Richard Ford - Women with Men

Matthews thought of what it meant for his book to “turn out” better in a language other than the one it was written in. It didn't seem very good. Though possibly it meant he was a genius.

“It's hard to think Dante could be better than in French, isn't it?” Miss Pitkin/Pittman said.

“I don't believe Dante was written in French,” Matthews said. He wondered what she looked like. He was staring out toward the line of thin woods behind which was another house and the big autumnal sun descending prettily.

“Well. Go to France and live it up.” She chuckled. She was typing something on a computer. “Honi soit qui mal y pense.”

“I don't know what that means,” Matthews said. He knew very little French.

“It's something about Prince Charles. Something he said, supposedly. It probably means ‘Live it up.’”

“Maybe so,” Matthews said. “Maybe I'll live it up.” And then they said goodbye.

THAT NIGHT, because of the cold and rain, and because Helen felt she might be coming down with something, they ate dinner in a dreary, nearly empty Japanese restaurant only a few doors down rue Boulard from the hotel. Matthews didn't like Japanese food, but Helen said she needed the important iron contained in raw fish to combat jet lag and to strengthen her in case she was catching a bug.

Over maguro and awabi, and Matthews’ sea bass tempura, Helen told him how interesting she thought it'd be to meet your translator, someone — so it seemed to her — who would have to know your book better than you did and who would give up so much time just for your (Matthews’) words. In advertising — her line of work — the trick was to get people to read things without knowing they were reading and to slip messages into their heads like spies behind enemy lines.

“It's their profession,” Matthews said, giving up in frustration on his chopsticks and opting for a fork. “People dedicate their lives to translating. It's not a sacrifice to them.”

“It's like a marriage,” Helen said. “At least it's like one of my marriages. Spend years trying to read the tea leaves about what somebody else might've meant. And I never did find out.” Helen was eating a big chunk of red tuna and dredging parts of it in soy sauce, using her chopsticks. Some kind of Japanese violin music was playing in the background.

“I don't think it's like that,” Matthews said.

“What do you think?” Helen said, chewing.

“I think it's inventing,” Matthews said. “I think it's using one book to invent another one. It's not just putting my book into a different language, like moving your clothes from one suitcase to another one. It's creative. And there's a lot of satisfaction accompanying it, is what I think.”

“Oh,” Helen said. “But you're pretty excited, aren't you?” She had lost interest. He had bored her. He was aware he bored her all the time. Helen had a good, practical, earthy, goodhearted take on the world, and he frequently bored it into silence.

“I'm excited. I am.” He smiled at her.

Helen, however, wanted to plot out an itinerary for the next day's events. She had her Fodor's book and studied it on her side of the table while Matthews got through his broccoli and fish and sherbet. All the Japanese waiters and busboys seemed to be French, which felt peculiar. It was France, though. Everyone was French.

Helen wanted to visit Napoleon's tomb tomorrow, then she wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower and, afterwards, walk down the Champs Élysées. She wanted them to see the Louvre, though not necessarily go in (it was crowded with Japanese, she whispered, especially at Christmas). Then she wanted to take a ride in a glass-sided boat and finish the day at the Place de la Concorde, where people had had their heads cut off, including the king and the queen and Robespierre. She didn't know who Robespierre was, she admitted. At night they'd have their first incomparable meal someplace; “then,” she said, “we'll take your tour the next day.” Helen looked pleased. Though she also looked pale, Matthews thought. Travel took a greater toll on women. They registered everything. She had forgotten about the ballet.

“I don't have a tour,” Matthews said dolefully.

“What about all the places where Negro musicians played and famous Negro writers lived in terrible poverty and slept with white women? The stuff you used to teach.”

Matthews had talked about these matters as side issues in the course he'd taught, and Helen still remembered. But he had really known nothing about any of it. He'd only read about it in other books. He knew nothing about the Negro Experience, period. Just before he'd finished his PhD, his adviser at Purdue had called him in one day to say that a colleague at Wilmot College had telephoned the previous night to say a black woman professor had suddenly quit to take another job, leaving her classes without a teacher, and did he have anyone who could step into the breach? Matthews’ professor said if Matthews could get down to Wilmot in two days and be ready to give a lecture on sexual imagery in Langston Hughes’ late poems, some provision might be made for him to stay on longer. He simply had to be flexible. Matthews knew nothing about Langston Hughes. His own work had been in the English Romantics, who'd begun to bore him to death. But he arrived in Wilmot the next morning, spent the following two days reading, then gave a lecture to a group of surprised black students, who seemed not to mind as long as somebody arrived at nine o'clock and talked about something while they mostly slept or smirked at each other. Eventually the chairman decided he could stay on and even work for tenure if he promised to go on teaching African-American studies, so that the college could keep from hiring another black woman, who everybody felt would inevitably turn out to be a lot of trouble. Matthews thought it was a good idea and didn't particularly care what he taught. Anybody could teach anything, was his view. Helen thought the whole story was a riot, though she said she'd never known many black people personally. There weren't that many in West Virginia.

“I don't really know where any of those places are,” Matthews said. “I just read about them. They aren't real to me. They never were.”

“So much for the African-American Experience,” Helen said, refolding her map.

“I've said goodbye to teaching, okay?” Matthews said irritably. “I'm not a teacher anymore. I'm interested in a new life.”

“You're hoping to translate yourself now, I guess,” she said. Helen was nearsighted and would sometimes blink her big blue eyes behind her glasses and open them very wide, as if she could get more sight in that way. It made her seem to be looking at something over your head and being surprised by what she saw there. It was unnerving instead of consoling.

“Maybe,” Matthews said. “Maybe that's exactly right. I'm hoping to be translated into something better than I was.”

“What about your daughter?” Helen said, very pointedly. Helen knew nothing about Lelia, had never laid eyes on her, but periodically liked to mount an aggressive, parental-style sensitivity when she wanted to make points with him or get under his skin. It always caught him unawares, and he in fact disliked her for it. Helen had no children after her three unsuccessful marriages, and Matthews felt this was her way of expressing disappointment about that misfortune and sharing it around with others.

“We don't have to talk about Lelia,” Matthews said, and felt disheartened, looking around now for the Japanese/French waiter to bring their check.