Doris and I exchange a bewildered look. This dish, which Abel Prote enjoyed on his way to Paris in his Air France business class cabin in Chapter 12, “The Flight,” this dish shouldn’t be here, in Chapter 14, “The Dinner.” Decidedly, my memory is failing me, I am beginning to doubt where this salt cod should appear: in Prote’s plane or on David’s table? In Chapter 12 or Chapter 14? Unless the novel is rewriting itself, reorganizing on its own, like an organism henceforth independent, autonomous, emancipated from its human tutelage and paternity, no longer taking into account either its author or its French translator. An impossible hypothesis, so unbelievable that in this unhinged universe it becomes believable …
As for Doris, even if she is unaware of the entire first occurrence of this dish in the novel, she seems to be as astonished as I am.
“But,” I say with a trembling voice, “this is the dish that Prote ate on the plane that passed yours over the ocean: Atlantic salt cod with red beet purée and slices of black radish …”
“What do you mean?” asks Doris. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” I explained. “I was there. I translated it. No, I wrote it. I was on the plane with Prote. It was at that precise moment that I set about writing for good. You can verify in Chapter 12, ‘The Flight.’ I have a perfect memory of that dinner’s menu. Do you want me to recite it for you?”
“No, thank you, Trad,” responds Doris. “We trust you.”
“Well,” says David. “Shall I serve you?”
I hand him my plate, then Doris lets David serve her, and he serves himself last.
“I still can’t get over it,” I say. “I’m certain that, in the novel, tonight we eat cuttlefish in ink sauce. Would you like me to verify?”
“No, Trad. We trust you,” Doris repeats.
“So,” David continues with a malicious smile. “Would you like some more?”
“Wait a bit,” says Doris, without immediately understanding the irony of the question. “You only just served us. Also,” she adds, suddenly frowning, “let’s not do the dialogue on loop thing. The record of our three lives is not scratched, as far as I know. Not yet.”
We eat in a weighing silence. I feel that Doris and David doubt me, my credibility, for the first time. And I too doubt my memory, my novel. The salt cod in place of the cuttlefish, it’s only a detail, you will say, my reader. But I knew a time when all that I wrote or translated was perfectly confirmed, verified, concretized, incarnated down to the detail in real life. Now, as of recently, differences appear, certainly minor trifles, but troubling all the same. These hiatuses, these divergences, these imperfections of reproduction began tonight, when I entered David’s apartment and met Doris. Is she responsible for these snags? Does my gaze, through ricochet, cause these gaps, fissure the written truth, crack the text? How can I seal up the breaches? How can I keep life from drifting farther and farther from its initial organization mapped out in words?
“Did you buy a raspberry charlotte for dessert?” I ask suddenly.
The incongruous abruptness of my question makes David and Doris jump.
“Uh, yes, that’s what we’re having for dessert,” replies David. “But Doris made it, the charlotte.”
“Exactly,” confirms Doris proudly. “And it’s my first attempt. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I say, both reassured by this dessert that conforms to my predictions and agitated to learn that, contrary to my predictions, it was not bought but homemade. Another fissure opens between words and life. One more difference between the twin sisters. They are not really Siamese twins and, if things keep going like this, their twinship will be nothing but a memory. Before this memory sinks into oblivion in its turn. “Let’s go back to Prote,” I say. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Yes?” asks David cautiously.
“You cannot stand idly by without reacting,” I say. “So I would like to propose something …”
“What?” asks Doris.
“A sort of final vengeance. I have to go back to Paris in two weeks. I’m going to see him. Meet him. Explain the situation to him. Tell him what’s going on. I’ll make that peacock understand what he really is. Show him that his personal and concrete reality, his intimate being, his existence, and even his civil status depend on my good will. Convince him that the Delete function on my computer keyboard applies to the text that upholds his life, and that without this text he is nothing. A simple click of the Delete key and poof, exit Prote.”
“Not bad,” says Doris with a mischievous smile and a gleaming stare. “Not bad at all. You couldn’t conjure up a nice little rug of crushed glass in his bed, caltrops in his bathtub, burnt trash bags in his oven, saw the legs off his couch, snip his ties, shrink his socks? You would just have to write it all for it to come true, right? You could also repaint his apartment the color of goose poop, cover his fridge in a lovely layer of green mold, what else … ? Plug up his secret passage, reformat his hard drive, make his shoes walk down the hallway, update his sinister fresco by covering the puppet in bloody wounds, add in the four cheeky girls holding the sheet throwing the mannequin in the air, shut Prote in the armoire, bind his hands with a tie, force him to be sodomized by the puppet …”
“As of tonight,” I cut her off, “I’m starting to doubt the powers of my prose. In fact, since I entered your apartment, since I met you, Doris, gaps have appeared between the storyline of the novel and the film of our three lives, between text and reality. I confess that I’m worried. It’s as if you were taking liberties, as if our lives were breaking free from the novel little by little, diverting more and more from it. So I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But it’s still worth a shot. What do you think?”
“Yes!” Doris cries enthusiastically. “It’s worth a shot. I’m imagining the look on his face. His confusion. His panic. We have to prove it to him in some way. He’s not naïve. He won’t believe it straightaway.”
“Leave the convincing to me. I have quite a few arguments in my arsenal. And besides, it’s all already in the novel. I know what comes next. Don’t forget that I’ve translated and written the last chapters. I know, or rather I think I know, how our four lives will evolve, bifurcate, rebuild themselves in the weeks to come …”
“In the end,” says Doris in a morose tone, “it’s not a dinner for four, but for five, even if he was not invited.”
Doris and David remain silent. I’ve said too much. For them my words once again possess the value of prophecies. I see that, despite my recent doubts, they’re afraid. Now they believe me. Especially Doris. I take a secret satisfaction from that, a slightly masculine vanity of which I am perfectly aware, but that vanity excites me, injects adrenaline into my veins. The two photographs on the bathroom door and the one that hangs over us as we eat could not have been more apt to describe my situation. I am that giant with the curved neck, I am that masked woman, I am that hybrid being, that Siamese two-headed body, at once anchored in the present and informed of the future, that anomaly of human form whose fantasies are realized in advance and thus already devalued, at least to my own eyes, if not to Doris’s. For with each moment my premonitions, my predictions are already confirmed. In a certain way I never risk anything. Or almost. All I have to do is play the stock market to become rich, all I have to do is take a gamble to make money every time, I’ve found a foolproof betting system, so long as … yes, so long as I’m translating and rewriting a novel about a Wall Street broker or about horse or greyhound races. But I forget that I am limited to the domain that concerns us three, which is to say the adventure of writing this novel. I forget that my talents only work if Doris—for I think she is the one modifying the text unbeknownst to me—does not exercise her rights too much. I am a god at once powerful and delimited, a shortsighted psychic, a partial prodigy, a visionary blind to everything that exceeds the restrained perimeter of his expertise.
“Nothing is really certain,” says David in a hesitant voice, “but I’ll serve t
he dessert you both already know about: the raspberry charlotte.”
“And the cheeses?” asks Doris. “Also bring the second bottle of wine. Our guest is clearly thirsty.”
“I’ll get it,” says David.
Doris and I remain seated at the table while David busies himself in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, taking plates from a cupboard. Suddenly Doris grabs my hand and looks me straight in the eyes.
“Promise me that everything will be okay,” she whispers in a quivering voice. “Promise me you won’t take advantage of your power.”
“I think you’re jumping the gun a bit. We’re not at that point. Not yet. I can’t say for the next chapters. Everything is already going rather well rather quickly. But I’m wary of one thing: as soon as you enter the scene, the moment you intervene in our lives, the script changes. It’s as if you have the power to change the text, to rewrite it.”
“Promise me,” she insists, squeezing my fingers harder.
“Okay,” I say. “I promise not to take advantage.”
Suddenly she lets go of my hand and lets out a sigh that I don’t know how to interpret, then she gets up and goes back into the bedroom.
David arrives holding the raspberry charlotte in one hand and in the other a white compote dish covered with a plate. He places both on the table. “I decided to skip the cheese. I’ll get the wine.”
He comes back with the second bottle of 2003 Guigal. Right as he lifts the plate covering the second dessert, Doris returns from the bedroom. She’s put the hummingbird mask back on. She holds a small crown of faded violets in front of her as an offering. The violet of the petals and the matte brown of the stems strangely match the yellow and orange of her Lurex dress.
David and I turn to face her, stupefied. Doris slowly crosses the distance that separates the doorway of the living room from the round table. After a long silence, she says in a lifeless voice, like a sleepwalker:
“I found these violets at the back of the closet, on the top shelf. Did you put them there, David?”
“No. I’ve never seen them before.”
“You’re sure this crown didn’t belong to your grandmother Sarah, whose mask I’m wearing?”
“Not to my knowledge,” replies David.
“So it must be Abel who hid them in the closet before leaving, for us to find in due time. There was no Post-it stuck to them. Not anywhere nearby either.” Doris then slides two fingers into the center of the crown and extracts a small piece of square paper, meticulously folded and refolded. It’s a sheet of onionskin, a piece of stationery that she immediately unfolds, after placing the crown of violets on the table. She reads: “‘On the top shelf of the closet, behind the splendid bird mask, the photo of which I also quite like, hanging on the living room wall, I hide this crown of violets, like a round and crimson face—from shame? from desire? Of course, it will remind you of another. The one formerly given by my father to his American mistress, Dolores Haze, formerly Lolita. Don’t mistake this for a thank you gift. The period of Entente Cordiale is definitively closed between us. The Atlantic separates us, larger than the English Channel. No train, no footbridge, no secret passage, or any plane can ever bring us closer together again.
“‘No, the only reason for this gesture is an absolute need for symmetry: a crown at my place, in Paris, a crown here, in your place, David, in New York.’
“Signed: ‘Abel Prote.’”
Without a word of commentary, Doris places the sheet of paper on the table.
“Fuck,” says David. “Even though he’s not here, he’s still managing to piss us off, that asshole.”
After a few seconds of silence, Doris says:
“Since he’s so obsessed with symmetry and repetition, the bedroom closet must contain other little hidden objects. The treasure hunt begins again…”
I am back in my text. Reassured. Confident. Serene. Excited, but serene. I recall this passage perfectly. As soon as Abel enters onto the scene, as soon as he acts, writes, or speaks, reality is once again a copy conforming to the text. Its duplicate, its replica, its perfect double in the opacity of the material. I know what’s to come, I anticipate the shared stupefaction of David and his companion.
“Let’s go see?” proposes Doris, turning toward the entrance of the bedroom.
David follows her. I’m right behind them.
Standing on her tiptoes in front of the closet, its doors wide open, Doris runs her hand over the top shelf, moves aside some shoe boxes, a suitcase that’s probably empty, a pile of drapes, duvet covers, and pillowcases. “Nothing,” she says, before exploring the shelf directly below it. There, her hand freezes behind a pile of shirts. “I found something!” she cries. Then she turns toward me and David to show us her prize, which she holds between her thumb and index finger the way someone might hold a crab above the sand behind its pinchers in order to neutralize any remote desire on the crustacean’s part to attack.
“A model airplane,” she announces. “Like the one in Abel’s closet in Paris.”
“But it’s not a Super Constellation,” David observes. “It looks like a more recent model.”
“Boeing 747-400, a commercial aircraft that can carry 524 passengers,” I specify peremptorily. “The plane you two took back to New York. The same as Prote’s, when you crossed him over the Atlantic.”
“How do you know all that?” Doris asks, astonished.
“It’s in the novel. Our dialogue is there, word for word, in Translator’s Revenge. My memory is back to being infallible. I’m even starting to think that the author included a few technical details in the book that are perfectly superfluous simply to test my memory. For example, the codes to your building or the technical specifications of the plane. It sends a shiver down my spine.”
“Poor thing,” Doris mocks with a little laugh. She places the model on the table, gently moves it back and forth and notices a bizarre noise inside the plastic cylinder. “It sounds like there’s something inside. A small hard ball clinking in the fuselage. A pebble, an olive pit, a coin?”
“There was the same noise inside the Super Constellation in Prote’s closet,” David suddenly remembers. “That invisible bean is a kind of signature. Maurice-Edgar, Abel’s father, and his son built the model together in the ’50s, if I remember correctly. And like a piggy bank, his father slid a gold coin through the crack in the cabin that fit together with the tailplane before gluing on the last piece and closing the inside of the plane for good. Abel did the same thing here, in my home, with this Boeing 747 model. Clearly, he has one hell of a taste for symmetry, the bastard.”
Doris shakes the model again like a rain stick that contains only a single jingling grain of sand. The plane does a chandelle, a nosedive, a chandelle again, another nosedive, each time emitting a little rattling noise.
“Let’s keep going,” she says, setting the plane on the bedside table before turning back to the closet.
At the very back of the third shelf from the top, behind piles of sweaters, sweatshirts, and T-shirts, her fingers touch an oval object, then another, similar to the first. She shows them to us one after the other. Facing us, she holds one egg in each hand, as if presenting them as gifts. The sight of Doris standing there with her hands full and extended makes me smile. Still wearing the hummingbird mask, she looks approvingly upon her prize and says with a burst of flute-like laughter:
“Messieurs, your eggs!”
Obedient, David and I each take an egg from Doris’s palm. David the left, I the right. He is to my right, I am to his left. Our extended arms touch. Once again, I notice, the symmetry of our gestures and the staging is perfect. Abel is still present.
I look at my open palm and notice, or rather recognize, a large painted egg. At least, I recognize its size, for I read, translated, wrote that scene last month. The egg placed in my palm is already in my novel. I feel good, reassured, in control of the situation. Suddenly everything escapes me, I topple toward the unknown, the void.
A tiny firework invades the fuchsia sky in my hand. Orange spirals and explosions entirely cover the curved surface of the egg, like real or phantasmagorical animals in the celestial constellations in the midnight blue sky of an astrolabe, or else—this new comparison comes to me very suddenly and freezes me in terror—like the embossed orange patterns on the yellow Lurex dress that emphasizes Doris’s curves. My fascinated gaze then shifts from the egg’s decorations to Doris’s body, the spirals and sparkles, from the madder-red tights to the slight bulge of her stomach; I follow the spirals and orange explosions over the yellow background, over the twin ovoid hemispheres of her chest, finally the shining necklace like a last bouquet of pyrotechnics, her lips separated in a slight smile, perhaps mocking, the slender beak of the hummingbird, and, behind the mask, between the large parentheses of the white feathers surrounding her immobile face, two eyes shine mischievously from within the shadows and remain fixed on mine for a long time. I almost drown in the night bird’s stare. Once again life breaks free from the text. My novel mentioned neither spirals nor explosions; Doris’s dress was solid, the eggshell displayed only a few multicolored lines on a green background, I’m sure of it. And yet, the spirals and sparkles invade Doris’s yellow dress and the fuchsia surface of the egg. Doris’s eyes gleam with pleasure, her delighted smile blooms. Her mere presence disturbs the mise en oeuvre of the text, the mise en vie of the novel. She upsets the reproduction, unhinges the translation. And I know that my stare, which she stares into, betrays my confusion, my anxiety, my suspicions: did she prepare this distribution of eggs, and of roles, in advance? Did she choose that dress deliberately to observe my panic from behind her mask, and revel in it?
Revenge of the Translator Page 20