Good on Paper

by Rachel Cantor

  This joke wasn’t Ahmad’s, but I knew any number of translators, some of them exes, who were capable of such high humor.

  I crumpled the telegram and threw it like a fast ball toward the kitchen.

  You’re littering, Mom.

  Andi was at my side again, holding her satin hangers.

  Your mom’s a litterer, I said. You have homework?

  Very funny.

  I must have looked at her blankly.

  Summer, Mom? Camp? Remember? I’m your only daughter, Andi?

  Right, I said. Play till dinner. I’ve got to think about some things.

  She didn’t move.

  Go on, sweetie. I’m fine. Okay, hug me first. That’s good. Okay, hug me again.

  •

  We reconvened for tea. And cereal, because I hadn’t had lunch. Ahmad tried to convince me the offer was serious. Why not? he asked.

  It’s not even an offer—it’s a maybe offer. Besides, I know who did this, and it’s not a Nobel Prize–winning poet. Pass the milk, please.

  Who?

  It doesn’t matter, I said, looking pointedly at Andi. Just a person I used to know. A person who likes attention.

  Ahmad waited.

  A translator, I said. Someone I used to know but don’t know anymore.

  Did I know you once knew this person?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  After Ahmad and Roger broke up, we agreed never to bring men home again, not in thought, word, or deed. Out of consideration for Andi and, frankly, each other. An understanding we’d formalized one evening by spitting Armagnac out the window. Though usually we debriefed at the end of an off-site affair—debriefings Ahmad called man-wakes. Not this time.

  You going to call him on it? Ahmad asked.

  I’m going to give this telegram the attention it deserves.

  Mommy littered with it, Andi explained.

  I nodded, and the buzzer rang. It was a delivery guy. Holding a fax machine and a case of European A4-size paper. And a note thanking me for doing the honore. I must communicate with Romei only by fax, his work must never be interrupted by telephone. He would call to me; I would receive the first section “anon.”

  Expensive joke, Ahmad said.

  The note had a fax number. It looked like a Roman telephone number. I brought my cereal to the study.

  The study, just off the kitchen, was small but large enough for Ahmad’s velveteen loveseat, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, and an escritoire, on which rested my computer, slow but serviceable. It had once been an industrial-size walk-in pantry, back in the day when university professors “entertained”; since that ancient time, someone had removed the shelves and added track lighting, probably so it could serve exactly this purpose. Ahmad had his office at school, and that office had amenities like doors and windows, so this little room was mine. I’d rigged a door out of a drape and curtain rod, which offended Ahmad’s aesthetic sensibility, but it was better, he said, than watching me hunt and peck at the keyboard while he was trying to cook.

  I turned on my computer and visited the chat room of the Translators of Note. I was, nominally, a member, though largely on sufferance: I still went to meetings and organized our chapter’s annual Bloomsday pub hop, but my translation oeuvre was not substantial. It consisted of what I’d managed to finish of Dante’s Vita Nuova before I dropped out of grad school, plus a slim volume of stories by a writer who, like me, was said never to have reached her potential, and a few feuilletons—always the lesser-known works of lesser-known writers. It goes without saying that I never earned two dollars doing this good work. Except once: a suspect Italian-American society commissioned me to translate D’Annunzio, but they ran out of cash by chapter three.

  I had a few projects going—a volume of Calabrian ghost tales, poems by a Trilussa contemporary—though by going I mean that I thought about them once in a while. They didn’t capture my imagination, and always it seemed my spare time was better spent otherwise, like doing laundry or taking Andi to the park.

  In the chat room, Josh, prime suspect, had been pronouncing just that afternoon. Using the handle “Chive Pancake,” he’d shared his too-extensive opinions about an Ionesco opening he’d seen in Brooklyn the night before, performed by Kabuki actors—the lousy translation, the perfectly awful set design. He’d been comped by the lead actress, don’t you know. He definitely was not in Rome.

  If he hadn’t sent the telegram, who had?

  I had Ahmad hook up the fax machine on one of the shelves of my bookcase, then sent my own note:

  I don’t know who you are but your joke isn’t funny. Go away.

  P.S. I’m keeping the fax.

  3

  THE SINGULAR PILGRIM

  Andi went upstairs to have dinner at Pammy’s. Pammy’s mother sometimes let them have cinnamon toast for dinner if Andi and Pammy said please and thank you. Andi didn’t think we knew that, but we did.

  Thanks, Mambo! she said. I love you when you let me do things!

  She declined my offer to accompany her.

  I never once met a bad person in the elevator, she said.

  With Andi gone, the apartment was quiet. I lay down on my baby’s bed, smelling her good Andi smell, and stared at the metamorphosis mural Ahmad had painted on her wall: on the upper reaches, escaping birds, Philomel, a shower of gold. Phaethon in his chariot of flame. On the ceiling, Orion, Castor and Pollux—heroes become stars the old-fashioned way: glow in the dark. In the corners, smiling like four happy evangelists, Andi and her loco parenti. Or rather, Andi, Ahmad, me, and a grinning giraffe, where Ahmad’s ex-love Roger used to be.

  Metamorphosis was overrated, I thought. Look at me: forty-four, and the thought of my mother turned me into a weeping seven-year-old. We don’t change. We never change. If some deus ex machina turned me into a tree, I’d still be a tree on the verge of being a seven-year-old.

  My father used to say, There’s always door number two.

  There’s always another choice to be made. And that choice can change everything.

  Maybe.

  But I doubt it. He never made that choice, he never changed.

  We don’t change, but our lives do, sometimes. That would be enough, I thought—it would be a start, anyway. Because nothing about my life was as it was supposed to be. I’d veered off-track, as Ahmad was quick to point out. When he and I were young, it had seemed so clear. We knew we’d be famous: he as a painter, I as the world’s first writing, dancing architect. Ahmad had become famous—for his theory of “freedom deficits” (when he was still a “Soviet expert,” before coming out cost him his job at the think tank; they blamed the warming of the Cold War, but Ahmad knew). As for me, people often said I had a future, usually before I traded it in for another. My changes of heart had yielded “freedom surpluses,” but little in the way of accomplishment: I’d written stories, translated this and that, contributed, temporarily, to the efficiency of marginal businesses throughout the city. Today I thought, I don’t need to be famous! I don’t even have to have a future! I’d gladly translate pest-management reports or poetry by a fake Romei if it meant I didn’t have to go back to Mr. Ferguson and his proportional-folding system! But shouldn’t I be able to imagine something more?

  I couldn’t imagine anything more.

  I wrapped myself in Andi’s quilt—a polyester extravaganza sewn by Ahmad’s ex out of the disco shirts of a lover, long dead of AIDS (the guilt quilt, Ahmad called it)—and told life to wake me when it got interesting. I was just nodding off when the phone rang.

  Pronto! Pronto! Hello!

  A man with a Hollywood pizza-guy accent introduced himself.

  It was Romei, or so he said in a passable imitation of Romei’s voice, known to me and everyone in America from his cameo on Seinfeld, where he played a poet who may or may not have stolen Jerry’s cigar (allowing Romei to say, Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).

  Do you know what time it is? I asked blearily, though in fact it was only seven.

  Y
ou are Shira Greene, yes? The translator? This is Romei!

  I swear he said it with a flourish.

  Your joke isn’t funny, whoever you are. Go away, I said, and hung up the phone.

  He called again.

  Shira Greene, this is only me, or do you say, this is I? Romei? The poet? Perhaps you have heard of me? I am writing Romance Language? Also Bad Words and Baby Talk.

  Not to mention Mother Tongue and Nonsense Syllables, I said, yawning.

  You are knowing my work! he said, and sounded pleased—too pleased for an actual Nobel Prize winner.

  This isn’t Josh, I said. But Josh put you up to it, right? Tell him I give you an A for persistence, but a C-minus for the lame accent.

  I, too, am familiar with your work, the man said as if I hadn’t spoken. I have read this translation of Vita Nuova …

  I sat up. Vita Nuova? Not even Ahmad knew about this. I’d published it years ago as a grad student in a journal read only by dusty Dantisti. I later quit Dante when it became impossible for me to translate his noble love with a straight face. It wasn’t something I talked about, ever.

  It is for this reason, the man continued, that I am thinking you also translate my newest book, also entitle Vita Nuova, or maybe Vita Quasi Nuova …

  Romei?

  It couldn’t be Romei.

  I don’t believe it’s you—Romei, I mean.

  You think I am something other? he asked, plainly amused.

  Quote me something.

  You wish me to speak something of my work?

  The long poem “Perché Pascal,” I said.

  This is a short poem.

  Appearing in which volume? I asked.

  This Nonsense Syllables you are saying before.

  Appearing where?

  Is poem forty-seven, also it appear quoted in “Ormai Venerdì,” this is poem fifty-seven.

  Freak!

  I am saying it to you. And he did—he recited “Perché Pascal,” all two and a half lines of it.

  Romei? Was calling me?

  You are believing? And you are the translator? The translator from the Italiano?

  Of course! It is I. She. It is she! Yes, it’s me!

  This is good! This is very good!

  He had gotten my number, he said, from Signor Benny at Gilgul—a lit mag that had published some of my stories, may they rest in peace. It wasn’t the first time Benny had acted as mediator: an agent had once “adored” a story he found in Gilgul and wanted to know if I was represented. (Though he wasn’t looking for stories, it turned out, but novels, big, juicy novels, whatever those were.)

  Romei’s new work was important, he said. Like Dante in La Vita Nuova, he would use both prose and poetry to tell the tale of a woman—in his case, his wife. Whereas Dante embedded old poems in a narrative about the genesis of those poems, Romei, of course, would write new poems, only new poems. The book would be a gift to Esther.

  He wasn’t satisfied with his American publisher’s choice of translator, a big-name poet with too large an ego to be faithful to his, i.e., Romei’s, artistic conception. He’d dumped the publisher, said he’d pay for the translation himself. Now that he, like Dante, was laureato, he had money to burn, apparently.

  One question, if you please, he said. You do not think the world is ending? No—how you say—apocalypso?

  Do I think the world will end with Y2K? No, I do not.

  This is good. I am speaking with one translator, he say all he do until January is—how you say—have intercourse. This is not for you?

  I am available for work, I said

  You are familiar with Roma, I think, he said. I am living in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. You are knowing this place, yes?

  I laughed. Yes, I was knowing this place. Ahmad and I had spent many an adolescent hour there—gossiping about upperclassmen, plotting the revolution. While my father hunted Archaic Greek statues, and Ahmad’s was a general in the UN’s Green Revolution.

  Excellent, he said. Also, you have much respect for the poet. I see this from your story about Paul Celan, though you understand nothing of his work.

  Romei had read my story about Paul Celan? No one read my story about Paul Celan!

  You read my story about Paul Celan? I said, a tiny tear forming in one eye.

  Of course! I must be knowing every thing of your work. I am knowing Celan in Bucharest, yes? Quiet boy. You know, in Dante celan means …

  To conceal, I said, wiping the tear with Andi’s guilt quilt. Third-person plural.

  You think he is meaning this when he choose this new name?

  Names are consequent upon things. That’s what Dante said, right?

  You believe this?

  I believe that when people change their names, they do so for a reason.

  And romei? he asked slyly. You know what this is mean?

  Pilgrims whose destination is Rome, also in Dante. Is that your real name?

  What are you thinking?

  I adjusted Andi’s Pretty Princess pillow as I pretended to ponder the question, though I knew very well it wasn’t. I’d written a grad school paper on the subject: “The Hystery-Mystery of Romei.”

  I think that when you left Romania at the end of the war, you also chose a new name.

  Why would I do that?

  To announce that you were a traveler with purpose, not some scruffy refugee?

  Interesting theory, Miss Greene. And why the plural form?

  Because you shared your journey with your entire generation?

  He laughed.

  Or maybe you preferred Romei to Roméo …

  Ah, yes, the singular pilgrim! The name carry—how you say—baggage?

  I smiled: at three hundred fifty pounds, Romei was no Romeo.

  The whole world knows that Romei is not my given name. Only you know why I have chosen it. I am right for choosing you! This job, you are wanting?

  He named an extravagant fee. Extravagant for a SuperTemp.

  I don’t know, I said, trying to keep from smiling.

  You want more money, he said. This is natural.

  Well, I said.

  He offered another ten grand, half up front. But I must agree to finish by the end of the year. I must work on no other!

  No other, I said.

  I send, he said.

  I know, I said. Anon.

  Anon, he agreed.

  I got off the phone and screamed.

  Ahmad came running and I jumped on him and screamed.

  Shira, my ears! They are delicate mechanisms!

  Ahhh! I screamed.

  The New Life, it was about to begin!

  PART TWO

  THRESHOLD

  4

  NEW LIFE

  New Life! As when Dante, nearly nine, sees Beatrice for the first time and cries, Incipit vita nova! I, of course, had not come up with a word, much less a Latin exclamation—only a wild howling in my best friend’s ear. But the New Life! It was suddenly so easy to imagine: exchanging insights and recipes for tiramisu with Romei at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, the translation published to mammoth acclaim, authors calling, begging for my help. I’m booked till 2020! I’d say. Twenty years? they’d reply. You expect us to wait twenty years? Montale would call, Dante himself would call: I am sorry I disappointed you, I can see how foolish I was to have believed love ordered the cosmos, to have allowed you to think your love was sanctioned by the Divine!

  I could be magnanimous, finally: You ruined my life, Dantissimo, but I forgive you.

  I’m proud of you, he’d add. In Latin.

  Everyone would be proud! Ahmad would be proud! No more lectures about the UN. My father who art in heaven—his little girl! My mother who art who knows where? Who cared! My daughter? She’d be proudest of them all. I’d explain to her about Vita Nuova, Dante’s place in the Western canon, Romei’s place at the apex of the postmodern ridge of that canon, my place as a footnote at the apex of that ridge. Your mother, I’d say, has the mother of all opportunitie
s. I love you when you’re amazing, she’d say.

  I would be amazing, the envy of grad students everywhere!

  It had been the cool kids in grad school who’d read Romei. As I labored over Provençal precedents, they read his work during marathon sessions of sexual experimentation, they assembled on his birthday to chant his famed response to Derrida, who’d once called Romei’s work seminal (séminal):

  Who is this Derrida! What does he know!

  Did he give up language! Did he learn to speak by reading!

  He writes the language of lullabies! Fairy tales with happy endings!

  This is the language of BETRAYAL!

  Much as I longed to participate in that chanting, not to mention those marathon sessions, I resisted Romei, reading him only when forced to by my adviser. Once I did, I couldn’t rid myself of him. He peered over my shoulder when I communed with Dante: Reactionary! he’d hiss. Hunter after truth! Believer in cosmic order! Ever stalwart, I shrugged him off and wrote not of his work but his life, his tendency to offer contradictory accounts of his past.

  According to his book-jacket biography, Romei was the devoutly Catholic son of a Jewish convert mother, considering the priesthood when the war broke out. When his parents were killed by the Romanian Iron Guard, he hid in a grain silo, tended there by a nun whose wimpled beauty caused him to reconsider his vocation. Still, when he left Romania in 1945, he chose Rome, hoping for new life in the shadow of the Pope.

  For two decades, he lived there in obscurity, interpreting for visiting journalists, appearing in a fantasy sequence in Fellini’s 8½, writing unremarkable verse until, in his forties, he “burst onto the scene,” as they say, with Mother Tongue, a volume of iconoclastic poems so unprecedented, so bold in their treatment of language and meaning, so uncompromising in their conflation of loyalty and betrayal, they took Europe—or at least European poets—by storm.