From The Intended, translation in progress. The husband in the love triangle is talking.
There was peace then… though not proper peace really. We were between two wars. The borders were never completely open but the trains did not stop too long at the variously colored international barriers. People asked each other for loans - not only people but countries - as if nothing had happened, going about their lives with miraculous confidence – and what was still more miraculous they received the loans, long-term loans, and they built houses, big ones, small ones, and generally behaved as though they had seen the back of painful, terrible times for ever, as though it was an entirely new era when everything was as it should be, when they could plan far ahead, bring up children, and give themselves over to individual pleasures that were not only delightful but even a little superfluous. That was the world in which I started traveling, the world between wars. I can’t say that the feeling I set out with, and which I experienced at various stopping places on my journey was one of absolute security.
A familiar feeling. Without the next war part, I hope. My bold type.
4 comments:
Would you like to get involved with Blogging Norfolk 2009 in your internets on the Google machine?: http://alturl.com/cn62
Go on, it’d be fun: put your Norfolk on the map on April 23rd.
OK. What does it mean? What do I do?
I have just discovered Marai (and Ferenc Karinthy) through your translations. I look forward to The Intended when it becomes available. Thank you.
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Talk about synchronicity: Literally as I was typing the above, there's a knock at my door, and my postlady hands me a package from Amazon.com containing Esther's Inheritance. That's almost spooky. If I thought for even a moment you'd somehow managed to arrange that . . . .
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