Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  Repatriated in time to make his way to Angelo Essermos’s tomb in the midst of a procession in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of his death, Guldo spied, in a glass-enclosed recess in the mausoleum, a pair of dice placed on a sheet of paper on which the handwriting of two individuals intersected—objects whose history was recounted by the leader of the pilgrims.

  At a time when he was still unknown, seated one day at an empty table in the Café Sylvius, whose beautiful proprietress and his eternal creditor, the widow Soneda, he happened to be courting, Essermos, while inveighing against a new tax on alcohol in whose name he had just been refused any further extension of credit, noticed the arrival of a regular customer, the journalist Cactero, whom he challenged to a game of dice with his watch as forfeit.

  Destiny smiled on him, and Soneda, having recovered her outlay, honored him with a handsome receipt carefully traced on ruled paper, while a flask of To Be Drunk on One’s Knees—a liquor of the region said to justify its vainglorious name—was uncorked and served to toast both the winner and the loser.

  And soon the tipsy Essermos, in lines of verse perpendicular to those already written, elaborated this theme on the receipt: “Soneda, as our two hands are here, may our two hearts one day be joined.”

  Now these lines, beautiful ones indeed, captivated Cactero, who was able to popularize them easily by publishing a facsimile of the receipt in his newspaper.

  Suddenly haloed in glory, Essermos was able to stage his Gerta, a medieval verse-drama whose première successfully launched his career.

  The young queen-regent of Carmedia, Gerta, widow of Granor VI and mother of little Granor VII, finds consolation with the royal treasurer Hukloude.

  They have within the palace what they call their “gilded nest,” a rich chamber for caresses whose wall can part in two places to produce the suspect orifice of a secret corridor.

  Gerta is in somber spirits, and the people are in despair. In times gone by a sorcerer predicted that the ruling family would be extinguished by one tragic death. Three times already periods called false fear had been experienced, born out of the momentary lack in the royal house of an heir, even a collateral one. And now the child-king Granor VII, with no eventual successor, is fatally at risk.

  A moving scene takes place in the gilded nest, in which Hukloude annotates a certain List of Salaries while awaiting Gerta, who soon joins him.

  A frown darkens the queen’s forehead.

  Every seven years, so that the invincibility of the power of the monarchy may be symbolically affirmed in public, the leaders of the ten noblest families of the realm seize the extremity of a long pole whose other end is held solely by the king, who, triumphant over simulated adverse efforts, forces them back.

  Now, the seven-year due date is near. The king is only twelve—and the very spirit of the trial requires that he be sequestered. If, among the ten, some ambitious deadly conspiracy …

  Hukloude reassures her. He is of the same mind—and has consulted an astrologer, whose calculations concerning the ordeal have produced the word Norm. And, laughing, he adjures the queen to deal with her misgivings by using a certain arbitrary privilege of ostracism that is within her power.

  Next, one sees in the course of a series of scenes:

  * * *

  1. A playful Granor VII, frolicking unceremoniously with peasants of his age—whom he arranges in two rows so as to lecture them in pompous imitation of his tutor—not forgetting to puncture here and there with a pun the farcical severity of the latter’s stilted language.

  * * *

  2. The queen leading Granor VII before the statue of Gic, whose story she tells him.

  Gic, a humble rope-maker’s apprentice, and Clotta, whose prosperous father would not hear of a poor son-in-law, loved one another without hope.

  For their secret meetings they had chosen, within an abandoned close, a stone bench surrounded by a spinney.

  One evening a stranger brings Gic a rope, offering him a sackful of gold if he will make it invisibly breakable at one point—thus saving the life of the traitor Sarnilas.

  All at once inebriated by visions of a forthcoming marriage, Gic said “Yes”—and succeeded.

  The next day at dawn a procession was leading Sarnilas to his execution along the river Closeris just by Siouf bridge, so rickety that no one ever ventured on it, even prudently taking note of this warning carved in its threshold: “Pass on, having prayed, swift runner.”

  Suddenly, having broken with a single effort the rope binding his wrists, Sarnilas, raining blows around him, escaped—and crossed, soon to disappear, the dangerous bridge where none dared pursue him.

  Toward evening, Gic, armed with his gold, sat gloating on the stone bench, his mind filled with delightful dreams. As the warm autumn waned, the migratory birds, still not contemplating their exodus, sang gaily in every register.

  Clotta joined him, learned everything—and stung the traitor’s accomplice with an eternal adieu.

  Aspiring henceforth to nothing higher than a life of penitence, Gic entered the order of Bassorian monks after having affirmed, according to the rule, his renunciation by hideously scarring his face, and placing on his ring finger, as a recompense for his heroic mutilation, a lapis destined to elicit pious kisses, like the ecclesiastical amethyst.

  Gifted with natural eloquence, he won renown for a multitude of homilies which after his death—not without first soliciting help from here and there to make up for his lack of instruction—a well-born Bassorian, Tercus de Lal, published in series of ten.

  And at the place on the bench where, out of disappointment, his holy vocation had been born, a statue was erected to his memory whose finger bore a real lapis endowed with great power of protection for whoever kissed it.

  And Granor VII gladdens his fearful mother by placing his lips against the blue stone.

  * * *

  3. The queen paying a visit to the rich Tinophir, known as The Insular.

  Proprietor of the island of Dièsne in the river Nadur, Tinophir tirelessly plays the role of the government’s Dutch uncle.

  An eccentricity has made of him an inveterate thief, who never fails to give back to his victims much more than the value of his pilferings.

  Far from blushing at his essentially harmless failing, he draws attention to it, and, as a kind of profession of faith, has caused to be engraved on a stone panel in the great hall of his palace the famous Chain of Attila cited by Crôle—a cynical succession of arguments through which the haughty chieftain, exacting approval from those around him, liked to arrive publicly at a pact with his conscience concerning the legitimacy of his depredations.

  The queen came as a supplicant.

  Each time that a crown prince of Carmedia was born, the twelve months, figured by twelve symbolically costumed maidens, would come to perform a dance around his cradle awhile—a fervent company—praying aloud that Time might smile uninterruptedly upon him, his natal month serving as monitor.

  Born in January,5 Granor VII had a totally white monitress clad in a snowy gown embellished with a large icicle diamond, which Tinophir had stolen—and more than compensated for next day by canceling a large debt owed him by the crown.

  Gerta asks for and receives the loan of this jewel which, paramount in the dance around the cradle, seems to her well suited to protect Granor VII during the dreaded ordeal.

  In a voice weakened by emotion she thanks Tinophir, apologizing for thus abusing his generosity.

  * * *

  4. The queen and Granor VII in the garden of the proverbially credulous Viaz, known as the holy stutterer. Good fortune is guaranteed anyone who can make him swallow a story that will momentarily suppress his stutter through surprise.

  Instructed in advance, Granor VII addresses him thus:

  The wealthy Ablasson adores redheads—and jealously cloisters a bevy of them in his palace.

  One of them, Margealia, known for her goddesslike bearing, is fast maturing and dreads a
basement.

  Ablasson loves to carouse with his redheads but, jealous, will allow no man at his table, save his amusing crony Tric, whose incomparable verve is combined with a reassuring ugliness.

  Sequestered with only her rivals for company, Margealia confides her fears to Tric, who, shrewdly obliging parasite that he is, vows to help her.

  Shortly thereafter Tric, who knows that Ablasson loves to read and values his own opinions, begins matters by tossing out a laudatory phrase concerning Varocourt’s Nature’s Shillyshallying.

  The next day he brings the book itself, interspersed with glosses designed to emphasize the main argument.

  Varocourt shows how different, depending on the individual, the rate of aging can be—for example, how much faster a countrywoman declines than a lady of the town. He studies the female form from age to age, and maintains that the third physique—which he locates at the age Margealia has reached—often marks the apogee.

  Ablasson reads—and, influenced, bestows his favors on Margealia.

  Tric does not stop there.

  He goes to the Galati, an Eden so dense that its origins are considered prehistoric. A famous echo exists there; whoever succeeds in rendering it sevenfold by shouting loud enough will, it is said, feel a salutary inspiration fulgurate within him.

  Victor at the third shout, Tric, on an impulse, goes to pluck a full-blown lily—then thrusts his hand through the single hole in the hollow trunk of a decaying tree. And the lily, in more than full bloom, strikingly regains its vibrancy thanks to the contrast offered by the ambient darkness.

  Tric understands—and succeeds in having Ablasson recruit several women older than Margealia, who enhance her charms.

  But he goes further still.

  Ablasson, blatantly debauched, proclaims himself moreover a skeptic and unbeliever, cynically insists on immortalizing himself just as he is—by means of a strange tomb now under construction.

  Tric asks Margealia for her portrait—and with certain ends in view presents it to the mortuary artist.

  Soon afterward Ablasson, convoked, goes to see his finished tomb, accompanied by Tric.

  His instructions have been closely heeded.

  Reclining on the funerary stone, a polychrome statue of a woman: red hair, short horns, cloven feet, coral lips with a lubricous smile. Forming a half circle around the chevet, a wall whereon are cited honorifically in letters of gold illustrious felonies crowned with definitive success. In front of the wall and behind the tombstone, a round stele whose horizontal summit bears a finely engraved reproduction of Créno’s famous painting, The Death of St. Ardelle, a work inspired by this text of Exian: “St. Ardelle, when Death came to bestow his fatal accolade, received from an angel who had suddenly appeared an offer of postponement—and refused, saying: ‘What more beautiful than death to the heart of a believer?’” But the fiercely impious Créno had derisively given St. Ardelle a pose that contradicted her utterance, having her struggle, terrified, in the embrace of the scythe-wielding skeleton. From the summit to the base of the stele, Méroci’s Plea against Rigor is engraved spirally.

  Now the artist, supplied with the portrait, had given his she-devil the face of Margealia, who succeeds in deriving additional favor from this eternal distinction of rank.

  Tric noticed that a little space remained at the bottom of the gold-lettered wall—and through Margealia, he acquaints Ablasson with the Beneficial Fib of the Sage Octul:

  “A castaway clinging to a spar, Octul is washed ashore on the savage island of Nactade, whose natives force him to perform the vilest tasks. But his learning serves him well. Certain stars regularly disappear for a time—the result, some say, of their occultation by some dark sphere that gravitates around each. Recalling that, in the neck and withers of Pegasus, an absence of this sort is about to end, Octul, on the proper night, points his finger in the right direction and makes a thousand public grimaces from which the phenomenon seems to issue. And the natives, dazzled by so much power, crown him their king.”

  Ablasson applauds—and Margealia reigns more supreme than ever, while the funerary wall is further enriched.

  Surprise has dictated several interruptions to Viaz, whose stuttering has diminished—then disappeared, to Gerta’s great joy.

  * * *

  5. Granor VII listens to his mother, near a statue of Jortier.

  Shortly before a certain Varnio-Carmedian war, Jortier, renowned for his exceptionally acute vision, boasted of being able to defeat all comers with regard to the minute deciphering of any object approaching from a distance.

  Three daredevils accepted the challenge—and, on commission, an artist executes behind closed doors a medium-size painting designed for subtle decoding, which, advancing slowly on the day of the contest, he himself tenders toward the three contestants in turn (each strictly positioned in a narrow circle), and stops, docile, at the first cry of Halt!, scraping the ground with his heel, while an explanatory bulletin is drawn up and delivered to the judges. Jortier closes the tournament and, sure of himself, boldly posts himself far behind the circle so as to magnify his victory. Now, his heel mark is the most distant, and his bulletin the best. He alone was able to make out in the painting, entitled Love’s Message, the painter’s profound concept: the proof, supplied by the habitus, of incipient decline in an artfully made-up coquette who laughs as she reads some smoldering love letter.

  War breaks out and, thanks to the opportune utilization of Jortier’s special gift, unsuspected and very faint diurnal signal lights used by the enemy engender victory.

  And later on a statue is erected to Jortier the warrior, projecting from afar his powerful decoding gaze, and a superstition soon accrues to it: To whomever places himself, as he climbs a certain knoll on an overcast day, in the axis of the imperious stone gaze, Jortier will predict the future by rendering the weather fine or foul.

  Granor VII ascends the knoll at a sign from the queen—who is soon enraptured by a ray of sunlight piercing a dreary tent of clouds.

  * * *

  6. Hukloude talking with the queen before the tomb of Erroi, who, somewhat renowned for his burlesque poem, The Skinflint’s Siesta, tried to stave off oblivion by pledging on his deathbed to bestow from the beyond a salutary piece of advice on whoever would come to read his masterwork to his remains.

  And in a resounding voice, Gerta reads The Skinflint’s Siesta:

  The Jew Irny, a pawnbroker, falls asleep after his noonday repast—and this is his dream. The very noble and very rich Duke Fanéon IX of Siar has a first-class servant-mistress, Nicette, an early-rising manageress with an exhaustive account book in which even the barnyard hens are registered. An indefatigably militant champion of her lover, she is forever proudly recounting the Miracle of Urou—then hastily adding that the brotherhood of the Paléreux commemorates it annually with a sacred pantomime: “Two centuries ago, the woodcutter Flac, forced by poverty to work even at night, was returning home late beneath a calm and entirely overcast sky, when through a sudden rent the full moon revealed itself, lighting up a thicket in which his wife was embracing a lover—whom he felled with a single blow of his axe. It was the lecherous Duke Fanéon II of Siar, a recluse whose death elevated in illustrious wise—given the clearly miraculous nature of the rent, produced in calm weather exactly where and when it was needed—a head of the collateral branch, direct ancestor of Fanéon IX.” Nicette dies prematurely, and Duke Fanéon IX, after excusing himself in a prayer for being unable to endure life after so much heartbreak, tries, valorous in the extreme, to get himself killed in battle—but in vain. Henceforth, seeking oblivion, he madly squanders exorbitant sums, sucking up the finest wines through a golden tube and sponsoring a renowned buffoon, expert at erudite teasing. And the day comes when Irny makes him a loan which, too usurious, results in a trial. Condemned to temporary exile, Irny wants to demonstrate the capacity of a certain clause added to the contract to annul the verdict—and argues so long-windedly that, little by little, sleep dec
imates his audience …

  It is here that the anticipated illumination transfigures the queen: A narcotic, carefully dosed and surreptitiously administered, will, at the propitious hour, turn those she fears into innocuous dozing bundles of rags.

  * * *

  7. The queen visits the alchemist Suleil who desires, before preparing the desired narcotic, to consult a skeleton, that of Hulda, whose inspirational virtues he praises.

  Hulda, a noble Norwegian, dwelt in her castle of Chriven, taking advantage of the frequent absences of her husband, Aag, a renowned hunter, to seek romance on the heath of Blège, where it was her custom to sing—in a voice so beautiful that invisible elves greeted each couplet with a salvo of applause—until the arrival of a passerby to her taste, whom she would then lure into a nearby wood.

  Apprised, Aag decided to punish Hulda in a manner befitting her cynicism.

  Would she go so far as to prostitute herself on Good Friday—which was fast approaching?

  Leaving on a feigned pilgrimage he came, on the appointed day, to the heath of Blège, in a monk’s hooded habit.

  Hulda was there, singing to the applause of the invisible elves, verses concerning Tius, the great navigator: “Tius, as a child, had caught from his nurse a violent fear of the werewolf, which his father used when necessary to combat his bouts of laziness. One day, seized with fright, having finished his schoolwork early and not wishing to take recreation too soon, he drew an imaginary map of certain unexplored northern countries which already fascinated him—and which, later in life, he would go on to reconnoiter. And a square was cut from a sail of his ship of discovery, on which a hyperborean landscape in dull sunlight was painted, and which was glued to the corner of his schoolboy’s fantastical drawing, that a strange divinatory accuracy had destined for fame.”