This morning I pulled from my bookshelf a translation of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I flipped to the end, p. 1,463! Then I backflipped to the middle, where I read on p. 731 the essence of Hugo’s message about the miserable poor of France. Next to it on the shelf was a five-volume set of the novel in French, so I pulled out the third volume and had a go at translating the lines myself.
Just before the lines of my translation, the narrator had recounted an incident where Marius, walking at a wintry nightfall, had run into two barefoot girls in torn rags whispering to each other about their narrow escape from the police. Once they had disappeared, he continued his walk:
Along the way, in an alley off the Rue Mouffetard, he saw a child’s coffin covered in a black cloth, lying across three chairs and lighted by a candle. It brought to his mind the two girls of the twilight.
‘Poor mothers!’ he thought. ‘There’s one thing sadder than seeing your children die, and that’s seeing them live bad lives.’
The verb ‘to read’ does not tolerate the imperative, an aversion it shares with a few others: ‘to love’ … ‘to dream’ …
Like a Novel (originally Comme un roman), Daniel Pennac (my translation)
*****
I’ve read this book in French. On the back cover is a list of ten rights of a reader, which I found online in the printable form of an English language poster, and which I duly printed and stuck to the back of a particular door for everyone to read.
Trembling. It’s what I do best. I’m an expert at trembling. I have an incredible mastery of trembling. Had it since I was very small. Since the day I started kindergarten, the teacher has been telling my mother who comes to pick me up every day, running from the Sendai–Minami Sanriku train; she has been telling my father who never misses a fete at the Shizugawa school: Your daughter, she trembles; it’s amazing how she trembles; it’s amazing how well she trembles. Perhaps she didn’t say exactly that at the end, Your daughter, how well she trembles, but she looked so impressed that I think she did. I am the best at trembling.
It began the first time someone said, All children under the table. At first, I hesitated. When the voice repeated, All children under the table, the Earth is trembling, I thought, it’s the table with the red tablecloth, and on top of it all the flowers and the birds and the horses and the multicoloured lanterns of the origami class for the school fete, if it starts trembling, us underneath, no one to watch it, everything will be knocked to the ground, the fete knocked to the ground. But the voice insisted, so I slipped under the table with the others, and I thought the only thing to do was to tremble all together, me, us, the table, the flowers, the birds, the horses, the multicoloured lanterns of the origami class for the school fete. And that’s what I did; every time, that’s what I did and the teacher said, Your daughter, she’s an earthquake on legs; and the old doctor Tokiji Watanabe looked at me for a long time, a long time, and he said, There is actually a sickness called ‘Essential Tremor’ or ‘Familial Tremor’, but to be sure, we’ll have to wait till she grows up, and she’ll have to learn to live with it.
Learn to live with it; Papa says, It’s Shinto, it’s knowing that everything is connected, nothing and no one is ever separated, it’s our pride. I’m not sick, my name is Katsumi, Victorious Beauty; my father chose my name and he never misses the school fete that takes a long time, a long time to get ready, sometimes all year, and every day when parents ask, What did you do today?, me, Katsumi, I answer, Today we got ready for the school fete, and the next day, and for days and days, when Papa or Mama asks What did you do today?, always the same answer, Today we got ready for the school fete.
This morning, Friday 11th March 2011, for the school fete, for the origami class, I brought in some beautiful old paper that Grandma Sadako gave me. There’s a drawing on it that frightens me, but Papa says, Fear is like the tengu, like trembling, you must tame it; take this picture, it’s by Hokusai, our ‘Old man mad on painting’, his Great Wave off Kanagawa, it’s everywhere in the world, it’s our pride. So I dared to take it because folding, it calms my trembling, and especially because I saw her in the folds, the creases, the teeth and the claws of the sea on the paper: the crane of my dream. She was just waiting for me so she could fly away. And that’s what I did. All morning, I had to fight with this rotten drawing and my trembling. In the end, she was standing on the table with the red tablecloth; the one‑thousandth crane for Grandma Sadako, who folds one every day, saying, It’s my prayer; and she was the most beautiful, too.
She’s Prussian blue and yellow ochre, with greys like you’ve never seen over her whole body; here pale like shellfish soup, there dark like pea soup, and a very white spot on her throat. The great wave living inside her doesn’t frighten me any more. Papa is right. Everything is connected, no one is separated. It was 2.30pm when the voice shouted, All children, quick, the Earth’s trembling. I held her close to me under the table with the red tablecloth. Both of us lying down, folded, patient. When I put her up to my ear, I clearly heard the roar of the sea; Mama, running from the Sendai–Minami Sanriku train; Papa, his footsteps, full of pride, coming to the school fete. She was just waiting for me so she could fly away. I’m not trembling any more.
Anne Bihan, Noumea, New Caledonia, 29 April 2011
‘Great Wave off Kanagawa’, Hokusai (Image courtesy Wikipedia)
26th Aug – Found out that lactose-free cream can’t be whipped.
27th Aug – A 10 year-old told me about a scorpion. It’s a dirt bike trick where the rider throws his body up off the seat, curling his legs up and back like a scorpion’s tail.
28th Aug – Taught English to an ambassador. That’s a first!
29th Aug – Read that some of Marcel Proust’s lines are the longest in English literature.
Illustration of a sentence by Proust, from ‘How Proust can change your life’, Alain de Botton, pp. 32, 33
30th Aug – My students never write in cursive (running writing). One 13 year-old said he had one-hour cursive writing lessons once a week when he was in Year 3 (8 y.o.), but he didn’t like it and prefers to print. What is truly amazing to me is that teachers give them the choice.
