Jhumpa Lahiri - In Other Words

The room was almost empty. While the translator was looking for her sweater, most of the women had left. The owner was preparing a receipt for the next to last. Only the translator remained.

The owner looked at her, as if she had noticed her presence for the first time.

“And what did you decide on?”

“Nothing. I’m missing a sweater, my own.”

“What color?”

“Black.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

The owner called to the woman behind the mirror. She asked her to pick the clothes up off the floor, put everything in order.

“This lady is missing a black sweater,” she said. “I don’t know you,” she continued. “How did you find me?”

“I was outside. I followed the others. I didn’t know what was inside.”

“You don’t like the clothes?”

“I like them but I don’t need them.”

“Where are you from?”

“I’m not from here.”

“I’m not, either. Are you hungry? Would you like some wine? Fruit?”

“No, thank you.”

“Excuse me.”

It was the woman who worked for the owner. She showed something, a garment, to the translator.

“Here,” said the owner. “It was hidden, we found your sweater.”

The translator took it. But she knew immediately, without even putting it on, that it wasn’t hers. It was another one, unfamiliar. The wool was coarser, the black less intense, and it was a different size. When she put it on, when she looked in the mirror, the mistake seemed obvious to her.

“This isn’t mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mine is similar, but this isn’t it. I don’t recognize this sweater. It doesn’t fit.”

“But it must be yours. The maid has put everything in order. There’s nothing on the floor, nothing on the couches, look.”

The translator didn’t want to take the other sweater. She felt antipathy toward it, revulsion. “This isn’t mine. Mine has disappeared.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe another woman took it without realizing it. Maybe there was an exchange. Maybe there were other clients who were wearing a sweater like this?”

“I don’t remember. All right, I can check, wait.”

The owner sat down again on the couch. She lit a cigarette. Then she began to make a series of calls. She explained to one woman after another what had happened. She said a few words to each one.

The translator waited. She was convinced that one of them had taken her sweater and that the one left for her belonged to someone else.

The owner put down the phone. “I’m sorry. I’ve asked everyone. No one was wearing a black sweater here today. Only you.”

“But this isn’t mine.”

She was sure that it wasn’t hers. At the same time she felt a tremendous, consuming uncertainty that canceled out everything, that left her with nothing.

“Thank you for coming, goodbye,” said the owner. She said nothing more.

The translator felt disconcerted, empty. She had come to that city looking for another version of herself, a transfiguration. But she understood that her identity was insidious, a root that she would never be able to pull up, a prison in which she would be trapped.

In the hall she wanted to say goodbye to the woman who worked for the owner, behind the mirror, at a table. But she was no longer there.

The translator returned home, defeated. She was forced to wear the other sweater, because it was still raining. That night she fell asleep without eating, without dreaming.

The next day, when she woke, she saw a black sweater on a chair in the corner of the room. It was again familiar to her. She knew that it had always been hers, and that her reaction the day before, the little scene she had made in front of the two other women, had been completely irrational, absurd.

And yet this sweater was no longer the same, no longer the one she’d been looking for. When she saw it, she no longer felt revulsion. In fact, when she put it on, she preferred it. She didn’t want to find the one she had lost, she didn’t miss it. Now, when she put it on, she, too, was another.

When I read in Italian, I feel like a guest, a traveler. Nevertheless, what I’m doing seems a legitimate, acceptable task.

When I write in Italian, I feel like an intruder, an impostor. The work seems counterfeit, unnatural. I realize that I’ve crossed over a boundary, that I feel lost, in flight. I’m a complete foreigner.

When I give up English, I give up my authority. I’m shaky rather than secure. I’m weak.

What is the source of the impulse to distance myself from my dominant language, the language that I depend on, that I come from as a writer, to devote myself to Italian?

Before I became a writer, I lacked a clear, precise identity. It was through writing that I was able to feel fulfilled. But when I write in Italian I don’t feel that.

What does it mean, for a writer, to write without her own authority? Can I call myself an author, if I don’t feel authoritative?

How is it possible that when I write in Italian I feel both freer and confined, constricted? Maybe because in Italian I have the freedom to be imperfect.

Why does this imperfect, spare new voice attract me? Why does poverty satisfy me? What does it mean to give up a palace to live practically on the street, in a shelter so fragile?

Maybe because from the creative point of view there is nothing so dangerous as security.

I wonder what the relationship is between freedom and limits. I wonder how a prison can resemble paradise.

I’m reminded of a passage in Verga, whom I recently discovered: “To think that this patch of ground, a sliver of sky, a vase of flowers might have been enough for me to enjoy all the happiness in the world if I hadn’t experienced freedom, if I didn’t feel in my heart a gnawing fever for all the joys that are outside these walls!”

The speaker is the protagonist of La storia di una capinera ( Sparrow: The Story of a Songbird ), a novice in an enclosed order of nuns who feels trapped in the convent, who longs for the countryside, light, air.