The translator, Auslander, was at first flattered. She listened, astonished, for a full minute before the caller—Rumanian, she had guessed after his initial words of praise—paused for a breath, allowing her the opportunity to thank him.
“No, no,” he said. “It is I who should thank you, and furthermore apologize for disturbing you at your home. Naturally I am aware that this was most presumptuous. I admit I hesitated a long while before I placed the call. Still, it was difficult to resist. When I read the contributors’ notes and discovered that you ‘lived and worked in New York City,’ I felt it was a great stroke of luck. I must tell you I was surprised that your telephone number was so easily obtained from Directory Assistance.”
Auslander laughed. “I’ve never found it necessary to keep the number a secret. I’m not exactly in the position of getting besieged with calls from admiring readers.”
“You are far too modest,” the Rumanian said. He spoke hoarsely but with a certain delicacy, as if he were whispering. “Your essay was truly quite something. Such insight! Your understanding of the process of translating poetry is complete, total.”
“It’s kind of you to say so,” Auslander said. She had begun to shiver. The telephone call had caught her just as she was preparing to lower herself into the bathtub, and she wished she had thought to grab a towel when she’d rushed to answer the phone.
“I assure you I am not being kind,” he said. “Your work impressed me greatly. It is so difficult to write of such matters with cleverness and charm as well as intelligence. I imagine you are a poet yourself?”
“No, not actually,” Auslander said. Her teeth were chattering now. “Could you possibly hold on for just a second?” She set the receiver down and clambered over the bed to shut the window. Across the small courtyard a man sat at his kitchen table laying out a hand of solitaire. He looked up at Auslander and she stared back for an instant before she remembered that she was naked. As she yanked down the bamboo shade, the man raised his hand in slow expressionless salute.
“Oh, I fear I have interrupted you,” the Rumanian said when she returned to the phone.
“Not at all.” Auslander cradled the receiver on her shoulder as she dug through a heap of clothes on the floor. She extracted a flannel shirt and shrugged her arms into it. “Really, it was very good of you to call.”
“Good of me? No, no, not in the least.” He was nearly breathless. “Your essay was outstanding. Brilliant, I should say.”
“My goodness,” Auslander said. She sat down on the bed and buried her feet in the tangle of shirts and jeans and sweaters.
“Marvelous work. Profound. I do not exaggerate.”
She was beginning to feel embarrassed. “You’re much too kind,” she murmured, and quickly, before he could protest again, she said, “Tell me, how did you happen to come across the essay?”
“Oh”—he laughed, a taut, high-pitched sound—“I read everything, everything. I haunt the periodical room of the library. Nothing is obscure to me. The quarterlies, the academic journals, they all fascinate me, utterly. And I admit also that I have a particular interest in translation.”
“A university library, it must be?”
“Ah, my God! How rude of me!” There was a soft thump, and Auslander imagined him smacking his fist to his forehead. “I am so sorry. I have not properly introduced myself. My name is Petru Viorescu. I am a student—a graduate student—at Columbia University.”
Auslander smiled into the phone. A Rumanian: she had been right. “Well, Mr. Viorescu, I’m grateful for your compliments. It was very thoughtful of you to call.” This was greeted with silence. Auslander waited; he remained mute. She was just starting to become uneasy when he cleared his throat, and lowering his hushed voice still further said, “Miss Auslander, I do not want to appear in any way aggressive. Yet I wondered if it might be possible for us to meet.”
“To meet?”
“Yes. You see, what I want to propose is a working meeting. Or, rather, a meeting to discuss the possibility . . . the possibility of working.” He spoke quickly, with a nervous edge to his voice. “In your essay you write of the problems of translating some of the more diffuse, associative poetry in the Romance languages—of the light, respectful touch necessary for such work.”
“Yes,” she said. Cautious now.
“You have this touch, of course.”
“I hope so,” Auslander said.
“You even mentioned, specifically mentioned, a number of modern Rumanian poets. This was a great surprise and pleasure to me. I should add that I myself am Rumanian.”
“Yes.”
“Your biographical note included the information that you are fluent in nine languages. I assume, on the basis of your remarks in the second section of the essay, that my own is one.”
“Your assumption is correct.”
“And you are familiar with a great deal of Rumanian poetry.”
“‘A great deal,’ I don’t know about, Mr. Viorescu.”
“You are feeling a little bit impatient with me now, yes?” He coughed out his odd laugh again. “Bear with me, please, for another moment. Have you in fact done any translation from the Rumanian as yet?”
Of course, Auslander thought. She struck her own forehead lightly with her palm. A poet. “Some,” she said. A student poet yet. More than likely a very bad one. Unpublished, it went without saying. She sighed. Vanity! Only this had prevented her from assessing the matter sooner.
“I thought so. I would be most grateful if you would consider meeting with me to discuss a project I have in mind.”
“I’m afraid I’m quite busy,” Auslander said.
“I assure you I would not take up very much of your time. A half hour perhaps, no more.”
“Yes, well, I’m afraid I can’t spare even that.”
“Please,” he said. “It might be that ten or fifteen minutes would be sufficient.”
Irritated, she said, “You realize, of course, that you haven’t described the nature of this project.”
“Oh, that is not possible at the moment.” It occurred to her then that he actually was whispering. Always such drama with poets! “I do not mean to be secretive, believe me,” he said. “It is only that I am unable to speak freely. But if you could spare a few minutes to see me . . .”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Please.”
It was not desperation—not exactly that—that she heard in this invocation. But surely, she thought, it was something akin to it. Urgency. Despair? Oh, nonsense, she told herself. She was being fanciful; she had proofread too many romance novels lately. With this thought she felt a pang of self-pity. She had lied when she’d said she was busy. She had not had any real work since early fall; she had been getting by with freelance proofreading—drudgery, fools’ work: romances and science fiction, houseplant care and rock star biographies. But that was beside the point, of course. Busy or not, she had every right to say no. She had refused such requests before, plenty of times. Those letters, so pathetic, forwarded to her by the journal or publisher to which they had been sent, asking her to translate a manuscript “on speculation”—they wrote letters that were like listings in Writers’ Market, these young poets!—she had never had the slightest difficulty answering. But naturally it was easier to write a brief apologetic note than to disengage oneself politely on the phone. Still, it was only a matter of saying no, and saying it firmly so it would be clear the discussion was at an end.
Viorescu had fallen silent again. A manipulation, Auslander thought grimly. He was attempting to stir up guilt. And for what should she feel guilty? As if her sympathy were in the public domain! What did he think, did he imagine that publishing a scholarly essay in Metaphrasis meant she was a celebrity, someone with charity to spare?
“I’m assuming that your intent is to try to convince me to undertake the translation of a manuscript,” she said. “First I must tell you that my services are quite expensive. Furthermore, you have read only a single essay which concerns approaches to translation and which tells you nothing whatsoever about my abilities as a translator.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I have read two volumes of your translations, one from the Italian, one from the Portuguese, and a most remarkable group of poems in a quarterly, translated from the German. I apologize for not mentioning this earlier; I excuse myself by telling you I feared you would question my motives, the sincerity of my praise. So much flattery, you see. But I assure you I am entirely sincere. I have not been as thorough as I might have been in my research—my time is limited, you understand, by my own studies—but I am certain I have seen enough of your work to know that it is of the highest caliber. I am well aware that the finest poem can lose all of its beauty in the hands of a clumsy translator. The work I read was without exception excellent.”
Speechless, Auslander picked angrily at the frayed cuff of her shirt.
“And, naturally, I would expect to pay you whatever fee you are accustomed to receiving. I am hardly a wealthy man—as I say, I am a student. ‘Independently poor’ is how I might describe my financial status”—that curious little laugh again—“but this of course is important, it is not a luxury.”
Auslander could not think of a word to say. She looked around at the disorder in her bedroom, a tiny perfect square littered with clothes and papers and precarious towers of books, and through the doorway, into the kitchen, where the tub stood full on its stubby clawed legs. The water was probably cold as a stone by now.
“All right,” she said finally. “I’ll meet with you. But only for half an hour, no more. Is that understood?” Even as she spoke these cautionary words she felt foolish, ashamed of herself.
But he was not offended. “That’s fine,” he said. “That’s fine.” She had been prepared for a crow of triumph. Yet he sounded neither triumphant nor relieved. Instead he had turned distracted; his tone was distant. Auslander had a sudden clear vision of him thinking: All right, now this is settled. On to the other.
They set a time and place, and Auslander—herself relieved that the conversation was over—hung up the phone and went into the kitchen. The bathwater had indeed turned quite cold. As she drained some of it and watched the tap stream out a rush of fresh hot water, she resolved to put the Rumanian out of her mind. The tenor of the conversation had left her feeling vaguely anxious, but there was nothing to be done for it. She would know soon enough what she had gotten herself into. She would undoubtedly be sorry, that much was already clear. It seemed to her that she was always getting herself into something about which she would be certain to be sorry later.
IN TRUTH, Auslander at thirty-four had no serious regrets about her life. For all her small miscalculations, all the momentary lapses in judgment that only proved to her that she’d do better to attend to her instincts, in the end there was nothing that really upset the steady balance she had attained. She had lived in the same small Greenwich Village apartment for a dozen years; she had a few friends she trusted and who did not make especially great demands on her time or spirit; her work was work she liked and excelled in. The work in particular was a real source of pleasure to her; and yet it was not the work she had set out to do. She had begun as a poet, and she had not, she thought, been a very bad one. Still, she had known by her freshman year at college that she would never be a very good one. She had been able to tell the difference even then between true poets and those who were only playing at it for their own amusement. Poetry as self-examination or catharsis was not for her—not enough for her—and knowing she would never be one of the few real poets, she gave it up without too much sorrow.
The decision to make her way as a translator of other, better, poets’ work was one that hardly needed to be made: she found she had been moving toward it steadily for years, as if by intent. As early as the fifth grade she had discovered that languages came easily to her: the Hebrew lessons her father had insisted on were a snap, a pleasure; Yiddish, which was spoken at home, she taught herself to read and write. In junior high school she learned French, swallowing up long lists of words as if she’d been hungering for them all her young life. At that age she took this as a matter of course; it was only later that she came to understand that facility with languages was considered a talent, a special gift. By her sixteenth birthday she was fully fluent in French, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Spanish. By eighteen she had added German and Italian, and by the time she had completed her undergraduate education she had mastered Portuguese, Rumanian, and Russian as well. Her choice to become a translator, she knew, was a kind of compromise between aspirations and ability; but it was a compromise that satisfied her.
She knew her limits. This, Auslander believed, was her best trait. She did not deceive herself and thus could not disappoint herself. She always knew where she stood. She was aware, for example, that she was not a beauty. She was content with her looks, however, for they were certainly good enough (“for my purposes,” she had told a former lover, a painter who had wondered aloud if she were ever sad about not being “a more conventionally pretty type”). When she troubled to make even a half-hearted effort she was quite attractive—neatly if eccentrically dressed, solid looking, “an indomitable gypsy,” in the words of the painter. Her unruly black hair and eyebrows, her wide forehead and prominent nose, her fine posture—about which her father had been insistent along with the Hebrew classes—all of this made an impression. Her figure, another ex-lover had told her, was that of a Russian peasant—he meant her strong legs and broad shoulders and hips. The notion amused her (though the man, finally, did not; he was a biochemist with little in the way of real imagination— his stolidness, which she had at first interpreted as a charming imperturbability, depressed her after several months). She knew she was the kind of woman of whom other women said, “She’s really very striking, don’t you think?” to men who shrugged and agreed, without actually looking at her, in order to keep the peace. And yet there was a particular sort of man who appreciated her brand of attractiveness—men by and large a decade or so older than herself, intelligent and good-natured men who had a tendency to brood, even to be sullen, and whose wit was mocked by self-criticism. In any case, she was not “on the market.” She had no call to compete with the slim, lively blondes or the dramatic dark young beauties who weaved like lovely ribbons through the city, brilliantly pretty and perpetually bored and lonely. Auslander watched them at publication parties and post-reading parties, in Village cafes and restaurants and bars, and she eavesdropped on their talk with mild interest: there was a hunt on in the city; there was always talk—she heard it everywhere—about the lack of available, desirable men. Auslander herself was not lonely, never bored. She liked having a man in her life, and frequently she did, but she was most at ease alone, and she grew uncomfortable when a man tried to force himself too far into her affairs. It made her nervous to have a man—no matter how much she cared for him—poking about in her things, clattering through cabinets and riffling through her books, cooking pasta in her kitchen, sitting casually in her desk chair.
Auslander’s boyfriends—a ridiculous word, she thought, when the men she knew were over forty (though the men themselves seemed to like it)—always started off admiring her “independence” and “self-sufficiency.” Later, they would accuse her of “fear of commitment,” “obsessive self-reliance.” Her most recent affair, with a poet named Farrell—a very good poet, whose work she admired greatly, and the first, and only, poet with whom she had ever been involved in this way—had dissolved after nearly a year into a series of nasty arguments: he called her inflexible and cold; she pronounced him infantile, morbidly dependent. In the end she slept with a young novelist she met at the Ninety-Second Street Y, and carelessly let Farrell discover it. He drank himself into a rage and howled at her, pounding the refrigerator and the bathtub with his fists, and hurled a bottle of shampoo across the room; the plastic split and pale orange globs spattered the walls. She watched in mute amazement, breathless with fear, as he flung himself around her kitchen in a fury, bellowing like an animal. Finally she slammed out of the apartment without a word, and when she returned an hour and a half later he was asleep on her bedroom floor, curled like a shell among her clothes. She spent the night sitting wide awake and shivering at her desk, and in the morning when he rose he only nodded at her and said, “Well, all right, then,” and left.
She had not seen him since—it had been five weeks now—and she had found that she missed him. This itself was disturbing. If he was gone, she wanted him gone, done with. She yearned for clarity; ambivalence unnerved her. They had been a bad match, she told herself. Farrell was so demanding, and what did he want from her after all? To be a different sort of person than she was? He needed constant attention and she couldn’t give it to him. But there was no getting around the fact that she liked him. More than liked him. She was fonder of him than she had been of anyone in years—perhaps ever in her life. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she had slept with the young writer except that she had felt suffocated. She’d needed to poke her way out, shake things up. But still she had taken a good deal of pleasure in Farrell’s company before their battling had begun.
This had happened again and again, this cycle of pleasure and discontent. Auslander could not help but wonder sometimes if she was simply picking the wrong men. To hear other women talk, most men were afraid of involvement. Her friend Delia, a playwright, had confessed to her that the man she’d been seeing for the last two years complained constantly about feeling trapped. “He says he wants to be close,” she told Auslander, “but then he admits that the whole notion of togetherness terrifies him.” Why then was it that the men Auslander knew seemed only too eager to cast in their lots with her? Delia laughed. She said, “Oh, sure. You ought to try taking one of them up on it sometime. He’d be out the door so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. Take Farrell, for instance. Do you think he’d know what to do with you if he had you? He’d be scared to death.”
Auslander wasn’t so sure. Not that it mattered anymore. Farrell, she felt certain, was out of the picture for good. They had spoken on the phone a couple of times, but he was still angry with her, and the last time they’d talked—he had telephoned her, drunk, in the dead middle of the night—he had called her a “cold ungiving bitch.”
It was of Farrell that Auslander was thinking as she readied herself for her appointment with Petru Viorescu. It wasn’t that she was imagining a romance with the Rumanian. She expected that she would read a few of his poems, gently tell him she could not translate them, and they would never meet again. No, it was only that this was the first time in more than a month that she had dressed and tidied herself knowing that she was going to meet with a man. She had been keeping to herself since the explosion with Farrell, seeing only the occasional woman friend—Delia or Margot or Kathleen, all of whom lived nearby—for lunch or coffee. She had not even attended a reading or seen a play or a movie since that night. It struck her now that it was as if she had been in hiding. Hiding from what? she wondered, surprised at herself. Afraid that Farrell would sneak up behind her on the street or in a theater? And if he did? What did it matter?
Displeased, she shook off the thought and took a few steps back from the full-length mirror behind her bedroom door, considering herself. She grimaced. What a specter! Brushing and tugging and straightening, turning this way and that. There was something demeaning, Auslander thought, about thinking of one’s appearance. Still, it was unavoidable. She tipped her head, squinting at herself. She looked all right. She had decided it would be wise to appear a trifle stern, and in gray corduroy slacks and a black sweater, boots, no jewelry, no scarves, her hair in a single long braid, she was satisfied that she had achieved the appropriate effect. Nodding to herself, she swept out of the room, snatched up her long coat and her gloves, and was off, even looking forward to the meeting now as a kind of mild diversion.
In the Peacock Cafe she had no trouble spotting him. He had the hollow, unhealthy look of a youngish poet—mid-thirties, she guessed, somewhat older than she had expected—and wore the uniform of a graduate student: shirt and tie, corduroy jacket and blue jeans. He was very slight. As she took him in with a glance from the doorway, she calculated that he was about her own height, certainly no taller than five-six at most. He sat smoking a cigarette and tapping a teaspoon against a coffee mug at one of the small round tables in the front of the cafe.
Auslander went in flourishing her coat and smacking her gloves together, her braid flapping behind her, and moved straight to his table and extended her hand. “Mr. Viorescu?”
He started, and half-stood so abruptly the mug clattered against the sugar bowl. “Ah, Miss Auslander?”
Auslander nodded and sat down across from him. There was an alert, tensely intelligent look about him, she thought—almost an animal-like keenness.
“You are younger than I had imagined,” he said. His presence of mind seemed to have returned to him. He was assessing her quite coolly.
She thought of saying: You are older and shorter. But she only nodded.
“I don’t know why I should have expected that you would be older—perhaps fifty.” He grinned and tilted back his chair, folding his arms across his chest. His smile made her uncomfortable and reminded her that the meeting was not likely to be a pleasant one for her. “Would you like a cappuccino? Or an espresso perhaps?”
“American coffee, thank you.” She decided not to remove her coat; she would make it clear that she meant to stick by her half-hour time limit. Viorescu continued to grin at her, and she was relieved when the waitress finally idled by to take her order. They sat in silence until she returned with the coffee. Then the Rumanian leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the table. “I know you are busy, so I shall come to the point immediately. Would you be interested in undertaking the translation of the work of a poet who is, I assure you, quite brilliant, a magnificent talent, and who has never been published in English?”
Auslander raised her eyebrows. “I see you are not of the opinion that modesty is a virtue.”
“Modesty?” Momentarily he was confused. Then, at once, he began to laugh. “Oh, yes, that is very good, very good.”
Auslander, herself confused, did not know what to say.
“I am so sorry—I should have realized. You of course imagined that I was the poet. Yes, I would have drawn the same conclusion.” He chuckled softly. “Ah, but my God, imagine me a poet! A fond wish, as it happens, but without even the smallest glimmer of hope.” He shook his head. “No, no, look here. It is my wife of whom I am speaking. The poet Teodora Viorescu.”
“You’re not a poet?”
“Not in the slightest.” He lifted his hands from the table and turned them palms up. “As it happens, I have no ability in this area at all. In fact, I have thought to try to translate a number of my wife’s poems. I believed I might manage it. But I find it takes a poet to do such work, or—you said you were not yourself a poet—a rather exceptional talent which I do not possess. It was a hopeless task, hopeless. The results were . . . earthbound. Do you know what I mean by this? The poetry was lost.”
Auslander sipped her coffee as she mulled this over. Finally she said, “Your wife . . . I take it she is unable to translate her own work?”
“Ah, well, you see, this is the problem. She has not the command of English I have. She has had some . . . some reluctance to learn the language as fully as she might. Oh, she is able to express herself perfectly well in spoken English. As for writing . . . that is another matter altogether.”
“Yes.” Auslander nodded. “This is often the case.”
“I had hoped you might recognize her name, though it is understandable if you do not. Her reputation was only beginning to become established in our country when we left. She was thought of then as one of the most promising young poets in Rumania. She was very young, you understand—nineteen—but still she had published a small book and her work was included in two quite prestigious anthologies.”
“Viorescu,” Auslander murmured. “She has always published under this name?”
“Yes. We married when she was seventeen.”
“Seventeen!”
He shrugged. “We have known each other since we were children. I was the best friend of her eldest brother.”
“I see,” Auslander said politely.
“And in any case, over the last eight years you most certainly would not have heard of her. Since we came to the United States there has been nothing to hear.”
“Is she writing at all?”
“Oh, she is writing, she is writing all the time. But she writes only in Rumanian. None of the work has been published.”
“How is it that she has never before had any interest in having her poems translated?”
“Well, it is somewhat more complicated than that.” He shifted in his seat. “You see, even now she insists she has no interest.”
“But then . . .” Auslander narrowed her eyes. “You’re discussing this with me without her permission?”
He poked at his pack of cigarettes with his index finger, pushing it around in a small circle. His eyes followed its path.
“You must realize that I could not possibly consider the translation of a writer’s work against her wishes.”
He did not raise his eyes. “Well, here is the problem,” he said. “I am very . . . I am very concerned about her. I fear . . . She is not—how can I say this correctly? She is not adjusting. She is languishing here. A poet needs a certain amount of attention to thrive. Teo is not thriving. I fear for her.”
“Still it doesn’t seem—”
“We are not thriving,” he said. Now he looked at Auslander. “She sits awake at night and writes; the poems she puts in a drawer in the bedroom. She will not discuss them. She refuses to consider the possibility of their translation. She is angry—all the time she seems angry. Often she will not even speak to me.”
“Well, this is a personal matter,” Auslander said, “between the two of you only.”
He continued as if she had not spoken. “Teo is rather frail, you see. She has headaches, she does not sleep well. Frequently she is depressed. I feel strongly that she cannot continue this way. She has no life outside her part-time job at the university. She has no friends, no one to talk with. She says I am her only friend. And it was I who took her away from her family and a promising career.”
“She is sorry she left Rumania?”
“Not quite sorry, no. The situation there was untenable, impossible. Worse for her than for me. She is a Jew—only nominally, of course; it is virtually impossible to practice Judaism in our country. But this in itself made life difficult for her. No, we were completely in agreement about leaving. But here . . . she is always unhappy. Her poetry, her most recent work—it makes me weep to read it, it is so full of sorrow. The poems are spectacular: violent and beautiful. But it is as if she is speaking only to herself.”
“Perhaps this is the way she wants it.”
Again he ignored her. “I have thought for a long time about finding a translator for her. I believe that if she were able to hold in her hand a translation of one of her poems, if it were precisely the right translation—she would change her mind. But how to find the person capable of this! It was daunting to me; it seemed beyond my abilities. When I read your essay in Metaphrasis, however, I was certain I had found Teo’s translator. I have no doubt of this, still. I feel it, I feel it in my heart. As I read that essay, it was like a sign: I knew you were the one. With absolute clarity I knew also that you would be sympathetic to the problem . . . the unusual situation.”
“Naturally, I’m sympathetic. But what can I do? Without her approval I could not translate a word of her writing. Surely you understand that. What you’re asking of me is not only unethical, it’s unfeasible. Without the participation of your wife . . .” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”
Viorescu’s expression was impassive as he tapped a cigarette from his pack and placed it between his lips. As he lit it, he breathed out, in rapid succession, two dark streams of smoke.
“But I would still like to see some of her poems,” Auslander said. She did not know herself if she were being merely polite or if he had indeed called upon her curiosity. In any case it seemed to her absolutely necessary to make this offer; she could not refuse to read his wife’s work after all he had said.
Viorescu took the cigarette from his mouth and looked at it. Then he waved it at Auslander. “Ah, yes, but are you quite sure that itself would not be ‘unethical’?”
His petulance, she decided, was excusable under the circumstances. He was disappointed; this was understandable. Calmly, she said, “I see no reason why it should be.” She kept her eyes on his cigarette as she spoke. “Unless, of course, you would simply prefer that I not read them.”
He smiled, though faintly. “No, no. I had hoped that in any event you would want to read them.” From a satchel hung on the back of his chair he produced a manila envelope. He laid it on the table between them. It was quite thick. The sight of it moved her, and this came as a surprise. Viorescu folded his hands and set them atop the envelope. “I have chosen mostly those poems written in the last year or so, but also there is a quantity of her earlier work, some of it dating from our first few years in this country. I have also included a copy of her book, which I thought you would be interested in seeing.”
“Yes,” Auslander said. “I would, thank you.”
“It is, I believe, a fair sample of Teo’s work. It should give you a true sense of what she is about. See for yourself that I have not been overly generous in my praise.”
“You’re very proud of her.”
“Yes, naturally.” He spoke brusquely enough so that Auslander wondered if she had offended him. “Perhaps this is hard for you to understand. Teo is . . . she is not only my wife, she is like my sister. I have known her since she was six years old and I was twelve. We were family to each other long before our marriage.”
A dim alarm went off in Auslander’s mind—a warning that confidences were ahead. This was her cue to change the subject, no question about it. But she remained silent. Altogether despite herself she was touched.
“Ah, you find this poignant,” Viorescu said, startling her.
Embarrassed, she nodded.
“Yes, well, perhaps it is. That we have been so close for so much of our lives is itself touching, I suppose. But we are not . . . She is . . . Ah, well.” He shrugged and smiled, vaguely.
Auslander cautioned herself: This is none of your business; you want no part of this. But she felt drawn in; she couldn’t help asking, “What were you about to say?” And yet as she spoke she groaned inwardly.
“Oh—only that something has been lost. This is maybe not so unusual after so many years, I think.” He closed his eyes for an instant. “Something lost,” he murmured. “Yes, it may be that she is lost to me already. Well, it is my own fault. I have not been a help to her. I have done a great deal of damage.”
At once Auslander realized she did not want to hear any of this. Not another word, she thought, and she imagined herself rising immediately, bidding him good-bye and taking off—she did not even have to take the package of poems. What was the point of it? Did she honestly think there was a chance she might discover a hidden genius? Who was she kidding?
“It is very bad, very bad,” he muttered.
A mistake, Auslander thought. Sitting here listening, offering to read the poetry of his wife—all a mistake. She could feel her chest tightening against what she suddenly felt was certain to be a perilous intrusion into her life. For it would get worse with every moment: confessions led to further confessions. No more. She wanted no more of Viorescu and his poet wife.
He pushed the envelope toward her. “Here, I can see you are impatient. I did not mean to keep you so long.”
She picked up the envelope. “It’s true, I should be going.” She half-rose, awkwardly, and drew the envelope to her chest. “Ah—shall I phone you after I’ve read these?”
“I will phone you.” He smiled at her, broadly this time. “I should like to thank you in advance for your time. I am very grateful.”
Auslander felt uneasy. “I hope I’ve made it completely clear that I’m not going to be able to take Teodora on.”
“After you have read the poems,” he said, “perhaps you will change your mind.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“You have agreed to read them, after all.”
“I am always interested in good poetry,” Auslander said stiffly. “If your wife’s work is as you say, I would be doing myself a disservice by not reading it.”
“Indeed,” he said, and now he laughed—his telephone laugh, that short curious bark. “I will phone you next week.”
She could feel his eyes on her back as she retreated, the envelope of poems under her arm. For his sake—and for the sake of the unknown, unhappy Teodora—she hoped the poems were not dreadful. She did not have much confidence in this hope, however; the excitement that had begun to stir in her only moments ago had already left her entirely.
By the time she had passed through the café’s door and emerged onto the street, she was convinced the work would turn out to be inept. As she crossed Greenwich Avenue, her coat whipping about her legs, her head bowed against the wind, she was imagining her next conversation with Viorescu. She would be gentle; there would be no need to tell him the truth about his wife’s work. If he deceived himself, he deceived himself. It was not her responsibility.
AS IT turned out, Viorescu had neither lied to her nor deceived himself. Teodora Viorescu’s poems were extraordinary. Auslander, after reading the first of them, which she had idly extracted from the envelope and glanced at as she sat down to her dinner, had in her astonishment risen from the table, dropping her fork to her plate with a clatter, and reached for the envelope to shake out the remainder of its contents. A batch of poems in hand, she ate her broiled chicken and rice without the slightest awareness of so doing. She could hardly believe her eyes. The poems jumped on the pages, full of terror, queer dangerous images of tiny pointed animal faces, blood raining through the knotted black branches of trees, fierce woods that concealed small ferocious creatures. And the language! The language was luminous, electrifying. What a haunted creature the poet herself must be! Auslander thought as she at last collapsed against her pillows at half-past twelve. She had been reading for five hours, had moved from table to desk to bed, and she had not yet read all the poems Viorescu had given her, but she intended to, tonight. She needed however to rest for a moment. She was exhausted; her eyes burned.
For ten minutes she lay listening to the dim apartment sounds of night: refrigerator, plumbing, upstairs creaks and groans, downstairs murmurs. Then she sat up again, stacked her pillows neatly behind her, and set again to reading. When she had read all of the poems once, she began to reread; after a while she got up and fetched a legal pad. For some time she reread and made notes on the pad, resisting with difficulty the urge to go to her desk for a batch of the five-by-seven cards she used to make notes on work she was translating. Finally she gave in, telling herself it was simply easier to use the index cards, their feel was more familiar, and with a supply of the cards beside her she worked until dawn in something of a feverish state, feeling like one of the poet’s own strange night creatures as she sat wild-haired and naked in her bed, chewing on her fingers and the end of her pen, furiously scratching out notes as the gray-bluish light rose around her.
For days, anxiously, she awaited Viorescu’s call. On the fifth day she checked the telephone directory and was half-relieved to find no listing; she knew she should not phone him. But she felt foolish, waiting. Dimly she was reminded of her adolescence—a hateful time—as she stared at the phone, willing it to ring. After each of her ventures out of the apartment—her few forays to the supermarket and the library, her one trip uptown to return the galleys of a gothic romance—she hastened to her answering machine. The playback yielded up several invitations to functions that didn’t interest her, a number of calls from friends, one from her mother, one from Farrell.
“Do you miss me, Harriet, my love? Are you lonely?”
Auslander breathed impatiently, fists against her thighs. Farrell’s message was intended of course to make her angry. He never called her “Harriet” except to taunt her. Well, let him, she thought. She would not allow him to upset her. She had been less preoccupied lately with missing him; she had other things on her mind (and she’d like the chance to tell him that, she thought)—though the sound of his voice on the tape, it was true, sent a shiver of sorrow and loneliness through her. “Has it hit you yet that you’re all alone? Are you enjoying it, as anticipated? Or are you sorry? Or are you not alone—have you already found someone else to resist loving?” There was a pause, then, harsher: “Don’t call me back. I’ve changed my mind; I don’t want to talk to you after all.”
Eight days passed; then nine. On the tenth day—once again as she was about to take a bath, one leg over the side of the tub—the phone rang and she knew instantly it was the poet’s husband.
He was cheerful. “So? What do you make of my Teodora?”
Auslander felt it would be wise to be guarded. “Well, she’s something, all right. An original, no question.”
“You enjoyed her work, then?”
She could not remain cautious; she was too relieved to hear from him.
“‘Enjoyed?’ Ha! She’s a terror, your wife. The real thing, astonishing stuff.”
Viorescu was cackling. “Yes, yes, it’s true, absolutely true. She is one of a kind, a wonder, a gem!”
Auslander stood beside the bed coiling and uncoiling the telephone cord about her wrist as they went on to talk about the poems. She excused herself to get her notes, and then she was able to quote directly from them; Viorescu was delighted. She had just launched into some observations about one of the most recent poems when she happened to glance up and saw that the man across the way was standing at his window staring blankly at her. Good lord, she thought, he would begin to imagine she strolled around naked for his benefit. She sat down on the bed, her back to the window, and pulled the blanket up around her.
“Listen, Petru,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. I really ought to meet Teodora.”
He clicked his tongue. “Well, as you know, this is not such a simple matter. I am not sure it is possible at all right now.”
“It may be difficult,” she said, “but surely we can manage it.”
“Tell me, have you given any further thought to the question of translating her work?”
‘’I’ve already told you I would not consider it without her full cooperation.”
“But you are interested! Well, this is good news indeed. Of course you must meet her. Let me think . . . Why don’t you come to dinner? Let us say, next Friday night?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. But it would be best not to let her know immediately that you are a translator.”
Auslander was discomfited. “Are you sure this is necessary?” she said. “If I’m not to be a translator, who am I? How did we meet?”
“Oh, I shall say I met you at an academic function. Teo never attends department functions with me.”
“An academic function,” Auslander echoed. She recalled then that she had never asked him what his area of study was. “What department is it that I am to be associated with?”
“Philosophy,” he said with a short laugh. “That is my department. My specialization is Nietzsche.”
“Wonderful,” Auslander said. “You can tell Teo I’m a renowned Nietzsche scholar and I’ll remain silent all evening.”
“I can tell her that you are Hannah Arendt and she would not know the difference,” Viorescu said dryly.
“Are you sure all this intrigue is necessary? Maybe you ought to simply tell her the truth.”
“No. She would suspect a plot.”
“Has she such a suspicious nature?”
“It does not take much,” he said, “to arouse suspicious thoughts. Why take such a chance? We can tell her the truth after an hour, two hours perhaps, once she is comfortable in your presence.”
For the second time, Auslander hung up the phone after talking to the Rumanian and found herself wondering what she was letting herself in for. Gloomily she paced around her bedroom—the man across the way, she noted as she went to the window to pull down the shade, was no longer looking out—and tried to convince herself that she was in no danger of becoming personally involved with the Viorescus. They needed a translator, she told herself; it was not necessary to be their friend. Still, she didn’t like the circumstances; they did not lend themselves to a smooth working relationship. Even assuming that all went well—that Teodora was willing, that she could be reasoned with—the project was likely to be full of difficulties and strains, starting out the way it was. Already she had agreed to this preposterous masquerade! It was clear enough that between Viorescu and his wife there were problems, serious problems. Auslander hated the thought of these complications.
But the poetry! Auslander shook her head, tugged at her hair as she circled the room. Oh, the poetry!
SHE WOULD have recognized Teodora Viorescu at once, Auslander felt. Had she passed her on Sixth Avenue a day or two ago, she was certain she would have thought: Might this not be the poet? Small and pale, with hair like a slick black cap cut so short her ears stuck out pointedly from beneath it, she felt her way through the room toward Auslander like a swimmer.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Auslander said. “Petru has told me a great deal about you.” She took the poet’s small hand in hers. It was very cold.
“So you are Miss Auslander.”
“Just Auslander is fine.”
“Ah, yes, so my husband told me.” She smiled. Her face was perfectly round, her eyes also—oddly—round. How white her skin was! As if she truly never saw daylight. And how grave she looked, even as she smiled. It was in the eyes, Auslander thought. Her eyes were the eyes of one of her own imaginary creatures: liquid-black with floating pinpoints of light, emitting a steady watchful beam.
During dinner there was small talk. The food was Rumanian, traditional, Viorescu explained. He seemed very nervous and spoke at length about ingredients and methods of cooking. Auslander avoided meeting his eyes; she was sure it was plain to Teodora that something was up. Teodora herself kept her eyes downcast and picked at her food; between the Viorescus barely a word passed.
Auslander helped Viorescu move the table back into the kitchen and pile the dishes in the sink; he tried to whisper to her but she waved him away impatiently. Enough of this, she thought. She returned to the living room to find the poet sitting on the windowseat, gazing out upon Riverside Drive. Auslander seated herself on the end of the couch nearest the window and said, “Please, Teodora, won’t you tell me about your work? Your husband informs me that you are a fine poet.”
“There is nothing to tell.” She turned slowly toward Auslander. Her tone and facial expression were remote. Auslander recalled what Farrell had told her when she’d described a famous poet she’d met as “terribly cool and remote.” “Wrong again, Auslander,” he had said. “Not remote. Only massively depressed and riddled with anxiety—like me.”
Auslander tried again. “Petru tells me you published a book in Rumania.”
“Yes.”
“And have you any interest in publishing your work in the United States?”
Teodora glanced over at her husband, who had entered the room silently and positioned himself by the bookshelves opposite the couch where Auslander sat, and spoke quietly to him in Rumanian. Auslander heard only snatches of what she said. “Unfair”—she heard this word several times—and “You should have told me.” Once, clearly, she heard the poet say “unforgivable,” and then—her heart sank—she heard unmistakably the Rumanian for “translator.” Viorescu did not speak. Finally Teodora turned again to Auslander. “I am sorry if we have put you to any trouble. I do not wish for my work to be translated into English.” Abruptly she stood and left the room.
Auslander started to rise, but Viorescu said, “Please, Auslander. There is nothing we can do.”
“What do you mean ‘nothing we can do’?” She was astounded. “I thought you were so eager to convince her.”
“I believed she might be convinced. Apparently I was wrong.”
“But you didn’t even try.”
“It would be pointless. She is very angry at having been deceived.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her what I was here for in the first place?’’
“You must realize that it would not have mattered either way. She is obviously beyond—”
“You’re giving up. I can’t believe it. You do this whole . . .” She sank back into the couch and looked up at him in amazement. “And giving up so easily!”
“Easily!” He laughed hoarsely. “I have been trying for years to talk her into having her work translated. I am giving up now finally.” He shook his head. “There is a story—do you know it?—about a famous philosopher who decided, after long consideration, to become a vegetarian. For many years he lived as a vegetarian. He spoke and wrote of it, of course, since under the circumstances such a decision could not be a private matter only. He spoke brilliantly, in fact, and movingly, on the moral logic of his choice. Then one day he sat down to his table and began to eat a steak. His students, as you would imagine, were quite agitated when they saw this. Why the change? they cried. What had happened? And the famous philosopher said, ‘Ah, well, it was time to give it a rest.’”
“There is no relevance to this story, Petru,” Auslander said wearily.
“Oh, I quite disagree, Auslander, my friend. But in any event don’t you find it a charming story?”
“I have other things on my mind,” she said. “Tell me. Why doesn’t Teo want her work translated? What does she say when you ask her?”
“She says, ‘Because I say so.’”
“But that’s a child’s logic.”
“No. It’s a parent’s logic, rather. The child asks, ‘Why not?’ The parent says, ‘Only because I say not.’”
“Well, then.” Auslander shrugged and stood up. She was angrier and more disappointed than she could have predicted. “I guess that’s it. Shall I mail the poems back to you?”
“Are you in a rush to be rid of them?” He smiled at her. “No, my friend. Let us not altogether give up. May I telephone you tomorrow?”
“What’s the point?”
“Oh, I shall talk to her tonight. Perhaps it would be wise to tell her you’ve already read her work, extend your compliments. It will depend on her spirits.”
“But I thought . . .” Auslander stopped herself. There was no sense trying to follow him. “All right, fine. Call me.”
“Tell me something,” he said as he walked with her to the door and helped her into her coat. “Are you absolutely certain that if her work were translated it would be publishable here?”
“Oh, without question,” Auslander said. Then a thought came to her. “Why? Do you think it will help if Teo knows this? Because if you like, I can make a few calls tomorrow, ask around, get a feel for it.” Instantly she regretted this offer. Who on earth could she call to discuss the work of an untranslated Rumanian poet? Without work to show, what could she expect an editor to say? It was nonsense, absurd.
“That would be very kind.”
“I should go now,” Auslander said, her hand on the doorknob. As she went down the hall to the elevator, she reflected that it was a miracle that she had escaped without having made any further promises.
On the subway heading back to the Village, she removed from her Danish schoolbag the envelope containing Teodora’s poems. She was not sure why she hadn’t told Viorescu she had the poems with her—evidently she wasn’t ready yet to part with them. She flipped through the pages until she found the one she wanted. From the front pocket of her bag she took out a pen and the packet of index cards she had begun to keep on Teodora’s work, and she sifted through the cards, stopping at the one headed “In the Cold Field, In the Troubled Light.” She ran her eyes quickly down the card; besides the title, she had already, automatically, cast a number of lines into English as she made her notes. She sighed and turned to the poem itself. Then, pen in hand, using the canvas bag as a lap-desk, she began the translation.
HE DID not even bother to say hello. “She wants no part of it,” Viorescu announced. “She will not discuss it.”
“What did you tell her? Did you explain—”
“I pleaded, I made promises, I was a madman.” He laughed miserably. “She made me sleep on the couch.”
“That’s none of my affair,” Auslander said sharply.
“I want to apologize for all the trouble you have taken.”
“Yes, well, here’s a surprise for you,” she said. She took a deep breath and then told him about the poems she had translated last night, working until four o’clock, until she couldn’t see clearly anymore.
“My God, that’s . . . Is this really true? How marvelous! Please, will you read them to me?”
For half an hour she read Viorescu his wife’s poems. She had rough versions—very rough in some cases—of eight poems already; one or two were quite polished, almost perfect.
“But this is wonderful! Incredible! Oh, we must convince her. Do you think . . . what if we did as I had thought to begin with . . .’’
“I don’t know. If you were to simply show her these translations she might get very angry. She might—quite justifiably—feel invaded.”
“She might feel complimented.”
“She might. You would know better than I.”
Auslander was not altogether sure of this, however. His track record did not seem to be the best.
SEVERAL DAYS passed. Auslander continued to translate the poems. There was no logic in it, she knew; she had almost no hope by now that Teodora would agree to have this done. She was translating the poems because she wanted to; there was no other reason. She was working at it late on Saturday afternoon when there was a knock on her door. Surprised, her first thought was of Farrell. Nobody ever dropped by without calling. Farrell himself had done so only once, and he would surely only do it now if he were drunk. Cautiously she went to the door and stood listening.
“Auslander, are you there?”
It was Petru Viorescu. She snapped away the police lock and swung the door open. He looked terrible.
“Petru! What on earth’s the matter?”
“May I come in?” He brushed past her and heaved himself into her desk chair. He looked around. “What is this room? Bathroom, study, kitchen?”
Auslander closed and locked the door. “What’s going on? You look like hell.”
“I want to tell you something. I need to discuss this with someone. I am going to lose my mind.”
“Is it about Teodora?” she asked anxiously. “Has something happened?”
“Oh, something has happened, yes, but not what you imagine. You think she is so fragile! You are afraid that she has tried to commit suicide, that she has had a ‘nervous breakdown.’ No,” he said. “She is made of iron, my wife.” He laughed, but then after a second he placed his head in his hands and began to weep. Auslander stood back, uncertain what was expected of her. Finally he stopped crying; he looked up at her and very calmly told his story: He had met a young woman, someone in his department. He was in love; there was nothing to be done for it.
“I don’t understand,” Auslander said. “When did this happen? Just this week?”
“Months ago,” he said. “Months.”
“But I don’t understand,” she repeated. “Have you . . . ?”
“I have not slept with her, if that is your question.”
“But then . . . Have you told Teo about this?”
“Of course.” He seemed offended at the implication that he might not have.
“But why? You haven’t done anything. What is there to tell? You are . . . you have a crush, Petru, only that.”
“No, no. It is not a crush. I am in love.”
Auslander was at a loss. “Well, what do you want to do?” Then immediately she said, “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
He began to weep again. Auslander wanted to scream. Suddenly a suspicion came to her. “Tell me something,” she said. “How much does this business with the other woman—”
“Ana,” Viorescu said.
“I don’t want to know her name! How much does it have to do with Teo’s refusal to have the poems translated?”
“How much does anything have to do with anything?”
“Don’t speak to me that way, I won’t stand for it,” she snapped at him. “Answer me truthfully.” She began to pace around the kitchen. “What’s going on here? What is this all about? When did you tell Teo about this woman?”
“Months ago,” he said. “As soon as I knew. I could not keep my feelings secret from her. We tell each other everything, we always have; we are brother and sister, inseparable.”
“But you fancy yourself in love with someone else,” she said sarcastically.
“One has nothing to do with the other. You must yourself know that.”
“You’re not planning to leave Teo?”
“No, I am not going to leave her. The question is whether she will leave me.”
“But why has it come to this now, if she’s known all these months? What’s changed?” At once Auslander had the answer. “Petru,” she said, “did the idea of having her poems translated somehow backfire on you?”
He shrugged.
“Did you come up with the notion of getting me to do this in the first place as a way of . . . of placating her? Giving her something of her own? Did you think that having me translate her poems might make things all right between the two of you?”
“This is partly true, yes.”
“You could have just bought her flowers,” Auslander said bitterly. “It would have saved a lot of trouble.”
“I have bought her flowers,” he said. “And in any case the trouble, it seems to me, was worth it. No? You don’t agree? You understand that this was not the only reason I wanted to have the work translated, do you not? I have been discussing the matter with her for years, years. Long before I knew Ana, long before I met you. Years!” he said angrily. “She will not listen to reason. And what is a poet without readers? I have been her only reader for too long.”
Auslander continued to stalk the kitchen, twisting her hands together as she paced. For a long time she did not speak. Finally she sighed and said, “Well, now there are two of us.”
“Yes,” Viorescu said. “Yes, exactly. Now there are two of us.”
THE CALL from Teodora the following night woke her.
“I am sorry to be disturbing you at so late an hour,” the poet said. “But I will not be long. I wanted only to say one thing. I understand that Petru has been troubling you with problems of a personal nature.”
Auslander was too startled to respond.
“I apologize for this,” Teodora said. “I want you to know that I have asked him not to trouble you any further.”
“Oh, really, it hasn’t been all that much trouble,” Auslander said.
“In all events he will not be calling you again.”
“Oh, that isn’t—” Auslander began. But it was too late; the poet had already hung up.
AUSLANDER DID not for a moment seriously consider the possibility that she would not hear from Viorescu. Thus she was not in the least surprised when three days later he called. There was a note of hysteria in his voice, however, which alarmed her.
“What is it, Petru? What’s wrong now?”
“She wants to leave me! She says she has had enough, she is fed up. Auslander, please, I need your help. Will you call her? Explain to her? Please?”
“Explain what?” Auslander said. “I don’t understand it myself.”
“Please. She is at home now. I am in the library. You could call her right now and she could talk to you freely, she is alone.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“But she wants to leave me!”
“Petru, I can’t help you with this. It should be plain by now that I can’t. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Yes, there is. But you refuse! You refuse to help!”
Auslander could not think of what else to do, so she hung up the phone. She stood staring at it. It began to ring again instantly.
She lifted the receiver. “Please don’t do this,” she said.
“Jesus, Auslander, you’re right on top of it tonight, aren’t you. I haven’t even started doing anything yet.”
“Oh, Farrell. I thought you were someone else.”
“I wish I were.”
“Please,” she said, “not tonight. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you calling to give me the business? Because if you are, I don’t think I’m up to it.”
“No, actually I thought I’d take my business elsewhere.” He sighed. “You’re not laughing, love. What’s the matter? Is something really wrong?”
“No, Farrell,” she said flatly, “nothing’s really wrong.”
“Well, shall I tell you why I called? See, I’ve got this idea. What if I gave up drinking? How would that be?”
“How would it be how?”
“Come on, Auslander. You’ve always complained about my drinking. What if I stopped?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly she felt like crying.
“Hey, what’s going on with you? Are you really all right? You sound awful.”
“I’m all right,” she said. Then, after a second, “No, I’m not. I guess I’m not. I don’t know.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head before she remembered that he couldn’t see her. “No,” she said. “Not a thing.”
“Well, what do you think? Do you think it would make a difference? In our relationship, I mean. Do you think it would help?”
“Look, Farrell,” she said, “if you want to quit drinking, then quit drinking. You know perfectly well that I think you ought to. I’ve said it enough times. But if you’re going to do it, do it for yourself, not for me. I don’t want to be responsible for the decision.”
“Oh, sure, that’s right. How could I have forgotten? You don’t want to be responsible for anything or anyone, do you?”
“Farrell, please.”
“Please what? I am making a perfectly reasonable gesture toward straightening things out between us, and you’re just tossing it right back in my face.”
“That’s not what I mean to do.”
“No? What do you mean to do, then? Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t, do you.”
“No.” She realized she was gripping the phone so hard her fingers ached. “I don’t.”
“Tell me something, will you? Do you miss me? Ever? Do you even think about me?”
“Of course I think about you. I think about you a lot. I wonder about how your work is going. I wonder how life’s treating you.”
He laughed softly. “Oh, Auslander, my love, you should know. Life’s not treating me at all—I’m paying my own way.”
INTO BED with her that night she took the envelope of Teodora’s poems and all of Farrell’s poetry that she had in the apartment—all the poems of his that she had in typescript, all the magazines that had his poems in them, his four chapbooks, even some stray handwritten lines on pages torn from legal pads, which he’d left scattered about the apartment on nights he couldn’t sleep. She read all of it, every line, Teodora’s and Farrell’s both, read until she felt stunned and overburdened, and fell into a sleep that was a kind of stupor. Under the blanket of poems, dreaming, she turned and tossed in her sleep; poems crackled and fluttered, flew off the bed, alighted on the floor.
It was months before she heard from Viorescu again. He called to tell her that Teodora had killed herself. He had returned from the library late at night and found her. There was no note. “She left nothing,” he said. He spoke of the funeral and of Teodora’s family. Several times he wept, but very quietly. Auslander listened without saying anything. When he had said all he had to say, she waited, expecting to hear herself tell him that she was sorry, but she remained silent.
For a moment they were both silent. Finally Viorescu said, “There is something else I must tell you. Teodora destroyed all of her work—all the poems she wrote from the time we left Rumania. I have searched the apartment; she was very thorough. Every copy of every poem is gone.”
Now Auslander was able to make herself speak. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“You are not surprised, I imagine.”
“That she destroyed her poems. No, I suppose I’m not.”
He hesitated. “You understand that you now have the only copy of her work.”
“Yes.”
Again they were silent.
“You want the poems translated,” Auslander said.
“This is not the time to discuss this, of course,” he said. “But after a reasonable amount of time has passed, yes.”
“Yes, I see,” she said.
“And in the meantime you will be careful, will you not?”
“With the poems? Of course.”
“Well, then . . . We will speak.”
As she went to her desk and removed the envelope from the center drawer, where it had remained undisturbed for months, Auslander thought briefly of Farrell’s poems, which that same morning months ago she had set on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. She saw them in her mind—the bundle of poems secured by a rubber band, surrounded by the accumulated clutter of years: stacks of letters; shoeboxes full of photographs, postcards, cancelled checks; spiral-bound notebooks dating back to graduate school. Then the image vanished and she sat down at her desk; she flipped open the oak box in which her index cards were filed and removed the cards on Teodora—the notes and the dozen translations she had done. One at a time she laid the cards on her desk, as slowly and precisely as a storefront fortune teller, spreading them out carefully in a fan, one corner of each card touching the next. When she had come to the end of the cards, she shook the poems themselves out of the envelope. Now the desktop was littered with poetry. For a time she sat looking at all that she had spilled out there. Then she scooped up everything and stood, hugging the papers and cards tightly to her chest. She crossed the kitchen and with some difficulty unhooked the police lock. In the hallway she hesitated for an instant only; then she moved quickly. With one arm she held the poet’s work; with her free hand she pulled open the door to the incinerator chute. It was a matter of seconds; then it was done.