Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Klaus Eckstein was a canny creature, and it may be that he sensed my new availability for non-romantic interests, compensatory obsessions. In his campaign of match-making between me and the Spanish language he escalated from hints (you’ve got so much in common, he was asking about you) to commands ( I’ve booked a table — don’t let me down ).

‘Here,’ he said at the end of one German lesson, handing me a copy of Nos ponemos en camino , ‘You’ll easily be able to manage the first twenty chapters before the weekend is over, and considering that your work-load is so risibly light, you’ll also have time to take a look at this poem. You can write me an essay on it.’

‘But sir!’ I said. ‘I haven’t even started Spanish, I don’t know if I’m even going to like it or want to do it, and you’re asking me to write an essay on a poem I don’t understand and haven’t any way of translating!’

‘Oh, you’ll manage,’ Eckstein replied. ‘It’s hardly much of a challenge. I’m babying you, really. I had to move from absolutely nothing to degree level in eight months. You should easily manage A-level in a year. And here’s where you begin.’ It did sound easy when he put it that way.

‘So let this help you get off to a good start,’ he added. ‘I’ll expect to receive your completed essay by Tuesday.’ Perhaps he saw panic in my eyes, because he made an uncharacteristic concession. ‘Wednesday at the latest.’ He was even good enough to lend me some Spanish dictionaries. He carried them to the Mini for me, dropping them in the back with a thud. One big, one medium and one small, the Three Bears transformed into reference books.

‘I’ll give you one more bit of help,’ said Eckstein as I started the engine of the Mini. He was breathing heavily, his internal spaces clogged with snuff. ‘The first line of the poem means At five in the afternoon . So does the fourth line, and the sixth, and the eighth, and the tenth. So, you see, I’ve translated almost half the poem for you. Aren’t you going to thank me?’ I shouted ‘Thank you, sir!’ above the engine noise, but he muttered, ‘I thought not,’ so perhaps he didn’t hear me.

Cling to the guru’s fur

On the journey back to Bourne End that evening I was buoyed up by the challenge I had been given. I wasn’t paying due care and attention to the road. It was pure luck that I didn’t come adrift on that deadly curve from Hedsor Hill, pure luck that the arch-roadhog Michael Aspel wasn’t going home just as fast and carelessly, demanding right of way as a broadcaster’s privilege.

I was downright bouncy when I went in to have my supper. Mum commented that her JJ was remarkably chirpy. And so JJ was. JJ liked having private confabs with teachers, special assignments. I had resisted Eckstein’s oblique academic overtures during German lessons, but I had appreciated them just the same. There was an aspect of surly intellectual courtship in the way he pushed me into the arms of Spanish. He never resorted to anything as lowly as charm, but his cantankerousness had its nuances, and I knew he wanted the best for me academically. Now I would have to buckle down and justify his interest, to earn the modified contempt which was the closest he could come to faith in anyone’s abilities.

Soon the table in the kitchen was spread with papers and notes, as I grappled with the technicalities of a language that I had only just met, unless you count an inventive obscenity scrawled on a blackboard months before. Mum said that she had never seen me tackle a piece of homework with such determination. And still after two hours I was no further forward, despite having moved from the Baby-Bear dictionary to the Daddy. There are many wonderful short books in the world, but it isn’t every book that can afford to be short. A short dictionary is one which has weeded out just those language-flowers which you were wanting to sniff and maybe pick.

Nos ponemos en camino was plain sailing, but the intricacies of the poem completely defeated me. This time I wasn’t starting on the nursery slopes of a literature, as I had with German and Hänschen klein , with a nursery rhyme tailored to my name and psychology. I was starting on one of the peaks, with Federico García Lorca’s ‘La cogida y la muerte’. My exhaustion wasn’t altogether mental: the whole business of manœuvring books about, consulting one for help with another, disinterring references then returning to where I started, was something my body rather resented. Not the intellectual legwork but the sheer lugging back and forth of tomes. The armwork.

To start with I tackled the poem word by word, as if I was a translation machine, a language grinder.

Cuando el sudor de nieve fue llegando

a las cinco de la tarde,

cuando la plaza se cubrió de yodo

a las cinco de la tarde,

la muerte puso huevos en la herida

a las cinco de la tarde.

A las cinco de la tarde.

A las cinco en punto de la tarde.

yielded only

When the snow sweat was arriving

to five of afternoon,

when the square was covered with iodine (iodine?)

to five of afternoon,

the death put eggs in the wound

to five of afternoon.

To five of afternoon.

To five o’clock of afternoon.

To be fair to myself, I did manage to nudge the poem a little further towards English than that — but Eckstein wanted more than a translation. He wanted understanding in depth — an essay. My excitement collapsed. All I could do was pray for my guardian angel to deliver a miracle of understanding — a forlorn hope, since understanding is what miracles leave grasping. On its own my brain could manage nothing. The cells were stumped.

Mum asked what the matter was, and for once I welcomed her fussing. I explained that I had to write about an important poem in Spanish when I didn’t know any Spanish. That my wits were at the end of their tether. Mum didn’t say anything but moved quietly into the hall, shutting the door behind her.

There was murmuring on the phone. Then Mum came back to tell me that she had arranged for me to see a friend and neighbour of hers, who lived on the other side of the Abbotsbrook Estate.

‘María Binns will see you at eight, JJ. She’ll be happy to help you with your Spanish poem.’ I must have looked doubtful about someone called Binns being an Iberian scholar, because she added, ‘María is as Spanish as it’s possible to be. Michael — that’s her husband — must like her that way. I made a blouse for her once, and when I saw her wearing it, I thought, “Why did I bother to sew on those top three buttons? They’ll never be used.”’

So Mum had met this Spanish godsend through the sewing circle. It made sense that the de luxe dressmaker’s dummy, delivered in error, held on to with a passion and named after the intended owner, Mum’s guardian angel (or as close as she would ever get), should have a hotline to a whole network of higher powers. Miss Pearce was sending me along to the top woman, and my prayers seemed to have been answered. My guardian angel would rescue me as long as I put in a bit of effort and drove to meet her myself. The system seemed to work more or less on Granny’s principles, making sure I contributed energy of my own instead of coasting on bounty. This is a sound spiritual principle too. As one famous formula puts it, the guru is a mother monkey not a mother cat. She won’t pick you up by the scruff of your neck and carry you bodily to self-realisation. You have to cling to her fur.

An attractive, well-turned-out woman was waiting for me at the gate of her charming house when I pulled up in the red Mini. My guardian angel was lithe and handsome and dressed in a black suède skirt and jacket which looked brand new. Her welcome was marvellously warm.