[translated poetry]

He was the same as other people

who know nothing about the white gray glass:

about the flat drop of sameness

in a frame

of white-lacquered window

like a gray block of longing

lying in a day rectangle of colored dough of encounters.

He has installed the window panes

in a gray house with white window frames,

in a white house with gray shops.

The first window pane. Second. Tenth.

The panes are flat and still, like rectangles.

The panes are colorful tears:

The glass is the color of watery joy.

Glass has a rhythmical smile

like a person after seven years of waiting.

Now his face is a transparent glass pane

which takes into itself

streets. Houses. Circulating bodies.

And a flat drop of sameness,

which smiles measured with watery joy:

everything should always be as is.

דער גלעזער

ער איז געװען גלײך צו אַנדערע מענטשן

װאָס װײסן גאָרנישט װעגן גראָ־װײסן גלאָז׃

װעגן דעם פֿלאַכן טראָפּן גלײכקײט,

װאָס ליגט אין אַ רעם

פֿון װײס לאַקירטע פֿענצטער

װי אין אַ טאָג־רעכטעק פֿון לאַקירטן טײג פֿון באַגעגנישן

ליגט דער גראָער בלעק פֿון דער בענקשאַפֿט.

ער האָט אַרײנגעשטעלט שױבן׃

אין אַ גראָען הױז מיט װײסע פֿענצטער־רעמען,

אין אַ װײסן הױז מיט גראָע לאָדענס.

ערשטע שױב. צװײטע. צענטע.

די שױבן זענען פֿלאַך און שטיל, װי רעכטעקן.

די שױבן זענען טרערן־קאָלירטע׃

ס’איז דער קאָליר פֿון װאַסעריקער פֿרײד.

גלאָז שמײכלט ריטמיש

װי אַ מענטש נאָך זיבן יאָר װאַרטן.

איצט איז זײַן פּנים אַ דורכזיכטיקע גלאָז־שױב

װאָס נעמט אױף אין זיך

גאַסן. הײזער. קרײזנדיקע גופֿים.

און אַ פֿלאַכער טראָפּן גלײכקײט,

װאָס שמײכלט אָפּגעמאָסטן מיט װאַסעריקער פֿרײד׃

ס’זאָל תּמיד אַלץ זײן װי ס’איז גראָד.

Translator’s Note:

Debora Vogel’s language could be best described in terms of its plasticity. We may think of plastic as stiff but it’s also a pliable material. It is the material that best exhibits the fact that form is constantly being transformed. The poem “Glazier” from Day Figures poetry collection (1930) is an example of an author’s stylistic play with linguistic malleability and rigidity. The poem is executed in the aesthetic of Constructivism; it is “constructed” as an artwork from the material of words mirroring the preoccupation with materiality of existence in this avant-garde artistic movement. Glass as material fascinated artists, designers, and architects because of its qualities of transparency and opacity, and the possibilities it presented for modern urbanism. Vogel utilizes glass as a “plastic” material, it is both “watery” and angular, voluminous and flat, clear and opaque. Her vocabulary is minimalist, the color palette is sparse (with white and gray colors predominating), yet repetition and lack of color engenders rhythm and colorfulness. The mood oscillates between stasis and dynamism, sameness and difference. The world of circulating bodies and encounters is fitted into a rectangular frame of a window-pane. There is a certain sense of wonder which arises out of monotony and everydayness in this synesthetic creation. These are the elements that my translation strives to reflect, or perhaps, it would be fitting to say, to mirror.

Anastasiya Lyubas is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature in Binghamton University where she is currently at work on her dissertation “Language and Plasticity in Debora Vogel’s Poetics.” Lyubas is a 2017-2018 translation fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and a Max Weinreich research fellow in YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Her translations of Debora Vogel’s work appeared in The InTranslationat the Brooklyn Rail, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Pakn Treger, and are to be published by The Odessa Review. Lyubas is working on a full collection of Debora Vogel’s essays, reviews, polemics, and correspondence, which she translated from Yiddish and Polish into Ukrainian, to be published by Dukh I Litera publishing house in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Debora Vogel (1900-1942) was a Polish-Jewish writer, philosopher, art critic, and translator. She was a “wandering star” of Polish and Yiddish Modernisms in Eastern Europe and North America. Her writing is comparable to Gertrude Stein’s in its striking originality. Born in Eastern Poland (now Western Ukraine), she was educated in Vienna and Kraków, and travelled extensively in Paris, Berlin, and Stockholm, which is reflected in her work. Given her engagement with visual arts and avant-garde movements, her highly experimental texts challenged every notion of writing in Yiddish in her own lifetime. Her poems are examples of Cubist-Constructivist experimentation in a language that is at once lyrical and philosophical.

“Tell your father not to stay out there in the chill; it’ll make him sick.”

Actually, it was warm on the patio. The sun already hung low in the sky, but it was still two hours until dark. And the fence around the house shielded don Antonio Nemiña from the winds loaded with dust and dry leaves, bringing more warmth, not coolness.

“Tell him to come in. It’s cold,” his mother repeated.

Ignacio had just come home from the movies. On Sundays, he always went to the movies. It didn’t surprise him to see his old man there, seated in his rocker at the far end of the patio, smoking a cigar. But it must have surprised his mother. She didn’t know how to express why it worried her, so resorted to the excuse that it was chilly. She couldn’t say that directly to her husband because they had not spoken for years. If they wanted to communicate, even if they were in the same room, facing each other, they sent the message through one of their children. And now, that meant only Ignacio.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

Don Antonio didn’t even turn to look at them on the other end of the patio. His face empty of expression, he contemplated the smoke that came out of his mouth in thick ropes to become tangled between the branches of the tamarind. The gray at his pale temples shone with ruddy afternoon light. Seeing him like that, Ignacio felt the hatred he’d harbored in recent days ebb. Instead, he now pitied his father.

“Come inside yourself, Mamá. He must want to sit there.”

“He’s going to get sick. And then you’ll be left with all the work.”

“Leave him alone. You and I will go in. I want a coffee.”

If they wanted to communicate, even if they were in the same room, facing each other, they sent the message through one of their children. And now, that meant only Ignacio.

She had aged too. Pride and rancor had managed to keep her young for years, but now even those passions were beginning to decline. Ignacio took her arm and led her to the living room. He left her seated on the sofa and went to make the coffee. On the way to the kitchen he glanced at the photo of his sister hanging on the wall. It was from her wedding. She was alone, wearing her wedding gown, but alone, her hand resting on a marble pillar. Their parents hadn’t wanted her to marry the guy, resisted to the very end. In that, they had been in complete agreement. So, they had asked for a photo of Marina by herself, not with that mestizo. And so, she didn’t visit them. She had made her own life. She’d had the courage Ignacio lacked. You couldn’t tell that in this portrait—so sweet, even smiling, her fair complexion, her honey-colored eyes full of light.

Ignacio wondered what she would think if she found out what had happened here. She had always loved her father a lot. And he had loved her.

The kitchen smelled like canned fruit. He turned on the gas and lit the burner with a wooden match. The room was already gathering gloom and the ring of blue flames dispelled it a bit.

While he was making the coffee, his mind returned to the furniture store, to his father and the girl. Bibiana had the habit of spitting on the ground. She did it constantly: when she had the feeling that something was stuck in her throat, when she smelled something strange, when she heard dirty talk or thought of something nasty. He heard a dry hack and there it was: a gob of white spittle that she then squelched with her foot.

She’d made a bad impression on Ignacio the moment she came to ask for work at the store. She seemed vulgar, aggressive and dangerous. He was disgusted by her thick silver eye shadow, her smoker’s voice, the pride with which she bared her cleavage and flaunted her breasts. But he didn’t dare say anything because his father had looked at her with pleasure and Ignacio already knew: once he’d decided about something or someone, any word to the contrary only aroused his anger. For her part, Bibiana also took Ignacio’s measure, kept looking him up and down with her poisonous cat eyes until it was obvious that they’d never be friends. She took two steps out the front door and sent the first spittle to the sidewalk. Don Antonio didn’t say anything. As if he was going to say anything when, thanks to this act, she turned her back to him for an instant and he could get a good long look at her butt. The decision was made then. What followed was a formality: the supposedly careful reading of the job application, his comments on certain points, the admonition about the mistakes her predecessor had made—tardiness, sloppy dress—for which he’d been fired. Finally, while Ignacio attended to a woman who came in to ask if they still made Philco televisions, his father explained the job to Bibiana and came to an agreement about what he would pay her.

*     *     *

All this had happened before ten in the morning, almost six months ago. When the girl went to eat at three in the afternoon, don Antonio was already in the best mood Ignacio had seen him in for years. He and his wife avoided each other as much as possible. They slept in separate rooms and ate at different times. Perhaps with the goal of making the solitude he must feel less obvious, don Antonio had developed the habit of taking his afternoon meal at the furniture store. At four p.m. on the dot, when the employee returned, he shut himself in the small office at the back and spread his newspaper, the Galician Mail, on his desk so he could read it while he dipped slice after slice of black bread in olive oil. He closed the store at eight and walked home. Always in silence, always sealed up in himself, as if the punishment of not talking that he’d imposed on his wife had extended to include the whole world. He didn’t complain. He seemed to have accepted his fate: to be married for forty years to a woman he didn’t love; to live in a small city without plazas or trees, buried among dry hills, a place whose people he disdained; to communicate only through letters with the few relatives that he had sprinkled around the world. One day a week—Sunday—he closed the furniture store early and shut himself in his office to smoke a cigar and drink two bottles of wine. Never more, never less. He sat in there alone. Once in a while, Ignacio saw him leave around ten at night, and walk to his house: an enormous figure, solid and at the same time ghostly, elusive, as if it weren’t his father but a blurred memory of his father.

When he heard the water begin to boil, he walked back to the door and turned on the kitchen light before shutting off the stove. He poured the coffee, put two porcelain cups on a tray and carried it to the living room. His mother waited for him with the same suffering face as before. She raised her legs to the footstool and began to massage them. It wasn’t that they hurt, she said; it was a habit she’d picked up, nothing more.

“Have there been problems at the store?” she asked Ignacio.

“No.”

“Then what’s bothering your father?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just yesterday he was happy.”

“The employee left,” he was going to say, but he thought that wouldn’t comfort his mother. She’d have more questions. And he didn’t want to answer more questions. He’d come from the movies, his only vice and the only thing that made him happy. His father hadn’t let him go to the university. He didn’t read, didn’t participate in any sports, had no friends or girlfriend—when he was young his father had forbidden him to associate with the town’s children—they’re not our kind, he said. Ignacio only went to the movies. And whenever he really liked a film, he would think about it for hours, review the scenes that moved or excited him, even after he was home, alone in his room. So, he kept quiet now. In the dusk, he put the tray with the coffee on the side table by the sofa where his mother sat and remained standing, as if awaiting an order or permission to leave.

“Turn on the light, son.” Still the suffering voice, the shushing of her rough hands kneading her white legs through wool stockings.

The light dazzled them a little, at first. He sat in the smaller armchair, resigned. He stared again at the photo of his sister. What if he had talked to her by phone and told her? It would do the old man good to talk to her, if his shame wasn’t too strong. No. Surely, he’d refuse.

“Hasn’t Marina called, Mamá?”

“You think she’s going to call? Only if she needs something from your father.”

Ignacio let a deep, weary sigh escape. Sometimes he missed his sister a lot. He envied her. Of all who had inhabited this house, she seemed to be the only one who was truly alive. He remembered the day when his father discovered she was engaged to “that guy.” It was also on a Sunday, like today. In those days, they had Sunday breakfast together: his father and mother, Antonio his older brother, Marina and him. Antonio had a hangover, as he always did after his weekend drinking bouts, and that had put the old man in a bitter mood. Besides, someone at the furniture store had already told him about Marina, although he still hadn’t confirmed it; he thought she would deny it if he asked. But it didn’t turn out that way. The maid had finished serving the hot chocolate when the phone rang. Marina jumped from her seat and went to answer it, but don Antonio stopped her. He answered it. Rudely. Then she couldn’t stand it anymore.

“They’re calling for me,” she told him. “Give me the phone.”

Her father ignored her.

He stood staring her in the eye, defiant. She, equally defiant, said, to end it: “It’s my fiancé.”

Ignacio escaped his anger. He always escaped because don Antonio didn’t think it was worth the trouble to get mad at him.

Then everything exploded. Her father restrained himself with her because he loved her very much. He only threatened to put a bullet in her boyfriend. But he used his fists on Antonio for not taking better care of his sister. And likewise, her mother. Ignacio escaped his anger. He always escaped because don Antonio didn’t think it was worth the trouble to get mad at him. He was useless, nothing more than a shadow.

“Turn on the television for me, son?”

“Yes, Mamá.”

Ignacio obeyed, knowing that after a few minutes he would have to get up again to turn it off. It was Sunday and there was nothing on that his mother liked, just sports and a musical program. She already knew that. Why then did she bother with it? He wanted to think about the movie he’d just seen, a story set in the Amazon jungle, about a black man who escapes from the Cayena prison and after walking forever and overcoming all kind of dangers, is captured by some savages who offer him a beautiful woman.

“The woman selling egg bread hasn’t come?” his mother asked, pensive.

Ignacio didn’t answer.

“And we don’t have a single slice left, do we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t you go see if at least there’s a bit? I really feel like having some.”

Ignacio went to the kitchen. From the living room, his mother called: “If you don’t find anything, bring me some fig cookies, please, son.”

Through the window, he looked toward the patio. Although it was now dark, he could still make out everything: the tamarind, the pomegranate, the two fig trees with the hammock hanging between them. Don Antonio was no longer smoking, but he still sat there, immobile. Ignacio envisioned a high waterfall, surrounded by tropical trees. The black man fell, caught by the current. He lost consciousness. The savages found him shortly afterwards, downstream.

In the living room his mother was watching a baseball game, although it was evident she was thinking of something else and what happened on the screen didn’t matter to her.

“Thanks, son.”

Ignacio felt sad looking at her. But also a certain satisfaction, because in the end, in spite of his father and two dead sons and everything else, there she was: healthy. Sustained by her manias.

Next to the photo of Marina hung a small one of Antonio. He couldn’t handle it, thought Ignacio. Antonio had been the chosen one since he was small. His father expected a lot from him. Because of that, of the three of them who survived to grow up, Antonio was the one who hated his father the most. That’s why he got drunk so much and squandered his money on whores. He suffered, but in the midst of his suffering he took satisfaction in frustrating the expectations don Antonio had forced on him. Then he was shot to death in a bar brawl. It was then, immediately after the burial, that the two old folks stopped talking to each other. In silence, with a deaf, unending rancor, they blamed each other for Antonio’s death. His father had driven him to vices with his punishments and hardness; his mother had spoiled him rotten with so much pampering.

“Just yesterday he seemed very happy.”

“Yes, Mamá.” This fixation of hers bothered him. Why worry about someone you no longer care about?

“It isn’t about some woman? At his age!”

“I don’t think so, Mamá.”

“He’s a dirty old man.”

Yes. As soon as Bibiana began to work for him, don Antonio had given her the eye. Even though at first, she had wanted to flirt with Ignacio. But Ignacio disliked her. It repulsed him to watch her spit. Since she couldn’t do it there, on the floor of the store, she went out to the street or to the bathroom. Besides her odor, the odor of her body… Ignacio felt like it lingered, clinging to his nostrils. At night he woke suddenly, throwing aside sheets soaked with sweat, and felt like Bibiana was there, spying on him, lying in wait in the darkness, naked and oozing lust. She lifted her arms as if they were wings and released the odor of her body, the odor Ignacio carried with him like an infection. And perhaps, yes, his father was a dirty old man. He began to talk to her, to give her privileges Ignacio didn’t have. He gave her authority. If anything didn’t go well, it was Ignacio’s fault, not hers. Bibiana made the best sales, attracted clients. The furniture store became those two: don Antonio and Bibiana.

“Close the door, son. Mosquitoes will get in.”

Ignacio obeyed. He got up to close the door and on the way turned on the outside passage light. From there he could see the obstinate figure of his father.

“Is he still there?”

“Yes.”

“I think you know something and don’t want to tell me.”

Why, whenever he thought of her, did he see her spitting? Or hear her saying “yeah.” She said “yeah” instead of “yes.”

“No. I don’t know anything.”

“Do you have an employee at the furniture store?”

“No. We’re alone.”

It was true. What a relief not to have to lie. Why, whenever he thought of her, did he see her spitting? Or hear her saying “yeah.” She said “yeah” instead of “yes.” A half answer that to Ignacio meant it was not a real affirmation, as if she didn’t want to promise anything. It was all the same to his father, but to him it was disgusting. “Yeah.”

They began to make him feel like he was in the way. So finally, one afternoon, Ignacio decided to leave them alone. The next day he realized his father hadn’t wasted the opportunity. He saw it in his eyes, in the way he passed by Ignacio, practically pushing him, without saying excuse me. Bibiana came late and wasn’t reprimanded. Ignacio began to leave them alone more and more often. He walked through the city, that horrible city. He climbed the steep streets, heavy with heat. Not a single tree along the road, not a single bench to sit down on. Almost no one walked the sidewalks. Suddenly a door opened to a long patio, full of dark sweaty people: shirtless men holding cans of beer, women who danced and laughed around tubs full of wet clothing, children who urinated in any corner, among panting dogs.

Ignacio reached the highest hill and then turned, hoping to see an agreeable landscape, if one of those gusts of wind didn’t arrive to throw fistfuls of dust in his eyes. But he only saw the city spreading from the little valley to climb the nearby hills with its factories and miserable houses. Only downtown was dabbed with notable bits of color: the orange towers of the church, the banana trees and jacarandas that tried to give the hotels a touch of the exotic, the fruit trees that still grew in the orchards of some older houses. And the movie theatre: a tall building like a giant shoebox painted yellow.

Only downtown was dabbed with notable bits of color: the orange towers of the church, the banana trees and jacarandas that tried to give the hotels a touch of the exotic, the fruit trees that still grew in the orchards of some older houses.

There, one afternoon when things between Bibiana and the old man seemed certain and don Antonio had realized that Ignacio knew everything, he saw her. He saw Bibiana. With a boy her age. They were leaning against a wooden arch covered with withered flowers, leftover from the last religious fiesta. The smelly gusts of wind brought dust that muffled everything and was everywhere like a plague from God, but in spite of that, the two young people looked as fresh and free as if they had been on a beach or in a meadow or in some equally beautiful place and not that atrocious city. It was too late for Ignacio to take another street. Bibiana, cornered against the arch’s post, had sensed him. She raked him with a look so intense it made her companion turn also. And she stuck out her tongue, as if she were going to spit, but she didn’t do it. That time she didn’t do it. She only wet her lips a second before clinging to the boy who had her wedged in that corner. An evil smile sketched across her face, a smile of defiance, of triumph. A gust of wind came. Ignacio walked on and didn’t see them anymore.

He thought again with pleasure of the movie he’d enjoyed this afternoon.

“I’m going to bed, son. Help me.”

At last, he thought. Ignacio got up and shut off the TV, offered his mother his arm.

“Who knows how late he plans to stay out there,” his mother said. “Take him a blanket.”

They went down the passage loud with the noise of insects. At the end of it was his mother’s room: a big room with high ceilings. Her door opened, creaking.

While he waited for her to get a blanket from the wardrobe, Ignacio looked at the bureau covered with family portraits, including one of his youngest brother, the fourth child, who had died soon after he was born; the recliner nearby, the rosary hanging on the headboard of the bed. He thought again about his brother Antonio. Perhaps he would have been satisfied to see his father like this. To see him at last with his head hanging, sucking his balls, alone. Yes, if Antonio could see them from whereever he was, if his soul wandered around the house, he would be satisfied. He would be able to rest in peace.

“Until tomorrow, son. May God and the Virgin tend your sleep.”

Ignacio kissed her crossed fingers and closed the door after him. He went to the patio with the blanket. He was going to lay it across his father’s legs, but the old man’s hairy hand grabbed his arm. He grabbed it forcefully, as if Ignacio were a child again and he could hurt him and make him cry. He looked at Ignacio with eyes brimming with bitterness and spit on the ground. Something he’d never done before: he spit on the ground. The spittle of his rancor was lost in the darkness of the night. Then he got to his feet and walked toward his bedroom on the other side of the house.

Ignacio felt a rush of cool wind and thought, with pleasure, of the Amazon.

Domingo

—Dile a tu padre que no esté en el fresco: le va a hacer daño.

En realidad hacía calor en el patio. El sol ya estaba bajando, pero aún faltarían por lo menos dos horas para que se ocultara. Y las bardas de la casa protegían a don Antonio Nemiña de los ventarrones, que venían cargados de polvo y hojas secas, pero no traían frío sino más sofoco.

—Dile que se meta. Hace frío —repitió su madre.

Ignacio venía de la calle, del cine. Los domingos iba al cine. No le sorprendió ver al viejo ahí, al fondo del patio, fumándose un puro sentado en su mecedora. Pero a su madre sí debió de sorprenderle y no sabía cómo expresar que estaba preocupada. Por eso había recurrido a aquello de que hacía fresco. No se lo decía directamente a su marido porque ella y él hacía años no se hablaban. Si querían comunicarse algo se lo mandaban decir por medio de los hijos, aunque estuvieran uno enfrente del otro.

—¿No me oyes?

Don Antonio ni siquiera se volvía a mirarlos. Con el rostro vacío de expresión, contemplaba el humo que salía de su boca en gruesos cordones para ir a enredarse entre las ramas de un tamarindo. Las canas de sus sienes brillaban con la luz de la tarde, rojizas. Al verlo, Ignacio sintió que se desvanecía el odio que le había tenido en los últimos días. Le dio lástima.

—Métete tú, mamá. Él ha de querer estar ahí.

—Se va a poner malo. Y te va a dejar a ti todo el trabajo.

—Déjalo. Vámonos adentro tú y yo. Quiero un café.

Ella también se veía envejecida. El orgullo y el rencor habían logrado mantenerla joven durante muchos años, pero ahora hasta eso comenzaba a declinar. Ignacio la tomó del brazo y la condujo a la sala. La dejó sentada en el sofá y fue por el café. Al pasar hacia la cocina echó una mirada a la fotografía de su hermana, que colgaba en la pared. Era de su boda. Estaba sola, vestida de novia pero sola, con la mano apoyada en una columna de mármol. Sus padres no habían querido que se casara; se resistieron hasta lo último. En eso sí estuvieron de acuerdo. Por eso habían pedido para la casa una foto donde Marina estuviera sola, no con el mestizo ese. Y por eso ella no los visitaba. Había hecho su vida. Había tenido el coraje que a Ignacio le faltó. Quién la viera en ese retrato: tan dulce, sonriendo apenas, con sus ojos color miel llenos de luz.

Mientras ponía el café, Ignacio se preguntó qué pensaría ella si se enterara de lo que había pasado acá. Siempre quiso mucho a su padre. Y él a ella.

Abrió la llave del gas y luego, con un cerillo de madera, encendió el quemador. Las llamas azules salieron por los orificios iluminando un poco la habitación ya en penumbra. Olía a frutas en conserva.

Su mente volvió a la mueblería, a su padre y a la muchacha. Bibiana tenía la costumbre de escupir al suelo. Lo hacía constantemente: cuando le venía la sensación de que algo se le había adherido en la garganta, cuando le llegaba algún olor extraño, cuando oía hablar de algo sucio o pensaba en ello. Se oía un chasquido y ahí estaba: un copo de espuma blanca que luego ella misma aplastaba con el pie.

Desde que llegó a pedir trabajo a la mueblería le causó mala impresión a Ignacio; le pareció vulgar, agresiva, peligrosa. Le disgustaron sus párpados pintados de plateado, su voz de fumadora y el orgullo con que sacaba el pecho luciendo sus tetas. Pero no se atrevió a decir nada porque su padre la había mirado con complacencia y ya lo conocía: una vez que se hacía una idea de algo o de alguien, cualquier palabra en contra despertaba su ira. Por su parte, Bibiana también lo midió a él; se le quedó viendo de arriba abajo con sus ojos de gata envenenada y con eso tuvo para saber que nunca serían amigos. Dio dos pasos en dirección a la puerta de la calle y aventó el primer salivazo a la banqueta. Don Antonio no le dijo nada. Cómo le iba a decir algo si fue gracias a ese acto que ella le dio la espalda, un instante, y él pudo mirarle el culo. La decisión estaba tomada. Fue mero formalismo lo que siguió después: la lectura supuestamente cuidadosa de la solicitud de empleo, los comentarios sobre algunos puntos, la advertencia sobre los errores que había cometido su antecesor—impuntualidad, descuido en su presentación— y por los cuales había sido despedido. Finalmente, mientras Ignacio atendía a una mujer que llegó a preguntar si todavía se fabricaban televisores Philco, su padre le explicó a Bibiana en qué consistiría su trabajo y se puso de acuerdo con ella respecto a cuánto le iba a pagar.

Todo esto sucedió antes de las diez de la mañana, hacía casi seis meses. Para cuando la muchacha salió a comer, a las tres de la tarde, don Antonio ya estaba de un buen humor que no se le había visto en años. Él y su mujer se evitaban lo más posible. Dormían en habitaciones separadas y comían a distintas horas. Quizá con el fin de hacer menos obvia la soledad que pudiera sentir, don Antonio había dado en tomar en la mueblería su comida de la tarde. A las cuatro en punto, en cuanto volvía el empleado, se encerraba en el pequeño despacho del fondo y extendía en el escritorio el Correo Galego para estar leyendo mientras sopeaba en aceite de olivo rebanada tras rebanada de pan negro. Cerraba pasadas las ocho de la noche y se iba caminando a su casa. Siempre en silencio, siempre encerrado en sí mismo, como si el castigo de no hablarle que le había impuesto a su mujer se hubiera extendido a todo el mundo. No se quejaba. Parecía haber aceptado su suerte: estar casado desde hacía cuarenta años con esa mujer a la que no amaba, vivir en una pequeña ciudad sin plazas ni árboles perdida entre cerros áridos, comunicarse ya sólo a través de cartas con los escasos parientes y amigos que tenía regados por el mundo. Un día a la semana —los domingos— cerraba temprano la mueblería y se encerraba en su despacho a fumarse un puro y a beberse dos botellas de vino. Nunca más, nunca menos. Se encerraba solo. Alguna vez, Ignacio lo vio salir, ya como a las diez de la noche, y tomar el camino de su casa: una figura enorme, sólida y al mismo tiempo fantasmal, inasible, como si no fuera su padre sino un recuerdo borroso de su padre.

Cuando oyó que el agua comenzaba a hervir, dio unos pasos hacia la puerta y encendió la luz de la cocina. Luego apagó la estufa. Sirvió el café, puso las dos tazas de porcelana en una charola, y volvió a la sala. Su madre lo estaba esperando con la misma cara de sufrimiento de hacía rato. Subió las piernas al taburete y comenzó a darse masaje sola. No era que le dolieran, decía; era una maña que se había cogido, nada más.

—¿Ha habido problemas en la mueblería? —le preguntó a Ignacio.

—No.

—Entonces, ¿qué le pasa a tu padre?

—No sé.

—Todavía ayer estaba muy contento.

“La empleada se ha marchado”, iba a decir Ignacio, pero pensó que eso no tranquilizaría a su madre. Haría más preguntas. Y él no quería contestar preguntas. Venía del cine, que era su único vicio y la única cosa que lo hacía feliz. Su padre no lo dejó ir a la Universidad. No leía, no practicaba ningún deporte, no tenía novia ni amigos —su padre le prohibió desde niño que hiciera amistad con los muchachos del pueblo—. Sólo iba al cine. Y cada vez que le gustaba mucho una película, se ponía a pensar en ella durante horas, a revivir en su mente las escenas que lo habían conmovido o excitado, aun ya en su casa, solo en su cuarto. Por eso se quedó callado. En la penumbra, puso la charola con el café en la mesita que había a un lado del sofá donde estaba su madre y permaneció de pie, como si esperara una orden o el permiso para retirarse.

—Enciende la luz, hijo—otra vez la voz de sufrimiento, el rumor de las manos rugosas sobando las piernas sobre las medias de lana.

La luz lo deslumbró un poco, al principio. Se sentó en el sillón más chico, resignado. Volvió a mirar la foto de su hermana. ¿Y si le hablaba por teléfono y le contaba? Al viejo le haría bien hablar con ella, si no era más fuerte su vergüenza. No, seguramente no lo haría.

—¿No ha llamado Marina, mamá?

—¿Tú crees que va a llamar? Sólo que necesitara algo de tu padre.

Ignacio dejó escapar un suspiro hondo, viejo. A veces la extrañaba mucho. La envidiaba. Le parecía el único ser vivo que había habitado alguna vez esa casa. Recordó el día cuando su padre descubrió que andaba de novia con aquél. Era domingo también, como ahora. En esa época, los domingos desayunaban todos juntos: su padre, su madre, Antonio el hermano mayor, Marina y él. Antonio andaba crudo, como siempre después de sus borracheras del viernes y el sábado, y eso había puesto de mal humor al viejo. Además ya le habían contado en la mueblería lo de Marina, aunque todavía no lo confirmaba; pensaba que ella iba a negarlo si la interrogaba. Pero no fue así. La criada acababa de servir el chocolate cuando sonó el teléfono. Marina saltó en su silla y fue a contestar. Pero don Antonio la detuvo: contestó él. De mal modo. Entonces ella no se aguantó más.

—Me hablan a mí —le dijo—. Dame el teléfono.

Su padre no le hizo caso. Se le quedó viendo a los ojos, desafiante. Entonces ella, igual de desafiante, le dijo para terminar:

—Es mi novio.

Ahí explotó todo. Su padre se contuvo con ella porque la quería mucho. Sólo la amenazó con meterle un tiro al muchacho. Pero a Antonio se le fue a golpes por no cuidar bien a su hermana. Y a su madre. Ignacio escapó de su ira. Él siempre escapaba porque a don Antonio ni siquiera le parecía que valiera la pena enojarse con él. Era un inútil nada más, una sombra.

—¿Me enciendes la televisión, hijo?

—Sí, mamá —Ignacio obedeció, sabiendo que después de unos minutos tendría que volver a levantarse para apagar el aparato. Era domingo y no había nada que le gustara a su madre: sólo deportes y un programa musical. Ya lo sabía. ¿Por qué entonces lo molestaba? Él quería pensar en la película que había visto: una historia en la selva del Amazonas, acerca de un negro que escapaba de la cárcel de Cayena y, después de caminar mucho y sortear toda clase de peligros, era capturado por unos salvajes que le ofrecían una mujer hermosa.

—No ha venido la señora del pan de huevo —dijo su madre, pensativa.

Ignacio no le contestó.

—Y ya no nos queda ni una pieza, ¿verdad?

—Creo que no.

—¿Por qué no vas a ver si hay por lo menos un pedazo? Tengo mucho antojo.

Ignacio caminó hacia la cocina. Desde la sala, su madre le gritó:

—Si no encuentras nada, tráeme unas galletas de higo. Por favor, hijo.

Por la ventana miró hacia el patio. Aunque ya estaba oscuro, todavía alcanzaba a distinguirse todo: el tamarindo, el granado, las dos higueras con la hamaca amarrada de una a otra. Don Antonio ya no fumaba pero seguía ahí, inmóvil. Ignacio pensó en una cascada muy alta, rodeada de árboles tropicales. El negro caía arrastrado por la corriente. Perdía el sentido. Los salvajes lo encontraban poco después, río abajo.

En la sala, su madre miraba un partido de béisbol, aunque era evidente que estaba pensando en otra cosa y no le importaba lo que sucediera en la pantalla.

—Gracias, hijo.

Ignacio sintió tristeza al verla. Y también cierta satisfacción porque finalmente, a pesar de su padre y de los dos hijos muertos y de todo, ahí estaba: sana. Apoyada en sus manías.

Junto al retrato de Marina, más pequeño, colgaba uno de Antonio. Ése sí que no pudo, pensó Ignacio. Antonio había sido el hijo predilecto, cuando niño. Su padre esperaba mucho de él. Por eso, de los tres que llegaron a grandes, fue el que más llegó a odiarlo. Por eso se emborrachaba tanto y se gastaba el dinero con mujeres públicas. Sufría, pero en medio de ese sufrimiento le quedaba la satisfacción de ver frustradas las esperanzas que don Antonio había puesto en él. Hasta que lo mataron a balazos en una cantina. Fue entonces, inmediatamente después del entierro, cuando los dos viejos dejaron de hablarse. En silencio, con un rencor sordo e infinito, se culpaban uno al otro por la muerte de Antonio. Que porque el padre lo había orillado al vicio con sus castigos y su dureza; que porque la madre lo había echado a perder de tanto solaparlo.

—Todavía ayer se veía muy contento.

—Sí, mamá —le molestaba esa actitud de ella. ¿Por qué preocuparse por alguien a quien ya no quiere uno?

—¿No será cosa de alguna mujer? ¡A su edad…!

—No creo, mamá.

—Es un viejo sucio.

*     *     *

Sí, desde que Bibiana entró a trabajar, don Antonio le echó el ojo. Y eso que ella primero había querido coquetear con Ignacio. Pero a él le desagradó: le daba asco verla escupir. Como no podía hacerlo ahí, en el piso de la mueblería, se salía a la calle o iba al baño. Además su olor, el olor de su cuerpo… Ignacio sentía que se le había quedado metido en la nariz. En las noches despertaba de pronto, aventaba a un lado las sábanas empapadas de sudor, y le parecía que Bibiana estaba ahí mirándolo, acechando en la oscuridad, desnuda y ahíta de lujuria. Levantaba los brazos como si fueran alas y dejaba salir el olor de su cuerpo, que Ignacio llevaba consigo como una infección. Y tal vez sí, su padre era un viejo sucio. Empezó a hablarle, a darle privilegios que Ignacio no tenía. Le dio poder. Si algo salía mal era culpa de él, de Ignacio, no de ella. Bibiana hacía las mejores ventas, atraía a los clientes. La mueblería era ellos dos: don Antonio y ella.

—Cierra la puerta, hijo. Se van a meter los zancudos.

Ignacio obedeció. Se levantó a cerrar la puerta y de paso encendió la luz del corredor. Desde ahí se veía, obstinada, la figura de su padre.

—¿Ahí está todavía?

—Sí.

—Se me hace que tú sabes algo y no me quieres decir.

—No. No sé nada.

—¿Tienen empleada en la mueblería?

—No. Estamos solos.

Era verdad. Qué alivio no tener que decir una mentira. ¿Por qué cada vez que la recordaba la veía escupiendo? O la oía diciendo “ei”. Decía “ei” en lugar de “sí”: una respuesta a medias, que a Ignacio le parecía no era una verdadera afirmación, como de alguien que no quiere comprometerse. A su padre le daba lo mismo, pero a él le disgustaba. Ei. Empezaron a hacerlo sentir que estorbaba. Por eso, finalmente, Ignacio decidió dejarlos solos una tarde. Al día siguiente se dio cuenta de que su padre no había desaprovechado la oportunidad. Se lo vio en la mirada, en la forma como pasaba junto a él casi empujándolo, sin decir Con permiso. Bibiana llegó tarde y no fue reprendida. Ignacio empezó a dejarlos más y más tiempo solos. Se iba a caminar por la ciudad, esa ciudad tan horrible. Subía las calles empinadas, humeantes de calor. Ni un solo árbol en el camino, ni una banca donde sentarse. Casi nadie andaba por las banquetas. De pronto alguna puerta se abría a un patio largo, lleno de gente acalorada: hombres sin camisa, mujeres que bailoteaban y se reían alrededor de los lavaderos colmados de ropa mojada, niños que orinaban en cualquier lado, entre perros jadeantes. Ignacio llegaba así a lo alto de los cerros y entonces se volvía, esperando ver algún paisaje agradable, si no venía alguno de esos ventarrones que le aventaban a los ojos puñados de tierra. Pero sólo veía la ciudad extendiéndose desde el pequeño valle hasta cubrir de fábricas y casas miserables todos los cerros vecinos. Únicamente hacia el centro destacaban algunas notas de color: las torres anaranjadas de la iglesia, los platanares y las jacarandas que trataban de dar a los hoteles un toque de exotismo, los distintos árboles que crecían todavía en los huertos de algunas casas viejas. Y el cine: un edificio alto como una gran caja de zapatos pintada de amarillo.

Allá, una tarde cuando ya las cosas entre Bibiana y el viejo parecían muy seguras y don Antonio se había dado cuenta de que Ignacio sabía todo, la vio. Vio a Bibiana. Con un muchacho de su edad. Estaban recargados contra un arco de madera cubierto de flores marchitas, rastro de la última fiesta religiosa. El aironazo traía embozadas de polvo que se metían por todos lados como una plaga del Cielo, y sin embargo los dos jóvenes se veían frescos y libres igual que si hubieran estado en una playa o en un prado o en cualquier lugar igualmente bello y no en esa atroz ciudad. Era demasiado tarde para que Ignacio tomara otro camino. Bibiana, arrinconada contra el poste del arco, lo había sentido. Lo barrió con una mirada tan fuerte que hizo que su acompañante se volviera también. Y sacó la lengua como si fuera a escupir, pero no lo hizo. Esa vez no lo hizo. Sólo se mojó los labios, un segundo, antes de aferrarse al cuerpo que la tenía atrincherada en ese rincón. En su cara se dibujó una sonrisa mala, de desafío, de triunfo. Vino el viento, otra vez. Ignacio no los vio más.

Pensó otra vez, con placer, en la película que había disfrutado esa tarde.

—Ya me voy a acostar, hijo. Ayúdame.

Ignacio se levantó y le ofreció el brazo a su madre. Por fin, pensó.

—Quién sabe hasta qué horas pensará quedarse ahí —le dijo ella—. Llévale una manta.

Salieron al corredor lleno de ruidos de insectos. Al fondo se encontraba la recámara de la madre: una habitación muy grande, de paredes altas. La puerta de madera rechinó al abrirse.

Mientras esperaba a que su madre abriera el ropero y sacara la manta, Ignacio observó la cómoda cubierta de retratos de familia, incluyendo uno de su hermano más pequeño, el cuarto de la familia, que había muerto casi recién nacido; el reclinatorio, el rosario colgado en la cabecera de la cama. Pensó otra vez en su hermano Antonio. Quizá él se habría sentido satisfecho de ver así a su padre. De verlo por fin con la cabeza doblada, mordiéndose los huevos, solo. Sí, si Antonio podía verlos desde algún lado, si su alma andaba rondando la casa, estaría satisfecho: ya podría descansar en paz.

—Hasta mañana, hijo. Que Dios y la Virgen cuiden tu sueño.

Ignacio besó los dedos en cruz y cerró la puerta tras de sí. Cruzó el patio con la manta. Iba a ponérsela a su padre en las piernas, pero el viejo le cogió el brazo con su mano velluda. Lo apretó con fuerza, como si Ignacio fuera otra vez un niño y él pudiera lastimarlo y hacerlo llorar. Lo miró con ojos brillantes de rencor y escupió al suelo. Lo que nunca había hecho: escupió al suelo. La espuma de su rencor se perdió en la oscuridad de la noche. Luego se puso de pie y echó a andar hacia su habitación, en el otro extremo de la casa.

Antonio sintió un golpe de viento fresco y pensó, con placer, en el Amazonas.

Translator’s Note

Agustín Cadena’s English is excellent and our working relationship is a pleasure: I send him a penultimate draft of a story and he sends me copious praise. (Well, he’s a Mexican gentleman, after all.) His critical comments and notes follow, and are always pertinent. I revise one more time and we’re good to go.

I have translated sixteen and published twelve of Agustín’s stories. Translating a writer more than once or twice results in familiarity with such things as vocabulary, style, syntax, and subject matter. Translating “Domingo” (Sunday) felt familiar, but with a density of tone new to me. It is older than the other stories I’ve translated. Agustín’s comment: “I don’t write like that anymore.”

Still, I was confident I’d captured the story’s essence. Here was a bitter old man living in a dry, featureless town, unable to forgive or forget, who’d kept his children from fulfilling their lives. The first response from Agustín was effusive. Then he gave it to his partner to read—English is the language they share—and discovered she didn’t get an aspect of the story that a Mexican reader would have understood immediately.

In the beginning, we learn the old man is don Antonio Nemiña, a surname Mexican readers would recognize as Galician. Galicians weren’t among the conquistadores or even 18^th and 19^th century immigrants. They arrived mostly in the 20^th century, missing several hundred years of integrating and acquiring local blood along the way. When don Antonio calls his daughter’s boyfriend a mestizo, the Mexican reader already knows that don Antonio considers himself above the people among whom he lives.

Don Antonio smokes cigars, drinks wine, and eats black bread with olive oil. The people of the town smoke cigarettes, drink beer, and eat tortillas. He owns a furniture store, a business typical of Galician immigrants in Mexico, and reads the Galician Mail, a newspaper only available by subscription. He came here in hopes of a better life, but in isolating himself and his family, destroys any chance of that.

Rereading the story with that information, I thought of retired Americans I met in San Miguel de Allende long ago. They had lived there for years and never learned Spanish, associated only with other ex-pat Americans, and had no Mexican friends. That’s another version of this story.

It needed light touches. I don’t like to resort to footnotes. Although I’ve used “stealth glosses” when they fit snugly, “Nemiña, whose name was Galician,” was not acceptable. I added beer to the Mexican family we see briefly, hoping that will recall the contrast of don Antonio’s wine; emphasized the family’s fair complexion and amplified why Ignacio is forbidden to make friends with children of the town. “It’s enough,” Agustín decided. I agree. But it still may be a story that resonates in a way for the Mexican reader that we who are not Mexican cannot fully access.

Patricia Dubrava chaired the creative writing program at Denver School of the Arts, where she also taught Spanish, and currently teaches writing at the University of Denver. She has two books of poems and one of stories translated from the Spanish. Recent translation publications include flash fiction by Agustín Cadena in Café Irreal, 2013 – 2015 and stories in Mexico City Lit, Fiction Attic, and Numéro Cinq in 2016. Dubrava also translates Mónica Lavín and blogs at www.patriciadubrava.com

Agustín Cadena was born in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, México, and teaches at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Essayist, fiction writer, poet and translator, Cadena has won numerous national prizes for fiction and poetry. His 26 books include collections of short fiction, essays and poetry, novels and young adult novels, most recently Fieras adentro, 2015. His work has been translated into English, Italian and Hungarian. His recent publication is Dibujos a lápiz (Pencil Sketches) a collection of flash fiction, 2016. Cadena blogs at elvinoylahiel.blogspot.com

Photo by Roberto Garza

The Horseshoe Finder 
            (A Pindaric fragment)

We look at a forest and say:
+++— Here is timber for ships and masts,
Rosy pines,
Free of hairy burden to their very tops,
They should screech in the storm
As lonely pines
In a raging forestless air;
The plumb-line fastened firmly to the dancing deck will endure
++++++++++++++++++++a salty sole of the wind,
And a seafarer,
In a frantic thirst for space
Drags through soggy furrows
A fragile instrument of a geometer,
To weigh a rugged surface of the seas
Against the attraction of the terrestrial bosom.

Inhaling the scent
Of tarry tears which exude through plaiting,
Admiring the clamped planks of bulkheads
Which were not riveted by a Bethlehem’s peaceful carpenter, but by another,
The father of sea-fares, the friend of a seafarer,
We say:
+++— They too stood on land,
Uncomfortable as a mule’s backbone,
Their tops were forgetting about the roots
In a famous mountainous ridge,
And rustling under freshwater torrents
Offered heaven in vain to trade their noble load
For a pinch of salt.

Where to start?
Everything cracks and sways.
The air trembles with similes,
No word is better than any other,
The earth drones with metaphors,
And light two-wheeled chariots,
Dazzlingly harnessed to flocks of birds strenuously flapping their wings,
Fall to fragments
Competing with snorting favorites of the races.

Thrice-blessed is he who puts a name in a song;
A song embossed with a name
Outlives the others —
It is set apart from her girlfriends by a head-band,
Healing from oblivion by a befuddling odor too strong to endure —
Whether caused by the imminence of a man
Or the smell of a strong beast’s fur,
Or just by the scent of thyme grated by the palms.

The air can be as dark as water, and all creatures swim in it like fish
Whose fins thrust the sphere,
Dense, pliable, slightly warmed —
A crystal, where wheels revolve and horses shy,
A soggy black soil of Neaira each night plowed anew
By pitchforks, tridents, hoes, ploughs.
The air is kneaded as densely as soil —
It is impossible to leave it, hard to enter.

A rustle rushes through the trees like a green bat,
Children play knucklebones with the vertebrae of extinct beasts,
The frail chronology of our era comes to a close.
I am grateful for what was given:
I myself was lost, made blunders, lost count.
The era was ringing like a golden orb,
Hollow, cast, supported by no one,
Responding “Yes” or “No” to each touch,
Thus a child answers:
“I’ll give you an apple” or: “I won’t give you an apple,”
While his face is an exact cast of his voice, which utters those words.

The sound is still ringing although its source has vanished.
The steed lies in the dust and snorts dripping with sweat,
But a steep turn of its neck
Still keeps the memory of a thrush-legged race,
Not a four-hoofed race,
But as many hooves as there were cobblestones
Renewed in four shifts
As many times as a steed foaming with heat
Hit the ground.

Thus
The horseshoe-finder
Blows the dust off it
And polishes it with wool until it shines;
Then
He hangs it on his doorway
Giving it rest,
So it won’t have to strike sparks from flint.

Human lips
++++++++which have nothing more to say
Keep the form of the last uttered word,
And a feeling of heaviness fills the hand
Though the jug
++++++++has been half-spilled
++++++++++++++++++++++while it was carried home.

What I am saying now is not spoken by me,
But is dug out like grains of petrified wheat.
Some
+++++++stamp lions on coins,
Others,
+++++++a head.
Various copper, bronze and golden lozenges
Are buried in earth with equal honor.
The age has tried to gnaw at them leaving the clench of its teeth.
Time cuts me like a coin,
And there is not enough of myself left for myself….

(1923)

The age

My age, my beast, who can try
Look straight into your eyes
And weld with one’s own blood
Vertebrae of two centuries?
Streams of building blood pour
From the throat of earthly things,
Only a sluggard who lacks backbone
Trembles on the brink of new days.

A creature, while still alive,
Should carry its spine on,
And the wave plays
With an unseen backbone.
Infantile age of earth
Is like tender baby’s bones —
The temple of life is again
Sacrificed like a lamb.

To tear the age from bounds,
To found a new world,
The knotty joints of days
Should be bound by flute sounds.
The age sways a wave
With a human sorrow that stings,
While the adder breathes in the grass
With a golden measure of things.

The buds will swell again
And a green shoot will burst,
But your backbone is broken, alas,
My wonderful wretched age!
A cruel and weak beast,
You gaze with a senseless smile
At the traces of your own paws,
Like a beast once strong and agile.

Streams of building blood pour
From the throat of earthly things,
And a warm cartilage of the seas
Sways searing fish ashore,
And from the bird’s height,
From azure wet rocks
Indifference flows down
Upon your mortal wound, beast.

(1922)

January 1, 1924

He who kissed time’s tormented temple,
With a son’s tenderness will recollect
How time lay down to sleep
Behind the window in a snowy mount of wheat.
He who raised time’s sickly eyelids —
Two enormous sleepy apples —
Will always hear the noise of roaring rivers
Of deceptive and deadly times.

A tyrannous age has two sleepy apples
And a beautiful mouth of clay,
But on his death-bed he will kiss
A drooping hand of his aging son.
I know that life’s breath
Grows weaker day by day,
They will soon cut off a simple song
Of clay wrongs and seal the mouth with tin.

Oh, life of clay! Oh, dying of the age!
I fear the only one who can
Grasp you is the one whose helpless smile
Reveals the man who lost himself.
It’s such a pain to look for a lost word,
To raise sickly eyelids
And gather night herbs for a foreign tribe
When one’s blood is thickened with limestone.

The age. The layer of lime hardens in sickly son’s blood.
Moscow sleeps like a wooden chest.
There is nowhere to run from a tyrannous age…
The snow smells of apple as in old days.
I long to run away from my own threshold.
Where to? It’s dark outside,
And as if a paved road sprinkled with salt,
My consciousness shines ahead.

Past lanes, past starling houses, wooden eaves,
Somehow going somewhere not far,
A regular rider covered in a threadbare fur,
I try to button up sleigh robe.
Street after street flies past,
Sleigh’s frozen sound crunches like an apple,
A tight loop would not give up and keeps
Slipping out of my hands all the time.

With what iron hardware does winter night
Jingle along Moscow streets?
It rattles with frozen fish, streams steam
Like silver roach-fish from rosy tearooms.
Moscow—it’s Moscow again. I say “Hello!”
Bear with me—let bygones be bygones,
As in old time, I respect the brotherhood
Of hard frost and pike’s court. [1]

Pharmacist’s raspberry burns in the snow,
An Underwood somewhere clinked,
Two feet of snow and a coachman’s back:
What else to wish? You won’t be hurt or killed.
Winter’s a beauty, and a goat-like starlit sky
Scattered around burns like milk,
With a horse’s hair against the frozen runners
The sleigh robe rings and rubs.

The lanes smoked with kerosene,
Swallowed snow, raspberry, ice,
Still remembering the year of twenty and nineteen,
Scaling off the Soviet sonatina like dry fish.
Can I betray to a shameful smear —
The frost smells of apple again —
The wonderful oath to the fourth estate
And the wows as great as tears?

Whom else will you kill? Whom will you hail?
What lies will you devise?
That’s the Underwood’s cartilage—tear out a key,
And you’ll find a pike’s bone underneath,
And the layer of lime in the blood of a sick son
Will dissolve, and a blessed laughter will burst …
But the typewriters’ simple sonatina is just
A shadow of those mighty sonatas.

(1924, 1937)

[1] An allusion to a satirical fable “Carp-Idealist” of the great Russian satirist  Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-1889). In the story, Carp was proclaiming ideas of equality, observing the laws, which were labeled as “socialist”, and in the end was called for a dispute with Pike, was later taken in custody and finally eaten, or rather, occasionally swallowed by the Pike.

Нашедший подкову 

        (Пиндарический отрывок) 

Глядим на лес и говорим:
— Вот лес корабельный,мачтовый,
Розовые сосны,
До самой верхушки свободные от мохнатой ноши,
Им бы поскрипывать в бурю,
Одинокими пиниями,
В разъяренном безлесном воздухе.
Под соленою пятою ветра устоит отвес,
+++++++пригнанный к пляшущей палубе,
И мореплаватель,
В необузданной жажде пространства,
Влача через влажные рытвины хрупкий прибор геометра,
Сличит с притяженьем земного лона
Шероховатую поверхность морей.

А вдыхая запах
Смолистых слез, проступивших сквозь обшивку корабля,
Любуясь на доски,
Заклепанные, слаженные в переборки
Не вифлеемским мирным плотником, а другим–
Отцом путешествий, другом морехода,–
Говорим:
…И они стояли на земле,
Неудобной, как хребет осла,
Забывая верхушками о корнях
На знаменитом горном кряже,
И шумели под пресным ливнем,
Безуспешно предлагая небу выменять на щепотку соли
Свой благородный груз.

С чего начать?
Всё трещит и качается.
Воздух дрожит от сравнений.
Ни одно слово
+++++++++++++не лучше другого,
Земля гудит метафорой,
И легкие двуколки
В броской упряжи густых от натуги птичьих стай
Разрываются на части,
Соперничая с храпящими любимцами ристалищ.
Трижды блажен, кто введет в песнь имя;
Украшенная названьем песнь
Дольше живет среди других —
Она отмечена среди подруг повязкой на лбу,
Исцеляющей от беспамятства, слишком сильного одуряющего запаха,
Будь то близость мужчины,
Или запах шерсти сильного зверя,
Или просто дух чобра, растертого между ладоней.
Воздух бывает темным, как вода, и всё живое в нем плавает, как рыба,

Плавниками расталкивая сферу,
Плотную, упругую, чуть нагретую,–
Хрусталь, в котором движутся колеса и шарахаются лошади,
Влажный чернозем Нееры, каждую ночь распаханный заново
Вилами, трезубцами, мотыгами, плугами.
Воздух замешен так же густо, как земля:
Из него нельзя выйти, в него трудно войти.

Шорох пробегает по деревьям зеленой лаптой,
Дети играют в бабки позвонками умерших животных.
Хрупкое летоисчисление нашей эры подходит к концу.
Спасибо за то, что было:
Я сам ошибся, я сбился, запутался в счете.
Эра звенела, как шар золотой,
Полая, литая, никем не поддерживаемая,
На всякое прикосновение отвечала “да” и “нет”.
Так ребенок отвечает;
«Я дам тебе яблоко» — или: «Я не дам тебе яблоко».
И лицо его — точный слепок с голоса, который произносит эти слова.

Звук еще звенит, хотя причина звука исчезла.
Конь лежит в пыли и храпит в мыле,
Но крутой поворот его шеи
Еще сохраняет воспоминание о беге с разбросанными ногами —
Когда их было не четыре,
А по числу камней дороги,
Обновляемых в четыре смены,
По числу отталкиваний от земли пышущего жаром иноходца.

Так
Нашедший подкову
Сдувает с нее пыль
И растирает ее шерстью, пока она не заблестит.
Тогда
Он вешает ее на пороге,
Чтобы она отдохнула,
И больше уж ей не придется высекать искры из кремня.

Человеческие губы,
+++++++++++++которым больше нечего сказать,
Сохраняют форму последнего сказанного слова,
И в руке остается ощущение тяжести,
Хотя кувшин
+++++++наполовину расплескался,
+++++++++++++++++++пока его несли домой.

То, что я сейчас говорю, говорю не я,
А вырыто из земли, подобно зернам окаменелой пшеницы.
Одни
++++++на монетах изображают льва,
Другие —
++++++голову.
Разнообразные медные, золотые и бронзовые лепешки
С одинаковой почестью лежат в земле,
Век, пробуя их перегрызть, оттиснул на них свои зубы.
Время срезает меня, как монету,
И мне уж не хватает меня самого.

1923

ВЕК

ВЕК
Век мой, зверь мой, кто сумеет
Заглянуть в твои зрачки
И своею кровью склеит
Двух столетий позвонки?
Кровь-строительница хлещет
Горлом из земных вещей,
Захребетник лишь трепещет
На пороге новых дней.

Тварь, покуда жизнь хватает,
Донести хребет должна,
И невидимым играет
Позвоночником волна.
Словно нежный хрящ ребенка
Век младенческой земли —
Снова в жертву, как ягненка,
Темя жизни принесли.

Чтобы вырвать век из плена,
Чтобы новый мир начать,
Узловатых дней колена
Нужно флейтою связать.
Это век волну колышет
Человеческой тоской,
И в траве гадюка дышит
Мерой века золотой.
И ещё набухнут почки,

Брызнет зелени побег,
Но разбит твой позвоночник,
Мой прекрасный жалкий век!
И с бессмысленной улыбкой
Вспять глядишь, жесток и слаб,
Словно зверь, когда-то гибкий,
На следы своих же лап.

Кровь-строительница хлещет
Горлом из земных вещей,
И горячей рыбой плещет
В берег тёплый хрящ морей.
И с высокой сетки птичьей,
От лазурных влажных глыб
Льётся, льётся безразличье
На смертельный твой ушиб.

1922.

1 января 1924

Кто время целовал в измученное темя,–
С сыновьей нежностью потом
Он будет вспоминать, как спать ложилось время
В сугроб пшеничный за окном.
Кто веку поднимал болезненные веки —
Два сонных яблока больших,–
Он слышит вечно шум — когда взревели реки
Времен обманных и глухих.

Два сонных яблока у века-властелина
И глиняный прекрасный рот,
Но к млеющей руке стареющего сына
Он, умирая, припадет.
Я знаю, с каждым днем слабеет жизни выдох,
Еще немного — оборвут
Простую песенку о глиняных обидах
И губы оловом зальют.

О, глиняная жизнь! О, умиранье века!
Боюсь, лишь тот поймет тебя,
В ком беспомо’щная улыбка человека,
Который потерял себя.
Какая боль — искать потерянное слово,
Больные веки поднимать
И с известью в крови для племени чужого
Ночные травы собирать.

Век. Известковый слой в крови больного сына
Твердеет. Спит Москва, как деревянный ларь,
И некуда бежать от века-властелина…
Снег пахнет яблоком, как встарь.
Мне хочется бежать от моего порога.
Куда? На улице темно,
И, словно сыплют соль мощеною дорогой,
Белеет совесть предо мной.

По переулочкам, скворешням и застрехам,
Недалеко, собравшись как-нибудь,–
Я, рядовой седок, укрывшись рыбьим мехом,
Все силюсь полость застегнуть.
Мелькает улица, другая,
И яблоком хрустит саней морозный звук,
Не поддается петелька тугая,
Все время валится из рук.

Каким железным скобяным товаром
Ночь зимняя гремит по улицам Москвы,
То мерзлой рыбою стучит, то хлещет паром
Из чайных розовых — как серебром плотвы.
Москва — опять Москва. Я говорю ей: здравствуй!
Не обессудь, теперь уж не беда,
По старине я принимаю братство
Мороза крепкого и щучьего суда.

Пылает на снегу аптечная малина,
И где-то щелкнул ундервуд,
Спина извозчика и снег на пол-аршина:
Чего тебе еще? Не тронут, не убьют.
Зима-красавица, и в звездах небо козье
Рассыпалось и молоком горит,
И конским волосом о мерзлые полозья
Вся полость трется и звенит.

А переулочки коптили керосинкой,
Глотали снег, малину, лед,
Все шелушиться им советской сонатинкой,
Двадцатый вспоминая год.
Ужели я предам позорному злословью —
Вновь пахнет яблоком мороз —
Присягу чудную четвертому сословью
И клятвы крупные до слез?

Кого еще убьешь? Кого еще прославишь?
Какую выдумаешь ложь?
То ундервуда хрящ: скорее вырви клавиш —
И щучью косточку найдешь;
И известковый слой в крови больного сына
Растает, и блаженный брызнет смех…
Но пишущих машин простая сонатина —
Лишь тень сонат могучих тех.

1924, 1937

Translator’s Note

As Mandelstam said in the “Conversation about Dante,” poetical speech is heard in a very relative way because in a true work of poetry we hear many voices, one of which, a musical voice, is deaf without a word; another, narrative, is absolutely meaningless without music and images, and can be retold as a dull story (that is the best proof of the absence of poetry); the other voice, metaphorical, expresses nothing without poetical motive and meaning revealed in a definite context. This thought of the Russian poet coincides to some extent with Gerard Manley Hopkins’s definition of verse as “speech wholly or partially repeating the same figure of sound.” To name the phenomena of the world is to reveal them. Revelation is re-evaluation: re-veiling and unveiling something so palpable and fragile that when “rendered in a disdainful prose,” to quote Pushkin, it evaporates.

It is my contention that the word as such is untranslatable, even in prose. As George Steiner mentioned, there is no such a vehicle that can transport a word literally into another language. Even composing in one’s own language is an impossible task. Imitations, adaptations, or free translations, which are of no time as poetry itself, on the other hand, do not attempt to render the original poem as translation as such into another language. What one can try to render is what George Steiner calls in After Babel “a contingent motion of spirit” (Steiner 71).

Translating the poems of Osip Mandelstam is even more impossible, since his poetry is not only full of allusions and hidden and direct citations (as, for instance, allusions to Pindar in “The Horseshoe Finder”), but it is also esoteric, and the bridges / associations between metaphors are in most cases eliminated. Hence the translator of Mandelstam’s poetry has to do a lot of research, but then thoroughly “hide” the acquired knowledge between the lines, since translation differs from interpretation (although the latter is also implied).

In Mandelstam’s “The Horseshoe Finder” (1923), “unbridled passion for space,” a desire to sail “beyond the Gates of Hercules” erases the boundary between time and space. The sea is doubtless a metaphor of life while wandering, in my view, is a metaphor of a spiritual quest. Mandelstam’s seafarer may be Odysseus (since he is called “The father of sea-fares, the friend of a seafarer”), but the scholars of Mandelstam’s poetry, Steven Broyd and Clare Cavanagh, do not exclude Peter the Great, since he was also a shipbuilder, though not “a Bethlehem’s peaceful carpenter.” As was mentioned by a number of scholars, rhythm and imagery of the poem have allusions to Pindar as well as to Hesiod’s Theogony (915-917), in which the Muses and their mother Mnemosyne are crowned with frontlets. It is notable that in Mandelstam’s “The Horseshoe Finder,” oblivion (or amnesia) is caused by an overly strong, befuddling smell, the source of which might be the closeness of a male, or the smell of a strong wild beast’s hair, which is akin to Yeats’ “sensual music” (“Sailing to Byzantium”) of the dying generations; hence the vital power of procreation can lead to unbeing if not saved by the creativity or by the “monuments of unageing intellect.”

The image of time, which “has tried to gnaw” on ancient coins, reminds us of Bergson’s image of time where the past “is gnawing into the future.” (Matter and Memory, 52-53.) In Mandelstam’s poem, however, time “cuts me”–the lyrical hero, if not the poet himself, is literally cut by time. Thus, time for Mandelstam, who is alluding to Dezhavin’s (1743-1816) last poem, “The River of Time” [Reka vremyon] and to the theme of oblivion, is a fearful thing. The theme of Derzhavin’s poem is the flux of time which carries away all the human deeds and “drowns in the chasm of oblivion/ nations, kingdoms and kings.”

In “The Age” [Vek] Mandelstam refers to time as “a sick and dying beast,” while in “1 January 1924” the age is shown as a dying tyrant that will nevertheless “sink onto the numb arm of an aging son.” Mandelstam opposes sick time to the roaring rivers of deceptive and desolate times, alluding both to the bloody Soviet reality and to Derzhavin’s “The River of Time.” Hence, the necessity to heal or save sick time with music—even at the cost of the poet’s own life. Therefore, the theme of overcoming separation in time and isolation in civilization and culture, by thus healing or saving time, was inevitably connected in Mandelstam’s poetry with the theme of art. Here “a flute is a metonymy of art, poetry,” as was stated by the Russian scholar Etkind. Similarly, in “The Horseshoe Finder,” the theme of wandering and a spiritual quest is connected with the art of poetry.

Ian Probstein, associate professor of English at Touro College, New York, is a bilingual English-Russian poet and translator of poetry. He has published nine books of poetry and more than a dozen books of translation; in all, he has more than 450 publications credits, including work in Atlanta Review, The International Literary Quarterly, Brooklyn Rail: In Translation, and in An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature, 1801-2001: Two Centuries of a Dual Identity. Recently he published Spiritual Soil, a book of essays on Russian Poetry (Moscow: Agraph, 2014), two books of poetry: Gordian Knot (Milan: 2014), The Circle of Being (Vladivostok, Russia, 2015), and participated in the definitive edition of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas in Russian (Moscow: Rudomino, 2015).

A great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) led an unsettled life full of tribulations, wandering, and exile. After his Stalin epigram of 1934, for which the dictator, who used to say that “vengeance is best when served cold” (literally:“vengeance is a cold dish”), never forgave the poet, Mandelstam was first sent to Cherdyn’ in Siberia. Due to the protection of Bukharin, then a powerful Communist party functionary who was fond of Mandelstam’s poetry, the term was somehow softened: he had to live in the provincial town of Voronezh (deprived of the right to live in the capital and big cities) and finally was arrested again in 1937, sent to Vladivostok labor (virtually concentration) camp, where he perished in 1938. The exact date of his death is unknown; the poet has no grave of his own.