Birth of a Bridge (22 page)

THE DAY BEFORE THE OPENING CEREMONY, PEOPLE are still hard at work on the bridge. The electrification of the structure requires the installation of one hundred and fifty-two lamps along the deck, and sixteen more powerful ones on the towers that will each be crowned with a red beacon, they’re still unrolling miles of cables. The freeway approaches are just barely finished, the poured concrete is still wet on the bridge’s access ramps. They’re scrubbing the metal, keeping a close eye on the birds; swing stages sway along the piers to clean up the least stain. Here and there along the structure, hanger cables are sprinkled with flags that smack in the wind, and in front of the Coca gate, a giant stage is put up, circled by bleachers and crowned with a meringue circus tent – tomorrow an orchestra is supposed to set up here and launch the fanfare when the Boa comes to cut the magic ribbon, when he places the tip of his shoe on the splendid roadway and walks across to Edgefront, alone at the head of the people, relaxed, triumphant, offered up to their gazes, arms at his sides and chin parallel to the ground, perhaps even a rose in hand, followed twenty minutes later by two thousand guests who will also cross on foot, hand-picked close friends – among them, Shakira, and we hope that Mo will also have managed to infiltrate the little privileged crowd, he will have put on a white shirt and a pair of grey linen pants that will narrow his hips, he’ll feel a wild pleasure in crossing this bridge that belongs to him, without a hard hat, full sun on his face. On the other side of the water the welcome will be triumphant: release of doves, cheerleaders, jugglers, Native traditional dances, a parade of municipal police, and free distribution of T-shirts emblazoned with a magic formula: c = 0%, m = 69%, y = 100%, k = 6%, the definition of the structure’s vermilion. Draconian security measures have been taken: Jacob and the Natives – among them Buddy Loo and Duane Fisher – are under surveillance in a motel on Colfax with a giant screen; the younger generation is excluded from the celebrations, Matt plans to watch the ceremony from the viewpoint, Liam will come too, they’ll bring Billie, their father has said he doesn’t want to see any of it, and anyways he’s got the TV.

IT’S THE END
of the afternoon and Katherine’s going to park her vehicle for the last time in the parking lot for the levelling machines, she taps the base of her seat – how many hours will she have spent in here? – picks up the photo of her kids tucked into the windshield, the bottle of water, the pair of gloves, and then, passing by the facilities, gathers her things from her locker – soap, towel, change of T-shirt – and goes to hand in her hard hat, her badge, and her padlock in the administrative building. Don’t dwell on it, make your gestures quick.

Diderot is waiting for her past the work site, wedged into the Impala that’s soon heading upstream, towards the river bend, where there are no more villages, just a few cabins and coves. It’s not the last time they’ll see each other, there isn’t a last time, no one is dead yet in this car, and their only idea right now is to find a place for themselves, it’s still hot, they choose the wild reeds and the sandy grass, take off their shoes, prick their toes. They have beautiful feet, Katherine with slender ankles and wide heels, gently flared at the edges, Diderot with slim slightly curving toes. They walk along the bank lifting their knees high; their skin is erased in the brown, inhabited water. Far off, the bridge, and before them, very unsettled, the river, worked by strong currents that create a froth on the surface, there’s only one landscape left around them, shall we? They get undressed quickly, toss their splashed clothes onto the bank, and with long strides run into the water yelling, pushing away the branches floating in their path, a carton of Campbell’s soup, a pink sandal, then catch the current and drift off in a sidestroke.

THE AUTHOR
thanks Ewa Z. Bauer, Robert E. David, and Alan Leventhal in San Francisco, and Paul-Albert Leroy in Paris.

JESSICA MOORE
is an author and a translator. She is a former Lannan writer-in-residence and winner of a PEN America Translation Award for her translation of
Turkana Boy
, the poetic novel by Jean-François Beauchemin. Jessica’s first collection of poems,
Everything, now
, was published with Brick Books in 2012. She is a member of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and worked as the secretary in their Montreal office while completing her master’s in translation studies. She is also a songwriter – her debut album,
Beautiful in Red
, was released in 2013. She embarks on frequent adventures and uses her hometown of Toronto as an anchor.

Photo:
Micah Donovan

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This translation project began with an unabashed love of the book – a vibrant, generous novel by one of the most celebrated authors in contemporary France. This love, however, was not initially mine:
Naissance d’un pont
was introduced to me at a party one night in 2010, the year it was published to accolades in France. I have many things to thank David Gressot for, but above all for the introduction and for his exuberance about this author’s style – it proved infectious.

And the translation proved to be a terrific challenge. Maylis de Kerangal is a brilliant and difficult author, one so masterfully in control of her craft that she is comfortable taking a number of risks with language and syntax, including the omission of articles, prepositions, and punctuation, and the invention of words or new uses for them. Her stunning vocabulary gives even native French speakers frequent cause to turn to the dictionary. She draws upon antiquated terminology and contemporary slang – sometimes within the same sentence. Beyond deciphering the splendid labyrinths of her writing (an adventure for any reader), my greatest challenge in translating this novel was to avoid flattening her singular use of language.

One of the most refreshing aspects of de Kerangal’s writing is that she frequently invents new relationships between words that are not accustomed to being placed side by side. Walkie-talkies are
crocheted
(
crochetaient
) to ears, a couple is
inside
love
(
dans l’amour
), Diderot breathes
widely
(
largement
), eyes
screech
(
crissent
) over someone. Because we tend unconsciously towards the familiar (perhaps in all things), and also because dictionaries often give multiple options, I had to be vigilant in order not to normalize word pairings in translation. If there was a choice between an unusual word and a more commonplace one, it was nearly always truer to the original to keep the first; and even when it might stand out as odd or surprising, this is what I chose to do, because the jolt of the unexpected is what makes her writing so compelling. I also had to resist explaining things that were left richly unexplained in French. At times the work was like panning for gold – “keeping watch for the marvellous sparkl
e”
of meaning as I dug through dense lines, and then sifted through the English approximations that swirled around until I found a similar glint.

My aim was also to keep the echo of the French by maintaining as many cultural references as possible. References to landmarks, monuments, and figures from pop culture mostly were kept as is. There were times, though, when a reference would have been obscure if left as it appeared in the original. In the first site meeting, for example, when describing the two types of soil, harder on the surface but soft underneath, Diderot speaks about
le coup de la frangipane
(literally, “the marzipan tric
k”
). This refers to the Galette des Rois – a cake with a flaky crust and soft marzipan filling, traditionally served during the Christmas season and near Lent or Carnival. Any French person would understand this reference, but to most of Anglophone North America, “the marzipan tric
k”
would be a mystery. I chose in this case to call it “the trick of the cream fillin
g”
– which I suppose could call to mind either éclairs or cream-filled doughnuts, the latter being more of an across-the-board cultural reference in the English-speaking world.

I am deeply grateful to David, who was so generously available throughout the process for queries and proofreading; I can’t count the number of times he answered the questions, “Is this strange? How strange is it
?”
This translation owes a tremendous amount to him. Thank you also to Hugh Hazelton and Daisy Connon for advice from the English side of things, to the Collège international des traducteurs and the Centre national du livre for making it possible for me to spend time in France working on the translation; warm thanks to my fellow translators at the residency in Arles – in particular, my neighbour, Charlotte Woillez, for her wisdom in last-minute sessions, and especially Patrick Honnoré, whose patience and insight were unmatched. Essentially, it took a village to help me find my way to this
Birth of a Bridge
, and I was so fortunate to have a rich and multilingual village around me.

Thank you to the wonderful team at Talonbooks, particularly my editor Ann-Marie Metten, for all their thoughtfulness and hard work bringing this English version into being; and thanks to Maylis de Kerangal herself, for her effusiveness and encouragement in response to my questions.

Everything about this author’s writing pushes the reader (and translator) to widen her thoughts, to stretch her use of language; nothing is banal or by rote. And within the bounds of this fantastical, haywire work of fiction, this sort of epic tale of globalization, as de Kerangal says – objects and cities are personified, it snows in California, and jackals and bronze-eyed lynx descend at dawn. A fiercely original book.

MAYLIS DE KERANGAL
is the author of several novels in French:
Je marche sous un ciel de traîne
(2000),
La vie voyageuse
(2003),
Corniche Kennedy
(2008), and
Naissance d’un pont
(translated here as
Birth of a Bridge
, winner of Prix Franz Hessel and Prix Médicis in 2010). She has also published a collection of short stories,
Ni fleurs ni couronnes
(2006), and a novella,
Tangente vers l’est
(winner of the 2012 prix Landerneau). In addition, she has published a fiction tribute to Kate Bush and Blondie titled
Dans les rapides
(2007). In 2014, her fifth novel,
Réparer les vivants
, was published to wide acclaim, winning the Grand Prix RTL-Lire and the Student Choice Novel of the Year from France Culture and Télérama. She lives in Paris, France.

Photo:
Catherine Hélie

ALSO BY MAYLIS DE KERANGAL

NOVELS

Je marche sous un ciel
de traîne

La vie
voyageuse

Ni fleurs ni
couronnes

Dans l
es rapides

Cornic
he Kennedy

Tangente
vers l’est

Réparer l
es vivants

FOR CHILDREN

Nina et les
oreillers

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Birth of a Bridge
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