Frontera
By Carmen Herrera Castro
As noted in our previous Issue (#11), author Carmen Herrera Castro has generously allowed us to translate from her book, Frontera (Frontier.) However, there is as yet no complete and published translation of the entire book into English. For those of you who do read Spanish, we offer the following information about the Spanish edition so that you may secure the book for your reading pleasure:
Sevilla, España: www.wanceuleneditorial.com WANCEULEN S.L. ISBN (PAPEL): 978-84-9993-642-0 ISBN (EBOOK): 978-84-9993=643-7 |
This is Part Two, the last in our two-part translation of Herrera Castor's Frontera. Myself and Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno, after much discussion, believe the book's strongest point is Herrera Castro's play with the languages that intertwine and collide in the borderlands, a bit like the moment before a juggler's shower of eight clubs falters and they all suddenly tumble down over him....
Earlier, I alluded to the dicier side of the borderlands—illicit trade, drug trafficking, smuggling, a bit of hookerdom. But frontiers have historically been both barriers and points of intermingling, crossing, and, in its crasser version, of tourism—“may I see your passport, please, Sir/Mme.?”
On the more serious side, the root of the English word, “translation” refers to the word’s Latin origins, meaning to carry across. But when you are faced with a barrage of several languages, dialects, and the mix thereof, it is one thing to be the resident of such places where such mingling of habit and language is taken for granted, laughed at, joked with, while the stranger looks on baffled. It is said you really are “getting it” when you being to laugh at jokes told in a second language; yet, even then, translated, another language’s humor can fall flat. (Indeed, I remember Stanislas Lem’s translator, Michael Kandel, saying that he had to make up jokes to compensate for the Polish ones Lem told, which, when translated, lost all humor.) Sometimes, as I have done with the last entry, “Weather,” one barely needs to translate at all; between appositives, cognates, and context the meaning is obvious and the blend, like an idiosyncratic symphony is, indeed, the point. We bring you song, word play, and, despite one rhyme-poor tongue, English, a wild and poetic experiment.
Earlier, I alluded to the dicier side of the borderlands—illicit trade, drug trafficking, smuggling, a bit of hookerdom. But frontiers have historically been both barriers and points of intermingling, crossing, and, in its crasser version, of tourism—“may I see your passport, please, Sir/Mme.?”
On the more serious side, the root of the English word, “translation” refers to the word’s Latin origins, meaning to carry across. But when you are faced with a barrage of several languages, dialects, and the mix thereof, it is one thing to be the resident of such places where such mingling of habit and language is taken for granted, laughed at, joked with, while the stranger looks on baffled. It is said you really are “getting it” when you being to laugh at jokes told in a second language; yet, even then, translated, another language’s humor can fall flat. (Indeed, I remember Stanislas Lem’s translator, Michael Kandel, saying that he had to make up jokes to compensate for the Polish ones Lem told, which, when translated, lost all humor.) Sometimes, as I have done with the last entry, “Weather,” one barely needs to translate at all; between appositives, cognates, and context the meaning is obvious and the blend, like an idiosyncratic symphony is, indeed, the point. We bring you song, word play, and, despite one rhyme-poor tongue, English, a wild and poetic experiment.
- Bronwyn Mills, with much gratitude toward friend and polyglot, Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno
PLATERO
Every Sunday, Catarina Viera da Costa and her husband, Guus Kippensoep, ate breakfast in bed. They loved having breakfast in bed. Wakingup in the morning in their country house was like waking up in a Walt Disney movie with the dogs all wagging their tails, cats purring and the turtledoves cooing. It only lacked a song and dance routine. In those days, life couldn't have been more of a cliché/sentimental. But this day, when Guus Kippensoep got up to make breakfast, he came running back into the bedroom, exclaiming that the kitchen had a corpse in it. As always, Catarina had to get up and get rid of the dead: a rat of about ten or twelve centimeters minus the tail. The one responsible for the appearance of these corpses in the kitchen was Platero ––small, soft haired, so soft that he looked like he had no bones. Only four months old, Platero caught his first mouse the day that Catarina Viera da Costa organized the storeroom. Platero began stubbornly trying to get into a box of gear. When the mouse slipped out of the inside of the box. Catarina Viera da Costa let out a silly shriek and jumped. What an embarassing thing to do! After that, there was the reaction of the dogs, which––considering their impressive size compared to the mouse—was downright cowardly. Platero was the only one who kept his composure.
With feline efficiency, he forced the mouse out of successive hiding places until he had it cornered. Catarina Viera da Costa opened a window to give the poor mouse one last opportunity to escape, and then, on the principle of noninterference with Nature, left the room with the dogs, abandoning Platero to luck, to resolving the problem in his own way. A short time later, Platero appeared, wriggling proudly, his tail straight up in the air and the mouse in his mouth. He stopped and deposited the body at her feet and with a satisfied meow, posed in the elegant posture of a proud Sphinx, as if to say, "I am not a parasite. I, too, contribute to the maintenance of this household." Platero accepted her effusive congratulations and, with a grave and dignified air as if receiving a prize that he knew he deserved, smugly scorned the envious looks of the dogs. He did not eat the mouse. This was the first time that, in this Disneyland house, they had to get rid of a corpse (no, they did not throw it in the pot.) Sitting down in front of the computer screen after his hunt, Platero purred with satisfaction. Occasionally he tried to type, repeatedly hitting the keys with his right paw; at other times he only stared at the screen with fascination. Cats do not see color, they say; but Platero seemed to marvel at the brilliant colors, the ad pop-ups and the animated gifs on the pages of the internet. CROQUETTE
Nout De Donker and Wouter Van der Linde got married at city hall in Utrecht, where they lived and worked. Their honeymoon was in the Algarve, and after fifteen days of blue skies and lovely climate, going back to frozen canals and grey skies seemed impossible. It took two years to settle everything, sell their house in Utrecht, buy and apartment in Monte Gordo, rent a place and set up Nout & Wouter Eetcafe which, since it started, found an abundant clientele composed, in large part, by celebrating Germans and Dutch looking for familiar tastes: Fikandel, Bitterballen, Nasischiff, Loempia…and the star dish of Nout & Wouter Eetcafe, Brodje Kroket.
The Portuguese or Spanish who visited Nout & Wouter Eetcafe never returned. As Daniel Bueno Villepesa sait to his brother Rafa, with his mouth full of broodje kroket and in between gulp after gulp of Grimbergen Double, while on one side a couple repeated lekker lettker lekker, "Great beer, Buddy, but this little biteful of croquette is inedible, isn't it, buddy? No way is this like the delicious bacalau de Bras, with its generous dollop of paprika… RECIPE
João Lindo lives in a house in the country, with a garden and hens. He usually gives his visitors a pumpkin from his garden. Taking advantage of the occasion he explains in detail the method of the hot pumpkin, used by children in the country to relieve their needs. The method consisted of putting a mature pumpkin of proper size in the full sun, for several hours, and when it is well warmed a hole is made, suitable for the circumstances of each and then… It works just fine.
Note: before preparing pumpkin stew, or pumpkin candy, carefully check the integrity of the pumpkin. STEPCHILD By the house in the countryside, appeared a huge dog. It appeared to have escaped from something, and it was afraid of people, acting like a dog that had been beaten. She threw a lot of parties, and didn’t want to take care of another animal, so she yelled at him and threatened him with a broom. In spite of that the dog did not go away and, acting submissive despite the way she treated him and waved her broom in the air at him, tried to please her. One day she took pity on him and put out food for him, and the following day she called him Charlie [because she once knew a tramp by that name]. Now Charlie lives with her in the country. He is a rare dog, a little paranoid (each time he sees me with plant spray in my hands, he runs away,) But, in his own way, he does try to please though sometimes he does things the other way around (he’s like Rantanplan, Lucky Luke’s dog). Her mother, who always uses words that send you to the dictionary or make you ask their meaning in Portuguese, took charge of his training. She is the only one who calls him Charlie; everyone else calls him ‘el entenao,’ the stepchild, (the Portuguese say, the ‘enteado’). One day ‘el entenao’ knocked up a dog. (I was distracted; I stopped watching her for just three seconds.) Some friends had come over and... we were blah-blah-blahing when the scandalous event happened on the porch. Kai, kai, kaikai, kaii!!!— when we turned around to see what the commotion was, theere was the entenao, with a guilty face and tearful eyes, glued to the other dog’s ass. The spectacle was touching but damned graceless. A couple of months later, the female gave birth to nine puppies. Nine! And to think that the dust up only lasted three seconds!
TURTLEDOVE She was in front of the birdhouse door, with wounded wings and destroyed tailfeathers and clearly must have suffered an attack by a stray dog. She was a grey turtledove, with black around her neck and red eyes. With little hops and short flutters, she listed to the left. Clumsily flapping her wings she entered the cage that Catarina Vieira da Costa had left open just in time. The turtledove knew exactly what the situation was with the door. Catarina Vieira da Costa knew that the turtledoves that were inside the birdhouse had no intention of leaving, and if, by mistake, one escaped, it would keep trying to reenter, bumping again and again, without rhyme or reason, against the mesh that surrounded the birdhouse. What seemed so unusual was that a wild turtledove would put so much effort and commitment into losing its freedom. It must have been quite fucked up. Now in the inside, it perched on of the branches of a jasmine plant, and relaxed. Instantly thereafter [spring had arrived, lalala] one of the turtledoves in the birdhouse began cu-u-curruucucu cu-u-curruucucucu, its courtship song, and she accepted his invitation, going from her bar to his.
As he ruffles her feathers and gives her his beak, another male turtledove, free and solitary, but who up until this time had accompanied her, observed the scene from outside the birdhouse. He called and called her: cu-u-curruucucu cu-u-curruucucucu cu-u-curruucucu. This is not a metaphor [what I have told you actually happened, the little turtledove with the wounded wings and tail preferred security to liberty]. When Catarina Vieira da Costa closed the birdhouse, the memory of bird flu came to mind. |
In the interest of all those who plan to visit Lisbon:
There is no evidence that the ordinance has been repealed.
WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS....
My favorite palabra portuguesa, Portuguese word, is gafanhoto, say the Portuguese in the bar in Tavira, drinking a Super Bock, in Ayamonte we say gañafote, which I also like//e como se diz, and how does one say, gafanhoto em espanhol, in Spanish?//saltamontes, grasshopper// hum…also a very pretty palavra.
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CAROUSEL
The only child in Bordeira plays in the town plaza with his skateboards and a little stick, jumping and kicking an empty plastic bottle. All alone. Always solo. In Bordeira there is also only one bar. In the bar, three English women in their seventies are seated at one of the tables drinking beer. One of them is Elsa Friedchicken.
Two hours earlier, Rui Sobrinho Neto had commented, Elsa passed away, and Chris Naaktgeboren answered: no, no, she didn’t die, she was sick, in the hospital, but she left and now lives in Bordeira with other English teddies; Rui Sobrinho Neto insisted, with absolutely certainty: não, não Elsa passed away. So when they met Elsa with the other English teddies in the bar at Bordeira, Lucía Rojo Redondo couldn’t stand it: No, she wasn’t dead, no and no, she wasn’t dead, no,no…and no she wasn’t dead that no…cool so cool…she was drinking a small beer.. Reborn, reborn... PARADISES In the school of Den Bosch the children say that Paradise is a place where one eats cockroaches of gold. The children in the orphanage at Ayamonte imagine that pardise is like an enormous park full of swings, flyers, and seesaws. A Magic Island to the max. The only child in the school at Bordeira imagines a paradise where there are other girls and boys, with trees filled with birds with golden wings. HELL Hell is not hot, nor cold, hell is not fire, nor ice, hell is perpetual lack of love. Hell is knowing that no one loves you and that no one will ever come to love you. Hell freezes the bones in your soul. To go to hell you don’t have to die. For some, life and hell are the same thing. CAIPIRINHAS On the night of the full moon after the caipirinhas in the Alcaraván, and the chit-chat, and the foreplay, the couple ended up making love inside the car parked next to the government-subsidized townhouses, uninhabited for more than a year, because it’s been a mess with the owner loans and in the end they had given them the usual ones, and now the lawsuits continue. Love under the light of the moon, and the light of hundreds of silly streetlights that stayed lit till four in the morning, lined in double rows along the empty walkway, surrounding the deserted parking lot. Light pollution that lit up love in the car, but prevented them from seeing the stars. Also important, the clouds obscured them [the stars], in any case —clouds that discharge the rays, the lightning and the rains that vanquish all sneezes and allergies until next spring.
WEATHER When I see las chicas so good looking, bastante guapas, so pretty, lo sabes, you know, with their pretty clothes, and the men, los hombres, too, muy guapo, very handsome—(interesting this word in English, there are none like it en our idioma. Indeed! y todo taaaan—all soooooo typical Spanish, olé and olé, cohetes y las carretas, sky rockets and carts, and the innocent or nearly so— I am going to put photos in afterwards, and write, escribir, posts in mi blog. I don’t know anyone who’s had experiences like these in, Bradford..., you know, lo sabes, all are good friends with me, interesting, above all Rocio, such a lovely, pretty girl, with her bonito red polka dot dress, big flores around her head and eyes brilliantes, tu sabes, you know everybody invites me to drink rebuhitos, eat raw bacon, and otros tasty snacks—drinking and singing all the way to town, and everyone calls me, guiri, guiri, come have a rebuhito, take photos that make it look like your place is the best in the world, no, ni ná—no, no way! you know, and cada vez, every time, todos is drunk and drunker, y sometimes everyone hugs and cries I don’t know,very well, muy bien, but after three days I now adivino, I figured out when was the moment for everyone to feel emotional and embrace each other, at first, primero, I asked, “Should we cry now?” now I know when to play, you know, okay, bueno, it was a nice story, being with Rocio, pero I have my girl friend in Inglaterra, and after drinking and eating for four days, una non stop mobile party, tu sabes, you know, como, how did I resist a pretty chica, lo se, you know it, I told you I have mi chica en West Yorkshire, in one semana acabo, in one week I finish my holydays y me regreso to Bradford, pero Rocio cried and cried and I didn’t know what to do…”Honey, I’m sorry, tu sabes, pero but I’m like the weather in Ingleterra, the first five days…
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