Revenge of the Translator. Brice Matthieussent

Takeoff …

       A SUPER CONSTELLATION FALLS AND SINKS INTO THE RIVER SHANNON

      Of the fifty-six passengers and crew members, twenty-eight died, including the famous Parisian publisher M.-E. Prote.

      Abel Prote intends to study the New York setting of (N.d.T.) himself and thus to contribute to what will, by mutual agreement, not be a simple English translation of his novel, but a new version, another book, written by three or four hands, shared between author and translator in a ratio that has yet to be determined. And let’s not forget the lovely little hands of the beautiful Doris, who perhaps will slide herself among this hairy bunch of male fingers to participate in their work, but also sometimes to divert their studious energy toward less austere activities.

      In fact, Doris will arrive from New York at the end of the night and meet David at Prote’s apartment. Oddly enough, she will be crossing paths with Prote in the middle of the sky.

      Alone in the lugubrious Parisian apartment since the owner’s departure around five in the evening (“Au revoir, bon voyage!” “Merci, bon séjour à vous”), David Grey wanders around for a moment from room to room, enters the living room, follows the obstacle course of old-fashioned furniture, sits in a deep madder red armchair with frayed armrests, and distractedly rereads a few passages of (N.d.T.). He spends two hours like this before undertaking an in-depth visit of the apartment. My author is on his plane, he thinks with sudden determination. Let’s go.

      He leaves the dark and humid living room and decides to begin with the writer’s office, at the end of the hallway. It’s a large room, somber and silent, with a creaky parquet floor covered with old rugs. The two high windows are covered with heavy burgundy wall hangings. Several shelves filled with books, some faded, climb to the ceiling. David turns on the light.

      A large painting, wider than it is long, soberly surrounded and illuminated by a brass wall light, is hung opposite the windows. David approaches, stops in front of it. A black vertical bar divides the canvas into two equal parts. On the left half, David notices a series of black horizontal lines on a white background, some long, some short, that run between two white margins. The right half of the painting repeats the same pattern: they appear to be pages of an open book painted on the two halves of the painting, especially because the vertical median line strongly resembles that shadow line where the left page and the right page of a book normally meet the central binding. But unlike a typical book, in which every odd page differs in its appearance and contents from the facing even page, it’s as if the painter wanted to duplicate the appearance and contents of the left page on the right. The painting depicts the same page twice, excessively enlarged. David draws even closer and notices with surprise that, seen from up close, all the words are illegible: the painter has depicted only phantoms of words. Not the words themselves, but in a way their mass, their symbol, the image of these words, if one can say that words have an image. Comparing the two halves of the painting, the translator notices that the copy on the right is not completely consistent: the small drips, the width of the margins, the length of the black lines, the spaces between the lines, and even the thickness of the blacks differ from their counterparts on the left. In fact, which half of this painting is the original, and which is the copy? And what is the name of this artist, who obviously cannot sign his canvas on the bottom right as he usually does without disturbing the fragile symmetry? And why did Prote choose to hang this painting in his office?

      Leaving these questions unanswered, David pivots toward the large dark wooden desk and the comfortable stuffed armchair with its back to the windows. A gray computer sits next to a small printer and a few volumes with broken spines, piled there with care. Suddenly intrigued, David examines the books one after another.

      At the top of the pile, he finds a worn copy of Nabokov’s Despair. A note written by Prote is on the flyleaf: “The narrator drives a blue Icarus.” That’s all. Disappointed, David puts the slim novel back on the desk.

      Beneath it, he discovers a recent edition of Extraordinary Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. David leafs through the volume and quickly sees that the entire story entitled “The Pit and the Pendulum” is copiously annotated in the margins, in that thin chicken scratch handwriting that he recognizes immediately. David deciphers a few of Prote’s notes: “The threat comes from below, then from above, then once again from below.” A bit farther on: “The jail of the Inquisition is hermetically sealed, with neither entrance nor exit, with no visible secret passage, but equipped with sophisticated mechanisms.”

      Intrigued, David then picks up a worn copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. On the cover, he notices a small violet speck, a bloody fragment of crushed insect nearly encrusted in the laminated cardstock, like a tiny star.

      Next, a biography of the science fiction writer E.T. A. Hoffmann, from which falls a yellowed press clipping whose jumbled typeface evokes the French newspapers of the interwar period. It’s an article from an issue of Paris-Soir dated June 22, 1937:

      Is Ubiquity Possible After All?

      Science confirms for us that at a given moment an individual or object can occupy only a single position in space. Only Christ, whom certain witnesses of the time swear to have seen simultaneously in various places, possessed the miraculous gift of ubiquity. Only Christ? That might be about to change …

      For on the night of June 21, the summer solstice, the celebrated Parisian publisher Maurice-Edgar Prote held a large reception in his mansion in the Latin Quarter. He was celebrating his fifteen years as a discoverer of young literary talent. Numerous important people, whose good faith cannot be doubted, confirm that M.-E. Prote did not leave his mansion for the entire reception, meaning between 6:30 pm and 11:50 pm. However, it turns out that at the same time, witnesses who are just as credible claim to have met Maurice-Edgar Prote in the Odéon theater, where the sublime American actress Dolores Haze, a very close friend of the celebrated publisher according to reliable sources, was celebrating the hundredth performance of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, the play that introduced her to the Parisian public.

      How the editor could be in his mansion and at the Odéon theater at the same time is a mystery that today we have asked him to explain over the telephone. “I am like everyone else,” Prote answered humorously. “I cannot be in two places at once. Ubiquity exceeds my modest talents. Nevertheless, in my fifteen years of publishing, I have learned one thing: it is important to be at the right place at the right time.” Asked about this sibylline statement, M.-E. Prote then gave us this enigmatic response: “I am often where people don’t see me coming. But I never make people wait when I promise to come see them.”

      The reader will surely appreciate his response …

      Why did Abel Prote, the son of Maurice-Edgar, slide this press clipping into a biography of E.T. A. Hoffmann? David Grey wonders. A vague memory comes back to him: didn’t the German writer and composer live in a strange apartment with a door that opened directly onto an opera balcony box? Like the eardrum in the cranium, that thin wooden partition separated his private universe from the great baroque hall echoing with singers’ voices, orchestral music, the audience’s applause. But, reflects David, Prote’s mansion is more than one hundred yards from the Odéon theater. So it wouldn’t be a secret door in this case, but an underground tunnel, a long secret passage.

      Continuing with his indiscreet investigations, David takes the next book from the pile on the desk: New Impressions of Africa by Raymond Roussel. The red back cover displays a sort of sun or white star casting its rays toward the four corners of the book. David opens the slim volume in which all the pages on the left are entirely blank and, that’s luck for you, falls immediately on page 25, marked with an envelope bearing the name Abel Prote. After a moment of hesitation, curiosity overtakes him. With a nervous hand, David opens the envelope, takes out the letter, and reads:

      Bravo, my dear David, and shame on you.

      You have arrived at the last volume in my pile of books, not on my bedside, but on my desk. (For the first time, David blushes.)

      I hope that this passage by Raymond Roussel will help you to translate my Rousselien Note at the beginning of (N.d.T.)