Traveler of the Century (56 page)

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Authors: Andrés Neuman

BOOK: Traveler of the Century
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—a French translation, and an English one, and this nice Russian-German dictionary, what do you reckon?
They selected a few poems from the translations they had. They copied out the English and French versions, placing each stanza in a separate table. They checked each word in the dictionary in order to make sure they had understood the literal meaning of the original, then noted down the different meanings next to each table.
Do you know what? Sophie said playfully, this Pushkin's adulterous loves are more believable than his spiritual ones. That's typical of you, Bodenlieb! said Hans, looking over the draft they had just done:
Dorida's long tresses hold me in thrall,
As does her blue-tinged gaze at the ball;
When yesterday I left, her charms
Enchanted me as I looked on her arms,
Every impulse leading me to more,
My desire sated as ne'er before.
But suddenly in the bitter gloom
Strange features filled the room;
A secret sadness made me start,
Another name was in my heart.
After Sophie had left, Hans reread the drafts of their translations. His head began to grow heavy, his muscles went slack and his cheek settled on the desk where it was warmed by the oil lamp. Before sitting up straight again, he had a strange fleeting nightmare—he dreamt he was going from one language to another like someone running through a line of sheets hung out to dry. Each time he encountered a language, his face became wet and he thought he had woken up in his mother tongue, until he got to the next sheet and realised his mistake. Still running, he began talking to himself, and could clearly visualise the language he was speaking—he was able to contemplate the words he was uttering, their structures, their inflexions, yet he always arrived too late. The moment he came close to understanding the language in which he was dreaming, he felt something slap him in the face, and he woke up in the next language. Hans ran like a madman, arriving once, a hundred times too late to perceive these languages, until suddenly he understood he had really woken up. Looming before his eyes he saw a huge oil lamp and a great mound of papers. He noticed, as he sat up, that one of his cheeks was burning. Then, with a sense of relief he began a train of thought, and for a moment he contemplated in amazement the logic of his own language, its familiar shape, its miraculous harmony.
 
Listen, the organ grinder implored, is this really necessary? Are you sure? (Hans looked at him reprovingly and nodded several times.) All right, all right, let's do it.
Slowly, clumsily, as if with each garment he were peeling off a whole year, the old man finally took off his tattered shirt, his linen breeches and his worsted shoes. Just so you know, he added,
as a last protest, I'm only doing this to please you. Separated from the organ grinder's dry flaccid skin, the garments curled up into a stinking ball. The earth appeared to swallow them up.
Barefoot, his trousers rolled up to his knees, Hans took the old man by the arm in order to help him into the river. He watched as he immersed himself bit by bit—his paper-thin ankles, his unsteady legs, his sagging buttocks, his hunched back. At last all Hans could see was the organ grinder's dishevelled white head as he turned and beamed at him, mouth wide open, and began swimming like a child, arms thrashing in the water. Hey, it's not so cold! the old man shouted. Won't you join me? Thanks, said Hans, but I take my bath when I get up in the morning!
Every
morning! Bah! cried the organ grinder. Old wives' tales! Princes bathe in scented water and die young!
Hans watched with repulsion and fascination the ripples of grime dissolving around the organ grinder's body. He splashed his arms about in them playfully: Look! the old man laughed, pointing at the grey and brown lumps. It's attracted the fish! Yes, thought Hans, there was something repulsive and yet honest about such an attachment to dirt. There was an obscure integrity about the old man's lack of hygiene, or rather his lack of shame, a kind of truth. Some time ago, the organ grinder had said something ridiculous and at the same time true—perfumes were a deception, they wanted to be something else. Perhaps. Although Hans loved perfumes.

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