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.) without too many hiccups. (Indeed, I had a hell of a time with those rubbish lines.)
I am a mediocre chess player, nevertheless I know to anticipate a few basic moves of my opponent. You’re almost done with this room, my office.
Simply look up.
See you soon.
Faithfully yours,
Abel Prote
P. S. Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, king of England and Ireland between 1901 and 1910, “was especially interested in foreign policy and initiated the Entente Cordiale with France,” we learn from the Petit Larousse (100th edition, 2005). What the prude dictionary does not say is that at the beginning of the last century, the English king often came to Paris incognito. He would arrive at Gare du Nord by private train. Once he had disembarked from his car, he would take an aboveground walkway personally reserved for him that allowed the gallivanting king not only to escape from potential attacks, but most importantly to discreetly arrive at a luxury brothel where he was probably the only client during his very private visits. No doubt wearing a disguise, he would thus fortify certain carnal aspects of the famous “Entente Cordiale” by joining in himself, if I may say so.
Why, David, am I sharing this historical anecdote with you? Because of the trip, the anonymity, the disguise, the implicit eroticism. Because as a translator, you are interested, like Edward VII, in “foreign policy,” you are striving for your own entente cordiale … Because traveling, the unknown, disguises—and perhaps even implicit eroticism—fit you like a glove, all you translators.
And then also because, if the king of England formerly had the run of his private aboveground walkway, the subordinates like you, me, and so many others instead have the tendency to creep beneath the earth to quench our desire. You will understand soon enough.
The tour continues, follow the guide …
Agitated, under the disagreeable impression of having been hoodwinked and taken for a ride ever since the owner’s departure from his home, of having been led to the chessboard by a stronger player, David nevertheless obeys Prote’s instruction and looks up. The corkboard above the writer’s desk, between two windows, displays a mass of photos, postcards, press clippings, invitation cards, reminders—“call Doris,” “write to Doris,” “gift for D.”, “don’t back down on anything with Gris”—and, in the middle of this clutter, the neon green rectangle of a Post-it on which David, drawing closer, reads this quotation, copied down by Prote’s meticulous hand: “The translator will have to put it into one of those footnotes that are the rogue’s galleries of words.” Nabokov, Pale Fire. The murderous quotation is followed by this venomous commentary by the French writer: “Translator’s Night. I see from here my valiant D.G. add to the bottom of the page
