GUY DE MAUPASSANT
41
Trying to restrain the sway of her big hips, she left the room
and returned with a translation of "Miss Harriet." In her translation
not even a trace was left of Maupassant's free flowing sentences, with
their fragrance of passion. Raissa Benderski took pains to write
correctly and precisely, and all that resulted was something lifeless
and slightly distorted, as Jews wrote Russian in the old days.
I took the manuscript with me and in Kazantsev's attic, among
my sleeping friends, I spent the night cutting my way like a woods–
man through the tangled undergrowth of her prose. It is not such
dull work as it might seem. A phrase is born into the world both
good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, almost in–
visible twist. The lever should rest in your hand, getting warm, and
you can only turn it once, not twice.
Next morning I brought back the corrected manuscript. Raissa
wasn't lying when she told me that Maupassant was her sole passion.
She sat motionless, her hands clasped together, as I read it to her.
Her silky hands drooped to the floor, her forehead paled, and the lace
between her crushed breasts danced ,and heaved.
"How did you do it?"
I began to speak of style, of the army of words, of the army in
which all kinds of weapons may come into play. No iron can stab
the human heart with such force as a period put just at the right
place. She listened with her head down and her painted lips half
open. In her hair, pressed smooth, divided by a part, and looking
like patent leather, shone a dark gleam. Her legs in tight-fitting stock–
ings,
with strong, soft calves, were planted wide-apart on the carpet.
The maid, glancing to the side with her petrified wanton eyes,
brought in the breakfast on a tray.
The glassy rays of the Petersburg sun lay on the pale and un–
even carpet. Twenty-nine volumes of Maupassant stood on a shelf
above the desk. The sun with its fingers of melting dissolution touched
the morocco backs of the books-the magnificent grave of a human
heart.
Coffee in blue cups was served and we began translating "Idyl."
Everyone remembers the story of the youthful, hungry carpenter who
sucked the breast of the stout nursing mother to relieve her of the milk
with which she was over-laden. It happened in a train going from
Nice to Marseilles, at noon on a very hot day, in the land of roses,
