Andrés Neuman - The Things We Don't Do

Unless the poet’s good taste is failing him, this fourth version of his poem is full of errors and is already close to unintelligible. The referents have gone out of the window, the theme has been cast to the remotest margins, the enjambments sound like saws. Devastated but at the same time amused, for a moment he imagines all his books translated into this or any other language. He sighs gloomily. No two ways about it, he thinks to himself, poetry is untranslatable. No longer caring, he gifts this distant poem to a foreign female colleague whose opinion he values: it is the work of a fraternal friend — he writes to her — and I would be very happy if you could make it known in translation in whatever magazine you consider most appropriate. I have complete faith in your judgement, and blah, blah, blah. With — underneath — best wishes, yours, and all the rest.

Suffice it to say that the poet repeats this back and forth operation several more times, with identical requests and similar pretexts. Each reply he receives upsets, outrages and fascinates him in equal measure. Sometimes his poem is praised to the skies, at others it is criticized ruthlessly. Like someone indulging in a feverish pastime, almost without glancing at the succession of translations and retranslations, he simply passes it on to another translator friend.

Time goes by, dumbly.

And so it is that one grey morning the poet opens the file with the fourteenth translation and is confronted by a familiar version. As far as he can recall it is word for word, comma for comma, his own poem, the first one of all. For a moment he is tempted to go and check. Then, calming down, he tells himself it is fine as it is, original or not. “No doubt about it, poetry is untranslatable,” he writes in his notebook, “but, sooner or later, a poem will always be translatable.”

Then, lazily, he opens a novel and starts to think of something else.

AS PRESTIGIOUS as he is chaste, a certain person called P likes abstract art, chamber music and Petrarchian poetry. He has devoted two-thirds of his life to a rigorous study of the arts; the remaining third, to dreaming about them. Scrupulousness and serenity are the hallmarks of P’s domestic existence. Very occasionally, he permits himself to send a book of verse to the printers. It might even be suggested that he is not entirely dissatisfied with his latest collection. What greater excess could there be, P argues moderately, than a touch of literary vanity?

A certain person called Q, an unbridled drinker and compulsive womanizer, has for years had a vague friendship with P. Neither of them appears to be able to adequately explain their friendship to himself. Probably Q envies his friend’s wisdom and the solemn respect he receives. On the other hand, it could be suggested that P feels an obscure admiration for Q’s licentiousness, which he sees as an art or some sort of aesthetic militancy.

Out of mutual curiosity, in the course of an exceptional evening when, exceptionally, P has drunk too much wine, and Q, very unusually, seems to have sated all his appetites, they reach an accord: they will exchange places for twenty-four hours. Q informs P that the following night he has made a date with a woman friend of merry inclinations, and promises to praise his friend P to the skies. P tells Q he has promised to send a poem in honour of a certain bard who has passed away, and suggests with a chuckle that Q should be the one to pen it.

Not so much daunted as wryly amused, the two friends shake hands on their agreement.

Two days later, they meet again in a café. Q confesses his amazement at the unexpected demands of poetic creation. He describes for P his tortuous, sleepless night surrounded by the works of the deceased bard, listening to Austrian sonatas in search of inspiration. Sympathizing with him, P reveals to Q his exhaustion after an unbelievable succession of late-night bars, litres of alcohol and sexual gymnastics. Haggard-looking, he admits his inability to maintain a rhythm of this sort while still keeping, as his friend does, his appearance cheerful and his lucidity intact. His friend nods, and in turn declares himself unworthy of consorting with the muses. Equally dismayed, they agree that the experiment was worthwhile, since it has confirmed them in their respective destinies. The two men finish their coffees. Shake hands once more. Say farewell again.

That same night, P receives a call from a famous colleague, who thanks him effusively for his homage to the deceased bard, and goes so far in his praise as to dismiss all his previous production. “It was high time,” he tells P in a fit of enthusiasm, “that you gave up all that mannerism and risked saying something truly deep!” A few hours later, as he is on the verge of sleep, Q hears a whisper from the woman lying on her back in the darkness alongside him: “Don’t be offended, sweetheart, but could you give me the phone number of that friend of yours?”

I LIVE SEATED at my desk, looking out of the window. The view is not exactly an Alpine landscape: a narrow courtyard, dingy bricks, closed shutters. I could read. I could stand up. I could go for a walk. But nothing compares to this generous mediocrity that encompasses the whole world.

These bricks of mine are a complete university. In the first place, they offer me lessons in aesthetics. Aesthetics connects observation with understanding, individual taste with overall meaning. As a result, it can be seen as the opposite of description. When you only have an inside courtyard to fill your vision, that distinction becomes a matter of survival.

Or lessons in semiotics. Talking to the neighbours tells me less about them than spying on the clothes they hang out to dry. In my experience, the words we exchange with our fellows are a source of misunderstandings rather than knowledge. Their clothes though are transparent (literally, in some cases). They cannot be misinterpreted. At most, they can be disapproved of. But that disapproval is also transparent: it reveals us.

I spend long periods of time contemplating the washing lines. They look like musical scores. Or lined exercise books. The author could be anybody. Anonymous. Chance. The wind.

I’m thinking, for example, of my downstairs neighbour, the woman on the left. A lady of a certain — or uncertain — age, who lives with a man. At first I thought he must be a chubby son, but he is more likely to be her husband. It’s unusual nowadays for any youngster to wear one of those white vests that are so frowned upon by his generation, which has not imbibed so much as a single iota of neo-realism to help them mythologize the proletariat. My neighbour has left pairs of bloomers of biblical proportions flapping in the wind, and a flesh-coloured bra that could serve perfectly well as a shower cap (or two of them, to be precise). Therein lies the mystery: her rotund husband wears short, elasticated briefs. Some red, others black. I doubt whether a woman of such demure tastes encourages her spouse to wear such bold underwear. Conversely, it appears unlikely that a gentleman who shows such daring underneath his trousers has not suggested other options to his consort. I therefore deduce that, by donning those briefs, the gentleman in question is pleasing (if “to please” is the right term) a much younger woman. Of course, his wife takes it upon herself to lovingly wash them and hang them out to dry.

A couple of floors higher up, in the centre, there is another line belonging to a female student with bohemian habits, if I’m permitted the redundancy. She never pokes her head out to hang up her washing before nine or ten at night, when the courtyard is already in darkness. This prevents me from observing her as clearly as I can her clothes. Her wardrobe ranges from all kinds of short T-shirts, minuscule outfits, exotic tangas, as well as the occasional old-style suspender belt. This last detail suggests to me a certain penchant for the university film club. I imagine my student as one of those intrepid people who, at the decisive moment, are overwhelmed with a sense of shame, possibly the result of gloomy hours spent in catechism classes. One of those beauties who are better at seducing than at enjoying themselves. Or not. On the contrary, she could be one of those wonders of nature who, even at the moments of utter abandon, are capable of a touch of elegance. Or not. In the happy medium, my neighbour sets limits on her own brazenness, she has a modicum of self-restraint which makes her irresistible and sometimes infuriating. Particularly to that sort of man (namely, all men) who are enticed by a woman’s wardrobe and, with exemplary simple-mindedness, hope to uncover a lascivious woman beneath a skimpy dress. Deep down, my neighbour is a fragile soul. All you need consider are those socks of hers with childish patterns on them, in which I imagine she sleeps when she is alone: little ducks, rabbits, squirrels. She detests paternalism as much as having cold feet.