Revenge of the Translator

by Brice Matthieussent

  David Grey no longer hears anything, not even the din of the waves. However, he soon discerns hoarse gasps. He turns around and discovers with amazement a troop of ungainly seals that, right up close to him, emit husky screeches, a concert of wheezing breaths, of irregular puffing and panting. The island of Pharos, certainly. The Nile Delta. The droves of Poseidon, guarded by Proteus. Then David notices that he himself is one of those seals. Transformed by an evil spirit, he lets out a marine trumpeting with his fellow creatures that live sometimes in the water and sometimes in the air. Suddenly, without any transition, everything goes silent again. David wakes up. He sits up on the sleeper seat, he raises the canvas shade on the window, and …

  After remembering his recent dream, after calmly contemplating the black-and-white furrows of the immense field, David Grey pulls the shade back down to the bottom of the window, thus banishing the vision of the snowy landscape to that region of memory that welcomes images so unlikely that you ask yourself later whether you dreamed them or actually glimpsed them. (Train Night)

  *

  * A curiously similar scene takes place in Scattered Figments, my author’s second novel. Given the deplorable quality of the translation of the book, I thought it best to retranslate the entire passage in question. Here it is:

  “The blue-and-white mail truck was driving at full speed through the open countryside. In the distance, a train of travelers stopped on the rails seemed to be waiting for the signal authorizing it to take off again. The early morning was throwing a pale light on the parallel furrows of the fields covered in a thin layer of snow that extended as far as the eye could see. The driver of the mail truck was wearing a blue uniform paired with a blue baseball cap; on his vest, a badge displayed his name: John De Maria. As he was driving on the little road, from time to time he imagined two similar immense, handwritten letters, laid out to the misty horizon. Letters destined for stratospheric fighter pilots, for astronauts or inhabitants of the moon, he thought, amused. It was as if these two gigantic letters were on the verge of melting into one to bring together their nearly conjoined signatures, separated by the thin black edging of the paved road, two giants on the verge of uniting and fusing by pulverizing the narrow pavement that still separated them.

  “‘In my truck bouncing along,’ thought John De Maria in the grips of a growing euphoria, ‘I am the needle of a sewing machine, the thread of the surgeon suturing a wound, the metallic zipper that simultaneously secures their separation and their coitus (John De Maria has a PhD in philosophy from a good American university in the Midwest), and I weave between these two missives to assure the impermeability of two worlds. I am the watershed. Or else, the opposite,’ he continues in his increasing delirium, ‘I am the razor’s edge that will at last allow them to unite the two edges of the horizon into one immense field destined, in a few months, for an abundant harvest.’

  “Inspiration came bit by bit to this young man, besotted with poetry, occasional weed smoker, henceforth restricted to working in the postal service. Two months earlier, during one of his university courses, he had invoked the names of writers banned from the curriculum. Some of his students had been offended by it: formal complaints to the administration, a warning from the Director of Studies, repeat offense, great rage, insults, lay off.

  “‘These fields situated on both sides of the road,’ continues John De Maria, ‘are wings. My cockpit, a cabin. And I am Hermes, the messenger of the gods transporting news destined for unlucky mortals. Or else, Daedalus or his son Icarus escaping on their wings from the labyrinth of Crete.’ The inspired postman drives faster and faster. He believes that he will soon take off, escape gravity, finally fly. However, left and right, the countryside appears immobile: still the same snow-filled furrows. The monotonous black and white stripes are disproportionate quills canceling out his speed.

  “Accelerating even faster, he thinks of all those parcels of existence he’s transporting, of the immense wings and their imperceptible flapping, of an egg swollen with thousands of hopes. John De Maria thinks of a divine surprise falling from the sky, of palpitating antennae awaiting a favorable response, of a fulfillment, of a return of fortune or simply recent news. Then, the opposite, he senses behind him in the truck just as much anonymous coldness, disembodied words, routine sentimentalities, notices, bailiff threats, reports from the litigation department, requests for administrative information, complaints, dubious contracts, death announcements, last wills and testaments, various scams, final notices, stiff and moralizing prose, thinly veiled threats, bad checks, marketing leaflets, tempting propositions, administrative forms, a swarm of black ravens obscuring the sky, throwing their large shadows over the earth and its fields, all that in his command, he the white and blue messenger, the lugubrious bird of misfortune. The haruspex of antiquity would begin his ritual by cutting out an imaginary frame in the sky with a staff, thus delineating a space where the birds of destiny would appear. If they came from the right, it was good luck; from the left, ominous. The postal service Januses salute you. Two ticket counters, two telephone numbers for singing telegrams: heartrending melodies, lugubrious requiems, lessons of darkness, church organ, tearful voices, or else “Ode to Joy,” “Spring” by Vivaldi, or else “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Been Down So Long It looks Like Up to Me,” Offenbach, “La Vie Parisienne,” a French Cancan song, some salsa or bossa nova (John has a fondness for exotic music genres). A vast array of choices, unlimited repertoire, all types of music, a horde of specialized performers in the full spectrum of human emotions. We listen to them, entertained, standing in a doorway or behind a window, seated in a comfortable rocking chair or sipping whiskey, lying on a soft bed, we think we’re in a variety show or a play, or listening to a beautiful actress fallen from the screen cooing her divine melody for you alone, in the intimacy of your ear, or else a grieving baritone and his funereal aria coils through your right eardrum. Perhaps I should paint black the left half of my truck, that bird of misfortune that too often sows sorrow and consternation …

  “Soon, these turbulent images take hold of his feverish spirit and he thrusts the accelerator to the floor unknowingly and sees too late the lorry turning around the bend. At the precise moment when John De Maria decides, smiling, to ask to be transferred to the singing telegrams service, the mail truck violently collides with the enormous lorry. John De Maria is killed instantly, the gas tank of the lorry explodes, a few thousand letters go up in flames.

  “Firemen and policemen find a few on the side of the road, where the violence of the collision threw them out of burstopen bags, half burnt. Four of these letters concern orders of agricultural material; another contains the congratulations of a hundred-year-old grandmother to her granddaughter who has just had a baby, as well as the recipe for cherry clafoutis. In a sixth, a worried father writes to his son studying in New York to urge him to work relentlessly (‘You’ll see, my son, in a few years you’ll thank me for pushing you you to practice law; you’ll have a family, you’ll provide for your loved ones, who will appreciate you, you’ll understand that money is only worth the freedoms it provides for you,’ etc.).

  “The seventh and second to last letter, written in French, is addressed to a certain Doris Night, but it begins rather curiously with:

  My dear David,

  I hope that you will not deem my request improper or bizarre. After much reflection I would like to ask you for a slight modification to the American version of my novel (N.d.T.). I know that you are a talented translator, intelligent, full of resources. Others have told me, I have observed it myself. Paris, which serves as the predictable framework for my novel for the French public, does not feel suitable for American readers. Thus, in order to “geographically” update my text, I ask that you replace the City of Light with your Big Apple, or rather with your cruel hedgehog studded with shiny needles. It will be a minimal adaptation, which I’m sure you will carry out with great panache. All you have to do is change the street names while taking in
to account the distances traveled by my characters, modify a few descriptions of urban environments, Americanize PMU, CGT, UMP, Monoprix, and other names of supermarkets, politicians, celebrities, etc., adapt recipes and restaurant menus, the jargon of taxi drivers, and other minor details (for example, I know there are no “concierges” in your country. You’re on your own there).You are, I believe, up to the task. Pay attention also to the metro map, car brands, important historical events of the recent or distant past. You must also, I almost forgot, find equivalents for French newspapers, in their respective styles (do you have an equivalent of Le Canard Enchaîné in New York?). I remain of course entirely at your disposal. The next time you’re in Paris, come have a drink at my place.

  My secretary Doris says hello.

  Yours,

  Abel Prote

  P.S. Most importantly, do not add a single word to my text. In your work as a translator, the strictest rigor is essential: remain invisible, silent, irreproachable. Not a single “in English in the original,” or “untranslatable play on words” (followed by cumbersome explanations), “quotation by Flaubert/Proust/Stendhal, etc.” No, all those additions are the work of pedantic prigs.

  “The final envelope saved from the blaze and found by the policemen at the scene of the accident bears the name David Grey. It contains a love letter, addressed to a certain Doris. Here is the beginning, written in French, in the same cramped calligraphy as the previous missive:

  My beloved Doris, my love, my pink jewel set in black, I cannot wait to see you again! Your transatlantic back-and-forths weigh heavily on me. I long for your slender feet with the pearly white nails, for your thin ankles whose curves inflame me, for your shapely legs that …

  “The author of this fastidious letter, whose predictable name we discover four pages later, enumerates in detail the various parts of the rather charming anatomy of Doris, his personal secretary. Prote seems to be familiar with the first sequence of Godard’s Contempt, with the pulpy woodcock and the man with the long curly sideburns, or else he is simply interested in the ancient literary genre ‘blason,’ in which one describes with a fair amount of minutiae the various parts of the beloved’s body, like so many isolated, independent fragments, as if cruelly amputated and then positioned on the flat surface of a sterilized page for the purpose of medical observation, for no vision of the whole ever unifies these anatomic, or rather textual, morsels. Farewell, stratospheric fighter pilots, astronauts, and moon-men whose sharp, elevated views allow them to decipher pages covering several hectares; hello, low-flying wasp, the panting truffle dog riveted to the ground, the crawling insect whose faceted eye remains fixed on the object of its voracious desire, incapable of gaining even a tiny bit of height to glimpse an overall view. Hello, also, to the cruise missile molding to the mountainous terrain that it flies over at the speed of sound to escape from enemy radars. The cruel blason, the amorous vision of Abel Prote’s hand caressing Doris’s silky skin, or else the vision of the text that the translator is focusing on—eyes overflowing with paragraphs, phrases, words, letters, an approach that can be more surgical than tender—for he is faced with a body to operate on, not to caress, henceforth meat to cut up rather than flesh to delight in.

  “In short, when David Grey, in New York, receives this long letter addressed to Doris, written in an inflamed tone and received in an envelope that is lightly charred as though by the fire of Protean passion, he is at first stupefied, but soon understands that the scatterbrained author of (N.d.T.) switched the envelopes, and that the beautiful brunette with the voluptuous curves, the French writer’s secretary, and recently the translator’s lover, has more than one trick up her sleeve.

  “And when Doris receives, rather belatedly, the letter addressed to David Grey, an envelope stained with dirt and pale rings as though a liquid had been abundantly spilled over the paper, she is just as stunned. Then she understands that Abel Prote, her employer and Parisian lover, also has more than one trick up his sleeve, that he treats his American translator like a minion, and that his vanity knows no bounds, which, smart lady that she is, she already suspected.”

  I delete, with no remorse, the corresponding passage of Translator’s Revenge and add, happily, to my text, these few pages of Scattered Figments in my new translation. (Two-timing Nooky)

  Chapter 4

  THE TRANSLATOR PREPARES FOR WAR

  *

  * Abel Prote wants to take advantage of his literary paternity to pressure David into replacements in the form of a transatlantic displacement: although (N.d.T.) is set in Paris, Prote would like for Grey to transpose the novel to New York! What nerve! What boorishness! No one should be expected to do the impossible, especially since the translation contract signed by Grey with the American publisher for (N.d.T.) does not account for this sudden whim. Furious and probably also crazed with jealousy because of what he has just learned inadvertently about Doris, Grey wants to avenge himself and is already imagining physically deleting Prote. As for the too-brief list of weapons formerly mentioned by my author, who is decidedly a coward, to the whiteness specked with a minuscule stain I add the English monkey wrench, the American brass knuckles, the Bulgarian umbrella, the Japanese forearm strike, the Malaysian kris, French boxing, Chinese torture; the progressive strangulation or cardiac arrest provoked by sudden terror; the more classic arsenic or cyanide, kitchen knife, chandelier, heavy ashtray, drop hammer, and other crushing machines; the yataghan, piano wire (handled skillfully it promises instantaneous decapitation), defenestration, bewitchment, black magic, polonium-210 discreetly poured into your future victim’s cup of tea, if possible in London; the deadly sting or bite (scorpion, black widow, green mamba), the poison dart shot forth from a thin titanium blowgun, gold paint covering the entire body to asphyxiate the victim; the dagger, the sword, the supple épée with a decorated handle; the car, the package, or the booby-trapped telephone, all types of time bombs, backfiring Uzis, AK-47s, M16s, Stens, the light SLR machine guns of the British army, not to mention the heavy machinery kindly made available to the public by international arms dealers.

  Thanks to me, henceforth Grey is spoiled for choice and we will see what weaponry his temperament pushes him toward. In his place, and given the admiration he has for the masked avenger, I would choose the supple épée with the decorated handle to assuage my anger against an author with exorbitant demands: how can one swap the gray hues of Parisian facades for the glimmering faces of New York City skyscrapers?

  Here we have—finally?—a translator tempted to kill his author: a Hide-behind ready to do the deed. As for my own vengeance, I do not require a handgun, or any weapon for cutting or thrusting, but instead a regular, obstinate growth, singularly shielded from any judiciary pursuit, a slow climb—not of water, nor of adrenaline, nor of desire, but of lines—a discreet invasion that will necessarily provoke the fury of the wronged writer, expelled from his living space. (Killer’s Darkness)

  The wheels are in motion. The virus works its way through the machine, like a rat.

  Z

  *

  * The term Kiwi was used during WWI to designate the soldiers in the US Air Force who didn’t fly. This word corresponds more or less with what French pilots call the rampants. David Grey thinks of William Faulkner, known for his juvenile passion for flying and the brazen lies concerning his supposed exploits as a WWI pilot: contrary to his bragging, the author of Soldiers’ Pay never piloted a single military plane and remained a Kiwi.

  A brief aeronautic commentary: the image of the plane tracing its graceful arabesques through the serene sky seems to obsess David. I suspect the American translator envisages a low-altitude machine-gunning of Prote or a proper bombardment of his posts. When I furnished Grey with a few additional arms, I forgot to include in my panoply those fatal Easter eggs and metallic hailstones that fall from the sky without warning, accompanied, a fraction of a second after impact, by a terrifying howl of engines launched at full speed when—memory of reels of news bull
etins from WWII—the German Stukas or the Japanese Zeros burst forth from the sun and head straight for the parade of unlucky refugees who immediately dive toward the side of the road. Grey, who loves the cinema and aviation, lets himself be invaded by these images in a daze. Replacing Prote, not only in relation to Doris, but also on the page, visibly tempts him. Tired of being the mere prosthesis of his French author, he would like to feel the powerful sensations of flight or acrobatic eroticism, to chase Prote from his cockpit, wrest the control stick, the pen, and the beautiful brunette from his hands at the same time. Yielding to the confusion of his effervescent spirit, he imagines assaulting his author in an air attack.

  For David Grey, my kindred spirit, my brother, finds himself as irritated as me by this hierarchical division of space: above the horizon line, the impervious page is an empty sky, tarnished by a mosquito or a fly that soon comes to life; Grey and I remain pitifully nailed to the ground, vulgar Kiwis deprived of flight, while my author and his author—my mosquito, his fly—buzz freely up above in graceful whirls while evoking oh!s and ah!s from the crowd of delighted spectators. But they don’t suspect, those naïve men, those ignoramuses, those space cases, those naïve compatriots, that it’s me (or Grey) who is flying the plane, who is making the spectacle happen. He and I who pedal in sync at the back of the cabin smeared with oil and grease, spinning the propeller and keeping the old crate in the air! He and I who, hidden among the sheet metal and the clouds, work the controls with our tense arms, crippled with painful cramps, in order to maneuver that winged puppet! For a moment, it was as if there was no pilot on the plane other than me, or him … For a moment, we believed … But of course it’s a deceptive illusion, we are nothing more than servile copilots, subordinates obedient to the orders from the control tower, to the directives of the conductor, faithfully playing the score, following his instructions to the letter, performing with ardor or reserve, nostalgia or enthusiasm, enacting the roles created by another for the enjoyment of the audience.