JAMES HADLEY CHASE
No orchids for Miss Blandis.
translation – measure: Andreas Apostolidis
P. 344, ed. Agra, 2021

Chase burrows into as many corners as a person can fit: bright, dusty, dark. However, he accepts them.

James Hadley Chase wrote No Orchids for Miss Blandis in six weekends, and I read it in one. Although this is not true. Chase didn’t write that fast, and I don’t read that fast either. In fact, the English author corrected it again twenty years after its first publication, removing parts of the text that had already been dented. Thus there are three versions – the 39th, the 61st, and a mixture of the two – according to the epimeter of the translator Andreas Apostolidis, who has the meticulousness of an accountant who compares numbers in search of that subtle difference that will lead him to the mystery. Luckily the numbers don’t come out. Never. And so they let the books leak out.

History is naive. Some petty crooks kidnap the daughter of a millionaire. A more capable gang snatches the girl out of their hands. They imprison her. They hypnotize her with drugs. The leader of the gang is a huge woman who gave birth to a thin man. Her son Slim – first and last name – falls in love with Miss Blandis. So here is the plot of the novel, chip. How to write a thick book thinly, simply and clearly? A text that even a child could read, as he dedicates himself to a bedtime story – although I wouldn’t recommend it. Not because plot violence thrives. But for exactly the opposite reason. Because now she seems trivial, indifferent. Not creepy at all. In the event that a child or teenager came into contact with the “Orchids”, a void opened up inside him, as he realized the elasticity of his resistance to cruelty. As the first sign of adult apathy.

It would be interesting to see a film adaptation of ’48. The film is unbearable. Complete failure. Slim isn’t skinny enough. His mother isn’t really scary. The police are not corrupt enough. Blandis is not so pretty. No shot is worth it, because no shot is as dry and precise as a shot. Like Chase’s prose. When there is no style, there is no story. There is nothing. Even if we refuse to admit it, style often depends on appearance. After all, the only benefit of films that procedurally adapt important books—like sleepwalking into an absurd duty—is that they serve as a concise literature lesson. You will learn that brilliant writing is irresistible. How voluminous his words are, which allow you to play a separate film in the head of each reader. How many times has a good book, a movie, an advance? Almost never. Words don’t convey the whole picture. They provide the framework for the image. Literature is even bolder than cinema.

George Orwell found the novel morally ambiguous. And therefore dangerous: “Throughout the book it is implied that it is reprehensible to be a criminal only because it is unprofitable. Being a policeman is more profitable, but there is no moral difference, since the police usually use criminal methods.” It’s really dangerous. But the reason is different: Chase burrows into as many corners as a person wears: bright, dusty, dark. However, he accepts them. His heroes are nothing more than desperate morons, trembling at the fact that some kind of ray of love will break out of their bowels and shake them. The delight of a charismatic text lies in the freedom of choice it offers the reader. We, too, have the right to dive into the “cesspool,” as Orwell peevishly wrote, to love, dislike, or ignore this filth parade, and finally decide whether we’d rather return dirty to the surface. Who wants literature to sparkle with purity, didacticism and boredom? I hope no one.

I leaf through the old Greek edition of the novel by the Likhnari publishing house. The translation is lame. Paper is cheap. The cover is yellow evil. We can say that this is the ideal option. You try to read the little wavy letters like hundreds of bullets crammed into each page, and when you’re done, you throw it in the trash and move on with your life.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, Slim gives Blandis a gift. The girl is not touched. Slim is angry. “Miss Blandis remained motionless with her eyes closed. She might as well be dead,” Apostolidis translates. I grab the ’75 edition: “Miss Blandis stood perfectly still, her eyes closed. He was like a corpse.” Sometimes a less elaborate translation is fortunate enough to find its target more easily. Each translation is a new version of the text. Only slops have no versions.