He would slide into the darkness of the nook, then, in his imagination, he would leave his childhood bedroom, his boredom, and the solitary afternoon, to travel to other ages and more enticing places, America for example, or the cruel India of Around the World in Eighty Days. The few luminous spots or the rays of sun that sometimes entered into his den were also incorporated into his visions of a distant existence, fascinating settings, delicious fantasies. Lying down, squatting, or sitting in his black room, as the translator is at present in front of Mercury’s helmeted head, the young David would have liked never again to see the faded daylight of unending afternoons, remain forever among these fragile images, these precarious characters and palpitating adventures that, at night, when he went to bed, came back to flit around his consciousness, taking advantage there again of that darkness and ephemeral emptiness.
But an adult would sometimes enter and take issue with this unseemly game. Suddenly wrested from the world of his black room, the child would poke his head between two sheets, blinking his eyes in the bright light, and would try to explain the unexplainable. Once the disgruntled adult was gone from the room, everything had to be begun again, he had to start his ritual over from zero once more to summon the enchantments—a Herculean task that apparently no adult could imagine—or else surrender to the reason of the “grown-ups,” accept and subject himself to the tread of time like the other members of his family, who didn’t seem to suspect the existence of such secret passages to worlds much more seductive and more real, yes, real, than this one.
On all fours faced with the blind gaze of the plaster head mounted on two small symmetrical wings, for a moment David forgets his present situation and basks in the joys of the black room, or rather the memory of those joys. Then his posture reminds him of certain passages of (N.d.T.), his own work as a translator that he considers more and more as an apostolate or sometimes a prison. Especially when it comes to that insidious scoundrel Prote, the importer keeps nothing of what he transports, except for maybe a meager pittance. The riches only pass between his welcoming hands that, at the end of the day, remain empty.
Shifting the helmeted head with much effort, David moves two or three yards through the tunnel and suddenly discovers, flabbergasted, to his left, a cluster of pale and grimacing faces rushing toward him, seeming to scream in silence. But rather than human cries, he hears the humming of a squadron of bombers. Motors roar, machine guns crackle, bombs explode, buildings collapse, but the deformed faces remain impassive, petrified on their black background. David flattens himself against the dirt and the dust, as in times past with Doris on the sand of a dreamed beach beneath a violet rain. He closes his eyes. Then he hears muffled voices, right up close:
A WOMAN (begging): An air raid! We have to take shelter in the metro!
A MAN (sharply): No. Leaving would be too dangerous.
THE WOMAN (after a silence):Then take me in your arms, Jean.
David cannot believe his ears: a languishing violin now competes with the uninterrupted racket of bombs and engines running at full capacity. Opening his eyes, David notices that the pale faces are still there, frozen, stripped of bodies. Finally daring to turn the beam of his flashlight on them, he sees a golden frame, rococo embellishments: it’s a small-scale reproduction of one of the very large canvases Goya painted at the end of his life in the “Deaf Man’s Villa,” one of those black paintings seemingly riddled with ghosts, their features deformed by terror or ecstasy.
David shivers, keeps listening.
SECOND MAN: He escaped through the sewers! Come on!
Sounds of shoes sloshing around in water. Metallic clashes of weapons wobbling in a hurried run. Calls, cries, clicking of boots, splashes, echoes. Someone gasping for breath, right next to him.
The irregular breathing of a fugitive and also of David, who finally understands that an air duct probably links the secret passage he finds himself in now to a movie theater.
SECOND MAN: Too bad! We’ll nab him another time.
THIRD MAN: There he is!
The tunnel gets bigger, David can now walk bent in half, head and shoulders level with the ceiling that he sometimes grazes, loosening small patches of wet earth. A minute later, his walk is more comfortable, he stands back up, risks a few steps that lead to a formerly white door, now covered in a fine layer of gray dust. A lock. The silver key. It fits perfectly. He turns it and pulls the door towars him. Behind the rectangle of solid wood, a heavy mauve velvet wall hanging blocks his path. Like a frustrated actor feeling around in the dark, trying to find the opening of a curtain leading onto the stage while on the other side, in the spotlight, faced with a perplexed and soon mocking audience, an actor and actress kill time as best they can during this inexplicable intermission by improvising a few unconvincing scenes and lines, David gropes around a surreal atmosphere: the batteries of the flashlight die, the air saturated with dust seems to be a consistent block of translucent mauve material stuck to the wall hanging that allows the glow of an unknown space to filter through.
Finally finding the slit in the thick fabric, he looks through it like a peephole and discovers a small room with walls covered in violet velvet. Two lamps illuminate the room. There is no one. David hears a distant music. The hanging he spies through easily divides into two sections to let the intruder in. Theater costumes are lined up on a big clothing rack. Three of them have been taken off: to the left the lavish black outfit of Zorro, to the right the long cape and large hat, also black, of the enigmatic man of the Sandeman port label, have been placed carefully on two chairs upholstered in crimson satin, with a round and gilded back. Between these two costumes, the surgical, immaculate bandages of the Invisible Man envelop a wooden mannequin.
Black, white, black.
I’ve just traveled between two altarpieces, thinks David: the first at the entrance of the secret passage, the second at the exit. On one side, striped ties and bow ties surround a central void; on the other, Zorro and Sandeman flank the Invisible Man.
David has the disturbing sensation that these three costumes have been placed here specifically for him. And this terrifies him.
Voices echo in the distance: piercing cries, theatrical apostrophes, thundering replies, the surge of a seemingly large orchestra. A muffled cell phone rings five times in a neighboring room, then goes quiet.
Without thinking, obeying an urge that feels like a conditioned reflex, David rapidly undresses and puts on the Zorro costume, which, he remarks, fits him like a glove, except for the patent shoes that pinch his toes a bit. Then, without forgetting the black domino mask, the glimmering sword with the finely wrought pommel, or the small key still in the lock, he lights his candle, closes the door behind him, and returns to the secret passage to retrace his steps back to Abel Prote’s apartment. He walks for a decent amount of time through this tunnel that he hardly recognizes, so often does the path we take in the opposite direction seem different to us than the vision we had of it going the other way. He passes the reproduction of the Goya painting, the air vent (“I didn’t come here for nothing, I won’t leave empty-handed!” exclaims a manly voice), then the bust of Mercury. David soon collides with a white locked door, which he certainly did not come upon walking in the other direction. Am I lost? he asks himself. He turns back around, tries in vain to get his bearings, to recognize the tunnel he’s just come through. Then, last resort, he tries sliding the silver key into the lock, but with no success: this time, the shaft and the hollow don’t fit together. So he places his candle on the dirt floor and discovers a large black crowbar abandoned there. On purpose? He picks up the tool, examines it, then slides the beveled end under the solid wood panel. A firm pressure from his gloved hands on the cold steel of the stick is enough to take the door off its hinges. In front of Zorro, the white rectangle topples over in a cloud of dust that, once dissipated, reveals a bare, dirty space, a circular room with stone walls covered in shelves of worm-eaten wood. David enters cautiously and finds that the room con
tains only an old chest with metallic hinges placed in the center. The walls are black with grime or soot, the chest is a blinding white. Once more, black and white. The chest is locked. David tries to open it using the crowbar, then tries sliding the tip of his sword into the thin groove of the lid. Nothing. Suddenly another idea comes to him: he takes the small silver key from his pocket and sees, stunned, that it fits perfectly into the lock of the chest, whose top opens effortlessly.
Once more, it’s as if I were expected here, thinks David, more and more worried. As if I had no other choice than to play the role written for me to perfection by another. And then this ridiculous outfit! He is suddenly ashamed: what madness took hold of him in that room covered in violet velvet to make him put on the outfit of the masked avenger? For crying out loud, I’m not a child anymore! Why did I leave my jeans, my shirt, and my tennis shoes there, traded for the all-black disguise of a Mexican Hidalgo? I’m such an idiot. But there’s nothing to do about it now, might as well keep going.
At the bottom of the chest upholstered in black satin, a bright rectangle glows dimly: it’s a violet envelope bearing a crimson marking in the form of a Z. Heart racing, David takes the envelope, turns it over, reads the initials A.P. on the back, wipes his forehead with the back of his glove, opens the letter, already encountered in a dream, and immediately recognizes the chicken scratch handwriting:
My dear Z,
I want first to congratulate you: like a good little translator, you have followed the treasure hunt flawlessly, without missing a single step. You have, to the letter, followed in my footsteps.
You will have noticed on this envelope your famous, pathetic acronym. Here you are, as in a mirror, confronted with your own face, masked but designed for another, your other, the author, me. I would have liked to see your face behind that mask at this precise moment. But as my father once said, ubiquity exceeds my modest talents. Tomorrow, meaning for you right now in this moment, I cannot be both on the plane and at your side in this cellar.
I drew not the X of the illiterate appending his hesitant initials to the bottom of a deposition, unaware that it is damning for him, but the last letter of the alphabet, the fifth wheel of the fictional coach chugging away on its four solid wooden circles, this modest wavy line so fitting for the translator, the same way the capital A suits my first name and my crucial function.
This signature, this letter that you left on my computer screen, I anticipated it and return it to you now on this envelope, thus pulling the rug out from under you, restoring you to the persona of the little loser, the superfluous appendix: not masked Zorro, but exposed Zorro.
Once, but not twice. You already broke into my modest remodeled farm in Normandy, but not again in my Parisian home will you have the pigheaded idea of harming me. I obligingly furnished you with a key that brought you here (it’s not you who’s using the silver key, it’s the key leading you in its wake). However, you will not open even one more lock with this key, for there are no more locks left on your path. You have reached your goal, even if you’re not yet out of your gaol.
I willingly admit that your path is less comfortable than that of the lustful English king on his iron walkway over the Gare du Nord. But I have no doubt that when all is said and done your pleasure will reach the same heights.
On your way to the Odéon theater, following in the footsteps of my late father, who was rather excited at the idea of finding his American mistress, the ravishing actress Dolores Haze, you move around underground to the hesitant rhythm of your trembling legs, while I, traveling between the sky and sea at supersonic speed, am writing with my large aluminum pen. Zorro zigzagging, wandering, and getting lost, while I trace a pure, straight, invisible line. Neck bent, you expend great effort in the shadows, you retrace your steps, you crawl, you make strange encounters, you scream in terror, you think you see specters and hear phantoms, you grope around like a blind mole in a labyrinth that is seemingly impossible to escape from, you collide with closed doors without ever finding a way to open them, while I fly with no obstacle through the rarefied air of the stratosphere, much higher than Edward VII the lecherous king, leaving behind me a straight wake of white condensation: my words inscribed in negative on the midnight blue page of the sky.
I’ll get to the point. Here is a passage that does not appear in the French edition of (N.d.T.) and that I am showing you now so that you will translate it pronto and include it in the American edition of my book. It’s my secret passage and I find it fitting that you read it thus disguised, by the wavering light of your candle (the batteries in the flashlight I thoughtfully furnished have run out, no?), in this dark cellar where my father formerly stored his best vintage wines. There are none of those fine wines left: all the bottles were drunk a long time ago, during the prosperous age of grandiose receptions and parties copiously supplied with alcohol for the cultivated friends of Maurice-Edgar Prote. I suppose, furthermore, that after the emotions and physical efforts of this unusual night, you are dying of thirst. Know then that in this very moment I am savoring a glass of champagne in the company of a charming multilingual flight attendant. Imagine me thirty-two-thousand feet above the sea, secretly making a toast to the health of the valiant translator who has ventured to the Parisian underground, dressed in a black costume so well matched to the décor (what was Zorro’s favorite drink again? Tequila? Mezcal? Corona beer? A mint julep imported from the southern United States? Given his hectic nocturnal life and the thunderous nature of his surprise appearances, I would opt for coffee, very strong, robust, a double, with lots of sugar. Unless, obligatory clothing analogy, he had a weakness for Sandeman port. Which, I am sure, you’ve already tasted. In any event, no one will ever know …).
But I digress. A promise is a promise. Here is my secret passage; you are its first reader:
“I can’t remember who wrote that—”
A cry, or rather a call, brusquely interrupts the translator’s reading:
“Da-avid!”
It’s Doris’s voice, distant and contorted by its path to the circular space of the wine cellar.
“Da-avid, where are you?”
He shoves Prote’s letter into the inside pocket of his black costume. The writer’s secret passage will have to wait. He picks up his sword, then rushes toward the opening of the door:
“I’m down here!” Immediately noting the comical and insufficient nature of his response, he adds: “In the wine cellar!”
“Are you here?” Doris continues, not having his heard response.
“Yes, be right there!”
“Da-avid? Is that you?” says the feminine voice, still just as far away.
The translator leaves the cellar and retraces his steps through the underground.
“I’m here, in the passage!” he cries.
“Put your hands up!” a forceful voice nearby suddenly orders.
David freezes on the spot, then raises his hands, brandishes the candle and the sword.
“But … who are you?” he asks, terrified.
“Give me the letter … Quickly! And no funny business,” the man’s voice orders dryly.
Paralyzed by fear, David hears Doris’s call, just as distant and distorted:
“Da-avid! Where are you-u? Answer me-e.”
“Don’t turn around. Don’t try to call for help. I want that letter. I know you have it. Maybe you’re not aware, but it contains, in code, crucial information about the secret weapon (“Daaavid! Stop hi-iding!”) developed by your laboratories. Did you really think that that stupid disguise would stop me from recognizing you (“For crying out loud, Davi-id! This isn’t fu-unny!”), Doctor Schlump?”
“Hello,” comes another masculine voice, “It’s Jim. I received the orders (“David, you idiooot!”). I’m com …”
Two gunshots bang behind him. Thinking he’s already dead, David turns around brusquely and stares into the gritty darkness of the deserted cave while a breathless music rings out.
“I’m coming
!” he yells to Doris, remembering a little too late that movie theaters proliferate like molehills in the underground of the Latin Quarter. All the same, too many coincidences: the letter, the disguise …Abel Prote didn’t really go so far as to rent a movie theater screen to project a film synchronized with my movements through this passage?
At the bottom of the staircase of the secret passage, just below the puppet with the thin black braid on the wall facing the open armoire, Doris is waiting.
Chapter 6
PROTE’S SECRET PASSAGE
* * *
I can’t remember who wrote that all human life—yours, mine—is perhaps only a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, and unfinished masterpiece. In that version of reality, we would be minor appendices of a great unknown novel whose author will never reveal himself. This invisible author would whisper our replies, decide our actions, our loves, our careers, our thoughts. For him, everything would be clear, unless he too is but a pawn of another novel, more expansive than the first, written by another author, a writer who is twice as powerful, who might be in his turn the brief note of another author … and on and on, perhaps infinitely. Each of us would be then a footnote within a footnote within … like an unending interlocking of Russian nesting dolls that grow smaller and smaller, Easter eggs containing an infinite number of other eggs of various colors, a mask hiding a mask hiding a mask … a marionette moving a marionette moving a marionette moving …
Speaking of interlocking paternities, I would like to bring up here, for your benefit, David le Gris, a few memories concerning my father, Maurice-Edgar Prote.
When I was a child, back in the 50s, some Sunday afternoons he would take me to watch a soccer match in the Parc des Princes, near Porte d’Auteuil and the Boulevard Périphérique. I remember that, not really liking the sport, I would bring a Tintin comic with me each time to distract my boredom and make those two forty-five minute halves go by faster. Seated next to my father on the hard rows of stadium seats, I would soon renounce watching those athletes maneuver on the green lawn in order to plunge into my comic book, taking off to America, the Congo, Arabia, the mysterious Island, the Moon or, more prosaically but with just as much delight, the Château de Moulinsart and the drunken antics of Captain Haddock. Suddenly, an immense ovation would rush through the stadium, wresting me from my clandestine universe to bring me back to reality, urging me to raise my eyes, to look at the green lawn and the scattered players, standing or on the ground, but I was always a few seconds too late: the action was over, a few players mad with joy were congratulating each other, others were holding their heads in their hands, raising their contorted faces to the sky to implore an invisible and silent God. As for the round ball, it was now motionless at the back of the net, a symbol that everything was over, as immobile as the speech bubbles of my comic book. The spectators all seemed happy, except for me, who had heard everything but seen nothing, and I was disappointed every time at having missed the individual or collective feat, so much so that vexed once again I would plunge back with even greater intensity into the world of Tintin. Then of course the same exasperating scenario would repeat itself. Reading is in a certain way going against life, turning your back to it, or at least exiling yourself for a moment, at risk of missing the most intense moments, that no clamor will ever signal to the reader absorbed in his book.
Revenge of the Translator Page 7