VAGABOND (Re)Issue 1 - 2022

Letter from the Editor

Vagabond returns! After three semesters of trials, tribulations, writing, reading, editing, re-editing, and many, many emails, we are pleased to bring to you the first issue of Vagabond in nearly a decade. When the editorial board of the Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal took on the project of bringing Vagabond back to the literary community, it wasn’t just out of a deep love of creative writing, but because there is still an extraordinary lack of multilingual publications on campus.

In many ways, this re-issue of Vagabond is a translation of the original publication. We align with what we believe to be the intentio of the original Vagabond – a campus publication that suspends the boundaries between original and translation, difference and similarity, distance and closeness, to shape a nuanced understanding of the world around us. However, we don’t claim to be exactly like the original Vagabond. Upon revisiting past issues, we were struck by how much our vision of the publication diverges from the original. We no longer publish work solely by UC Berkeley students, and as of our second issue (which is currently in progress!), we no longer limit submissions to undergraduates. The publication has been adopted by UC Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Literature thanks to efforts from our CLUJ counterparts, and undergoes a thorough double blind, two-round review process, modeled after other campus publications. In line with Walter Benjamin’s vision, our magazine truly works “in-translation”: in harmony with the original works, but not a replicate. A unit in its own right.

For this first (re)issue, we are proud to be publishing original English translations of literary works ranging from Ancient Greek to Yiddish, in addition to original creative pieces from artists all over the world. We believe that our published pieces embody what it means to take a truly interdisciplinary approach to art.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for supporting and believing in our project of bringing multilingualism, multiculturalism, and translation from the periphery of the literary sphere to the forefront. To our published artists, we thank you for your patience and trust as we worked to put your creative pieces to the page. To our department, we thank you for your support and hope that our magazine remains a place for the love of language to take root. To our readers, the magazine you are reading now is the culmination of hard work, love, and care from the undergraduates of the UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature. Happy reading, and see you in the next issue!

Sincerely,

Pearlin Liu and Eva Whitney Editors in Chief, 2022-2023

Editors-in-Chief

Pearlin Liu

Eva Whitney

Senior Advisors

Andre Bouyssounouse ‘22

Ronald Godoy ‘22

Editorial Board

Roxana Wang

Annette Ungermann

Andres Marquez

Diksha Dahal

Faith Leung

Editors (Spring 2022)

Andrea Bernal

Andre Bouyssounouse

Carol Blair

Joshua Caceres

Annie Cheng

Diksha Dahal

Jake Hendries

Faith Leung

Andres Marquez

Nina Rodenko

Priya Sharma

Annette Ungermann

Cover image by Tesse Reversma ‘22

Magazine Design by Eugenia Yoh

MAST HEAD

Editors (Fall 2022)

Hannah Boettge

Ella Shih

Marley Fortin

Charlie Kim-Worthington

Francis Ruiz

“...As regards to the meaning, the language of a translation can – in fact, must – let itself go, so that it gives voice to the intentio of the original not as reproduction but as harmony, as a supplement to the language in which it expresses itself as its own kind of intentio .”

–

Walter Benjamin,

“The Task of the Translator”

[The] solider [to his] dear girl

An erasure poem from Henri Barbusse’s letter, translated and erased by Sam Hyman

1915

come back a good job: magnificent, « » fallen on a segment broken antediluvian exhumation was, however, end considerable number of porcelain scraps gently, by layers of the earth the ridge bank To-day I nothing all hour we go four soldiers occupy throughout we must not think about the light about Nature are no others will not be these are of sustained attention paralysis voluntary (always the bedspring my dear) barely disturbed the soldiers cause silence peace

« Vos gueules ! bande de vaches ! » the leisure to introduce

found here the house to light a fire on the intimate the dame the house, evacuated engaged. think joy boisterous caused by these confessions

Not to mention we brave ripe

« noirs » a Music despite

And conclusion of all this:

Artist Statement

This poem is an erasure of a letter written by Henri Barbusse (1873-1935)—a French writer and political thinker who garnered immense popularity from his anti-militaristic sentiments and promotion of communist ideology. He was a staunch supporter of sovietization and the leader of the World Committee Against War and Fascism. Barbusse enlisted and fought in the French Army during WWI, and the erasure I performed here dealt with a letter written to his wife during that time. The letters he wrote

soldier dear girl

[Le] soldat [à sa] fifille

An erasure poem from Henri Barbusse’s letter, translated and erased by Sam Hyman

1915

reviens un beau travail : magnifique, « » tombé sur un segment cassée antédiluviennes exhumation fut, néanmoins, bout nombre considérable de porcelaines ferrailles doucement, par couches de la terre la crête talus Aujourd je rien tout heure irons

quatre soldats occuper toute il ne faut pas songer à la lumière sur la Nature n’y a pas d’autres ne sera pas ce sont d’attention soutenue paralysie volontaire (toujours le sommier ma chère) peu dérangé les soldats causent le silence la paix

« Vos gueules ! bande de vaches ! » le loisir de se introduire

trouvé ici la maison d’allumer du feu le intimes la dame la maison, évacuée fiancée. pensez la joie bruyante provoqués par ces confessions Sans compter nous braves « mûrs » « noirs » une Musique malgré Et conclusion de tout cela : je

soldat fifille

while serving as a soldier have literary significance in that they anticipate his transformation into a radical pacifist. And such is the root of my erasure’s pursuit: to underline, reveal, and contemplate the liminalities and limits of soldierhood. The erasure is present here in its original French and translated English.

The Kiss

by Lauren Li

Calypso in Cerulean

An original translation of the Odyssey 5.50-75

By S Eli Johnson

50

Zeus’ son Hermes strode out into the stratosphere and streaked downward to the sea. He careened like a cormorant on the crashing surf chasing fish across the saline expanses of the sursurrusing sea and soaking his wingfeathers.

55

As he arrived at the island from afar he strode onto the shoal, out of the indigo ocean where he chanced upon the enchantress in her clear-swept cove-home.

60

While she labored along the loom, a strain of her silvery singing swept to the shore with the smoke of split cedar and juniper as the tinders burnt to cinder on the hearthstone of the hollow. And around the cave, conifers cascadedalder - black popular - and scented cypress

65 wherein nested wide-winged owls and restless kestrels and havering ravens, sea-minding. A grapevine germinated by the gladed cave, fructifying clumps of plump currants of richest vintage

70

and side by side, four fountains flowed, lacing their luminous elixirs. All around in mild meadows, violacae and celery seed symbiotized in superabundance. Some divinity (by accident alighting on the island) would delight in their heart in adulation on eyeing it. And so Hermes was overjoyed in looking it over, [75] Hermes, messenger, slayer of monsters.

Πιερίην δ᾽ ἐπιβὰς ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ: σεύατ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἐπὶ κῦμα λάρῳ ὄρνιθι ἐοικώς, ὅς τε κατὰ δεινοὺς κόλπους ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο

ἰχθῦς ἀγρώσσων πυκινὰ πτερὰ δεύεται ἅλμῃ:

τῷ ἴκελος πολέεσσιν ὀχήσατο κύμασιν Ἑρμῆς.

55 ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ τὴν νῆσον ἀφίκετο τηλόθ᾽

ἐοῦσαν,

ἔνθ᾽ ἐκ πόντου βὰς ἰοειδέος ἤπειρόνδε

ἤιεν, ὄφρα μέγα σπέος ἵκετο, τῷ ἔνι νύμφη ναῖεν ἐυπλόκαμος: τὴν δ᾽ ἔνδοθι τέτμεν ἐοῦσαν.

πῦρ μὲν ἐπ᾽ ἐσχαρόφιν μέγα καίετο, τηλόσε δ᾽

ὀδμὴ

60 κέδρου τ᾽ εὐκεάτοιο θύου τ᾽ ἀνὰ νῆσον

ὀδώδει

δαιομένων: ἡ δ᾽ ἔνδον ἀοιδιάουσ᾽ ὀπὶ καλῇ ἱστὸν ἐποιχομένη χρυσείῃ κερκίδ᾽ ὕφαινεν.

ὕλη δὲ σπέος ἀμφὶ πεφύκει τηλεθόωσα, κλήθρη τ᾽ αἴγειρός τε καὶ εὐώδης κυπάρισσος.

65 ἔνθα δέ τ᾽ ὄρνιθες τανυσίπτεροι εὐνάζοντο, σκῶπές τ᾽ ἴρηκές τε τανύγλωσσοί τε κορῶναι

εἰνάλιαι, τῇσίν τε θαλάσσια ἔργα μέμηλεν.

ἡ δ᾽ αὐτοῦ τετάνυστο περὶ σπείους γλαφυροῖο ἡμερὶς ἡβώωσα, τεθήλει δὲ σταφυλῇσι.

70 κρῆναι δ᾽ ἑξείης πίσυρες ῥέον ὕδατι λευκῷ, πλησίαι ἀλλήλων τετραμμέναι ἄλλυδις ἄλλη.

ἀμφὶ δὲ λειμῶνες μαλακοὶ ἴου ἠδὲ σελίνου θήλεον. ἔνθα κ᾽ ἔπειτα καὶ ἀθάνατός

Artist Statement

Since I learned to read, the classics fascinated me. As a youngster, I spent many happy hours pouring over illustrated children’s editions of Greek myths and the Bible. In college, it seemed to me that the establishment – politicians, academics, theologians –had gotten these literary works from antiquity totally wrong somewhere along the line. The establishment likes to purport that the classics are hidebound conservative screeds, pushing retrograde social values down the throats of their readers, but they’re wrong. The Iliad and the Odyssey are weird and wild works of poetry, soap operas with more in common to a B-grade scifi movie than something boring and historical like the Federalist Papers. Learning Greek only strengthened that conviction.

Homeric verse is unrhymed, relying on the strong meter of dactylic hexameter to create poetry – a kind of meter that’s quite difficult to represent in English. In this translation, I focus on alliteration and assonance to create a tidal push and pull at the expense of more formal accuracy, in order to capture the passage on an aesthetic level as nearly as possible. I hope this translation of Homer’s description of Calypso’s island strikes you as wild, unfamiliar, witchy, and untameable – just like her.

Gayhead Cliffs Fogat

photographed by Anjali Chanda

Creation Myth

By Evan Antonakes

How can a body withstand this?

A sweep of cool nighttime air descending from the High Atlas faraway moves through these tiled and chipped riad windows the way loneliness moves through a body. The hours, heavy and slow, move like fog. Even the flowers — hibiscus rosa sinensis, bougainvillea — feel the rattling gravity, petals falling toward cobblestone streets as if pushed. I aligned my life with this world. The starless sky, a mirror hanging over the city, too dark and warped for any reflection to be seen. No image, no coherence, no reflection, just out of reach, like specks of dreams left over at dawn. I wait for the arrival of one.

Why, then, does this make me feel more alive?

Bare-skinned, bare-minded in night’s austerity. Because terror and allure are easily tangled. Because this body, branded by time, is enough. Because I take nightly walks along the shoreline, seaweed and stars stuck to my boots, allowing these hazy subtleties to deposit themselves within me, to become a morning found after a storm.

by Ekta Jha

Artist Statement

In many of my poems I try to explore ideas and move through questions of identity and the self, or more specifically how one’s identity or sense of self is arrived at or created. Very often the very action or craft of writing poetry, to me, feels like (re)creating a self on the page. This particular poem was first drafted when I was living in Morocco. I revisited it more recently and was able to bring it together in a more coherent manner. The poem relies heavily on imagery I became familiar with and would write about while living there. The poem is grounded in the idea that when you move to a new place, when you’re completely immersed in a new world, there’s a disorientation, but there’s also the feeling that your sense of self isn’t immediately present. It’s a period of liminality. It’s also a period of possibility. This poem is speaking to the understanding that this feeling can be simultaneously terrifying and freeing. My poems are an attempt to convey the landscape of these feelings.

Multilingualism

Gardening

a preemptive eulogy

By Angela Yang

Artist Statement

This poem is a personal mediation on how diaspora shapes and complicates grief. Over the years, I’ve seen my immigrant parents grow older and grieve the deaths of their elders overseas. This has led me to reflect on how I will one day grieve my parents – hence, the future tense of the poem. One idea I explore is how “invisible heirlooms’’ – traumas, histories, and hopes –get passed through generations, persisting through decades and across borders. The “promised land” of the house is the shell of the American Dream, however fictitious, that my parents have tried so hard to pursue. All the items and spaces in the house,

Dispersed Sunlight photographed by Tesse Reversma

After burying you beneath the birch, the greengravers will pack their truck and leave us to carve up your house like a promised land, kitchen cupboards groaning from heirloom platters lifted, sapling kumquat freed from your tender sunroom prison.

We will carve for days, tame the rubble of your life to boxes on the driveway, curse the abundance you have left us to disassemble and carry.

Mine your books riding shotgun. Mine your knives lurching from backseat with every brake as I flee the yellowing of your lawn.

I have not inherited your calloused green thumb, but still your dogeared gardening guide will insist anything grows, even roots that play dead.

Come seven times seven days since your uncreation, I will walk past ember rosebed to scuff my knees in the yard crusted over from drought, drive my spade to the earth,

plant your knives, and dare them to bloom.

including the kumquat tree, the sunroom prison, and the gardening guide, point to their attempts to cultivate a home and a life in this new country. At the same time, I recognize that some of these invisible heirlooms can be traumas that outlive the people who survived them, and that children of diaspora must reckon with both the strengths and the pains they have inherited. At the end of the poem, it remains unclear whether the knives will actually bloom — whether the hurt has been buried or planted by the speaker.

photographed by Tesse Reversma

Sign of the Times

photographed by Tesse Reversma

My Wagon

Mordkhe Perlmuter’s “My Wagon” (Translated from Yiddish to English)

Translated by Tyler Kliem

I want to be simple, I want to be right, but I can’t: my actions of mine thrash about like a roaring whip onto the worn-out workhorse by my wagon, which drives, drives, and drives him so deep in the dampness away from my bent, beaten wagon …

Artist Statement

Mordkhe Perlmuter (1888–1962), born in Ludmir in what is now part of Ukraine, was a Jewish poet, writer, and translator of Yiddish. In 1906, he moved to New York City and, like other Jewish immigrants during his time, worked in city sweatshops before joining the labor movement. He published poems and essays in left-leaning Yiddish publications throughout his life. He died in New York. Unfortunately, not much else is known about him, and his creative works have long been forgotten.

In my translation of Perlmuter’s poem “Mayn vagon,” published in the Yiddish labor journal Gerechtigkeit in the 1920s, I pay particular attention to Perlmuter’s original textual formatting and punctuation. Because only around 3% of Yiddish works have

My Wagon

Original Text

איך װיל זײַן פּשוט, איך װיל זײַן גוט, און קען ניט: די מעשים מײַנע בײַטשן מיט אַ פֿײַערדיקער רוט דעם מידן לאַסט־פֿערד פֿון מײַן װאַגאָן, און יאָגן, יאָגן, יאָגן אים אַלץ טיפֿער אין דער נעץ פֿון קרומע, לאָמע װאַגאָן …

been translated into English, according to the Yiddish Book Center, I believe it is important to stay true to the original author’s meaning and intentions to preserve faithful intertextuality.

Equally important, Perlmuter’s poem seems to recall the Jewish cultural life of Eastern Europe, making reference to the shtetl-like wagon and packhorse. My translation pulls this mention of Perlmuter’s homeland to the forefront, chronicling his narrator’s internal woes. Meanwhile, the fleeing horse symbolizes his narrator’s mortal desperation and uncertainty in the bustle of shtetlkeyt.

Artist Statement

José Martí’s 16

Close translation of Marti’s verse XVI

by Cynthia Salinas Cappellano

On the fretted ledge of a Moorish window

Pale as the moon

A lover dreads.

Pale, in her canopy bed

Of turtledove silk and reds Eve, silenced, plucks

A violet to stain her tea.

José Martí’s 16th verse is a reference to Genesis 3:16, after Eve and Adam were caught in their ‘mortal sin’: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” Meanwhile, Eve is disappointed, likely bleeding, and ‘deflowered’. The verb deshojar in the present tense means: to pull petals. Martí likens Eve to plucked petals in hot water: blood-stained. Eve underwent pain during sex and after–in the menstrual punishment of her mortal sin. Adam has only anxiety and long stares into the distance.

My own translation has me interested in the geography and objects of the poem rather than the work about the two tragic ‘lovers’. At times, because of the original, patriarchal translation, I couldn’t tell if this was a scene occurring in two different

[Deshojar]

Close translation of Marti’s verse XVI by Cynthia

Salinas Cappellano

En el alféizar calado

De la ventana moruna, Pálido como la luna, Medita un enamorado.

Pálida, en su canapé

De seda tórtola y roja, Eva, callada, deshoja

Una violeta en el té.

places, a woman disappointed by the performance of her lovers, or a scene of sexual assault and trauma. The original translator’s emphasis on rhyming couplets obscures the deeper analysis of Martí’s verse.

Which made me wonder what are the stories of women we lose in translation? How are these women’s stories obscured by male translators and the difficult nature of translating pronouns and possessives? Which is also a bigger question long posed for literary critics and historians of the Bible. To move forward, we must let go of ‘purity’ of translations, or the infinite, totalization of translation. Why not produce multiple translations–by people of multiple linguistic backgrounds, and genders? A translation is only as viable as its translator’s literary identity. For me this translation was a way to re-enchant the rich textures of Cuban women’s voices that Martí brought forth during the Independence Movement.

photographed by Anjali Chanda

Scoured away

Translated by Ben Thomas

SCOURED AWAY by the Radiation-wind of your speech the motley gossip of experience earned — the hundredtongued mypoem, the no-em.

Whirlwinded, free, the path through the humanhewn snowstacks, the penitent-snow, to the generous glacier-grottoes and -tables.

Deep in the crevasse of time by honeycomb-ice awaits, a breathed-crystal, your irrevocable testimony.

Weggebeizt

Original Text by Paul Celan

WEGGEBEIZT vom Strahlenwind deiner Sprache das bunte Gerede des Anerlebten — das hundertzüngige Meingedicht, das Genicht.

Ausgewirbelt, frei

der Weg durch den menschengestaltigen Schnee, den Büßerschnee, zu den gastlichen Gletscherstuben und -tischen.

Tief in der Zeitenschrunde, beim Wabeneis wartet, ein Atemkristall, dein unumstößliches Zeugnis.

Speak

also you

Translated by Ben Thomas

Speak also you, Speak as the last, Say your speech.

Speak — But split not the No from the Yes. Give your speech also meaning: Give it shadow.

Give it shadows enough, Give it as many As you know are spread around you between Mid-night and midday and mid-night.

Look around: See how it comes alive all round — By death! Alive! Truth speaks who shadows speaks.

But now shrinks the space where you stand: Where to now, shadow-stripped one, where to? Climb. Grope upward. Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer! Finer: a thread

By which it longs downward, the star: So as below to swim, below, Where it sees itself shimmer: in the swell Of wandering words.

When Theodor Adorno wrote that “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch,” he meant that the poet commenting on Auschwitz from within the culture responsible always does so barbarically. Paul Celan, whose Germanlanguage poetry concerns the Holocaust and its survivors, would have seconded Adorno’s diagnosis of the problem but contested his fatalistic conclusion. Many of his poems do in fact use German to reflect humanely on the Holocaust. What, then, is it to speak poetically of a collective trauma in the language that perpetrated it? How could a reader who does not know that language ever hear the trauma echoing through it?

Sprich auch du

Sprich auch du, sprich als letzter, sag deinen Spruch.

Sprich —

Doch scheide das Nein nicht vom Ja. Gib deinem Spruch auch den Sinn: gib ihm den Schatten.

Gib ihm Schatten genug, gib ihm so viel, als du um dich verteilt weißt zwischen Mittnacht und Mittag und Mittnacht.

Blicke umher: sieh, wie's lebendig wird ringsBeim Tode! Lebendig! Wahr spricht, wer Schatten spricht.

Nun aber schrumpft der Ort, wo du stehst: Wohin jetzt, Schattenentblößter, wohin? Steige. Taste empor. Dünner wirst du, unkenntlicher, feiner! Feiner: ein Faden, an dem er herabwill, der Stern: um unten zu schwimmen, unten, wo er sich schimmern sieht: in der Dünung wandernder Worte.

In my translations of two of Celan’s poems, I therefore follow Vladimir Nabokov’s prescription to render, “as closely as the associative and syntactical capacities of another language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.” The syntax is strange; the language is awkward, fusional, inescapably German. These translations are not pleasant, but then, neither is the testimony they contain. In a time of resurgent anti-Semitism and “corroded away” memories of the Holocaust, my hope is that they not merely recreate poetic speech after the Shoah for Anglophone readers, but inspire them to listen.

Dear, by Lauren Li

A New Translation of Isabel Allende’s “El Huésped de La Maestra”

The

Schoolteacher’s Guest

The schoolteacher Inés entered The Pearl of the Orient, which at that hour hadn’t a single customer, made directly for the register where Riad Halabi was rolling up a bolt of brightly coloured fabric, and announced that she had just slit the throat of one of the guests in her pension. The merchant clutched at his white handkerchief and lifted it to his lips.

‘What are you saying, Inés?’

‘What I just told you, Turk.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘Of course.’

‘And now what are you going to do?’

‘That’s what I came to ask you,’ she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

‘I think I’d better close the store,’ Riad Halabi sighed.

They had known each other so long that neither one could recall the exact number of years, but both had committed to memory every single detail of their first encounter. Back then he was one of those traveling salesmen that paraded up and down the streets hawking his wares, a pilgrim of commerce without compass or fixed destination, an Arabian immigrant carrying a false Turkish passport, solitary, tired, with a bad cleft-lip and a burning desire to sit down briefly in the shade. And she was still a young woman, with a firm figure and wide shoulders, the only schoolteacher in the village, mother to a twelve–year–old boy who had been born of a passing amourette. The child was the center of her life. She loved him desperately and could manage only with great difficulty to avoid coddling him— to treat him just as she treated all of the other schoolchildren— so no one would accuse her of poor parenting or detect in her innocent child the unfortunate stamp of his father. It was her earnest mission to cover over those paternal failings with virtues of rationality and kind-heartedness.

The same afternoon that Riad Halabi crossed into Agua Santa by one boundary line, a group of boys carried Mrs. Inés’ son over the other on a makeshift stretcher. He had strayed onto private

Translated by Donna Sanders

land to pick some mangos and the owner of the property, a foreigner little known in those parts, fired a rifle to scare him off, puncturing half his forehead with the dark hole through which his spirit fled. At that moment the merchant discovered his gift for leadership and, without knowing exactly how, found himself embroiled in the very heart of the affair, consoling the mother, organizing the funeral as if he were a family member, and preventing the rest of the village from enacting a bloody vengeance. Meanwhile, the murderer realized that he would have a difficult time preserving his life if he stayed on in the village, and fled without any intention of ever returning.

It was Riad Halabi who led the next morning’s cavalcade from the cemetery to the site where the boy had been struck down. All of Agua Santa spent the day gathering mangos, which they hurled at the windows until the house was completely covered, from the ground up. In a few weeks’ time sunlight fermented the fruit, now a sticky juice, plastering the walls with orange blood and sweet pus that transformed the ranch into a fossil of prehistoric proportions, an enormous beast in its death throes, tormented by the infinite diligence of flies and mosquitos.

The death of the child, the responsibilities that he had taken on during those dreadful days, and the welcome he received in Agua Santa collectively determined Riad Halabi’s fate. He disregarded his nomadic heritage and stayed on in the village. There he set up his shop: The Pearl of the Orient. He was married, widowed, married a second time, and continued selling his goods while simultaneously earning a reputation as a man of firm character. For her part, Inés educated several generations of children with the same affectionate tenacity that she had shown her own son until fatigue sapped her energies, then she made room for other teachers, recently arrived from the city with their new grammars, and at last retired. After leaving the schoolroom, she felt that she aged all at once, that time was accelerating, days passed so rapidly that she could not even remember how she had spent the hours.

‘I’m stunned, Turk. Life is passing me by and I don’t even realize it,’ she remarked.

‘You are as healthy as ever, Inés. Only you’re growing bored. You mustn't be idle,’ Riad Halabi replied, and he gave her the idea of rearranging a few rooms in her house and converting it into a pension.

‘There isn’t one hotel in the entire village.’

‘Nor are there any tourists,’ she commented.

‘A clean bed and a hot breakfast are blessings to a traveler passing through.’

So they were, primarily for truck drivers from the Petroleum Company, who came to pass the night in the pension when fatigue and the tedium of the road filled their heads with hallucinations.

Mrs. Inés was the most respected matron in Agua Santa. She had educated all of the village children for several decades, which gave her authority to intervene in their lives and take them by the ears when necessary. Girls presented boyfriends for her approval, spouses consulted her about their arguments; she was advisor, arbiter and judge in every possible conflict, her authority was firmer than priests’, doctors’, and policemen’s combined. She never held back in

the exercise of this power. On one occasion, she entered the local jail, passed by the Lieutenant without greeting him, grabbed the keys that hung on a hook in the wall, and pulled from his cell one of her former students, taken up for drunkenness. The official tried to stop her, but she gave him a shove and dragged her student outside by the neck. Once in the street, she slapped him twice and declared that next time, she would lower his pants and give him a very memorable spanking. The day Inés came to announce that she had murdered one of her clients, Riad Halabi did not doubt for a moment that she was speaking seriously, because he knew her much too well. He took her by the arm and they walked the two blocks that separated The Pearl of the Orient from her house. It was one of the finest constructions in the village, made from wood and adobe, with a spacious porch where they hung hammocks on the hotter afternoons, bathrooms with running water and fans in every room. At that hour it seemed vacant— there was only one guest in the living room, drinking beer with his eyes glued to the television.

‘Where is he?’ whispered the Arab merchant.

‘In one of the back rooms,’ she responded without lowering her voice.

She conducted him past a row of rooms for rent, all connected by a long, narrow corridor, with purple vignettes painted on the columns and flower pots hanging from the rafters, next to a side yard where loquats and bananas grew. Inés opened the last door and Riad Halabi entered into the shadowed room. The blinds were closed and he needed some moments to adjust his vision and distinguish, on the bed, the body of an old man of harmless appearance, an aged farmer, swimming in a pool of his own blood, with his pants covered in feces, his head hanging by a strip of pallid skin, and an expression of terrible despondency on his face, as if he were asking forgiveness for so much disorder and carnage and for the tremendous inconvenience of having been assassinated.

Riad Halabi sat down on the only chair in the room, eyes glued to the floor, trying to calm his churning stomach. Inés remained standing with her arms crossed. She estimated that it would take a good two days to wash off the blood stains, and at least two more to mask the smell of shit and fear.

‘How did you do it?’ Riad Halabi asked at last, wiping sweat from his brow.

‘With the knife we use to chop coconuts. I came up from behind and hit him only once. He didn’t even see it coming, poor devil.’

‘Why?’

‘I had to do it, such is life. Imagine… what awful luck. The old man hadn’t even planned to stay on in Agua Santa, he was driving through when a rock cracked his windshield. He came here to pass the time until some Italian at the garage could fix his car up. He’s changed a great deal, we all age, so they say, but I recognized him at once. I’ve waited all these years, certain that he would return sometime or other. It's the man with the mangos.’

‘Allah deliver us,’ murmured Riad Halabi.

‘You think we should send for the Lieutenant?’

‘Hardly! How can you …’

‘I had the right, he killed my little boy.’

‘They wouldn’t understand, Inés.’

‘Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, Turk. Don’t they say that in your religion?’

‘The law doesn’t work like that, Inés.’

‘Fine. Then we can hide him here for a time, and say he committed suicide.’

‘Wait a bit! How many guests are there in the house?’

‘Only one truck driver. He’ll leave soon enough. He has to drive all the way to the capital.’

‘Good. Don’t receive anyone else. Lock the door to this room, and wait for me. I’ll return in the night.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to handle this in my own way.’

Riad Halabi was seventy-five years old, but he still possessed the same youthful vigor and the same spirit that had propelled him to the head of the crowd on his very first day in Agua Santa. He left Mrs. Inés’ pension and started, with a rapid step, for the first of many houses he would visit that evening. In the following hours, a persistent whisper echoed through the village, whose populace threw over decades of stagnation, excited by the most fantastic report, which they kept on repeating like some irrepressible rumor— a report that agitated to the point of screams and was respected all the more for its urgent secrecy. Night had not descended before the heady air was filled with that ecstatic restlessness which, as time passed, would come to characterize the village, forever bemusing visitors and foreigners who saw only a perfectly ordinary, insignificant outpost, like so many others, located just at the forest's edge. Early on, men began to install themselves at the tavern, women pulled kitchen chairs out onto the sidewalk to get a breath of cool, fresh air, and children flooded the streets as if it were Sunday.

The Lieutenant and his men took their routine turn around the village perimeters, and afterward accepted an invitation from the local brothel, where they were, apparently, celebrating some prostitute’s birthday. At midnight, there were more people in the streets than there had ever been before, even on All Saints’ Day, each one interpreting his part as diligently as if he had been cast in a film, some playing dominos, others drinking rum and smoking on the fringes, couples walking hand in hand, mothers running after their children, grandmothers leaning out of open doors. The priest lit lanterns and set the church bells ringing, announcing a novena prayer for Saint Isidor the Martyr, but very few were drawn to perform that particular brand of devotion.

At 9:30, a rendezvous at Mrs. Inés’ boarding house brought together the Arab, the town doctor, and four local youths whom she had educated from infancy, and who were already grown into hardened men home on military leave. Riad Halabi conducted them to the last room, where they found the cadaver covered with insects because the window had been left open and mosquitos allowed to enter in droves.

They stashed the poor wretch in a canvas sack, hastily carried him to the street, and without any further ceremony, pitched him into the trunk of Riad Halabi’s car. They exited the village by the main street, cheerfully waving to pedestrians, as travelers always did when they passed through. Some returned their salute with exaggerated enthusiasm, while others pretended not to see them, laughing disingenuously, like children caught in the performance of some naughty prank. The truck made for the very spot where, years ago, Mrs. Inés’ son had breathed his last while straining to grasp a mango.

By moonlight, they observed the property, long abandoned to overgrowth, ravaged by decay and bad memories. On a tangled hillside mangos grew, fell to the ground and rotted, giving birth to new trees which would produce others in their turn, and so on and so forth until a sort of hermetic forest had sprung up, absorbing hedges, paths, and even the scant remains of the house, detectable only by a faint odor of marmalade. The men lit kerosene lamps and waded into the forest, vigorously clearing a path with their machetes. When, at last, they agreed to go no further, one man gestured towards a patch of ground, and there, at the base of a giant tree brimming over with fruit, they dug an extensive hole and interred the canvas sack. Before covering it over, Riad Halabi murmured a brief prayer in Arabic, the only one he knew. They returned to the village around midnight and observed with relief that no one had retired yet: lights still glared in all the windows and the streets were packed with pedestrians.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Inés had washed the walls and furniture with soapy water, burned the bedclothes, aired out the house, and awaited her friends’ return with dinner on the table and a pitcher of pineapple rum standing by. The meal was accompanied by spirited talk of the latest chicken fights, barbaric sport, according to the teacher, but not quite so barbarous as bullfighting, where a matador had recently lost his liver— or so the men alleged. Riad Halabi was the last to leave. That night, for the first time in his life, he felt old. At the door, Mrs. Inés took his hands and pressed them a moment in her own.

‘Thank you, Turk,’ she said.

‘Why did you come to me, Inés?’

‘Because you’re the person I love most in this world, and because you should have been the father of my son.’

The next day, the inhabitants of Agua Santa returned to their interminable chores enlivened by a certain magnificent deception, a neighborly secret, that would be guarded with the utmost avidity, passed from lip to lip as a legend of justice, until Mrs. Inés’ death finally liberated us from our secrecy…and so I can tell it now.

It has become a commonplace to describe Isabel Allende as one of contemporary fiction’s greatest talents. For four decades now, her many novels have drawn readers into a lush, thaumaturgic world of rich backdrops, visceral characters and, on occasion, the odd piece of sorcery. Something remains to be said, however, of the great authoress as short story master. Condensed space can prove either boon or bete noire— for Allende, it is undoubtedly a boon. Her Cuentos de Eva Luna, loosely connected to the earlier novel, are perfectly packed with coiled-spring energy and glibly unfolding prose. In the original Spanish, this prose is like to a fertile forest canopy— its depths can never be plumbed but the reader discovers some new, unseen treasure. Endlessly flowing sentences combine with sharp candor to produce a style that is at once ‘done up’ and naturalistic. Among the collection of tales spun by Eva Luna, “El Huésped de La

Maestra” stands out as an example of the traditional ‘twist’ short story tinted by Allende’s patent macabre tones. It is simultaneously an homage to form and a satisfying innovation, complete with tragedy, revenge, stoic philosophy and blood friendship. Englishlanguage readers, most of whom are imperfectly familiar with these petite Allende successes, will benefit by a revitalized translation, which seeks to preserve atmosphere as much as accuracy of language. My own attachment to the piece is simply stated. As a descendent of Puerto Rican and Southern Italian grandparents, I feel a keen affinity for Allende’s southern passion. As an aspiring author of the beautiful and mystifying, I find inspiration in her decided prowess. She manages always to transport me, by some curious mechanism, into a heat-soaked and dizzying life of fantasy.

Artist Statement

Shadowed Overgrowth photographed by Tesse Reversma

CITATIONS

6

[Le] soldat [à sa] fifille/ [The] solider [to his] dear girl

Barbusse, Henri. “Jeudi, 11 février 1915.” In Lettres de Henri Barbusse à sa femme: 1914 1917, Bibebook, 1937, pp. 38-39

10

Calypso in Cerulean

Greek:

Homer. The Odyssey. Book 5, lines 50-75. Edited by A.T. Murphy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919). [online] Perseus. tufts.edu. Available at: <http://www.perseus. tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0135%3Abook%3D5%3Acard%3D50> [Accessed 2 October 2022].

26 José Martí’s 16

Tellechea, Manuel A., and Martí José. Versos Sencillos. Arte Publico Press, 1997.

33

Sprich auch du

Celan, Paul. “Sprich auch du.” In Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, translated by John Felstiner, 76. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. ———. “Weggebeizt.” In Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, translated by John Felstiner, 246. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.

Adorno, Theodor. “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft.” In Soziologische Forschung in Unserer Zeit, edited by K. G. Specht, 228-240. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1951.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Translator’s Introduction to Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse. Vol. 1, Introduction and Translation, translated by Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), vii-xii.

36 The School Teacher’s Guest

Allende, Isabel. “El Huésped de La Maestra,” in Cuentos de Eva Luna. New York: Penguin, 1999.

Artist Bios

Visual Art

Ekta Jha

Ekta Jha is a student of Delhi University pursuing Economic honors. Ekta’s hobbies include painting and reading novels, particularly tragedies. Her favorite mediums to work with are charcoal and acrylics. In her free time, one can find her listening to music and experimenting with new mediums.

Tesse Reversma

Tesse Reversma (1999) is a Dutch image creator by both photo and word. She tries to create images that translate and color how she makes sense of the world. Currently a part of Amsterdam’s Poetry Circle, she is hoping to soon return to the Bay Area.

Anjali Chanda

Anjali Chanda is a recent college graduate from Vanderbilt University where she studied English and sociology. She has photographed for the Vanderbilt Hustler, Loyola Greyhound, and her work has appeared in the Washington Post. In addition to photography, she is very interested in fiction writing and is currently working on a manuscript. You can find more of her work on her website https://anjalichanda. wixsite.com/2023.

Poetry/Translation

Sam Hyman

Sam Hyman is a student of literature and contemporary theory at Columbia University. They have budding interests in reparative approaches to archives, anticolonial listening and sound-making practices, and framing art as collaboratively relational. In their free time, they love to take lengthy soundwalks.

Donna Sanders

Donna Sanders is a senior at Columbia University studying English and European Intellectual History. She is an avid reader and writer of fiction, poetry and drama. Two of her plays have been awarded Columbia’s Seymour Brick Memorial Prize for Playwriting (‘21, ‘22). She has also written several works for broadcast on WKCR-FM Soundstage.

Evan Antonakes

Evan Antonakes is a poet currently living in Maine. He studies creative writing and anthropology at Bates College.

Poetry/ Translation cont...

Ben Thomas

Ben Thomas is a fourth-year undergraduate studying comparative literature, political science, and Russian, East European and Eurasian studies at Emory University. He has published work on U.S. education policy, on moral philosophy, and on Soviet, German, and British literature, and his current thesis explores the influence of the Russian heroic epic, fairy tales, and Stalinism on early Soviet children’s literature. Thomas speaks Russian, German, and Hindi, and he has interned for Emory’s English department, the Carter Center, a congressional campaign, and California’s Environmental Protection Agency.

S Eli Johnson

S Eli Johnson studied classics at Oberlin College and graduated in 2015. In addition to being a lover of ancient literature and poetry, she is also a speculative fiction writer, with recent work appearing in OFIC Magazine and the audio drama Sojourner’s Trails. She lives in Ohio with her partner and their large garden.

Angela Yang

Angela Yang is a psychology researcher and creative writer. She graduated from Stanford in 2022 with a major in psychology and a minor in Asian American Studies. Her writing attempts to explore the complex emotional journeys of Asian American families, which continue after their physical migrations. She was an editor for the Leland Quarterly, a student-run literary magazine.

Cynthia Salinas Cappellano

Cynthia Salinas Cappellano is a rising senior studying Film & Media Studies, and Creative Writing at Emory University. Previously, they were the recipient of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Prize. Recently, they placed as a finalist in Agnes Scott College’s 52nd Annual Writers’ Festival.

Downstairs Exit photographed by Tesse Reversma