The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  Spring came late to the top of Ruscada. This he knew. But when the thaw started, when the melt-waters flowed, it would go on. Till complete.

  Three

  He left her down in the town by the lake and rejoined the motorway north while she made her way back up the valley on the yellow community bus. The driver nodded as she produced her ticket, and greeted locals by name in their language of choice – Italian, French, German. She could tell by the guttural Swiss-German he spoke with some of his cargo that he had come from the north, had left home to re-surface here at some stage of his life, a migrant in a foreign clime.

  Home – the word attacked her at every turn. Home sat, a truculent child in a dingy corner of her mind, fixing her with its pout. When would she stop thinking like a refugee – homeless, stateless – and like a migrant? The bus driver had made the transition – translating a past into a present, a transaction written as clear as the tanned happiness on his face. He had found his sun.

  But where was her sun? Not Sarajevo – this other, different Sarajevo which wasn’t home, yet full of the memories of home lost in her scarred walls, scarred bodies, scarred souls.

  She stared down into the gorge as the bus wound its way up the valley and thought of all the things she should have said to Marko. About home. That it wasn’t especially attached to Sarajevo or her sense of Yugoslav principles, or for that matter her Bosnian Serb label under the new world order, one of the supposed bad guys. None of this was fundamental to what it was to be her, what it was to be home.

  She plumbed the gorge, its thin knife-slit of river twisting, turning, frothing, flowing, plunged deep through the layers of what defined her sense of home, tried to set out the sequence of events, pinpoint when she’d lost her way, broken mooring, swept free of her anchor and been set adrift on a sea as fraught with dangers as any no man’s land. The deeper she plumbed, the more she saw how home was seamlessly woven into those she loved. Lost, gone, and she with them, swirled in eddies below surface rapids, bruised by boulders tossed by gods into the stream.

  She pressed the button, got out at her stop, and began the slow climb up to the village.

  Why had it stood unharmed since the 16th century and her town had burned on a pyre of 20th century hate? Why was her town on a fault line of human suffering and this valley rent by nature knew only human peace?

  Samir had said: There’s no point asking why. But still she did. Still her mind tried to make sense of the senseless, tried to unpick the threads of tangled tapestries, their colours and shapes all wrong, discordant to an aesthetic eye. And tried to pry behind the scree slopes of past avalanche slips to a time before now, before anyone or anything was now. Was there ever peace on earth? Ever stability? Ever a moment, an eyeblink of unchange? Were all seismic shifts beyond control whether nature- or human-induced?

  She trudged up the path with her backpack of whys, crossed the bridge over a torrent cascading down from the ridge, passed another, no more than a dry gully some days before. The weather was warming. The high snows were melting.

  Water rushed in her ears. It would go on. Till complete.

  Four

  He had shown her how to build the fire – all flues open, a pyramid of small sticks to begin and the glass door slightly ajar until a good flame had taken hold. She needed to watch for when the time was ripe to feed in a larger log and close the door, close down the flues, one by one, to ensure the oven stayed on task, to fully combust its contents.

  To all this she had listened as he instructed and now performed it each evening as ritual, brought it into her body, sensing the fire’s readiness to penetrate the next level. She listened to the gentle tap of expanding metal, a log’s random crackle and hiss of complaint. But mostly she listened to silence, of flame licking log, lovers creating new life, the energy of two into one. Each now and then she enjoined their embrace, brought her hands close to the granite stones which clad the slender oven, brought them as close as she could to share in the desire they radiated. As close as she could, without melting her wings.

  Perhaps she had been aware of this loving union between flame and book. But because it had never been remarked – brought up from her thoughts and onto an external plane, spoken about with Samir or preserved as haiku in her notebook – she could not now be sure. Yet recorded the memory-image, here in this place, long past as it was:

  In this tiny stove,

  Fire has translated words

  Into afterlife.

  There was another fireplace in the cottage, the original beneath its wide heavy mantel and flared chimney, with copper pots and cracked pans hanging from hooks over a grate no longer used. But the scent of four hundred years of polenta bubbling, chestnuts roasting, bread baking, encircled her in memories-made of this place. Four hundred years of sitting about on milking stools or upturned buckets, the tap of pipe in hand, the scrape of poker through coals, the rubbing together of chapped blackened fingers by ruddy-faced farmhands returned from the field, wrapped her in the weft of a glowing fireside.

  She looked at these objects, the ones which remained to steward the return of flown souls. When new custodians honoured the rituals of their hearth, why would they fly too far? Perhaps they circled Pizzo della Croce each day, high on the thermals, before slipping in through walls come evening to sit again by the fire and share their myths.

  Sarajevo’s souls could not return. Who would or could reconsecrate a martyred Library? Or the mosques, churches, homes, schools that still contained their suffering? No peaceful souls lay in their rubble. No calm fireside awaited them each evening.

  She was back in the space of the perennial why, throwing four hundred years of peace in hand-hewn stone into sharp relief against Baba’s altar of crumbled dust. And with shoulders hunched and head hung low, her footsteps sounded a death knell up the stairs and into bed.

  She did not heed Samir’s voice: No more whys. Did not heed Baba’s advice: Ask the Lady. Just flopped into bed, hugged a pillow to her aching gut, curled herself tight into a ball, and stared at the patient stitching which hooked mountains into the lining of a star-bright night.

  All night Kisha keeps watch as she is watched, all night she feels the Earth slip while the moon remains steady. Only toward dawn does she acknowledge: Once more I have slipped. Less than an instant – no more remarked by her eye than the beat of a hoverfly’s wing, no more noticeable than the slippage of the Earth beneath her feet – and she is down in it again.

  She doesn’t know where to begin – to sift and sort, confront and reject, interrogate and analyse, rearrange to best fit. How to counteract the slippages, render them redundant, remove the obstacles which send her stumbling, fumbling about an unlit room and a library full of catalogue drawers labelled: Do Not Touch? Where should she begin in this process of unravelling herself? Pulled like an umbilical chord too far stretched and attacked by blunt bloodied knives, a tangle of wool lies on the floor at her feet. Who, what will reel her back in, catch her before she slips, cradle her even when she does?

  Help me! she cries.

  The moon has made her arc through the sky, clouds hugging her full-bodied form this whole night through, but as the Earth slips again, she is tugged free of her blanket and shines in through the glass to infill the room and bathe the girl on the bed in white light.

  Into this space comes a memory, of a day in the midst of searing pain when she saw sunlight touch canola fields, gold upon gold, creation patchworked in a sea of young wheat-green.

  When did I forget? she had thought that day. When did I forget the beauty of this world?

  Now the moon reminds her that she did indeed forget. Now the moon whispers:

  It is time to remember.

  Five

  Can I help?

  Tobias looked up from under a broad-brimmed hat. Of course, he said, as long as you know a weed from a flower.

  It was the front garden bed which posed the problem. See this? he said. It’s a day lily. And he showed her
the spreading tubers of its rhizome.

  They just keep multiplying, he said. And get so matted and tangled. It’s a damn endless task, and he sighed.

  Let me, she offered. I promise to have the whole bed cleared by the time I leave.

  Done, he grinned. Unless that means you plan on staying till summer?

  The plot was five metres by one, the rhizomes a tangled web to a depth of some twenty centimetres. It looked manageable until she hooked the fork into a clump of earth and the battle began. Cunning, these tubers, survival flowed in their very sap. A disciplined military, a colonial order, she could find no beginning or end to the root systems. They seemed to conquer everything in their path.

  She sat back on her heels, hands red raw, sweat on her brow, looked up to della Croce’s cliff face. Cracked and chipped, furrowed and frowning, it was a regular contributor to the garden. Slivers of stone smashed over millennia lay hidden in the dirt to tear at her nails and scrape skin from her knuckles.

  A voice entered her reverie, Samir in one of his literature classes:

  I swear the earth shall surely be complete

  To him or her who shall be complete,

  The earth remains jagged and broken

  Only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

  But there has to be more to it than that, she thought, prodding at a fresh tangle of rhizomes. Perhaps della Croce’s jaggedness, its brokenness, is its completeness. Perhaps to smooth all the edges off all the surfaces of the world isn’t the point.

  I’m jagged, I’m broken, she thought. Does that mean I can’t be complete? Aren’t we all constantly being transformed by the tectonic plates moving beneath the surface and carving watercourses through our scars?

  I think you’re taking his words out of context, said Samir. Write an essay on differing perspectives in Walt Whitman’s poetry and hand it in on Monday.

  Forget it, she humphed. I’ve got weeding to do. And felt his warm kiss upon the cheek of memory.

  Hours later, she finally wrapped blistered hands around the chill of a beer. An empty garden bed lay before her, rhizome-reduced. She watched clouds slow-skid the sky, shape-shifted by silent winds, and spotted a twin-cloud, hands and feet conjoined, a perfect O of blue space at their centre.

  Never mind the wind which caught them at their task, spreading wide their misted wings. Their yogic stance could not be broken and the O, with its tunnel of clear light beyond, stayed. Even as the sun dipped behind the ridge, the twins caught pink now by dusk, these guardians of the way stayed tight-wrapped round their O. And she waited until they melted into evening blue, wondering: Does the path remain when no longer seen?

  She went to bed with the question still on her lips and dreamt of the village from a time before now, from a time of no paths between cottages, only grass and the rare stone marker. Nevertheless she is in the selfsame cottage, knows it to be the same although no Madonna graces her outer wall, although she sleeps on a mat by a crackling hearth.

  Suddenly she is called to a celebration at the church and skips down the hill to join a procession through the graveyard. She sees accordion man astride a gravestone of granite, this time with guitar, calling everyone to join their merry troupe. She thinks she recognises others as well, but can’t be sure as they fade in and out of focus. Everyone claps and laughs, sings and cheers. Such a party!

  A dark night but the way lit by gentians, precious deep-throated flowers line the path, tiny bulbs filling their blue hearts, skin translucent from an inner glow. Kisha follows the troupe along a twisting turning route while a joyous chorus sings loud in her ear. After a time, she stops, follows no more. At peace with her decision, she farewells the merry-makers as they move off through a clear-lit tunnel to beyond, shared voice like swirled mist to her ears.

  Successfully have we stood our watch

  And celebrated in her presence.

  Yet the time has come to take our leave,

  And return to that place etched in gentian blue.

  Ready to arise when called afresh,

  We silent shepherds of earth-bound souls.

  Six

  Footsteps. She hears footsteps – the echo of her own, perhaps, or footsteps out of memory. The memory of one who walks ahead or behind or beside. Footsteps from the darkness of a curfew-lit night, feet which stand fast in their silence before suddenly arriving from a shadowed doorway.

  Ah yes. Military police. A torch in her face. She instinctively shields her eyes.

  Good evening. The voice kindly enough. Papers?

  She fumbles in her bag, asks the officer to direct his torch therein.

  Why are you out? A logical question.

  She hands him a sheaf of documents. There was a prisoner exchange at the bridge. We needed to stay late to settle the newcomers at the centre.

  He nods and wishes her a safe journey home. Take care up ahead, he says. There were reports earlier of a sniper working the street.

  Footsteps. The soft tap reaches her ear a moment or so after she presses heel to pavement. Yes, her own. But they sound like someone else’s, as if she herself is the ghost, followed, protected, by an angel among the living. Step by step, tread by tread.

  Here, in the silence of the village, she feels it more – to be watched over, looked after, shadowed, accompanied, by something as simple as the sound of tramping boots. And finds it strange, how in mystery films, footsteps are always an ominous sign.

  Not the sum of her experience – footsteps a comfort, an aid. If she could hear her own footfalls, she had survived another day. Never possible to hear her own breath or feel her heart’s beat, both held in suspension by the crack of gunfire or thump of rocket launcher. Only footsteps convinced her of life.

  Kisha climbs the steps through the village, along narrow paths between high stone walls, slowing her footfalls to catch each percussive echo, each fulsome note. Slowly she walks, to catch the call of life from her companion of the way. T-tap, t-tap, t-tap, arising from an audible shadow.

  Now she stands before the bookshelf. Even Tobias reads The Wasteland. But she tries not to flinch, pushes through her border.

  Who is that on the other side of you?

  Has Tobias seen? she wonders. Does he know?

  Perhaps, says Samir, hooded, in a brown mantle, leaning over her shoulder to where her finger traces heart-spoken words. But don’t worry. I’m sure he can keep a secret.

  The wind announces itself from down in the valley – high trees herald it first, the ones up and behind on the forest fringe, ash and beech a surging sea of branch and fresh leaf. The oaks merely rumble and turn over in their sleep. Too early, they complain, wake us in a month. While the chestnuts trill, giggle. Lift their skirts for boys to peek.

  Now the wind arrives where she sits, where she waits, braced for Eliot’s dance.

  Speak, wind, speak! she calls into the sky. Tell of the things you’ve seen, the places you’ve been, how you rush through valleys and slide over ridges, how you ricochet off the cliffs you greet.

  She laughs out loud as the wind speaks through others. It is their voices which bring the wind’s news – rustled leaves, swirling dust, the scent of lilac, and yes, now, her cheek brushed by a kiss.

  Speak through me too, wind! she cries, and gulps in its brisk taste, pushes it out into the world again. Over and over, the wind calls through her. Translating language pure as laughter warmed by joy.

  Seven

  More than a hum, a thrum, a buzz, a buzzzzzzzzzzzzz, and she woke to find a bumblebee beginning its day, a black and orange fuzzball knocking itself over and over against the clear glass of balcony door.

  You – , she said, climbing awkwardly out of bed. She stood in the chill of early morning and watched it zoom off into the neighbour’s garden. And while there, saw:

  Dawn on Ruscada.

  A scoop of mango sorbet

  Crowns her frozen crest.

  She returned to the warm bed and the novella she’d started re
ading the evening before. A book by the famous local writer, written here, about here – in his rifugio, writing about a valley under siege from nature and the creeping madness of a man desperate to escape.

  There are lesser roads Kisha could have stumbled along than the one she chose that day, an oracle by a prophet of the pen. She sat and considered the character’s dilemma, a lonely old man called HG who was convinced the end of the world was nigh courtesy of a week of heavy rain and a rock slide which had blocked the valley road.

  Random snatches of text crystallised the strange twists and turns of his mind – why would he think the mountain was about to crash down and bury the village for all time? Except that he was alone, wandered unchecked in his thoughts, and was drawn into dark recesses hitherto unremarked. Kisha understood the illogic, had lived the feeling, could smell the dank earth dislodged by his slide. Into inner siege.

  She turned the page. He had made an inventory of food on hand. Could he survive a siege of several days?

  Es bleibt nichts als Lesen.

  (There’s nothing to do but read.)

  He had made an inventory of books. Sustenance and books – what more was needed for survival? And this took her deep, deep into her own library.

  A candle wavered, Samir stood at the book wall, framed, a small volume in his hand.

  It must be a special place, this Montagnola, he said.

  What? The name foreign to her. Then.

  This place where Hesse sought refuge in the Swiss south, he said. Above a lake, it seems, but in sight of the Alps.

  He closed the book and passed it down to where she sat on the floor, cataloguing an inventory of the entire collection before committing them to flame, to burn night-bright like tiny stars.

  She wrote: Hesse, H. Klingsor’s Last Summer on the sheet of paper, and looked up for the next entry. A long process made longer as he thumbed pages and read out favourite quotes, as they discussed this or that plotline, character or perspective, as they separated the books into piles marked for first burning, or later, after re-reading. Long, over many days and nights, and it continued intermittently as they re-ordered piles over passing months. But there was time. In between everything else, there was always time to read.