Paul Auster - Invisible

He walks into La Palette at twenty-five past four, almost half an hour late. He would not be surprised if Cécile has already left, storming out in a huff and vowing to rain down a thousand curses on him if he should ever cross her path again. But no, she is still there, sitting calmly at a table in the back room, reading a book, a half-finished bottle of Orangina in front of her, wearing glasses this time, and a fetching little dark blue hat that resembles a beret. Embarrassed, out of breath from running, his clothes disheveled, his body no doubt reeking of sex, and with the word crazy still resounding in his head, Walker approaches the table, already stammering a multitude of apologies as Cécile glances up at him and smiles-a wholly undeserved smile of forgiveness.

Still, even as he sits down in the chair across from her, Walker goes on apologizing, inventing some far-fetched excuse about standing in line at the post office for more than an hour to make a long-distance call to New York, but Cécile shrugs it off, telling him not to worry, there’s no problem, he doesn’t have to explain anything. Then, holding up her left wrist, she taps her watch with her right index finger and says: We have a rule in Paris. Whenever people arrange to get together, the first one to arrive gives the other person an extra half hour to show up-no questions asked. It’s four twenty-five now. By my reckoning, that makes you five minutes early.

Well, Walker says, impressed by the daffiness of this logic, then I’m rattling on for nothing, aren’t I?

That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.

Walker orders a coffee, his sixth or seventh of the day, and then, with a characteristic downward tug of her mouth, Cécile points to the book she was reading when he came in-a small green hardcover volume with no dust jacket, apparently quite old, a frayed and battered object that looks like something rescued from a trash bin.

I found it, she says, unable to control her mouth anymore as it breaks into a full-fledged smile. Lycophron in English. The Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press. Nineteen twenty-one. With a translation by-(she opens the book to the title page)-A. W. Mair, professor of Greek, Edinburgh University.

That was fast, Walker says. How in the world did you manage to find it?

Sorry. I can’t tell you.

Oh? And why not?

It’s a secret. Maybe I’ll tell you when you give it back to me, but not before then.

You mean I can borrow it?

Of course. You can keep it for as long as you like.

And what about the translation? Have you looked at it?

My English isn’t very good, but it strikes me as stuffy and pedantic, rather old-school, I’m afraid. Worse yet, it’s a literal prose translation, so all the poetry is missing. But at least it gives you a sense of the thing-and why it’s given me so much trouble.

Cécile opens the book to the second page of the poem and points to line thirty-one, where Cassandra’s monologue begins. She says to Walker: Why not read some of it out loud to me? Then you can judge for yourself.

Walker takes the book from her and immediately plunges in: Alas! hapless nurse of mine burnt even aforetime by the warlike pineships of the lion that was begotten in three evenings, whom of old Triton’s hound of jagged teeth devoured with his jaws. But he, a living carver of the monster’s liver, seething in steam of cauldron on a flameless hearth, shed to ground the bristles of his head; he the slayer of his children, the destroyer of my fatherland; who smote his second mother invulnerable with grievous shaft upon the breast; who, too, in the midst of the racecourse seized in his arms the body of his wrestler sire beside the steep hill of Cronus, where is the horse-affrighting tomb of earth-born Ischenus; who also slew the fierce hound that watched the narrow straits of the Ausonian sea, fishing over her cave, the bull-slaying lioness whom her father restored again to life, burning her flesh with brands; she who feared not Leptynis, the goddess of the underworld…

Walker puts down the book and smiles. This is insane, he says. I’m absolutely lost.

Yes, it’s a terrible translation, Cécile says. Even I can hear that.

It’s not just the translation. I have no idea what’s going on.

That’s because Lycophron is so indirect. Lycophron the obscure . There’s a reason why they called him that.

Still…

You have to know the references. The nurse is a woman named Ilios, for example, and the lion is Heracles. Laomedon promised to pay Poseidon and Apollo for building the walls of Troy, but after he reneged, a sea monster appeared-Triton’s hound-to devour his daughter, Hesione. Heracles climbed into the monster’s belly and cut it to bits. Laomedon said he would reward Heracles for killing the monster by giving him the horses of Tros, but again he broke his word, and the angry Heracles punished him by burning down the city of Troy. That’s the background of the first few lines. If you don’t know the references, you’re bound to be lost.

It’s like trying to translate Finnegans Wake into Mandarin.

I know. That’s why I’m so sick of it. Summer vacation ends next week, but my summer project is already kaput.

You’re giving up?

When I came home from dinner last night, I read over my translation again and dumped it in the garbage. It was dreadful, positively dreadful.

You shouldn’t have done that. I was looking forward to reading it.

Too embarrassing.

But you promised. That’s why we’re sitting here now-because you were going to show me your translation.

That was the original idea, but then I changed the plan.

Changed it to what?

To giving you this book. At least I’ve accomplished something today.

I don’t think I want it anymore. The book belongs to you. You should hold on to it, as a keepsake from your summer of struggle.

But I don’t want it either. Just looking at it makes me ill.

What should we do with it, then?

I don’t know. Give it to someone else.

We’re in France, remember? What French person in his right mind would be interested in a bad English translation of an impenetrable Greek poem?

Good point. Why don’t we just throw it away?

Too harsh. Books should be treated with respect, even the ones that make us ill.

Then we’ll leave it behind. Right here on this bench. An anonymous gift to an unknown stranger.

Perfect. And once we pay the bill and walk out of this café, we’ll never talk about Lycophron again.

So begins Walker’s friendship with Cécile Juin. In many ways, he finds her a thoroughly impossible creature. She fidgets and trembles, she bites her nails, she doesn’t smoke or drink, she is a militant vegetarian, she puts too many demands on herself (e.g., the destroyed translation), and at times she is shockingly immature (e.g., the silly business about not telling him where she found the book, her girlish fixation on secrets ). On the other hand, she is without question one of the most brilliant people he has ever met. Her mind is a wondrous instrument, and she can think circles around him on any topic imaginable, dazzling him with her knowledge of literature and art, music and history, politics and science. Nor is she simply a memory machine, one of those prototypical top students with a capacity for ingesting vast amounts of unfiltered information. She is sensitive and acute, her opinions are unfailingly original, and, shy and nervous as she is, she stubbornly holds her ground in any argument. For six straight days, Walker meets her for lunch at the student cafeteria on the rue Mazet. They spend the afternoons together wandering in and out of bookstores, going to movies, visiting art galleries, sitting on benches along the Seine. He is relieved that he is not physically attracted to her, that he can confine his thoughts about sex to Margot (who spends one night with him in his hotel during this period) and to the absent Gwyn, who is never far from him. In a word, despite Cécile’s maddening idiosyncrasies, he enjoys the company of her mind more than enough to forgo any thoughts about her body, and he gladly keeps his hands to himself.