José Manuel Prieto - Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia

I. I notice ripples of light reflected on the canvas cloth beneath which I am slowly sipping a lemonade — YALTA, the sea, LINDA there beside me — and half-close my eyes. (At the next table, two Mongolian girls begin speaking in their harsh and unmistakable language, full of tongue clicks and hypnotically rolled r s. I follow that avalanche as the hare does the serpent’s rattle. I know perfectly well that if chance had sent me off to live in captivity in Inner Mongolia I would eventually have kissed the hard lips of the younger one, would have tapped her white teeth with the nail of my index finger, untangled that hair, wiry as a horse’s mane.) Full of life, now, compact, visible (Whitman). ( Lleno de vida hoy, compacto, visible .) Me.

José Manuel Prietowas born in Havana in 1962. He lived in Russia for twelve years, has translated the works of Joseph Brodsky and Anna Akhmatova into Spanish, and has taught Russian history in Mexico City. He’s the author of Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire and Rex . He currently teaches at Seton Hall University and lives in New York City.

Esther Allenteaches at Baruch College, City University of New York. She has translated a number of books from Spanish and French, including the Penguin Classics volume José Martí: Selected Writings , which she edited, annotated and translated. She has been a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, has twice been awarded Translation Fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been decorated by the French government as a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres.