Lunatics, Lovers and Poets by Daniel Hahn

Author:Daniel Hahn
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction;literary fiction;novel;version;adaptation;stories;anthology;translation;translated fiction;crime;comedy;drama;love story;realism;women’s literary fiction;Spain;Mexico;Pakistan;Africa;England;theatre;anniversary;Hay Festival;And Other Stories;glass;Cervantes;Quixote;Lear;Hamlet;Shakespeare;Signs Preceding the End of the World;Swimming Home;Midnight’s Children;The Satanic Verses;Famished Road;The Story of My Teeth
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2016-06-05T13:10:06+00:00

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‌The Secret Life of Shakespeareans

Soledad Puértolas

translated by Rosalind Harvey

I’m a man surrounded by Shakespeareans. My sister Julia, who is a couple of years older than me, studied English language and literature. She was in love with the language of Shakespeare and, not surprisingly, she then fell in love with Shakespeare, which, together with her obvious natural attributes, prompted the group of Shakespeareans – which wasn’t small – to fall en masse in love with her. As a result, a tightly bunched rosary of boyfriends passed through her hands, and an endless string of suitors filed through our house, some with more flair than others.

I never got along with my sister’s boyfriends, not so much for being Shakespeareans, but because of their qualities as boyfriends. The least clumsy of them was far too shifty; the quiet one, whom you never knew how to speak to, was as irritating as the chatterbox, whom you could never get rid of.

Once she finished university, Julia didn’t marry any of them. Her eyes had fallen upon an economist, a young man who read only in moderation. Essays, if anything. Never novels, let alone plays. But Shakespeare’s presence in our family life did not cease, due not just to Julia’s constant mentioning of him, marking out her conversation with lines from his plays – particularly his lesser-known ones, just to intimidate us – but also to the simple tendency my sister had to turn her life into a stage play. She had of course been born with this trait, but no one doubted that Shakespeare had contributed enormously to its development.

Julia and Marco got married, had two children, and seem like a well-matched couple. We all get on well with Marco. He’s a consultant for a large firm and his task, as far as I can tell, consists of improving product sales. Something to do with efficiency and the company’s image, I think. Anyway, the thing is, he travels a lot, he’s been to almost every country in the world.

When we talk to Marco about news from wars that seem a long way off, he gives us new facts. He knows this city, that region, he tells us something about them, the food, the smells, anything. Not just wars and catastrophes: his comments might also allude to happy events. But we all know what the news is like – it doesn’t relay a huge amount of happiness.

Sometimes, Julia and I both show up at our parents’ house for dinner. The time when it was just the two of us with them around the dining-room table, and our bedrooms, mine and Julia’s, were each on one side of the hall, is long gone, but we are the same: the same parents, the same son and daughter. Just like always, but after a period of time. The two of us speaking much more than they do, now. The two of them looking at us much more than they ever have done. With curiosity, with an awareness of a certain distance, conscious they will never fully know us.

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