Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussent

Author:Brice Matthieussent
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941920701
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Published: 2018-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 11

ASTERISK PASTA, CUTTLEFISH IN INK SAUCE, AND MILLE-FEUILLE

*

* Looking out the window of the plane, Doris looks down at the luminous constellations that sprinkle the ground obscured by night. Swarms of slowly shifting fireflies that go dark one by one: unknown cities prepare to sleep.

“So, my star of the shadows,” she says, turning toward David sitting next to her, “asleep already?”

David opens his eyes and, in a slurred voice, replies:

“You’ll never guess the dream I was just having…”

“No, that’s enough,” protests Doris. “Please don’t tell me about it. In any event, you’ll never have a more beautiful dream than the one about the dance contest in the airport. Me naked climbing the stairs of our secret passage, in front of the puppet fading little by little …”

“In the dream I was just having, you …”

“I don’t want to know,” she says pressing her index finger to his lips.

David pries off Doris’s hand and keeps it squeezed against his. He trembles.

“You were in my apartment in New York, I came back from my publisher’s, who had just announced to me that Abel Prote was very pleased with my translation of (N.d.T.).Then …”

“Then what?”

“Then the telephone rings. I pick up. A guy, a French guy, tells me in French that (N.d.T.) is actually part of an American novel, called Translator’s Revenge, which is in the process of being translated for a Parisian publisher. He adds that I, David Grey, am a character in this novel. Same for Abel, the author of (N.d.T.), and you, Doris. Can you imagine? If we were all characters of a novel being translated into French! He wants to see me. Right away. He tells me to meet him in a bar in Greenwich Village. I go and at a secluded table I see an old guy, tall, skinny, thin-framed glasses, salt and pepper hair cut short, in a dark suit and a burgundy shirt with an open collar, face tense, looking around, a little shifty, barely daring to look at me, forehead wrinkled, mouth rigid in a sort of grin. Clearly worried. As soon as I sit opposite him, he announces to me right away what he’s already told me on the telephone: I am one of the characters of the book he’s translating. I burst into laughter. Of course, the fact of seeing me in flesh and blood, hearing me talk, laugh, telling him I don’t understand anything of what he’s saying, it all disturbs him, makes him even more worried …”

“And then?”

“You won’t believe it. The guy starts talking seriously. Faced with my incredulity, with my laughter, he tells me a number of things that completely blow my mind.”

“For example?”

“Things that, he claims, are straight out of the novel he’s translating. He talks about you, about the secret passage at Prote’s home in Paris, about

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