Revenge of the Translator. Brice Matthieussent

(5 times), wet, hard (4 times), powerfully (3 times), frenetic, again (6 times), supple, defective, brusquely, languid, crumpled (2 times), low, tender, little by little, relaxed, dozing, restorative. (Tamperer’s Nosography)

      *

      * A clarification about my modus operandi: even when I resist the temptation of censorship or when I don’t dilate the original prose as I please, I am an indelicate transporter, a clumsy mover, a seedy trafficker. I dispatch fragile and labeled objects from one edge of the ocean to the other, and although I certainly do my best, I bang them and drop them, I damage and dent them, scuff them and scrape them, I destroy them despite myself and en route I lose the most important crates, furniture, carpets, paintings, etchings, designs, photographs, books, magazines and knickknacks, plates and silverware, bodies and body parts, clothes, tools and machines, stuffed or living animals, china, glasses and crystal, accessories and utensils that are however duly indexed, hidden nooks and love nests, boudoirs and canopies, cabinets and bathrooms, studios and apartments, houses, villas, buildings, entire neighborhoods, arrondissements, towers, towns, suburbs, cities, rivers, ponds, lakes and streams, provinces, states, continents and oceans, planets, stars, constellations, galaxies, nebulas and black holes, that were entrusted to my seemingly nice face, and violently I throw a large part of my cargo to the roadside and it crashes there with a roar, in order to transport to safe harbor a few paltry residues, scraps, trash, mismatched specimens, delivering them haphazardly to the mercy of my readers who are frustrated or naïve, in any event duped, tricked, for they are unaware of all the perils of the voyage and the risks of the trade.

      I preserve only the first half of the phrase import-export and in my tribulations I lose the majority of my fragile merchandise; at the first gust of wind they’re thrown overboard, for they are poorly tied up on the deck of my freighter, crushed during transfers by the distracted or clumsy longshoremen, smashed by life’s obstacles, ignobly swapped for food, weapons, a caravan of camels, a state-of-the-art car, a schooner, or a plane, pillaged by pirates and a thousand more or less shameful duplicities, or else simply forgotten, wasting away at the bottom of a shuttered warehouse. Thus, finally reaching the port, I arrive at the quay and deliver an inferior substitute to my employers, deaf and blind but normally satisfied, a derisory residue of original treasure, meager dregs that I piece together somehow, a balloon that I reinflate using only the force of my nicotined lungs. Disappointment, disarray, general desolation. There remains the empty husk, the sheath deprived of life, the mold without the bronze. In short, I am depressed, I am not the first of the text, but the eternal Poulidor, the second by vocation or by decree of destiny, the eternal afterthought: I always arrive too late and in rough shape. (Transporter’s Negligence)

      *

      *You will have noticed, my reader, that above I deleted all the “stage directions,” conserving only, for excellent reasons of austerity and internal dynamic, the dialogues between characters. Here, for your curiosity, the list of these deleted directions:

      “ !” hurled Doris in a defiant voice as she walked toward him.

      “ ,” Grey replied coldly.

      “ …”

      “ ,” Grey cut her off, drawing right up close to her beautiful face with its slightly hooked nose.

      “ ?”

      “ ,” he retorted ruthlessly, grabbing her by the collar of her blue terry cloth nightgown.

      “ !” Doris whined, undone.

      “ …” Grey insinuated without loosening his grip.

      “ ,” unleashed that beauty who (etc.).

      “ ?”

      “ ,” she confessed, batting her eyelashes.

      “ ,” he replied dryly.

      He pushed Doris violently down onto the crimson sofa, where she collapsed, a wreck, making sure to modestly tug her dressing gown over her legs, which were shapely / slender / thin as matchsticks / very skinny / could take a footbath in a double-barreled shotgun (I still have to choose).

      The translator left the room slamming the door behind him.

      Here are the stage directions from the next scene:

      “ ?” the stranger in the frayed black coat, wearing a fedora of an indefinable color, asks him out of the blue.

      “ ,” Grey replies, still thinking of Doris, of how he left her in tears on the crimson sofa.

      “ ?” continues the stranger.

      “ ?” Grey retorts tit for tat.

      “ .”

      “ ?” ventures the translator, suddenly wary.

      “ !” says the other.

      “ ,” Grey concludes.

      They go to the nearest bar, where they drink beers until nightfall. (Eraser’s Numerus Clausus)

      *

      * After the adjectives, the adverbs, and the stage directions, I have decided to delete from here on out all comparisons and metaphors. Often hackneyed, when they’re not harebrained or incomprehensible, they uselessly hinder the reader. As a result of this new ablation, my text (or rather, his text revised and corrected by my efforts: ours, then) gains even more lucidity, strength, simplicity. What would be the point of rendering that constipated prose in French when we can get straight to the point? Here is the list of those insipid flourishes, laughable or convoluted, in any case superfluous:

      his iron grip and her steel gaze (sic), the blanket of the night, the song of the sirens (2 times), a voice of blue velvet (?), with the lassitude of a cat (meh), strong as a Turk from the Bosporus (!), the Trojan horse of her seduction (referring to Doris), the star of the night, like a drove of wild horses, “the Greeks enter Ilion, overthrow the throne, and climb atop” (crossed-out sentence), that exhausted and unruly beast (hope), that Bluebeard killing one after another of his prying wives venturing behind the forbidden door to satisfy their shameful curiosity; stubborn as a red donkey (?); satin-smooth (skin); the muscle of the soul (imagination); the hell of the game; as abruptly as a drop of dew slides down a lilac leaf and falls, before the leaf, suddenly lightened, straightens up (?); like a translucent petal of a red rose (ear); the cruel sting of revenge; old as the dust of roads; he collapses on top of her like poverty over the world; “ten minutes before two: shiny mustache with curled-up tips” (this one makes my hair stand on end). And finally that doubly circular pearl, which I cross out with a capital Z in a vengeful crayon: “the sun was shining, like the sinister eye of a scheming Parisian ogling the gardens of the Palais-Royal through the slight opening of her parted curtains, faded by the sun.”

      Next, after careful consideration and for reasons of conciseness, I have decided to eliminate from the final text of my translation that long and yet rather beautiful digression in which the author describes the work of David Grey:

      “Here the translator David Grey is confronted with the original text of (N.d.T.). He probes, carries out some tests, follows the contours, identifies the lines with the greatest slope, drills, cores, plans, and outlines, he gropes around in search of buried geological structures, the right angle of attack and of adequate ‘positioning’ as one says in certain sports. For him this text is a mining site to exploit, to bleed systematically; he has to get to work, clear the fossil forests of the printed page, these lines accumulated like geologic strata, dig the tunnels, build the mine shafts, advance the front, beat down the blocks of words, of sentences, of paragraphs to see sometimes that the heart of the deposit is elsewhere, higher, lower, farther. Sometimes, an entire tunnel collapses, forcing him to backpedal, to reorient himself, to explore new tunnels, previously unseen means of approach, to modify the