Back in the days when I attended poetry readings, each time I'd walk into a room of poets (only people who signed up to read their poetry attend such events), there they all were: scruffy, gruff, snarly, drinking their beer and smoking their cigarettes, an entire room chock-full of the sparsely talented who aspired to write poetry like Charles Bukowski.
In a somewhat similar spirit, I can imagine many young would-be novelists sitting at their writing desk, attempting to mold a story in a way to give expression to their intense emotions and feelings. If only they had real talent like João Reis. And let me tell you, João Reis is a talented writer, in turns funny, ironic, waggish, caustic, roguish, tender, expressive.
Did I say young novelist? The Translator’s Bride was originally published in 2013, when João Reis was age twenty-eight. The first English edition of the novel, translated from the original Portuguese by the author himself, is made available now in 2019. I can’t read Portuguese but I’m confident the translation is a good one - after all, João Reis has been working as a translator for a good number of years, mostly translating literary works written in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic.
Turning to The Translator's Bride itself, we meet our unnamed first-person narrator, similar to the author, a translator of literary works, on his return to his rented flat in his home city. Although the city is also unnamed, I envision his rented flat in Lisbon, on a street with a streetcar like the one in the above photo.
The distinctive narrative voice hits a reader right from the first sentence: “My return trip is gloomy, rain falls relentlessly and I stick a hand out of the window, the streetcar moves slowly, someone crosses the rails in a hurry, there’s shouting and swearing, these people are so wearisome, I bring a hand to my face, get it wet in a disgusting fashion, the woman in front of me turns her head away, there's nothing else she can do, my face is damp, maybe it's obscene to wet one's face in front of a lady one doesn't know from Adam, I'm ignorant of such issues . . . .” Actually, this is only a fraction of the sentence – it becomes immediately obvious why João Reis counts Thomas Bernhard, the master of the expressive long sentence, as among his prime influences.
The narrator has various encounters with wretched examples of humanity (his characterization), such personages as his old, fat landlady who is so cheap she gives him candles for his room in lieu of electricity, a miserly publisher, an eccentric author and an ancient fortune teller reminding one of the old pawnbroker from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic (João Reis also counts the great Russian novelist as an influence).
However, irrespective of interlocutor or situation, at all times and on all occasions, our young translator gushes forth, as if a member of the virtual realists, one of those wild avant-garde poets right off the pages of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, but a poet and translator who has decided to break from the group and move through life solo. Well, almost solo. There’s Helena, his love, his heartthrob, his passion who has sailed across the wide sea and left him stranded. The translator’s pounding heart pounds faster every time he recollects beautiful Helena with her dark eyes and dark hair, her fair skin that easily blushes, the dimple when she smiles. Ah, to be a sensitive, poetic soul madly in love and have your lover sailing far, far away.
Since so much of the elegance and beauty of this short novel revolves around authorial voice, I will let João Reis have the last word in the form of a sentence. Again, it is a long expressive sentence but a sentence speaking to the joys a reader can look forward to in The Translator’s Bride:
"I sign the papers, my hand shakes mysteriously, a trembling caused by the shivers down my spine, were the money stolen I wouldn’t be in a worse mood and less presentable, a degraded and degrading life wears me down, without Helena I perish in the eternal fire that consumes our world, fire whirlwinds feeding upon human flesh drag me, deafening screams and cries reverberate all around, the pen slips out of my hand, my name was signed with no zeal, twice!, probably a sign of faintness, I’d be wiser if I ate something, but then I’m not able to do it, food is irrelevant, an indestructible creature shouldn’t need it, however, I’m a poor translator, not worth the air I breathe, treated like trash, they want to see me at the bottom of the dunghill, maybe they’re right and I’m not respectable enough to make remarks on others, I suffer the same ailments, am a true son of my face, knowing no other perspective I center the world on me, see the world with my eyes only, if possible I would merge with Helena, would be her skin, spleen, a kidney, would be always with her and would neither commit mistakes nor make decisions, I will perhaps trip someone, burn their head, kill them, and finally be sentenced to the ship galleys, which I would gladly accept, want to be made a captive and sent to the colonies, scorch my brain there, die of fever after drinking filthy water, to be jailed can be a blessings, no decision made as the time passes by, one can’t fail, we’re always the crystallized image of the last time we were seen, words, written on letters fail less than spoken words, Helena said I’m crazy, life together was unbearable, the cashier stares at me, compares signatures, he doesn’t seem particularly pleased, thinks I’m mad, can see it in his eyes, Helena was right regarding my intolerable presence, I’m a plague of fire, can’t I end all this?, my God, the only thing is to give her a small yellow house, yes, afterward I can be shredded into pieces, wouldn’t mind it, the cashier takes back the papers.”
Portuguese author and literary translator João Reis, born 1985
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