Read An Unnecessary Woman Online
Authors: Rabih Alameddine
“I’m not sure that a manicure is going to make me desirable.”
We work all morning. I run the iron in one corner of my reading room. Fadia and Marie-Thérèse blow-dry. The three of us form a triangle, or three points on a circle, within which Joumana moves. She performs triage: she organizes the piles, decides what needs resuscitation first, which page for ironing and which for hot air.
I develop a system: press forward and backward twice, then lift the blue towel to check if the page is dry. Most times I have to go over it once more. Naturally, I don’t need to use the iron’s steam functions.
We settle into a silent routine. Fadia talks to herself, but no one can hear her above the din of the blow dryers. Marie-Thérèse concentrates on the task before her, but Fadia treats it as some kind of game. Joumana asks her to give each page more of her attention, and she does for a minute or so. Still, the weird sisters are coordinated. Yes, it’s as if they’ve been resuscitating manuscripts all their lives. Without realizing it, I begin to fall in with their cycle. I look up after finishing each page, making sure I can move on to the next.
I consider asking them to stop, to give up, but I can’t bring myself to. I feel guilty that they’re working so hard for my benefit; I’m imposing. I also feel uncomfortable in their presence; they’re imposing. This situation is simply not right.
I must ask them to stop. My back hurts; at least two knots throb next to the left shoulder blade. The ironing board isn’t high enough, of course, forcing me to stoop a bit, and I’ve never stood over it for so long. I open my mouth to speak, but Fadia beats me to it. Both she and Marie-Thérèse have turned off their dryers at the same time.
“We have to consider lunch,” she says. “Shall I make it?” Her tone implies both infinite choice and no other at the same time. She stands up and stretches.
I stop moving the iron back and forth, lay it on its side. I’m exhausted and drained.
“Let me check your kitchen to see what you have,” Fadia says.
The look of panic on my face must be out of proportion, because all three women laugh.
“She’s teasing you, my dear,” says Marie-Thérèse.
“She can’t cook anywhere but her own kitchen,” says Joumana.
“Definitely not your kitchen,” says Fadia. “In the fifty years you’ve lived here, I’ve never smelled anything enticing coming out of your kitchen. Not one thing. Surely a record of some sort. I figured you must eat only boiled rice. Or maybe you learned to cook from an Englishwoman or something.”
“I’m sorry,” says Marie-Thérèse. “We probably shouldn’t be making jokes at a time like this.”
“At a time like what?” asks Fadia. “What happened?”
“Are you smiling?” Joumana asks me. “What’s amusing you?”
“Nothing much,” I reply. “What Fadia said reminded me of my dead ex-husband. He used to accuse me of smelling like onions when he returned home. Almost every evening, onions, onions. He blamed that for not being able to be around me.”
“You didn’t cook with onions, did you?” Fadia says.
“I’ve never chopped one in my life.”
I am alone again. My home is quiet, as I like it. My neighbors have left, taken a break for lunch. We’ll all return, Joumana insisted. After lunch, Marie-Thérèse thought. Probably after a siesta, added Fadia. I tried to excuse myself from lunch, but they would have none of it. Marie-Thérèse is going to make sure I accompany her up to Fadia’s when lunch is ready.
We haven’t made much of a dent in the drying process. In three and a half hours, we barely finished two manuscripts,
Anna Karenina
and
A Book of Memories
—two fairly long manuscripts, true. Only some of the pages are legible all the way through. When we start again, we’ll do
The Book of Disquiet
. I need to save it next if it’s salvageable. It will take forever. Maybe I should take Joumana up on her offer, have a passel of students air out the pages, create a serf assembly line to move the enterprise along more quickly. Tolstoy would be upset with me for using the term
serf
. Or I could just throw everything out, discard the weight of years, shrug off the albatross. Choices.
My apartment is a hellish mess, damp boxes and loose sheets of paper in the kitchen, in the living room, in the reading room. Only Joumana knows where everything is now. This is her system. How will I ever clean my home once we’re done? How will I be able to clean the wet disaster that is the maid’s room and the maid’s bathroom? I’ll need someone to change the lightbulb. A serf?
I’m losing my manners. I must ask Joumana whether she’s heard any more news from her daughter. Joumana has been kind, as has Marie-Thérèse; even Fadia, crazy Fadia.
The crazy witch is right in a way. This destruction is an opportunity to break free from the rules I’ve set for translating, or from some of them, at least. Like a teenager, I too can rebel. Maybe I can translate a book written in English for a change. Miss Spark—I’ll translate Muriel Spark’s
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
, or, better yet, the crème de la crème of short story writers, Alice Munro. I can live in Alice’s skin for a while.
Forget the industrialized countries; I can work with writers from the third world, Ireland! Edna O’Brien, Colm Tóibín, or Anne Enright.
The subcontinent and its diasporas:
A House for Mr. Biswas
or
Midnight’s Children
.
A farrago of possibilities.
Coetzee! I would love to do Coetzee; yes, I would.
I can translate
Mrs. Dalloway
. I can if I want to. I’ll spend that famous day inside Clarissa’s head as she prepares to host the party. Or work on
A Room of One’s Own
in a soggy apartment of my own. Maybe I should translate Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls
. The pain might induce a religious ecstasy.
No, I can translate a French book. I can spend a year with my darling Emma Bovary.
If English and French are the limits of my language, the limits of my world, then still my world is infinite. I no longer need to translate a translation. Not all has to be doubly lost. I’ve been studying the water while snugly nestled within the safety of a boat, but now I will swim in the murky waters of Flaubert’s French. I don’t have to work from a language once removed; I don’t have to translate from a distance. Aaliya, the above, the separate, can step in the mud.
Am I experiencing an epiphany?
Forget Emma. I’m going to translate my Marguerite.
Memoirs of Hadrian
, my favorite novel. Marie-Thérèse may have wanted Vronsky for a husband, but I wanted Hadrian. I wanted someone to erect monuments in my memory, build statues. I wanted someone to dedicate cities in my name.
Where is my Aaliyopolis?
Hadrian or Emma, Emma or Hadrian, a French housewife or a Roman Caesar? Choices, limitless choices—well, almost limitless.
If I translate Yourcenar, I can be my own Hadrian. I can build my own city. I can be emperor for a year, ruler of the universe, arbiter of life and death. Call me Emperor Speck.
But I would love to translate Coetzee and his impeccable prose, shorn of all excess. I’ll do
Waiting for the Barbarians
. After all, I’m no longer a feet-washing virgin. The book is magnificent, a perfect jewel.
I can try to capture Coetzee’s lapidary English in Arabic. Can I discover how to convey his precision and incisiveness? Or Yourcenar’s French, which she tamed, making it sound more Latin, as if Hadrian’s old, shaky hand wrote it with a quill? I don’t know if I can share her expansive formality of language or Coetzee’s beguiling subtleties, though I am a better translator than when I began fifty years ago. I can try.
Should I be Hadrian or the Magistrate?
I’ll use waterproof ink—permanent, nonfugitive ink.
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
I hear Marie-Thérèse coming up the stairs—time for lunch with the witches. She promised to stop at my door.
Should I translate Yourcenar or Coetzee?
Marie-Thérèse reaches my landing. If she rings my doorbell, my next project will be
Hadrian
, if she knocks, then it’s
Barbarians
.
I take a long breath, the air of anticipation.
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
Reading and editing: Asa DeMatteo, William Zimmerman, Madeleine Thien, Joy Johannessen, and Elisabeth Schmitz.
Generosity and a great place to write: Beatrice Monti della Corte and the staff of the Santa Maddalena Foundation.
Inestimable faith and support: Nicole Aragi, Christie Hauser, Duvall Osteen, Amy Tan, Colm Tóibín, Silvia Querini, John Freeman, Tony Chakar, Andrea Laguni, Teri Boyd, Sasha Hemon.
Translation of Antara’s poem: Fady Joudah.
Randa, Rania, and Raya, of course.
Thank you.
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