Хелен Девитт - Some Trick - Thirteen Stories

He went to Krakow for no particular reason.

He had found a flight for 5 euros; for an additional 9 euros one could take a suitcase weighing 20 kg, or 44 pounds. He packed a small suitcase with books.

He went into a bookstore and began opening books. A sample of randomly encountered words:

Note the frequency of the letters z, w and y. The sample is, in fact, unrepresentative; in a larger sample of Polish words the letters j and k are also common. Couple of sentences:

Żył raz pewien wielki konstruktor-wynalazca, który nie ustając, wymyślał urządzenia niezwykłe i najdziwniejsze stwarzał aparaty.

Żył raz pewien inżynier Kosmogonik, który rozjaśniał gwiazdy, żeby pokonać ciemność.

He had once read a collection of Robotermärchen , robot tales, in German. A translation of some stories by Stanisław Lem. One had naturally not grasped that the word “gwiazdy,” whatever it might mean, featured in the original. One had not understood that the title of the original was Bajki Robotów.

It was now unexpectedly necessary to purchase a small suitcase and fill it with books replete with the letters z, w, y, j and k. It was necessary to hire someone to fly with him to Berlin to accompany the suitcase. Słowosław was the applicant whose name had the best letters.

His life was quite difficult at this time for reasons we need not discuss. It was often necessary to travel. One never knows how long one will be gone, you see. If it’s just an overnight trip one might manage with a couple of old favorites, but once, you see, he went to Bilbao and was unexpectedly kept hanging about for weeks.

He took the precaution for a while of booking a second ticket and hiring someone to bring a second suitcase. It’s not just that it was beginning to be complicated to bring an extra bag; it’s so much easier, obviously, if the bag is accompanied by someone able to carry it for you.

To all intents and purposes that should have been perfectly adequate for unexpected contingencies, but the fact is, one had to mull over the candidates for the second suitcase. He still needed the whole of the indispensable collection which had filled the first suitcase, but now he had Bajki Robotów to consider, not to mention others too numerous to mention.

He would travel, at any rate, to, as it might be, Istanbul with his first suitcase under his own supervision and the second suitcase in the care of an escort, and on arrival in Istanbul would discover all sorts of books that one simply never sees. Books, you know, with a dotless i. Umlauts up the gazoo. It would be necessary, obviously, to purchase a new suitcase and hire someone locally to fly back with it.

An American need never learn a language to communicate. One should choose a language the way one chooses a dog or a musical instrument.

He went to Copenhagen at one point. The Danish word for island is Ø. The common run of visitors do not see the phenomenon as necessitating purchase of a suitcase and hiring of a Dane.

He had seen ø described as a monophthongal closed mid+front rounded vowel. Reliable sources informed him that this was the sound of the vowel in British “bird” or, in the light form, the vowel of French “bleu.” His approach was to sit in a café in Copenhagen and lure one of the natives into recording Odins Ø in GarageBand on his MacBook. On a subsequent occasion he sat in a café in Oslo and lured an unsuspecting native into selecting a book from the suitcase and recording a passage.

It’s interesting, everyone knows that Perec’s La disparition is a book in which the letter e does not appear, but Rabbit, Run is never mentioned as a companion piece in which the letter å does not appear. Ångstrom being the correct spelling of the surname of the eponymous protagonist.

It’s better to bow to the inevitable. It’s really simpler, you know, to purchase the empty suitcase and hire its minder before one sets out. In Catalan the letter x proliferates. The word for fiction is ficció. He was unable, in the event, to find a Catalan at short notice in Berlin; an ad on the Barcelona Craigslist turned up Francesc.

Those were the early days. The days when he could make do with one additional packed suitcase plus carrier and one empty suitcase, ditto.

He noticed at some point that one could fly EasyJet to Bilbao, 10 people, each with 20 kg of checked luggage, for £346.90. A mere £34.69 per person.

In the later days if he had to go to Bilbao he would book one ticket for himself and 20 for the entourage.

It would have been simpler in many ways to put the entourage up at a hostel in 12-bunk rooms but he could not bring himself to do it. He had tried it once but it had been a mistake. It had been necessary to replace the gossipy backbiting entourage with a clean new entourage.

He would be getting on with things, minding his own business, be dragged into conversation, leave, leave a message for a member of the entourage to join him in Ürümqi.

The books are marked with colorcoded flags. They have marginal notes.

He buys books to remind himself to read them.

At one point it looked as though he might have to replace a member of the entourage. Francesc was having a fit of the sulks. It was by no means clear that a Xavier or Xulio would not be a better man for the job.

He found that the best way to go about it was to be very casual, post on Craigslist.

With an entourage of 20, there was always the possibility that someone would have to be replaced.

Each member of the entourage was a native speaker of the language in which books in the accompanied suitcase were written. When he wanted to know how a passage should be pronounced, when he wanted to get the sound of the words in his head, he could have a recording made in GarageBand on the spot. One can’t find this kind of thing on the Internet. So one could not have a single pinch hitter, one needed the full complement of languages accounted for in the second string. At some point he realized that he needed to hire someone to manage the entourage, to keep understudies ready.

Ideally one would have an understudy waiting in each city. There is never any telling when a member of the entourage will simply up stakes.

It wasn’t the sort of thing he should be doing for himself. He tried to hand it over to his lawyer. His lawyer handed it over to someone young and stupid who made careless mistakes, the work was not important enough to merit competence.

“Look,” he said. “It’s perfectly straightforward. One simply wants a carrier to match the suitcase. When you buy a suitcase you don’t walk in off the street and pick the first thing you see, you select it for aesthetic properties superfluous to the task of transporting possessions. The name of the carrier is an aesthetic property. The language spoken by the carrier, on the other hand, must match that of the books contained in the suitcase for strictly utilitarian reasons, as he or she may be required at any time to record material from one of the books in question. It’s necessary, therefore, to recruit, in each case, a substitute who both speaks the language and bears an appropriate name.”

The young, stupid lawyer said he was not sure he would recognize an appropriate name.

He pointed out that a simple expedient would be to recruit replacements bearing names identical to those of the current incumbents, a solution one might have expected a graduate of Harvard Law School to work out independently.

An inconclusive exchange of compliments ensued.

His lawyer charged $450 an hour, $200 for the services of the halfwit. Money that would mean a lot to the sort of person who worked in the entourage. The sort of person who worked in the entourage might in fact be the best sort of person to recruit for the entourage.