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Authors: Alameddine Rabih
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sixty-two, Fadia is the eldest of the three. I, of course, am much further along. She isn’t aging gracefully; she fights every slight sign of decay with vigor and bitterness. Her makeup keeps getting thicker and her fashions more adolescent, a late desperate grasp at a fondly recalled youth. Even so, she looks younger and fresher than Marie-Thérèse, ten years her junior, who is aging without bitterness and with obvious resignation. Her elbows have collected as many furrows as a walnut, as many furrows as mine. She’s become a paltry imitation of what she once was. Her eyes settled into incuriosity a long time ago.
Marie-Thérèse has an inscrutable face, a life-is-but-a-dream look giving the impression that she wishes not to be disturbed by disturbing realities—a mask, really, for the impression is not true, the facade doesn’t match the house it conceals. For some reason she reminds me of the girl Fernando Pessoa tried to befriend, the single romantic liaison in his life. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know what that girl looked like. I’m not sure anybody does. I can’t even remember her name—Blanca, Maria, Francesca? My memory wishes to frustrate me this morning. The girl worked in the same import-export office as my poet, and he considered asking her out, or whatever hopeful twosomes did back in 1929 Lisbon.
I must say, I imagine that Marie-Thérèse looks like that girl as she aged, not as she was when the genius considered her.
Of course, Pessoa didn’t go out with that girl, didn’t do whatever they did back in 1929 Lisbon. Her name was Ophelia Queiroz. I am growing senile. Forgetting an Ophelia? The liaison’s brevity was due to the malicious interference of none other than Álvaro de Campos, Pessoa’s own creation, one of the seventy-two literary identities he used, the bisexual dandy who loathed Ophelia and believed her to be a distraction to Pessoa’s literary ambition. He wrote the poor girl and told her to flush any ideas she had about a relationship with Fernando down the toilet.
There is no evidence, at least none that I know of, that Ophelia had any idea who Fernando was, let alone that he spent his time inventing literary personas that wrote some of the great masterpieces of the twentieth century. She worked in the same clerical office, but I can’t imagine that they ever exchanged words. I can’t imagine him exchanging words with anybody.
Fernando died in relative obscurity, a virgin and a recluse.
I thought I’d be reading a new book today, but it doesn’t feel right, or I don’t feel like it. Some days are not new-book days.
After reading Sebald yesterday, I realized that translating Austerlitz was an easier project than The Emigrants , possibly because the latter laid the bitumen, smoothed the ride, for Austerlitz . A troublesome issue arises in translating Sebald into Arabic. His style, drawn-out and elongated sentences that wrap around the page and their reader, seems at first glance to be an ideal fit for Arabic, where use of punctuation is less formal. (Translating Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis was a relative breeze.) However, Sebald’s ubiquitous insertion of Jacques Austerlitz’s tongue into the unnamed narrator’s first-person narrative was difficult to convey precisely, since Arabic, like Spanish, drops pronouns more often than English or German. Sebald’s I spoke for at least two people.
The above problem has invaded my thoughts like algae this morning. I’ll reread my translation of The Emigrants, which I haven’t looked at in years. I must examine how I solved the problem then. But first I must bring it forth out of storage.
I don’t wait to finish my tea before searching for a flashlight—from the dark I come and into the dark I return. I have two flashlights, but can’t find either. Both are in the kitchen, I’m certain of that. I count to ten before searching once more, repeating every step in case I missed something the first
Marie-Thérèse has an inscrutable face, a life-is-but-a-dream look giving the impression that she wishes not to be disturbed by disturbing realities—a mask, really, for the impression is not true, the facade doesn’t match the house it conceals. For some reason she reminds me of the girl Fernando Pessoa tried to befriend, the single romantic liaison in his life. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know what that girl looked like. I’m not sure anybody does. I can’t even remember her name—Blanca, Maria, Francesca? My memory wishes to frustrate me this morning. The girl worked in the same import-export office as my poet, and he considered asking her out, or whatever hopeful twosomes did back in 1929 Lisbon.
I must say, I imagine that Marie-Thérèse looks like that girl as she aged, not as she was when the genius considered her.
Of course, Pessoa didn’t go out with that girl, didn’t do whatever they did back in 1929 Lisbon. Her name was Ophelia Queiroz. I am growing senile. Forgetting an Ophelia? The liaison’s brevity was due to the malicious interference of none other than Álvaro de Campos, Pessoa’s own creation, one of the seventy-two literary identities he used, the bisexual dandy who loathed Ophelia and believed her to be a distraction to Pessoa’s literary ambition. He wrote the poor girl and told her to flush any ideas she had about a relationship with Fernando down the toilet.
There is no evidence, at least none that I know of, that Ophelia had any idea who Fernando was, let alone that he spent his time inventing literary personas that wrote some of the great masterpieces of the twentieth century. She worked in the same clerical office, but I can’t imagine that they ever exchanged words. I can’t imagine him exchanging words with anybody.
Fernando died in relative obscurity, a virgin and a recluse.
I thought I’d be reading a new book today, but it doesn’t feel right, or I don’t feel like it. Some days are not new-book days.
After reading Sebald yesterday, I realized that translating Austerlitz was an easier project than The Emigrants , possibly because the latter laid the bitumen, smoothed the ride, for Austerlitz . A troublesome issue arises in translating Sebald into Arabic. His style, drawn-out and elongated sentences that wrap around the page and their reader, seems at first glance to be an ideal fit for Arabic, where use of punctuation is less formal. (Translating Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis was a relative breeze.) However, Sebald’s ubiquitous insertion of Jacques Austerlitz’s tongue into the unnamed narrator’s first-person narrative was difficult to convey precisely, since Arabic, like Spanish, drops pronouns more often than English or German. Sebald’s I spoke for at least two people.
The above problem has invaded my thoughts like algae this morning. I’ll reread my translation of The Emigrants, which I haven’t looked at in years. I must examine how I solved the problem then. But first I must bring it forth out of storage.
I don’t wait to finish my tea before searching for a flashlight—from the dark I come and into the dark I return. I have two flashlights, but can’t find either. Both are in the kitchen, I’m certain of that. I count to ten before searching once more, repeating every step in case I missed something the first
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