On the Train from Norwich to London

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Scribe Doll

The journey from Norwich to London was supposed to take two hours.  It took a little over four.  When we left Norwich, all seemed on schedule.  Then they got us to leave the train and wait on the platform in the cold East of England wind.  By the time we got loaded back on, the Abellio Greater Anglia train company had somehow managed to squeeze three trainloads of passengers onto one (if animals were to travel like that the European Union would probably intervene).

 

Next to me, a young woman, apparently impervious to the discomfort of close physical proximity to her fellow passengers, pulls on a ball of wool at the bottom of her tote bag on the floor as far as the thread will reach, and resumes crocheting.  I’m not sure whether to get irritated by the space  – already reduced by circumstances – she lays claim to, or admire her refusal to have her plans altered.  I stare at the purple and orange egg-shaped dome forming between her fast-moving fingers.  Is it a future baby mitten? Or an aspiring sock? Leaning against the gangway wall opposite me, H. is absorbed in a volume of Georges Simenon.  I wonder if I have enough room to open my Donna Leon novel and hold it far enough for my long-sighted eyes to focus on the print.  My reading glasses are in my rucksack, and there’s definitely not enough space to turn around and take it off my back.

 

I ask if delays are usual on this line.  Heads nod, long suffering.  The tall, youngish man on my right has earphones plugged into his ears.  “Are you listening to the match?” I ask.

“Yes, do you want the score?”

“Yes, please.”

“Belgium’s just scored.”  He looks around, as though checking for anyone who might be listening.  “I’ve probably spoilt it for everybody else now.”

“Great!”

A slim, elderly lady with a short, blonde, spiky haircut with a shock of pink, overhears.  “Are you Belgian?” she asks.

“No, but we’re currently living in Brussels.  Have you been there?”

She shakes her head, while the man nods, saying he’s been there once, briefly.

“It’s quirky,” I tell them.  “Fantastic Trappist monk ale.”

 

The train stops in the middle of the countryside.  Are we in Essex or Suffolk?  There’s an announcement on the loudspeaker but it’s too faint to hear.

“Excuse me… Excuse me…” A very young man wearing glasses, in train company uniform, edges through the crowd.  I tell him we can’t hear the announcements.  He nods and says that’s what he’s here for.  He steps over people’s bags, feet and bodies and finally reaches the staff cubicle to make an announcement.  This time, it can be heard loud and clear over our heads.  We’re informed that there’s a broken down train ahead of us, and we can’t move until that’s been removed.  Sadly, though, nobody has any idea when that will happen.  Then he fights his way to the buffet and brings out a large bagful of small bottles of still water.  They get passed around.  I hand one to H.  “Aren’t you thirsty?” he asks, offering it to me.  “Yes, but there’s no room to get to the loo, afterwards,” I say.

 

The train moves.  A man in a suit wants to get past me, and I squash myself against the wall to let him through.  He says he needs to get off at the next stop.  No sooner does he speak than the train slows down and grinds to a halt.

The man with the earphones turns out to be a book illustrator.  He often travels from Norwich to London and says such delays are not infrequent.  “Oh, so that’s why Norwich rents are so low,” I say.

He says the train company has received funding for new trains which will travel a lot faster.  The only problem is that no funding has been received yet to upgrade the rails.  So the fast new trains will have to go slowly, anyway, since they can’t whizz on the old rails.

The train starts again.

The lady with the shock of pink hair asks me about Bruges.  I tell her it’s beautiful but that she should also visit Ghent.  “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix,” says the man in the suit.  “Or is it from Aix to Ghent?”

The illustrator and I stare at each other for a second, trying to remember.  I don’t recognise the quotation.  The lady with the shock of pink hair thinks it’s “from Ghent to Aix”.

I turn to H.  “That’s one for you.”

He looks up from his book.  “‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix‘ – Robert Browning.”

The train reaches the next station, and the man in the suit gets off, saying goodbye to us.

The illustrator slides his finger in the screen of his smartphone.  “Here it is.  ‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’.”

He hands his phone to the lady with the shock of pink hair.  She reads:

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he:

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;

‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

I feel my knees have locked after hours of leaning against the wall.  Outside the train, the East Anglian countryside is flooded by a magenta sunset.  The train speeds up.  We listen to the lady with the shock of pink hair.

And all I remember is, friends flocking round

As I sat with his head ‘twixt my knees on the ground;

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which (the burgess voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

Outside the train, it’s now dark.  The train pulls into London Liverpool Street.  We say goodbye to our fellow passengers.  Everybody smiles.  “It was really nice meeting you,” we all say.

Scribe Doll

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Pictures of Saint-Gilles

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Scribe Doll

In the heart of bas Saint-Gilles, the cobbles of Le Parvis are lined on both sides with cafés, brasseries and a couple of Moroccan cake shops.  Tables are put outside at the first glimmer of elusive  Brussels sunshine.  People sit drinking beer or coffee and smoking until late in the evening.  Some bring babies in prams, fast asleep to the lullaby of human chatter, traffic noise and music.  I like it that the Bruxellois consider going out for a drink as a family occasion.

On the corner between Le Parvis, the police station and the church of Saint Gilles, stands the Brasserie Verschueren.  When there is no more space on the pavement right outside, tables and chairs spill out across the street, under the swaying acacia trees, at the foot of the eclectic style stone church.  Something about people drinking beer and smoking by the steps of the church seems to humanise the stern building and make it more of the world.

At one of the tables under an acacia tree, a young man with blonde hair and beard is sipping a lager, his attention and thumbs on his smartphone.  Every so often, he reads a message on the display screen, laughs with visible delight, raises his head to look around, self-conscious and, for a few seconds, watches the passing cars.  Then he looks down at his phone again, and starts tapping a message.

Further along, in the blazing afternoon sunshine, a group of thirty-somethings.  The men are wearing T-shirts with writing across the chest.  One of them smooths a square of cigarette paper, licks the edge, then arranges a pinch of tobacco onto it.  He then rolls it up and puts the tip between his lips.  Another is telling a story.  The woman at the table is wearing a short black dress that exposes her bare white legs to the sun.  She twirls her long dark hair, takes a sip from what looks like lemonade, and emits a short laugh.

The regular beggar in the stripy sweatshirt reclines on the church steps and asks passers-by for spare change.

A young father and his son are having a drink together.  Their serious expression suggests a man-to-man talk.  The father, sitting on one of the brasserie’s slated chairs, says something.  The son, comfortably installed in his own, wheel-equipped and lower seat, frowns, ponders, then responds with an earnest waving of the arms.  Their respective drinks stand face-to-face on the table, like equals.  The father reaches out for his glass of beer and takes a gulp.  The son watches intently and waits for the father to hand him his beverage – milk in a baby bottle.  He grabs it with a manly gesture, lifts the rubber tip to his mouth and takes a swig.

A middle-aged nun in pale blue and white comes out of the church and stands on the top of the stone steps, observing the secular world for a moment.  Then she slowly walks down and disappears around the corner.

A young woman in a brilliant white hijab draped around the shoulders of a long-sleeved, ankle-length navy-blue dress walks past the tables, followed by three little boys carrying satchels.

A toddler stumbles after a pigeon who picks up the pace then spreads its wings and flies off.  A young woman runs after the toddler, catches him by the shoulders, turns him around and leads him back to the family table.

A couple at a table by the windows of the brasserie have positioned their chairs strategically, so that his pale skin is in the shade and her darker complexion in the sunlight.  She has threads of white in her dark hair.  He looks a decade or so older.  Both have books open in their laps but their attention is on the life that surrounds them.  She puts her hand on his arm and comments on something that has caught her eye.  He follows her gaze, laughs, then smiles at her, as though seeing her for the first time.  She stares at him, as though to make sure he is real, and smiles back.

A young waitress with a dragon tattoo curling up her arm and shoulder, a round tray laden with drinks, waits at the edge of the pavement for a scooter to drive by, before crossing the street to the church side.

An old man in a checked shirt meanders between the tables, playing the accordion, giving a medley of Italian, Jewish, Russian and French tunes.

A familiar, strident call streaks across the air above the church steeple.  A couple of lime-green and cream parakeets whizz across the sky.

Scribe Doll

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Place de Bethléem

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Scribe Doll

The early evening light bathing Place de Bethléem carries flecks of sunlight.  Since moving to Brussels, I’ve had to arrange my timetable according to the sun.  In other words, as soon as I glimpse a rare hint of a sunbeam, I drop whatever work I am doing and rush out for a walk.  After all, there’s no telling when the grey Brussels sky will grant you your next glimmer of sunlight.

In the middle of Place de Bethléem, across the street from the red brick school building, the paved, vaguely ovaloid area is crowded with the neighbourhood children playing.  The square is filled with excited, happy shrieks as a football is being kicked and bicycles or tricycles slalom among the miniature footballers.  Some are taking it in turns to have a ride on a skateboard.  Others are sitting with dolls, while others again are teasing their dogs who are barking in fun, eager to be included in their humans’ games.

On the low stone walls surrounding this daily improvised playground, sit the mothers.  Many are wearing hijabs, others sleeveless tops or jeans.  While keeping an eye on their children, they are chatting among themselves.  Many in Arabic, others in French.  I also hear snippets of Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Italian, Greek and the odd bit of Flemish.  We’re in the Saint-Gilles area where, I am told, live about one hundred and thirty different nationalities.

There is a Greek café, where they serve the most exquisite coffee, and three Greek restaurants.  And then there’s Posto al Sole, where you can eat generous portions of scrumptious pasta or pizza, made by a friendly team of Moroccans who apparently spent some time in Naples before opening the restaurant on Place de Bethléem.  You’re greeted with the warmth reserved to old friends in composite sentences of French, Italian and English, then seated at one of the square wooden tables with checked oil cloths and dark red paper napkins.  In the small front room, you spear olives onto a toothpick, waiting for your meal, entertained by the histrionics of the Moroccan pizzaiolo who stretches, pummels and tosses the thin circle of pizza dough into the air several times, before flattening it and sliding it into the wood fire oven.  Whatever you order, it tastes wholesome and comforting.  If you’re feeling brave enough or – like me – have just come off the Eurostar and foregone train sandwiches, then you can undertake to share a pizza demi mètre.  That’s right.  A rectangle of pizza half a metre long, served on a board that takes up the whole table.  You can ask for two different toppings.  And so you and your companion start cutting each into his/her end of the pizza… and meet in the middle – that’s if your stomach capacity allows you to reach the middle.

Italian food, prepared by Moroccans, in Brussels.  You can’t beat that.

Scribe Doll

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Jazz and Three Women Carrying Water

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Scribe Doll

In the Place du Jeu de Balle/Vossenplain, the flea market is being packed up.  Small china ornaments, wood carvings, worn-in leather jackets, incomplete sets of cut-crystal glasses and frayed canvasses with oil paintings of forest clearings are wrapped in creased newspaper, crammed into crates and loaded into car boots and transit vans.  The sky above the plain, red-brick gable of the church of Notre-Dame Immaculée is drifting into a tired grey after the effort of glowing with blazing sunshine all morning.

On the cobbles outside La Brocante, on the corner of the Rue des Renards/Vossenstraat, a cluster of square wooden tables is arranged beneath a large tree, crowded with people drinking beer and smoking.  A jazz trio – drums, saxophone and electric guitar – are competing at who will produce the loudest, most alive sound.  The drummer’s pleasure beams through his face.  He beats out crashing rhythms which spark off a dialogue with the electric guitarist.  The latter plucks the strings and makes them vibrate in a tone of measured irony.

Standing between them, the saxophone player blasts a cascade of notes like fragments of coloured glass.  Then he lowers the sax and draws closer to the mic.  A gravelly voice, a staccato tone reminiscent of Jimmy Durante and a rasping Gallic ‘r’ come out in a warm rendition of On the Sunny Side of the Street.

Suddenly, a brassy, nasal beeping sound starts to beat time in unison with the drums.  A young woman at the wheel of a van stuck in traffic on the corner of the Rue Blaes/Blaesstraat is tapping rhythmically on her klaxon.  The musicians grin and launch their instruments into a playful match with the van horn.  The young woman throws her head back and giggles, her brown fringe flopping to the side.  Encouraged by a burst of laughter and applause from the audience, she sets out to tap out her own rhythm pattern on the klaxon.  The road ahead of her is clear.  She waves and drives off.

The sax player resumes On the Sunny Side of the Street.  H and I have been standing till now, so when I see a table become vacant, I suggest we take it.  It is next to an iron fountain shaped like a wide bowl, with a pillar rising from the centre and four spouts dripping water halfway up.  My attention is immediately attracted by the three figures at the top of the pillar.  Three women in long dresses, aprons, lace-up corsets, loose sleeves and long, rectangular headkerchieves tied under their chins.  They are carrying pitchers of water.  Porteuses d’eau.  The tallest of the three is holding her pitcher on her shoulder, leaning her head against it.  They are standing in a conspiratorial huddle, perhaps gossiping.  One of them is partly turning away from her companions, as though commenting with arch disapproval on someone across the street.  The tall woman with the pitcher on her shoulder is smirking knowingly.  The shortest – and perhaps youngest – of the three is cocking her head, eager to hear more.

I tell H they look Flemish.  “Why not Walloon?” he asks.

I say it’s something about their features.  The round cheekbones, the retroussé noses and the arched eyebrows.  Like faces from a painting by Van Eyck.

A boy comes to clear our table.  Shouting over the music, I ask for a lait russe.  He says he doesn’t take the orders but that his colleague will be along shortly.  We ask the next young man with a short apron who walks past but he says we need to order from another waiter, and that he’ll send him over.  Soon afterwards, the man with the correct job description comes up to our table and, a few minutes later, my lait russe – complete with ginger biscuit – and H’s Hoegaarden are on the table.

The jazz trio ends the set with It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.  They tell the audience they play here every fortnight.

We stay to finish our drinks.  When we ask for the bill, the young man clearing our table says he does not handle money.  It seems we need to ask “John”.

“OK.  What does ‘John’ look like?” I ask and listen to a physical description.

Opposite me, beneath the rustling leaves of the large tree, the three Flemish women carrying water start gossiping again.

Scribe Doll

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Three Brussels Quirks and Three Delights (at least for a Londoner)

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Scribe Doll

Quirk No 1: The Milk Issue

“I don’t think we’ll be getting any semi-skimmed milk this week.”

I stare at the sales assistant of our local Carrefour supermarket.  I am suddenly propelled into a parallel universe of Surrealism where I am struggling to make sense of the information I have just been imparted.  The lack of semi-skimmed milk in a refrigerated section otherwise provided with several types of buttermilk, on a weekday morning, feels strange enough but that a large-ish supermarket should not even stock such a simple, everyday product on a daily basis sends my brain into freeze mode.

An Englishwoman we met a few days ago shared my experience and explained that fresh milk – an absolute birthright for us Brits – is not viewed as such by the Belgians, who tend to use the long-life variety.

Given this cultural difference, it is hardly surprising that my requests for goat’s milk, goat’s butter, goat’s yoghurt and goat’s cream – readily available in most London supermarkets – are met with  a look of disbelief, as though I were asking for something alien to this planet.

*   *   *

Quirk No. 2: Cough Sweets

H. and I, suffering from a very tenacious cold, go to the pharmacy in search of cough sweets (you cannot buy any kind of medicine in supermarkets here).  The pharmacist informs us that she has run out.  My face locks, once again, in an expression of disbelief.  She adds, with some impatience, that it’s not her fault, that the supplier has run out.  H. drags me out of the pharmacy before my croaky voice can muster enough volume to ask Are you trying to tell me that a pharmacy stocks just ONE brand of cough sweets?!

*   *   *

Quirk No. 3: Coats in Museum Episode

Still cold-afflicted, we decide to take in the Neo-Impressionist exhibition at the ING Cultural Center.  At the ticket desk, we are told to hand in our coats.  Once again, my brain cannot process the information.  I am not about to go through the metal detector arch of the Eurostar but into a museum, right? “But I’m cold,” I protest.

I am told it’s the museum regulations.  “Yes, but regulations have to make sense, don’t they?” I say.  “Why do I have to take off my coat?”

The explanation I receive is as follows.  It is to avoid the risk of my getting too warm, taking off my coat, carrying it over my arm, and then brushing – and potentially damaging – the paintings with it if I come too close to them.  I am then informed that the museum temperature is 20ºC.  I don’t care what the temperature is.  The air conditioning blows on my legs and I am too cold to appreciate my visit to the museum, but cold enough to leave with a sore throat and in a foul mood.

*   *   *

 Delight No. 1: Gift-Wrapping

We buy a book at a central Brussels bookshop.  It is a birthday present and we ask if they sell wrapping paper.  They don’t, but offer, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, a free gift-wrapping service.  How delightfully civilised.  Something you don’t get in London.

*   *   *

Delight No. 2: No Chains

Yes, there are chains but these are so few and far between that you can easily live in Brussels without ever setting foot in one.  Whether you want to go out for coffee, a beer, dinner or to buy books, Brussels has an abundance of individual businesses, each with its own very distinct personality.  Each café and bookshop could be a character in a story.  Unlike England, where all the High Streets blend into one anonymous row of identical chains, Brussels streets are an adventure, a treasure hunt.

*   *   *

Delight No. 3: Lait Russe or Kaffee Verkeert

In Italy, they have a wonderful hot drink called latte macchiato.  It is for children, the elderly or those, like myself, who love the taste of coffee but cannot tolerate its kick.  Basically, it is hot milk with a dash of coffee.  In the UK, I am forever asking staff in coffee shop chains to make me a latte with half a shot of coffee.  In Belgium, you don’t need to launch into lengthy explanations.  They have, depending on whether you order in French or Flemish, lait russe or kaffee verkeert.  A tall glass of hot milk with a head of froth and a dash of coffee, just enough to flavour the milk.  And it is always served with the Belgian  ‘finishing touch’ – a biscuit, a chocolate or a piece of cake reclining on the saucer.

 

Scribe Doll

 

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Easter in Brussels

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Scribe Doll

M., the neighbour upstairs, asks if I am going to plant flowers in the large pots overgrown with weeds and dusty, pollution-corroded rosemary.  She looks disappointed when I say that I’m not going to bother planting anything, since we’re staying in this flat only six months.  As I look at our mini-deck cum terrace, with its floor made of thick, wave-patterned, blueish glass, I think of red geraniums on the kitchen windowsill, trailing their curly, strongly-scented leaves down the wooden planks that make up the wall beneath it.  I imagine the fragrance of lavender, rosemary, sage, mint, tarragon and basil, growing in shiny terracotta pots on the edge of the terrace.  I picture drilling holes in the tired white wall opposite the living room French window, and hanging baskets of honeysuckle, jasmin and any trailing flowers that are bright yellow.  Then I estimate the cost of all the pots and plants, and know I cannot justify the expense for just six months.

What this flat needs to make it into a home, is colour.  It is a flat with scarce daylight, and which the landlord has furnished in cream, camel and grey.

A flat where the light bulbs are those energy-saving ones.  You know – the ones which need so long to light up that by the time they’ve drummed up a furtive light, you’re leaving the room again (not they ever have the honest, strong glow of a traditional 100W or even 60W bulb).  I want to buy a bright-coloured throw and cushions for the sepia sofa.  Once again, not only do I tell myself that it’s an expense we can’t justify for just six months, but my now permanently injured back and neck – acquired after lifting a few boxes too many, a couple of moves ago – remind me that, no, we cannot just carry it all with us to our next home, wherever that might be.

It’s Holy Week, and I want at least to make an Easter meal full of colour.  I have not cooked a traditional Easter meal in years.  I am not even sure what a traditional Easter dish is.  I remember my grandmother’s scrumptious cooking.  I know I cannot reproduce her touch but I start thinking about the flavours and smells in her kitchen.  Of the colours.  Red.  Especially red.

I wrap eggs in onion skins and foil and hard-boil them.  They look like rusty-gold marble, as I stack them in a bowl.  I decide to make my grandmother’s borscht.  I chop onions, carrots, cabbage and potatoes.  I fill a stockpot with glistening white, orange, ivory and light gold.  Then, last but not least, my eyes feast on the dark red of the beetroot I dice before it permeates the other ingredients with its colour so full of life.  After a few minutes, the rich aroma triumphs over the ever-present Brussels smell of dust.

As I cook, the measured voice of the presenter on Radio Klara – which I have on much of the time – announces Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.  After a couple of weeks here, I am starting to make out some of the Flemish words and every time I do, I feel a sense of glee.  I would like to learn some Dutch while I am here.  A couple of days ago, while buying drawing felt-tip pens from the Flemish stationer, to whom I always speak French, I ask, “Comment on dit ‘Joyeuses Pâques’ en flamand?”

She gives me a long look, then enunciates clearly.

“Zalig Pasen,” I say, hoping I heard correctly, and that what I am saying is true to my intention.

She smiles, thanks me, and wishes me the same.

Easter would not be complete without an appropriate cake.  When I was a child, my grandmother would make kalach, a cake shaped like a braid closing in on itself.  I remember that Greeks have a very similar sweet, so I go to the Greek café in the square up the road, and ask where I can buy one.  The owner tells me there is a Greek delicatessen shop in Rue Birmingham but that sounds too far away.  I decide that an Italian Colomba will be a very decent substitute, so take a long walk to my favourite Italian alimentari on the Rue Haute but they tell me they’re not stocking any this year.

It’s a sunny day, and I decide to ease my disappointment at the prospect of a cakeless Easter by exploring the quirky Rue Blaes, full of antique dealers and second-hand clothes shops.  Suddenly, across the street, I catch sight of a Polish food shop.   I cheer up.  All is not lost.  Indeed, as I walk in, I see my favourite Polish poppy seed cake, makowiec, by the counter.

Our Easter feast is full of colours and different nations.  Russian rusty-gold coloured eggs, and crimson borscht, Polish gold and black poppy seed cake and a bottle of Italian red wine.

Oh, and, of course, a slab of rich brown Belgian chocolate.  The authentic stuff.

Scribe Doll

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London Book Fair 2014

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Scribe Doll

After a warm spell, there’s an icy wind blowing through my jacket as hundreds of us are queuing to get into Earl’s Court exhibition centre.  Plastic badge cases are handed out at the entrance.  We’ve been instructed to download our ID badges and print them in colour but I notice that most people, like myself, thought it a waste of cartridge and are sporting logos in various shades of grey.  I pin mine to the lapel of my jacket.  Ms Katherine Gregor, Literary Translator/Writer.

I walk into what makes Dante’s Inferno sound positively simple to navigate.  The huge, sprawling conference centre with alphabetical aisles is like a city criss-crossed by streets lined with the stalls of hundreds of publishers from what feels like every country on the planet.  Academic, technology, fiction, history, religion, self-help, cookery, children’s, archeology, history, science – my eyes dart in every direction but my mind cannot focus.  Too much to see, too much to take in.  Then there’s the overwhelming, constant, dull buzz of hundreds of voices trapped under the metal dome.  It’s like a bubble that shuts out the outside world and where the artificial lights give all faces an unhealthy yellow tint.  It’s a book city that stretches a mile or so, which I will have to walk up and down and across several times a day for the three days to come.  By the end of the first day, my feet hurt.  The following day, they feel like they’ve been mangled.  By the end of day three, they’re burning, throbbing wrecks at the end of my ankles, and every step I take reverberates through my body.

Shaking hands, smiling, expressing enthusiasm, exchanging business cards.  It’s a huge market place where everyone is touting for work, negotiating deals or trying to make a sale.  I drop every card into the London Book Fair canvas bag we were all handed at the entrance – and which is growing increasingly heavy with brochures – hoping that three months from now, I will remember the face that corresponds to the name on the business card.  Someone should invent an app enabling you to send through the ether – preferably telepathically – all your data straight to the other person’s IT device or mobile ‘phone.  Data that would include name, profession, contact details, photograph, voice sample and scent.  At the same time, the other person could add his/her impression of you to the information received.

I decide to use as my base and reference point for all three days the Literary Translation Centre.  It has the advantage of being situated at the back of Earl’s Court, so close to one of the glass exits, therefore within view of natural daylight.  There, I see many familiar faces.  Translators I have seen either at British Centre for Literary Translation events, or at the London Review Bookshop, or at publishers’ parties.  Time and again I ask – and am asked – “Have we met before?” and “Which languages do you work with?”

Translators compare notes on the difficulty of conveying a given idiom from Turkish, Russian, Mandarin or Italian.  And how do you translate body language?

Thousands of people, hundreds of nationalities, countless different languages.  Whether they are drawn here by love of money, love of fame, or love of books, one thing binds them together – the word, printed on paper or displayed on a screen.

Scribe Doll

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Trying Out a New City (Again!)*

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Scribe Doll

Eclectic, dirty, quirky and – for a European capital – surprisingly scruffy.  This city reminds me of a bric-à-brac shop, where a precious artefact, a piece of useless junk,  an item of modern tat and a neglected masterpiece lie side to side on a moth-ravaged, dusty piece of felt.  Dust being the one substance that binds rubbish and treasures together.  Dust seems to cover every street with a yellowish powder that stings the back of my throat.

The cobbled streets are strewn with food wrapping, plastic bags, the occasional sack of rubbish, and a myriad of cigarette buts that makes you wonder if news of the widespread European smoking ban ever reached these shores.

For a Nanny-State accustomed Brit, the nonchalant attitude towards health and safety measures is also initially shocking.  I have walked along stretches of street that are totally unlit – because of works or some other reason – and there are no security lights or warning signs to stop you tripping over.  I guess this is a city that assumes its inhabitants have enough common sense to find their own way in the dark, just as it takes it for granted that train passengers can see for themselves the wide gorge between the carriage and the platform, and feels no urge to warn anyone to “mind the gap”.

When you first walk across the city, you feel as though you’re entering a junk shop where, at first glance, there is nothing but the smell of damp, dust, and the colour of all the merchandise a kind of uniform, weary sepia-grey.  It’s up to you whether you turn on your heels and walk straight out again, or if you sneeze, wince, venture in, and start picking up one object after another, rubbing some of the dust off with your hands, and examining it carefully.  Someone once told me that this city was “Europe’s best-kept secret” so, like all secrets, you need to dig through cobwebs in order to uncover it.

Look up from the grimy, uneven pavements towards the hazy sky and you will notice that every single building has an architectural detail that distinguishes it from its neighbours.  You’ll see a row of Art Nouveau apartment blocks that look identical from a distance but, if you walk up closer, you’ll see that every balcony has slightly different ironwork, that every window has a slightly different frame, and every rooftop a quirk of its own.  Every building is crafted to tell a story – and a unique one at that.  Suddenly, a stone Virgin and Child smiles down at you from an alcove on a street corner, or above a doorway.  The gothic spires that rise above the skyline seem amused rather than arrogant about their status.

Every street is a distinct individual here.  There are hardly any anonymous chains.  Every brasserie, restaurant and bookshop is a character in its own right, and quietly proud of it.

There is quiet pride and obvious care in the way food and drink are served.  Every hot drink comes with a biscuit or a sliver of cake.  Hot chocolate generally arrives at your table in two parts – a glass of hot milk, and a cupful of chocolate chips next to it, with a long spoon for you to mix to your taste.  Or else, you’re given a kind of solid chocolate lollipop on a wooden stick, for you to immerse into the milk and stir until melted.  Every glass of ice-cold beer (and, after sampling the Trappist monks’ nectar you’re unlikely ever agree to drink another pint in England) comes with a small bowl of pretzels.  Moreover, every beer is served in its own specially appointed crystal-clear, gleaming glass.

We have six months to try out this city.  My hands may get filthy from digging but I have the feeling there’ll be a treasure chest at the bottom.

* Please also see last year’s posts.

Scribe Doll

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Watch this space…

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Scribe Doll

Scribe Doll apologises for the long silence.  She is in the middle of a major relocation.

Please watch this space…

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A Translator’s Point of View…*

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Scribe Doll

* Please see Part One of this story, last week,  A Bookshop for Free Thinkers

…. Last Thursday, 27th February 2014.

“Eat.  You need sustenance,” says Barbara, my publisher, as the tray with canapés comes towards us.  But I can’t eat a thing.  My stomach feels tight.  In fact, every part of me, including my lungs, feels constricted.

Frau Schwepcke, Barbara’s mother, offers me wine but I know it will go straight to my head, so I ask for a glass of tap water, and sip it whilst circulating around the bookshop, greeting people, thanking them for coming.  Most shelves and surfaces at bookHaus carry the small, cloth-bound, cherry-red book – the star of the evening, the reason for the party.  The launch of the translation into English of Italian writer Pino Cacucci’s Le balene lo sanno or, now, The Whales Know.  Inside, right beneath the author’s name, is my name.  Translated by Katherine Gregor.  The writer cannot be here tonight, so I have to present the book.

Two years almost to the day of the first book launch I attended at bookHaus, a launch for my book.

I feel someone take me by the hand.  I turn around.  Barbara smiles.  “You look like I’m taking you to your execution.”  I follow her through the crowd of people, up to the desk at the back of the room, my mind a blank except for the absolute certainty that I have nothing to say.  I suddenly hear my friend B.’s words in my head.  If all else fails, just burst into song and start tap dancing.  In a surreal moment, I try to think of a song.

Just over a year ago, I signed the contract with Haus Publishing to translate this book.  I spent several months trying to give Pino Cacucci an English voice.  Trying to be a servant of two masters – faithful to the writer’s intentions, faithful to the reader’s expectations.  Building a bridge from one language to another.  For several months, I lived and breathed the magic of Baja California, accompanying the author on his journey along this Mexican peninsula in the footsteps of John Steinbeck.  Months of visualising a land I have never seen, meeting its inhabitants so full of warmth and wisdom, listening to their stories of buried treasures and infamous privateers.  Months of discovering new horizons.  Getting to know the whales that come up close to the shore and allow humans to stroke them.  Whales who show off their calves, unafraid of humans, because they know that, in Baja California, they have nothing to fear, because they know more than we give them credit for.  Indeed, the whales know…

I am too short to be seen from the back of the bookshop.  Barbara points to a wide, leather-padded stool and tells me to stand on it.  She calls for everyone’s attention, and introduces me.  I smile but am not listening to her.  I just keep glancing from the soft padded stool to my feet.  I am wearing high heels.  I have visions of sinking through the leather and crashing down on the desk, or onto the audience in the front.  I don’t know what to do.  Barbara hands over to me and I have to make a split-second decision.  So I slip off my shoes and stand up on the stool in my stockinged feet.  “When I was little, a paediatrician told my mother I’d grow up to be average height for a Nordic woman and tall for a Mediterranean.  Instead, I’ve turned out short.  If I ever get my hands on that paediatrician…”

I have said this too loud and a giggle spreads through the room.

I start speaking about Pino Cacucci – I could not have wished for a better, more accommodating author to translate.  Friendly, eager to help, willing to answer all the questions I had about the text and highly appreciative.

Then I read out three passages from the book, narrowed down from the twenty or so favourite passages I’d picked out in the morning.  I think I must look like a total idiot, standing barefoot in full view of members of the Mexican Embassy.

I stand down to take questions.  Words just shoot out of my mouth, bypassing my brain.  People laugh.  I guess that must be good.

After the questions, I turn to Barbara.  “Was that OK?”

She beams.  I imagine she must be pleased.

People ask me to sign copies of the book.  I feel a tiny bit of a fraud.  After all, I did not create the book but merely built a bridge to it.  As a highly-respected translator and former teacher of mine says, “I am only as good as the book I translate.  The better the book, the better my translation.”  And The Whales Know is a jewel of a book.  I feel immensely privileged to have facilitated access to it for English-language readers.  Still, I’ve never been asked to sign books before, so I produce my pearwood and chrome Faber-Castell fountain pen – might as well rise to the occasion with swirls of jet-black, glossy ink.

Two years, almost to the day, after the first party I ever attended at bookHaus, another party.  Another book launch.  If not my book, then one I have the honour of bringing to an English-language readership.  A book that has become a part of me, and I a part of it.

Scribe Doll

 

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