Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [7]
people to put themselves in positions where you have to injure them. So I scanned the stuff with care. Everything seemed to be in order, except that one item was missing. That was the typescript of my translation of Le Rossignol de Bois. This Wooden Nightingale was Jean Pierre Breteuil's last book but two. I had done it straight on to the typewriter; I've translated so much of Jean Pierre's stuff now, it's just a matter of how fast I can type. I can't be bothered with carbons--I have no manual skill and you know what carbons are--so there was only one copy. I had no fears for this though, as I knew that if Magdalen had wanted to destroy something she would have destroyed one of my own things and not a translation. I made a mental note to collect it next time; it was probably in the bureau downstairs. Le Rossignol would be a best-seller, and that meant money in my pocket. It's about a young composer who is psychoanalysed and then finds that his creative urge is gone. I enjoyed this one, though it's bad best-selling stuff like everything that Jean Pierre writes. Dave Gellman says I specialize in translating Breteuil because that's the sort of book I wish I could write myself, but this is not so. I translate Breteuil because it's easy and because it sells like hot cakes in any language. Also, in a perverse way, I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge. The last but one, Les Pierres de l'Amour, which I had read in Paris, was undoubtedly another winner. Then there was a very recent novel called Nous Les Vainqueurs, which I hadn't read. I decided to see my publisher and get an advance on The Wooden Nightingale; and I would try to sell him an idea I had in Paris about a collection of French short stories translated and introduced by me. That was what my suitcases were full of It would keep the wolf at a distance. Anything rather than original work, as Dave says. I reckoned I had about seventy pounds in the bank. But clearly the immediate and urgent problem was to find a cheap and sympathetic place in which to live and work now that Earls Court Road was closed to me. You may be thinking that it was rather unkind of Magdalen to throw me out with so little ceremony, and you may think too that it was soft of me to take it so quietly. But in fact Magdalen is not a tough. She is a bright, sensual person, simple and warm-hearted, and ready to oblige anyone provided this doesn't put her to any trouble; and which of us could say more? For myself, I had a bad conscience about Madge. I said just now that I lived practically rent-free. Well, this wasn't quite true; in fact, I'd lived entirely rent-free. This thought annoyed me a little. It's bad for one's locus standi to live on a woman's charity. Also, I knew that Madge wanted to get married. She hinted as much to me more than once; and I think she would have married me at that. Only I had wanted otherwise. So on both these counts I felt I had no rights at all at Earls Court Road, and only myself to thank if Madge looked for security elsewhere; though I think I was quite objective in judging Sacred Sammy to be no cert, but a pretty long shot. At this point perhaps I should say a word about myself. My name is James Donaghue, but you needn't bother about that, as I was in Dublin only once, on a whisky blind, and saw daylight only twice, when they let me out of Store Street police station, and then when Finn put me on the boat for Holyhead. That was in the days when I used to drink. I am something over thirty and talented, but lazy. I live by literary hack-work, and a little original writing, as little as possible. One can live by writing these days, if one does it pretty well all the time, and is prepared to write anything which the market asks for. I mentioned before that I am a short man, but slight and neatly built would describe me better. I have fair hair and sharp elfish features. I am good at Judo, but don't care for boxing. What is more important for the purposes of this tale, I have shattered nerves. Never mind how I got them.