positioned on the flat surface of a sterilized page for the purpose of medical observation, for no vision of the whole ever unifies these anatomic, or rather textual, morsels. Farewell, stratospheric fighter pilots, astronauts, and moon-men whose sharp, elevated views allow them to decipher pages covering several hectares; hello, low-flying wasp, the panting truffle dog riveted to the ground, the crawling insect whose faceted eye remains fixed on the object of its voracious desire, incapable of gaining even a tiny bit of height to glimpse an overall view. Hello, also, to the cruise missile molding to the mountainous terrain that it flies over at the speed of sound to escape from enemy radars. The cruel blason, the amorous vision of Abel Prote’s hand caressing Doris’s silky skin, or else the vision of the text that the translator is focusing on—eyes overflowing with paragraphs, phrases, words, letters, an approach that can be more surgical than tender—for he is faced with a body to operate on, not to caress, henceforth meat to cut up rather than flesh to delight in.
“In short, when David Grey, in New York, receives this long letter addressed to Doris, written in an inflamed tone and received in an envelope that is lightly charred as though by the fire of Protean passion, he is at first stupefied, but soon understands that the scatterbrained author of (N.d.T.) switched the envelopes, and that the beautiful brunette with the voluptuous curves, the French writer’s secretary, and recently the translator’s lover, has more than one trick up her sleeve.
“And when Doris receives, rather belatedly, the letter addressed to David Grey, an envelope stained with dirt and pale rings as though a liquid had been abundantly spilled over the paper, she is just as stunned. Then she understands that Abel Prote, her employer and Parisian lover, also has more than one trick up his sleeve, that he treats his American translator like a minion, and that his vanity knows no bounds, which, smart lady that she is, she already suspected.”
I delete, with no remorse, the corresponding passage of Translator’s Revenge and add, happily, to my text, these few pages of Scattered Figments in my new translation. (Two-timing Nooky)
THE TRANSLATOR PREPARES FOR WAR
*
* Abel Prote wants to take advantage of his literary paternity to pressure David into replacements in the form of a transatlantic displacement: although (N.d.T.) is set in Paris, Prote would like for Grey to transpose the novel to New York! What nerve! What boorishness! No one should be expected to do the impossible, especially since the translation contract signed by Grey with the American publisher for (N.d.T.) does not account for this sudden whim. Furious and probably also crazed with jealousy because of what he has just learned inadvertently about Doris, Grey wants to avenge himself and is already imagining physically deleting Prote. As for the too-brief list of weapons formerly mentioned by my author, who is decidedly a coward, to the whiteness specked with a minuscule stain I add the English monkey wrench, the American brass knuckles, the Bulgarian umbrella, the Japanese forearm strike, the Malaysian kris, French boxing, Chinese torture; the progressive strangulation or cardiac arrest provoked by sudden terror; the more classic arsenic or cyanide, kitchen knife, chandelier, heavy ashtray, drop hammer, and other crushing machines; the yataghan, piano wire (handled skillfully it promises instantaneous decapitation), defenestration, bewitchment, black magic, polonium-210 discreetly poured into your future victim’s cup of tea, if possible in London; the deadly sting or bite (scorpion, black widow, green mamba), the poison dart shot forth from a thin titanium blowgun, gold paint covering the entire body to asphyxiate the victim; the dagger, the sword, the supple épée with a decorated handle; the car, the package, or the booby-trapped telephone, all types of time bombs, backfiring Uzis, AK-47s, M16s, Stens, the light SLR machine guns of the British army, not to mention the heavy machinery kindly made available to the public by international arms dealers.
Thanks to me, henceforth Grey is spoiled for choice and we will see what weaponry his temperament pushes him toward. In his place, and given the admiration he has for the masked avenger, I would choose the supple épée with the decorated handle to assuage my anger against an author with exorbitant demands: how can one swap the gray hues of Parisian facades for the glimmering faces of New York City skyscrapers?
Here we have—finally?—a translator tempted to kill his author: a Hide-behind ready to do the deed. As for my own vengeance, I do not require a handgun, or any weapon for cutting or thrusting, but instead a regular, obstinate growth, singularly shielded from any judiciary pursuit, a slow climb—not of water, nor of adrenaline, nor of desire, but of lines—a discreet invasion that will necessarily provoke the fury of the wronged writer, expelled from his living space. (Killer’s Darkness)
The wheels are in motion. The virus works its way through the machine, like a rat.
Z
*
* The term Kiwi was used during WWI to designate the soldiers in the US Air Force who didn’t fly. This word corresponds more or less with what French pilots call the rampants. David Grey thinks of William Faulkner, known for his juvenile passion for flying and the brazen lies concerning his supposed exploits as a WWI pilot: contrary to his bragging, the author of Soldiers’ Pay never piloted a single military plane and remained a Kiwi.
A brief aeronautic commentary: the image of the plane tracing its graceful arabesques through the serene sky seems to obsess David. I suspect the American translator envisages a low-altitude machine-gunning of Prote or a proper bombardment of his posts. When I furnished Grey with a few additional arms, I forgot to include in my panoply those fatal Easter eggs and metallic hailstones that fall from the sky without warning, accompanied, a fraction of a second after impact, by a terrifying howl of engines launched at full speed when—memory of reels of news bulletins from WWII—the German Stukas or the Japanese Zeros burst forth from the sun and head straight for the parade of unlucky refugees who immediately dive toward the side of the road. Grey, who loves the cinema and aviation, lets himself be invaded by these images in a daze. Replacing Prote, not only in relation to Doris, but also on the page, visibly tempts him. Tired of being the mere prosthesis of his French author, he would like to feel the powerful sensations of flight or acrobatic eroticism, to chase Prote from his cockpit, wrest the control stick, the pen, and the beautiful brunette from his hands at the same time. Yielding to the confusion of his effervescent spirit, he imagines assaulting his author in an air attack.
For David Grey, my kindred spirit, my brother, finds himself as irritated as me by this hierarchical division of space: above the horizon line, the impervious page is an empty sky, tarnished by a mosquito or a fly that soon comes to life; Grey and I remain pitifully nailed to the ground, vulgar Kiwis deprived of flight, while my author and his author—my mosquito, his fly—buzz freely up above in graceful whirls while evoking oh!s and ah!s from the crowd of delighted spectators. But they don’t suspect, those naïve men, those ignoramuses, those space cases, those naïve compatriots, that it’s me (or Grey) who is flying the plane, who is making the spectacle happen. He and I who pedal in sync at the back of the cabin smeared with oil and grease, spinning the propeller and keeping the old crate in the air! He and I who, hidden among the sheet metal and the clouds, work the controls with our tense arms, crippled with painful cramps, in order to maneuver that winged puppet! For a moment, it was as if there was no pilot on the plane other than me, or him … For a moment, we believed … But of course it’s a deceptive illusion, we are nothing more than servile copilots, subordinates obedient to the orders from the control tower, to the directives of the conductor, faithfully playing the
