‘Worldlets,’ I was finally able to say.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a palimpsest, an anachronistic samizdat, a found text – a bulletin from a place that has never existed. Cities, rivers, people – stories … all from these imaginary worldlets.’
‘You wrote this?’ I said.
‘Every word,’ he said, ‘and straight into the dialecta of the Chronac. I didn’t want to obscure the purity of the text, you see.’
‘No, I can see that,’ I said. ‘I expect that’s my job.’
‘I would like to work very closely with the translator on this,’ said Frant. ‘I want to be sure that the translation is as accurate as possible.’
The translation of your half-made-up language? I wanted to say. Instead I said, ‘But you speak English yourself. Why not just write it out in English?’
As I spoke, Frant began shaking his head. ‘No no no no,’ he said. ‘The text has to be translated, just as if it were a real medieval text only recently discovered.’
I decided not to point out that if it were a real medieval text it would be in Latin, not some half-assed Lord of the Rings-fan pretend Italian. It’s not my job to point things out in that way. So I simply said, ‘Well, it will be both a challenge and a privilege to work with you.’
Frant just sat there smiling like a booby. I picked up the manuscript and pretended to gaze at its awesome magnificence. In reality, I was weighing it.
* * *
I don’t know if you have ever read The Chronicle of Imaginary Worldlets. I’m guessing by its frequent appearance in discount bookshops and 2 For 1 bins that you’re one of the thousands of people who haven’t. If so, I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you how fortunate you are. Because it is an awful book. I don’t generally like to tell tales out of class regarding the books I work on, for obvious reasons (like nobody would ever hire me again, for example), but in this case I think I’m safe. After the sales figures came in, Walker-Hebborn made darned sure that Euros Frant’s name was never mentioned in the office again. The book did not go on to become the new ‘Harry Potter for adults’ that Walker-Hebborn and no doubt Frant had hoped for. Instead it went on to become lavishly bound landfill.
None of this would have mattered if it hadn’t taken up six months of my life. I was paid (to some extent) for my work, but I’d give back every penny just to regain the brain cells and ounces of sanity that I sacrificed to that horrible project. Let me just recall a couple of examples. The whole idea of the book was that it was meant to be some kind of lost encyclopedia from another world. Or our own world only different, or from the old days only everyone had forgotten about it. I have to say that Frant was pretty vague about the whole thing.
I once read, when I was going out with someone who used to subscribe to the music press, an interview with a rock musician about something he called a ‘concept album’ and the interviewer called a ‘rock opera’. The rock star kept trying to explain the story of his concept or opera but every time he delved into the details he got confused and it soon became apparent – to me at least, if not to his adoring fans – that there was no coherent story, just a bunch of music with roughly similar themes. Euros Frant’s book was like that. He said it was from another world, but one where for some reason they spoke bad medieval Italian. So to justify that, sometimes he said it was from the real Middle Ages, but it was about some places that we’d all forgotten about. And those places weren’t in this world.
And that was just the backdrop to this drivel. The Chronicle was supposed to be a magical repository of stories and new legends. It wasn’t: it was a lot of half-digested bits of mythology and other people’s books. One bit was Tristan and Isolde with the names changed, one bit was like The Hobbit only instead of a hobbit, the hero was a carpenter. And one bit was like the phone book. I mean it: it was just a list of names that Frant had made up, with stupid made-up medieval jobs. Lla dirretori estradale di Monto Royale, he called it. I won’t tell you what I called it when I realised I had to make up – sorry, ‘translate’ – all these job names into English.
Frant wasn’t too upset when the book did so badly, largely because he hated the finished product. He said it didn’t look authentic (he wanted it to be printed on that raggedy yellow paper American publishers use to make their hardbacks look ‘classy’), he said the illustrations hadn’t caught the spirit of the book at all (Walker-Hebborn used some Dungeons and Dragons person, Leonardo Da Vinci being unavailable), and the publisher’s refusal to print the opening 500-stanza poem, Intradozza In Chronaca, rendered the whole thing meaningless (the book was already meaningless and the poem – which wasn’t included because Frant forgot to write it until the week of publication – was the kind of doggerel that makes that one about going placidly among the noise and haste look like Tennyson).
Every so often, Walker-Hebborn would receive letters from Frant, demanding that he reprint the Chronac, and each letter was stuffed with press cuttings about ‘similar’ books that had done well. I imagine Walker-Hebborn loathed the television show Game of Thrones because every time a new series came on, Frant would write him another long letter that usually began with the words, ‘NOW MORE THAN EVER IS THE TIME …’ in big wobbly capital letters.
All of which goes to explain in a roundabout way why I did not wish to go anywhere near the world of fictional languages and made-up words. It’s just gobbledygook to me and I really try to avoid it if I can. (If I’m honest, my favourite of the writers whom I translate has to be Moîre Herone. When I tell you that her three bestselling novels are called Too Many Murders Spoil the Broth, A Rolling Stone Gathers No Murder and Red Sky at Night Murderer’s Delight, you can probably guess what kind of book she writes. The kind that’s pleasant to translate is what.) I just don’t want to run into any terrible Chronacs of stupid Mondinos Imaginarios, that’s all. And the book the girl had brought to me looked to be set firmly in this kind of world, so I was now almost glad to be rid of it. Besides, I’d hit a brick wall and there was nothing I could do without the actual book in front of me, so I just decided to forget about the whole thing. It was an annoying puzzle, and I don’t like puzzles. When my father left, my mother became obsessed with puzzles, but she was terrible at them, and so the house was always littered with half-completed puzzle books, word ladders and crosswords that she’d just abandoned. I was a lot younger then, in fact I was still at school, so my brain was more attuned to IQ examinations and aptitude tests and so forth, and I would gather up the puzzle books and sit in my room and complete the unfinished puzzles. I almost always managed to finish them, but I never got any real pleasure from it. It was just the idea of leaving them undone that drove me to it. Call me OCD (I’m not, though) but the thought of the bin being full of incomplete puzzle books just distressed me on some level.
But this puzzle looked to be one I could do nothing about. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be seeing the girl again, even if I were to hang out in that same bar every night, or go to all the bars in the area. It’s true that she had expressly forbidden me to look for her, but I was concerned. Then again, what would I do if I found her? She would almost certainly just tell me to get lost. So no girl. And no girl meant no book. Without the book, the puzzle was insoluble. Even with the book, the puzzle might be insoluble, but that was something I clearly had no chance of discovering for myself. So I did what I always do when I find I can go no further down the road I had hoped to travel.
I went back to the start.
* * *
Bars are a lot different at lunchtime to the way they are at night. A bar at night is a place where artificial light seems to sparkle off glasses and mirrors and everyone looks a little bit more glamorous and even the lonely guy in the corner looks like he’s stepped out of a New York photograph in black and white. If there’s music it sinks down into the crowd and whispers its way through the night. And everyone’s laughing and talking and you just know that if you could hear what they were saying, it would be clever and funny or just sa
d and wise.
A bar in the daytime, on the other hand, is a horrible place. Everything seems to be made of tin and the walls, the floor and all the surfaces clatter and jar with every sound. If there’s music, it echoes around in an irritating fashion, and it’s always a song you hate. Everyone’s in a foul mood, from the bar staff to the customers, and there are only two types of customer: alcoholics who need their late morning fix, and people who don’t know the area and think the best place to get an early lunch is a bar that only serves cold French fries and damp sandwiches.
I suppose I would fit mostly into the latter category, except I was having some kind of baguette with frilly salad and bits of bacon and whatnot. I was the only person eating, too, which would indicate that the place wasn’t exactly renowned for its cuisine. The other customers were either drinking as heavily as they could considering the hour – there was a fellow with his glass of Scotch at the bar – or pretending they weren’t in a bar at all. In the corner a small group of men and women in jackets were crowded around a laptop computer with big cups of coffee, having some kind of meeting or presentation and trying to ignore the crash of metal barrels being delivered from a truck parked right outside, as if this was their office and they were always trying to work while a lot of beer was being delivered.
There were only two things that connected this place to the way it had been last night. One was the slightest odour of cigarette smoke, which was so faint that I might have been imagining it, and the other was the barman, Don. I don’t know what kind of shifts he was pulling, but from the look of his eyes, he hadn’t been home to sleep yet. Maybe he’d caught a nap out the back, or perhaps he was relying on stimulants to get him through the day. Either way he looked even more morose than he had the previous evening and I wasn’t looking forward to engaging him in conversation.
This, you see, was my somewhat simplistic plan. Don the barman was my only connection to the girl, and might even know her outside the bar. Although she had told me not to find her, I didn’t see what harm there would be in learning more about her. That was to me a small but significant difference, and meant that I could keep my interest in her at arm’s length, without coming over as some kind of stalker or something.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about engaging him in conversation. When he brought over the bill for my baguette and coffee, he recognised me and said, ‘You were in here last night.’ I was about to confirm this, even though I was aware that it was unnecessary because he had already correctly identified me, when without waiting for me to speak or even nod, he went on, ‘That girl you were with? She left something behind.’
I could have been candid, I suppose. I could have said that I didn’t know her whereabouts, or even her name. I should have told him that I wasn’t the one to speak to, that he probably knew her better than I did and maybe he should just hand in whatever she left to the police. Instead I said, as casually as I could, ‘Really? What is it?’
‘Oh,’ he said, his concentration falling away for a moment from tiredness, ‘some sort of book. Wait there, I’ll get it.’
* * *
They say that time can change speed, that it’s entirely subjective. I know that when I’m working on a really tricky passage in a translation I can look up at the clock and see that I’ve spent two hours on a paragraph and it feels like a minute has passed. Conversely, five minutes in the dentist’s waiting room can feel like a lifetime.
The time I spent waiting for Don to come back was nothing like that at all. Time seemed to expand and contract in all directions at the same time. The people at the laptop were talking nineteen to the dozen while a drunk sipped his drink as if it were his very first. A bus went past outside at its usual lumbering rate while my heart hammered at my ribs like a monkey panicking in its cage. In the centre of it all, my mind seemed still and calm but also freaked out as time stretched and flew around. I was experiencing time in the way, I imagine, a drug addict or a hibernating animal might.
And then Don reappeared and time went back to normal again. ‘Maybe you can give it to her next time you see her,’ he said.
Even in my nervous excitement to see the book, I could hear the slight mix of resentment and envy in his voice. He thinks I’m her boyfriend! I didn’t correct him. I just reached out my hand for the book and thanked him. He nodded and handed it over.
It wasn’t the book. It was a book, sure, but it was completely different. It was a medium-sized bound notebook, not one of those with fake Victorian bindings, all marbled end-pages and creamy paper, but a modern one, with a bright green vinyl cover and ring-bound pages. It seemed to be pretty full but there was no name or address or even a contact telephone number. I must admit, I was so disappointed I was about to toss the notebook but something made me hesitate, not least the fact that this wasn’t my book to dispose of, and also that if it belonged to the girl it might be important to her. Maybe not as important as the other book, but then it wouldn’t be. After all, that book contained photographs that appeared to be of her dead or unconscious body, whereas this was just a notebook.
I opened it again and looked at the first page.
CARRIE AND THE LEGIONS
The Future/ Night Life
MINIMAX
In my long career I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more promising debut than this single. Released on retro-leaning blood-red vinyl, Carrie and the Legions’ first release showcases two wildly differing styles in a musical schizophrenia that’s far from displeasing. A-side ‘The Future’ is excitingly optimistic, full of promises that both voice and melody seem likely to keep, and has an entirely apt chorus – ‘Here comes the future/ I need it/ I want it/ I like it.’ Flipside ‘Night Life’ is an entirely different kettle of mystery, a smoky jazz creep through the small hours. ‘When it’s dark,’ sings Carrie huskily, ‘I wonder who I am/ And where I’m going.’ On the strength of these two songs? Far. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in these offices we cannot wait for that debut album. ***
I’m not what you’d call a ‘rock fan’, or really much of a music fan at all. I sometimes have the radio on when I’m driving, but at the moment I don’t have a car and anyway most pop music strikes me as pretty inane, classical music just makes me feel stupid, and jazz goes right over my head. I have a few old CDs a girlfriend burned for me when I was at college when she felt I could do with a bit of a musical education, but I don’t have a CD player any more. I suppose I could play the CDs in my computer but truth to tell I never liked the music on the CDs very much even at the time. However, this girlfriend I’m speaking of used to buy the weekly music papers, English and American, and from time to time I would glance inside one of them to see exactly what it was I was missing. And to be honest, the writers were worse than jazz.
I mean, I’m a translator but these writers were beyond anyone’s comprehension and they were writing in English. They would refer to everyone by their first name, and if they were writing about a band they’d shorten the band’s name, or use a whimsical or aggressive nickname, so that half the time even if you had heard of a singer or a group you still had to work to find out who they were talking about. They wrote in a peculiar mixture of sneering and enthusiasm, like a teenager who wants to be excited about something but doesn’t want to sound too happy about it, so he puts it down more than he praises it. And they didn’t seem to know if they were newspaper writers with snappy and concise prose or real writers using poetic similes and metaphors or just angry kids. The whole thing was entirely baffling and I was sorry when my girlfriend and I split up but also relieved that I didn’t have to pretend to know who the Rolling Stones were any more.
But when I skimmed that first clipping, it all came flooding back. It was a review of a single, what they used to call a 45rpm record. I had thought that these things were no longer made, but my then girlfriend assured me that they had become fashionable and cultish again. Anyway, this was a review of a single by a band called Carrie and the Legions and it was
a sort of gush, I suppose you could say, very frothy and verbose.
The next piece was a live review, where the writer had been to see a band play a concert and written about it, and once again the band was Carrie and the Legions. The review was favourable and ended, predictably enough, with a line about the future belonging to Carrie and her band. After that, there were some more live reviews in the same vein, a review of a second single (‘Not Your Girl’), and a couple of letters from the magazine’s mailbag page, both expressing contradictory viewpoints about – you guessed it – Carrie and the Legions.
I was disappointed, I have to say. Not that it’s my place to comment on anyone’s personal possessions, especially those of someone I could scarcely claim to know at all, but I had spent some time with the owner of the notebook and maybe I’d expected her to be a little more – I don’t know – sophisticated. This was the kind of thing a teenager would keep, a fan’s scrapbook of some untouchable fantasy star. I don’t know, maybe I was being harsh, but somehow I thought that the girl who’d come to my apartment last night would be above such adolescent obsessions. But then I suppose that goes to show that often first impressions aren’t correct, and someone you think is one kind of person might be an entirely different kind of person. Not of course that that makes them a bad person, or one deserving opprobrium, just a little bit of a disappointment.
That was how I felt then. Here in the present moment as I recall the feelings I had as I looked at the little book of cuttings, I have two sensations. One is a slight sense of shame at how unsympathetic I was to this actually touching indication of humanity, which was really a sign of endearing human frailty that I should have been sympathetic to. And the other was just how dense I can be. Because it didn’t occur to me until I had put the notebook in my pocket and returned to my apartment that this might not have been a teenage girl’s scrapbook of adulation, but a collection of pieces from the subject’s career made by the subject herself. How obvious did it have to be for you to realise, I almost want to scream at myself, that this was not a notebook belonging to an overgrown follower of Carrie and the Legions, but the property of Carrie herself?
The Mule Page 4