The Artist of Disappearance

by Anita Desai

  Prema, in gratitude, turning to convey her appreciation to Tara. Argument has erupted. Terms proliferate that indicate the large number of academics in the audience: Subaltern. Discourse. Reify. Validate.

  Prema crouches low, fearing some of them will be flung at her. Wasn't 'subaltern' a military term? She feels like the lowliest of students in her class instead of its leader and hopes none of them is present to observe her shame. Where has she been all this time, reading Jane Austen with them, and George Eliot? What has she been doing, talking of Victorian England and its mores? What has stalled her and kept her from joining the current that is now surging past, leaving her helplessly clinging to the raft of The Mill on the Floss, the rock of Pride and Prejudice?

  The chapters of the promised novel began to come in during the course of that summer, in large Manila envelopes that were always torn around the edges and had to be held together with string. They looked as if they had travelled a long and dusty road and suffered many misadventures along the way—and they probably had. At first I fell upon them as soon as I returned from work and found them lying upon the doormat, then immediately settled down to read them. But quite soon I found myself disappointed and dismayed by what I read.

  Instead of the artless charm and the liveliness of the short stories, the novel seemed by contrast slow, almost sluggish, as it followed the fortunes of one family from grandparents to parents to children in a not very interesting town—in fact, very like the dusty, ramshackle one where I had first come across Suvarna Devi's work. I found myself growing increasingly impatient with the noble, suffering grandparents, the quarrelling parents, the drifting children, all of whom seemed to follow predictable paths under the effects of changing circumstances: an increase in wealth followed by a dispersal of property, higher education foundering in lost opportunities—and too many births, marriages and deaths. Stories recounted, time and time again, in different ways, all over the world.

  Perhaps Suvarna Devi did not read very much herself, and was unaware of that? Or had her work actually deteriorated? Where was the passion and the drama of those early stories? Where was that keen observation that had given them their authenticity?

  Instead of the ardent admiration I had felt once for the author, the excited joy with which I had set to work rendering my childhood language as faithfully as possible into English, I now looked on Suvarna Devi's work with a much colder eye. More professional perhaps.

  I began to wonder if publishing such a disappointing novel would be good for Suvarna Devi's reputation, which I had worked hard to establish. And what would it do to my newly created career as a translator? That too had to be considered, did it not? Having linked myself to the author, didn't it require the best from both of us? And what about the reputation of Tara's press and this imprint she had introduced with Suvarna Devi's short story collection as its first publication? All these factors had to be considered.

  Prema took the manuscript across to Tara. Of course Tara could not read the language and would not be able to judge it till it was translated, but Prema felt compelled to warn her that this was not the masterpiece for which they had hoped. Yet she could not let Tara withdraw from the project and bring her new-found vocation to a halt. The warning would have to be delicately phrased, Tara's interest in it kept alive but no false hopes raised.

  Fortunately or not, Tara was distracted and did not seem too concerned by what Prema had to tell her. 'I trust you, Prema,' she said, without too much emphasis. 'I know I can rely on you. Not like the translator of this Urdu novel I was pinning my hopes on. It's a major novel by a brilliant new writer, and the first chapters the translator sent in were wonderful. But now he's gone off to Beirut, never answers letters, just makes promises over the phone and never keeps them. I am so annoyed. I was going to give it special treatment.' She tapped the Urdu book on her desk with a pencil impatiently, then glanced at the manuscript Prema had brought in without much interest. 'You are such a relief,' she sighed. 'I know I can trust you to do your job. It's OK to take your time, no need to hurry.'

  Prema bridled, thinking: all this pandering to the Muslim minority, hadn't it gone too far? Really, Tara seemed not to have taken in any of Prema's cautiously worded assessment of Suvarna Devi's novel—as if it didn't matter.

  So she picked up the manuscript and carried it away with an aggrieved determination to make of it something Tara would notice.

  The next step was to make room for the task by taking leave from her college. The principal barely reacted and the students saw her off with undisguised joy: they had been told the substitute would be a Miss Batra, who was known to be younger and livelier, dressed in jeans, was seen to smoke, and intended to introduce them to contemporary American authors not yet admitted to the academic pantheon.

  Through the suppurating heat of June and July, under a slowly revolving electric fan, and with perspiration streaming down her face in sheets, Prema settled to trying to rediscover the joy she had initially taken in translation. She suffered from a sense that she was struggling, like a drowning fly, to raise herself up from the dull, turgid prose before her and somehow recover the art of flying.

  I knew this was the hardest task I had set myself, the greatest challenge (aside from my initial decision to make this language my field of study). I felt a pressure settle upon my head that was uncomfortable but somehow not suffocating. In fact, the challenge was like a terrific headache that might leave one dazed but also uplifted.

  A faithful translation would clearly make for a flat, boring read. I saw that what was needed was for me to be inventive, take things into my own hands and create a style for the book. So, instead of a literal translation, I decided to take liberties with the text—to begin with, Suvarna Devi's modest syntax. And once I did that, I began to enjoy myself. What a difference it made when I turned 'red' to 'crimson', 'anger' to 'rage'. My pen began to fly. Using Suvarna Devi's text as a basis on which to build, I found I could touch it with small brush strokes of colour and variation. Wasn't this what the Impressionist painters had done in those early adventurous days, breaking up flat surfaces to refract light into many scattered molecules, and so reconstruct the surface and make it stir to life?

  And together with this 'enhancement', as I named it, of the text, I could see that reduction and deletion were called for too. I had to be a teacher and a critic, underline words she had used again and again: how often could I let her use the same adjective for one character? There was no need to repeat 'gentle' and 'kind-hearted' every time the grandmother was mentioned: her words and acts alone could convey that. And it was not necessary to keep calling the daughter-in-law 'greedy' and 'badtempered' if there were incidents that showed her greed and insolence.

  As with adjectives, I found verbs and adverbs, too, could go. The death of the grandfather, for instance, described by one character in chapter two, surely did not need to be repeated in chapter three by another character with the same 'wailing' and signs of 'grief'. It could be dramatised just once, not oftener: the effect would be to make the text tighter, stronger.

  I admit that now and then, in tired moments when I sat back and became aware of how my neck ached and how the heat was solidifying and pressing on me, I did wonder if what I was doing was my brief—to render a faithful translation of Suvarna Devi's work. But then I would get up, fetch myself a glass of water from the big clay jar that rested on the ledge of the kitchen window and kept the water marginally cooler than what emerged from the tap, return to my table and take a sip. Then ideas would come to me like drops of moisture falling on the arid manuscript, reviving my interest.

  Picking up my pen, I would remind myself that the best translations are the most inspired, when the translator becomes fully a co-author of the work so that it is a coming together of two creative spirits in a single venture. If the translator cannot rise to that, then the translation will be a failure.

  It made me laugh, almost, to see how improved the text was with the changes I had made, and the parin
g away of repetition. Oh, I should have been an editor—Tara should have employed me in her publishing house—and Suvarna Devi ought to have had an editor before she had a translator. Now she had both. How could she be anything but pleased? My translation was an uncovering, a revealing of what had been buried, concealed in her work. In a way, you could say I was the writer, only I would not be given the recognition. Not by Tara who had not read the original, and not by Suvarna Devi who was unlikely to read the translation. She had said, in the speech she gave at the conference, that although she could read English, she could not write in it because its vocabulary did not 'cover'—that was her word— her experience of life. I had thought that a strange remark but now I found reassurance in it. It had been my role to prove that it could. Perhaps one day we would meet again and I would explain to her the different way of translation I had discovered: a transcreation? or even a collaboration?

  All this was clear to me in the day, while I worked, but I have to confess that darkness, sleeplessness and anxiety made the nights a different matter. Lying on my back, trying to ignore the heat, the sounds and lights of passing traffic, I found that the thoughts and worries I could hold at bay in daylight approached me like ghosts, like monsters come to threaten me. They exerted a weight on my chest and sometimes I could hardly breathe. I would have to get up to try and escape them. I would go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. I would drink it standing by the window and looking out on the deserted street. The street lights would be shining. Sometimes a dog appeared to scavenge in a pile of garbage left outside a tea stall, now shuttered. Occasionally an empty bus passed by, probably returning, at this hour, to the depot. I tried to distract myself with these sights of the ordinary world, but in my mind it was the lines I had been translating and the lines that I had been writing that remained in the forefront. I longed for sleep to obliterate them but it eluded me. Perhaps everything would be normal again once I had sent off the manuscript, I thought, and looked forward to completing the work.

  In the interval between handing over the manuscript to Tara and the appearance of the published book, Prema returned to teaching, much to her students' regret. They found her more harsh and ill-tempered than ever and were certain that if she had had a love affair, it must have come to a bitter end. In the staff room, Prema's colleagues asked her how her work had gone during her leave of absence; she answered curtly and seemed unwilling to speak of it. The college librarian asked her to be sure to give her a copy when it was published, and Prema only nodded.

  When Tara telephoned to let her know the advance copies had arrived, she did go across to collect them, and Tara found her oddly subdued. Not elated as she might have been at the sight of the beautiful little volume with its cover of pale ochre like the clay of a village wall, a painted window frame in the centre for illustration, arresting in its simplicity.

  'Don't you like it?' Tara asked, looking curiously at Prema's grey and drawn face. The arduous labour of translating it through the summer had aged and fatigued her, Tara thought.

  'I do, I do,' Prema roused herself to say but, curiously, did not open a copy to look inside. Instead she asked, 'Have copies been sent to Suvarna Devi? And the critics?'

  'Of course,' Tara assured her. 'Of course. Now we have just to wait to see what they say.'

  Prema carried her copy home, laid it on the table, made herself tea, then sat down to open it finally. She could not help feeling moved by the sight of her name in it, under Suvarna Devi's. Then, with increasing tension, she let her eyes drift over the sentences, from one to the other. Together they had made this book, its text, its lilt and rhythm, its images and metaphors. Would Suvarna Devi approve? Then she came across a phrase she knew had not been there in the original, and the gaps where she had deleted what had seemed to her unnecessary repetitions: the death of the grandfather, the weeping and wailing. Would Suvarna Devi notice? If she did, what would she think? Would she acknowledge the improvement Prema had brought about, or would she oppose it? And the critics, would anyone notice? Would she hear from them?

  What she could hear was the raucous cawing of the crows outside, balancing on the telephone wires, and they sounded to her more mocking and scolding than ever.

  Then there was a long and difficult silence. Reviews of translations were always scant, Tara reminded her. It was this new breed of authors writing in the colonial tongue, English, who hogged all the attention, not only in England but even here in India, disgracefully. The one review that appeared, in a little read but serious political journal, commended Tara's noble venture in commissioning translations and calling attention to so far 'unknown' writing (as though there were no readers of regional languages). The critic called Suvarna Devi's novel an 'important' one but made no reference to the translation.

  'We'll have to wait till the regional press reviews come in,' Tara said and, seeing how anxious Prema looked when she came in to enquire, added kindly, 'I'm sure they will be good. It is a good translation after all.'

  It was not Tara's way to be effusive and she did sound sincere. In fact, she was. So it was a shock when, a few days later, a letter arrived at her office from someone who informed Tara he was Suvarna Devi's nephew. He came at once to the point, which was that he had read the original text written by his aunt and bought a copy of the translation. On reading it, he had found innumerable discrepancies between the two. He went on to list them.

  Frowning heavily, Tara wondered if he was pointing out serious flaws or if he was just nit-picking the way some readers were sure to do, more to prove their superior knowledge than for any other reason. But, she had to conclude on rereading the list several times, he appeared to have reason for complaint. According to him several pages had been cut out of the translation, the role of some of the characters—e.g. the grandfather—had been abbreviated, and the language itself diverged wildly from the original text. As a native speaker of the language, he felt a responsibility and wished the translator and the publisher to know that he objected strenuously to this 'cavalier attitude' to his aunt's work. He was debating whether to inform her; he did not wish to disturb or upset her, knowing how gentle and sensitive a person she was, but he demanded an explanation for the way she had been treated by Tara's press. What did Tara propose to do? Was she going to continue to bring out these 'spurious' equivalents for the English-speaking elite of what was so much more powerful and beautiful in the original? He advised her against putting out any more of them 'to hoodwink the public'.

  Tara put off all meetings for the day and sent for her secretary in order to dictate two letters, one to the nephew to apologise for 'any errors and shortcomings in the translation' and another to the leading newspaper in his aunt's home town to assure them 'appropriate measures were being taken to ensure that in future only rigorously supervised and faithful translations' would be published by her press. cc Prema Joshi.

  Eventually Tara's secretary forwarded a packet of letters to Prema sent by other readers with the same objections—not very many since those who read the original did not necessarily read the translation as well. Also a letter that arrived from Suvarna Devi, written on her yellow stationery with the red rose imprint, thanking her for sending the copies of her book which she said 'looked very nice', and making no mention of the translation. Nor was there any hint of suspicion or attack. Either her nephew had not informed her of his findings or she had chosen to overlook them; she did, after all, have other, possibly more compelling interests in life. Tara did not withdraw the book nor did she ever order a reprint.

  The Association of Indian Publishers sent Prema, c/o Tara, an invitation to its next gathering of authors and translators. Prema declined, pleading illness.

  So I haven't given up teaching. I continue to go through the same texts with my students. I know they are bored by me. I know they make fun of me behind my back. And I know the principal is waiting for me to retire so she can bring in someone new, someone who will arouse enthusiasm among the students. But, if I do tha
t, what would I do with the rest of my life? That stretches out before me like an empty, unlit road.

  Sometimes, on the bus going home from work, I look at the others seated beside me and across from me. Or, rather, since I don't like staring at people's faces, I look down at their feet, shod in slippers or sandals or dusty shoes of cracked leather, and the packages they are holding on their knees, and I think: that is how I must look to them—a tired woman going home from work with nothing to look forward to, nothing to smile about. Whyever did I imagine I was different, and could live differently from them? We are all in this together, this world of loss and defeat. All of us, every one of us, has had a moment when a window opened, when we caught a glimpse of the open, sunlit world beyond, but all of us, on this bus, have had that window close and remain closed.

  It is not that I did not try to open that window again. I gave up, of course, the idea of translating another book, though it meant giving up the language I had acquired with such ardour. In the course of those sleepless nights I spent, a thought did come to me—that I might write a book of my own. It would be an original work, it would draw from no one else and no one else's work. I did feel I owed Suvarna Devi a debt for teaching me, but now it was for me to prove I could establish my own worth as a writer.

  For a while I felt excited by that idea—as if the window had opened again, a little, and some light was slanting through it. I had had an idea that bifurcated into more ideas, and I followed these paths with a stirring of hope and delight. The one that drew me more powerfully than any other was the story of my parents' marriage. Their short-lived marriage and its sad end. By writing their stories, I could bring in all the different aspects of my life—the ones I inherited from my mother, her language and her background, and the ones I inherited from my father. I felt the story had promise and even sat down with a large new notebook I purchased from the store across the street, propped my feet up and started scribbling, trying out these themes.