2: The Poet:
has Oscar a poet/writer arrive on the side of the mountain to work on his story
and to hang around with Rick. Sim’s Oscar is Oscar Wilde and is accompanied
with the wit of our world’s Oscar Wilde. Jaka continues her routine until
finally the first customer stops in the tavern. Rick tries to look for work.
His time spent with Oscar annoys Jaka. Cerebus sits around a lot throwing a
ball in a bucket. Finally he leaves to buy a jar of paint. Jaka’s past
continues its integration between episodes of the present story. Readers learn
the events of Jaka’s past were crafted by Oscar. The Cirinists show up and
kill the tavern owner and customer, arrest Jaka and Rick, and sentence
Oscar to two years of hard labor because he doesn’t possess…an artistic license.
Book 3: Mystery Achievement: Jaka’s captivity
is narrated. She meets her old nurse, who is executed, and undergoes some re-education
to sign a confession that dancing is wrong. She reunites with Rick and reveals
that she induced a miscarriage, much to Rick’s distress. Rick states he never
wants to see Jaka again and is sent by the Cirinists to live with his mother.
Jaka is transported back to Lord Julius’s palace in Palnu. Cerebus returns to
discover the burned remains of the tavern. He drops and breaks the jar of
paint.
Epilogue: Jaka
sits silent in a room of Lord Julius’s palace while servants speculate on her
condition during the preparation of her tea. Readers learn Jaka’s escape from
the palace to dance 13 years ago, wasn’t as secret as she thought, and the
royal search for Jaka was a farce, since her location was known and monitored
by the royal family.
