In his most recent novel—at age 82 he says he believes he has one more in him—Michael Mewshaw has written a literary thriller with religious overtones in the tradition of his friend and mentor Graham Greene.
Though Mewshaw may have the “sliver of ice” in his heart that Greene famously said all writers have, in Not Heaven but Paradise he seems to have written a novel without the bitterness and cynicism that was part of Greene’s vision. Mewshaw’s vision has more compassion and natural grace; though Catholic, he is not as morbidly Catholic as Greene was. And his world has a modicum of realistic hope that Greene seems to have desired but never found.
This is not to say Greene’s is a less compelling vision, nor that Mewshaw is as great a writer as Greene, only that I came away from this novel feeling that I had both been through the hell of our contemporary world and also seen the only way out of the darkness.
However, darkness itself is not the problem. In fact, Not Heaven but Paradise reinforces the reality that figurative language does no favors to people of color. Witness what I would call, if I were writing a screenplay of this novel, the inciting incident of the story, the moment that sets the action going. This is when the protagonist, Paul Stewart, who runs an art colony in an old family carmen—a carmen being a walled house with a garden in Granada, Spain, in an Arabic- and Moorish-influenced Albaicín neighborhood—meets and gives alms to a very dark-skinned North African from the Sahara (we are never told his country of origin) named Blessed.
Mewshaw writes:
All of Europe teemed with migrants like Blessed. They spread blankets on the sidewalks of Granada and sold mass-produced trinkets and cheap knockoffs of designer goods. Keeping an eye open for cops as they haggled over prices, they were ready in an instant to roll up their goods and flee with them piled on their heads.
By contrast, Blessed seemed relaxed, standing outside an Italian gelateria shaking a paper cup, and singing, “Change, change.” Rather than begging, he might have been cheerfully commenting on Granada. The city was changing. Everywhere you looked, Islam was invading.
That last line might make the progressive reader flinch. But Mewshaw is giving us Paul’s point of view without attaching any moral value to it.
After giving Blessed alms a few times, Paul asks him to help out at the carmen doing odd jobs and assisting Patsy, a crotchety Cape Verdean maid who has known Paul since he was a child and who recalls the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s regime. Paul pays Blessed under the table in cash more than the usual amount to salve his conscience for playing it safe. He thus can cut ties with Blessed any time he wants.
We learn Blessed’s back story in depth in a chapter from his point of view, something disconcerting at first to this reader, but Mewshaw pulls it off. The risk is worth it, for he makes the reader live through the terror that many migrants endure to get to our world.
Blessed’s journey to Spain is not an easy one. Singled out as special in his village because of his intelligence and the caul that covered his infant head, Blessed clambers onto a dump truck that heads west. The party goes through numerous ordeals, including the women being raped while the men are restrained, hunger, thirst, infection and numerous incidents of bribery before they cross the Strait of Gibraltar in a rubber dinghy. It is a crossing only Blessed and a few others survive.
After Blessed is ensconced in a supply closet in his new home, an artist from New York City, Simone Pierce, arrives to stay at the art colony. Pierce paints the genitalia of men and women and is a champion of transgressive art. Her works both fascinate and repulse Blessed, a devout Muslim, and he soon refuses to have anything to do with her. Paul is mystified as to Pierce’s reasons for spending money to stay at his colony, but is happy to have a beautiful woman to show around the Albaicín.
“In principle,” Mewshaw writes, “[Paul] drew the line at sleeping with residents. In practice, it happened. And each time it did, Paul, like any man who hated his father, promised not to become him.”
Then comes plot point one, where the action of the story turns in a different direction. Enter William Spann, who works for the American embassy. The complete opposite of a privileged, politically correct limousine liberal, Spann is a rude and overweight smoker who doesn’t care if he’s working for Trump or Obama. Either way, he is going to take the hard line or worse if he needs to. He is ruthless, but not without a certain shambling élan and sardonic sense of humor.
Spann offers Paul a deal he thinks the latter can’t refuse: If Paul will shelter a political refugee from Algeria, Tahar, who was tortured severely while in prison, the American Embassy will pay the art colony 10,000 euros a month. The catch? Paul must get rid of Blessed, about whom Spann can’t find any information. Of course, if Paul doesn’t agree, Spann can make things difficult for him, since the bookkeeping at the art colony leaves something to be desired.
When Paul does indeed kick Blessed out, again salving his conscience with cash, the reader will find it hard not to think a great injustice has been done. Paul, of course, knows it, but doesn’t want to think about it. Now he has more money and a new lover. Unknown to him, however, life will not get easier. Blessed, living on the street but able to access the internet in cafes, looks up ways to make suicide vests for a quick ticket to heaven. And the Algerian professor turns out to be neither an easy guest for Paul nor a cooperating source for Spann.
To reveal any more plot points would spoil the great pleasure of reading the novel. All I can say is Simone and Tahar both have tragic secrets, and Blessed’s religion is treated fairly; that is, Islam is shown to be a faith that includes love and compassion, not only jihad.
Mewshaw writes economically and with a light touch, bringing his characters to life with deft strokes. His novel becomes a microcosm of our fallen world, and the only way out is through: hard choices and love willing to sacrifice privilege.
At the novel’s end, Paul and Blessed go to the Alhambra, the medieval fortress and palace originally Muslim then Christianized, and Paul begins to learn something we in the West could profit from. “Following in Blessed’s footsteps, Paul let go, no longer resisting the chaos, entering it, borne along toward the Court of the Lions.”
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