Does Obama need the Democrats? (part 2)

Last month, on 24 March, I posted an article called Does Obama need the Democrats? Perhaps, after Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania win, it deserves another airing.

The article proposed that if the Democratic party superdelegates decided in due course to overrule the pledged delegates and prefer Clinton as the presidential candidate, the Democrats might find that Obama responded by declaring himself the moral victor and running for president as an independent. Obama has far fewer ties to the Democrats than the Clintons, and has consistently decried the polarisation into "red" and "blue" states. His reasons for running as an independent would therefore be highly consistent with his previous statements and policies.

In other words the Democrats, by choosing Clinton, might unleash circumstances in which their own candidate faced not one but two formidable opponents. More than this, they might do so under circumstances in which Obama would take from Clinton a considerable proportion of the Democratic vote. If this were so, choosing Clinton over Obama, far from increasing the chances of the Democrats winning the presidency, might be the equivalent of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Meanwhile, Clinton's camp is arguing that the Pennsylvania result demonstrates that Obama cannot win the white working class vote which they believe will be essential to a successful campaign for the presidency. It's an unusually good argument from a candidate who until recently has been mainly clutching at straws. However, perhaps we should hold back our judgement for the time being on whether Hillary Clinton's argument is correct. An alternative explanation of Obama's lack of success in Pennsylvania is that not that the white working class is inherently biased against Obama, but that amongst the various electoral groupings it is simply the most "conservative" with a small "c". This could mean that it is likely to be slower than the other groups, such as middle class and educated whites, blacks and latinos, to arrive in numbers at the Obama banner. It will be interesting to see whether Indiana, which contains another large white working class population, continues to hold out so steadfastly against Obama.

Against this, there is little doubt that Obama created significant difficulties for himself in suggesting that the poorer sections of the working class were often embittered and turned for consolation to guns, religion, and prejudice against others. There is surely an element of truth in assertions from the Clinton camp that he is something of a liberal elitist (even though it applies perhaps more to Clinton). As liberal elitists go, however, he is a very fine one -- preternaturally lucid, graceful in argument, incisive of mind.

This blog is interested in Obama for a number of reasons, not least for what it shows about shifting public opinion in America. Joe Klein, whose novel Primary Colours was a brilliant evocation and satire of a presidential candidate closely resembling Bill Clinton, asks on the cover of Obama's autobiography Dreams from my Father whether it is not the finest ever autobiography from a politician. Taking that as a cue, it this blog's view at any rate that Obama represents the most gifted intellect to approach the presidential elections since the Enlightenment. That does not, of course, mean that he will win, or indeed that these are the same talents that make a fine president. Meanwhile, it is certainly interesting to watch his progress through the minefields of the Democratic nomination, whose startling shifts and transformations surely make it one of the most complex, exasperating and fascinating political contests of all time.

Mugabe and my South African past

As brief personal background, I was born in South Africa in 1948. My father, Robin Collins, wrote a series of novels under his own name and the nom-de-plume of Robin Cranford. One of these novels, My City Fears Tomorrow, set in Johannesburg, was banned by the apartheid regime because it described, with considerable precision, how black Africans had no civil rights and could be arrested and tortured by the police effectively without redress. Not long afterwards my father, who was a liberal, decided he would prefer to take advantage of his dual British citizenship, and the family settled in England in 1960. We greatly preferred Britain's settled tolerance to South Africa's institutionalised racism.

I retain vivid memories of South Africa, and have been haunted by her history and that of her neighbours. I remember as a child that parks had chairs which had blankes (whites in Afrikaans) and nie-blankes (non-whites) written on them. As part of my South African childhood, it was an extraordinary experience to travel north in the late 1950s on holiday to Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe then was ) and go into hotel bars where white barmen were serving prosperous black businessmen. Compared with South Africa, Rhodesia was then a model of racial toleration. To my eyes, it is a special tragedy that subsequently, under the Smith regime, Rhodesia was forced to undergo a brutal civil war between white settlers and African freedom fighters, a war which has had profound consequences in shaping Zimbabwe's subsequent history. Perhaps the most tragic of these is that nearly three decades after achieving independence, Mugabe's administration continues to live in the past, invoking an imaginary threat from Britain to justify its right to rig elections and use violent repression against the democratic majority.

Considering the moral and political support which is currently being given to Robert Mugabe by the South African president Thabo Mbeki, I have written a commentary on the most recent events in Zimbabwe on my Warwick Collins blog.

Replacement of Borges/di Giovanni translations

Is the replacement of the definitive Borges/di Giovanni English translations of Jorge Luis Borges by the grossly inferior translations of Andrew Hurley perhaps the greatest literary crime of the century?

The heart of the case is that the Borges/di Giovanni translations — the product of a four-year personal collaboration between Jorge Luis Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni during 1969-72 — were aimed precisely by Borges to provide definitive translations into English, and to supersede all other translations of his work into English. As each new translation was finished, they were published in the New Yorker, to universal acclaim, and were largely responsible for establishing Borges’ international reputation.

Their subsequent replacement, some twenty years after Borges’ death, by Borges’ eccentric widow Maria Kodama, aided by her agent Andrew Wylie, has been a dereliction of both Borges' work and Borges’ will.

Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine who is widely considered to be the most influential Spanish language writer of the 20th century, was also an Anglophile who felt that the English translations of his work were inconsistent, to say the least. Borges himself admits that he was largely to blame for the circumstances. In the past, when translators had approached him to make translations of his work from Spanish into various languages, Borges tended to say “yes” because he felt that the alternative was no translation at all. The result was a very uneven crop of translations.

Borges found an opportunity to undertake definitive translations after he had effectively retired from creative literary work, when he met the young editor and poet Norman Thomas di Giovanni in 1968. Di Giovanni had already translated a number of Borges’ poems into English. Borges sensed that here was a potential collaborator of sufficient zeal and rigour to create definitive translations of the main body of Borges’ prose work into English. He invited di Giovanni to Buenos Aires. From 1969 to 1972 Borges and di Giovanni worked together daily to create English translations which would do justice to the Spanish originals. Their combined efforts became one of the great collaborations in the history of literature. Borges said that they "thought with one mind". In certain respects their collaboration was so successful that Borges used the opportunity to revise his Spanish originals in the course of creating the new English translations. To a considerable degree, the Borges/di Giovanni translations into English can be considered the most complete and final form of Borges’ work.

What are the motives of Maria Kodama, Borges’ widow, in replacing the Borges di Giovanni translations with laughably inferior versions from Andrew Hurley? They appear to be entirely pecuniary. The underlying facts are that Borges himself insisted that ownership of the copyright of the Borges/di Giovanni translations should be shared equally between the two men. It seems that sharing the income from the English translations was not enough for Borges’ widow, however. Accordingly, she funded for an outright fee a new set of translations by Andrew Hurley - translations which, through the Borges estate, she would own one hundred percent.

In considering the consequence of these actions, one should take into account that Borges’ subtle writings depended greatly on the accuracy and coherence of the translations. Hurley’s truly execrable versions undermine and often destroy Borges’ complex meanings. To anyone who doubts my characterisation, I refer them to the translations themselves. Perhaps I may add one further rhetorical flourish regarding the translations, given that they were conceived by Kodama for pecuniary advantage. What serious academic or translator would have the temerity to concoct English translations of Borges' main works which are aimed to replace those generated by Borges himself in concert with his chosen collaborator di Giovanni? What type of person, in other words, would deliberately flout Borges’ own final will and testament on his English translations?

During the next months I am going to run a campaign under the general heading of The literary crime of the century? The shorter term aim of this campaign will be to direct attention at the current parlous situation. I believe that the effective removal and replacement of the Borges/di Giovanni translations has already denied a new generation of English readers access to the definitive works of one of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century. In support of this view, I have written a 50-page mini-novel called Icon, which is set out below, and which aims to reconstruct the circumstances and tragedy of this great loss in fictional terms. Although I know di Giovanni well, and regard him as a close friend, I emphasise that Icon is entirely my own work and my own responsibility as a writer. Di Giovanni has remained strictly detached. He neither approves nor disapproves of my efforts, but in characteristically liberal spirit believes I have the right to approach the subject in fictional form should I wish to do so.

To emphasise Icon’s fictive aspects, I have used different names for the leading characters. A great, blind Argentine writer is named Luis Váldez. His young Italian-American translator is called Victor Gambini. I leave it to the reader to decide how close my account comes to the truth.

Icon, printed below, is approximately 10,000 words or about 55 pages. Given that the average rate of reading is approximately a page a minute, a reader who wished to complete the short novel at a sitting should give himself or herself the best part of an hour to do so. Meanwhile, if should you wish to undertake that journey, I hope Icon entertains you.

ICON - a 50-page mini-novel

1

Imagine, if you will, the scene.

In the summer of 1969 Victor Gambini emerged from his rooms in Buenos Aires, caught a bus near the Congreso, and after several miles of placid movement through the city traffic he alighted in Belgrano Avenue. At a certain building he entered the foyer, took the elevator up three floors and knocked on the door of the apartment of the great Argentine writer Luis Váldez. Either Váldez’s wife Eliza or the maid Imelda would greet him at the door and usher him in.

Váldez was usually sitting at a dining table in the corner of the main living room, his right hand in his pocket, his blind eyes staring upward above the visitor’s head. It was his natural pose, but it had become a famous stance, sepulchral and beatific. “Good morning, Váldez,” Gambini would say. “Good morning, Gambini,” Váldez would respond in turn.

Váldez usually stood up and took Gambini’s arm. The grip was nearly always direct and fierce. Gambini, in his account of the time says, “Váldez hung on for dear life; that was when you were most aware of his vulnerability.” The two men descended in the elevator and walked ten or so blocks towards the National Library in San Telmo, where Váldez was the Librarian.

During the walk Váldez, as always, liked to share gossip. He recounted some of the table talk when he had dined the previous evening at the home of his great friend the writer Alphonso Gonzáles. Other subjects were raised, whatever was uppermost in their minds or would pass the time while they traversed the distance to the library. As they walked, there was usually a certain amount of banter about what Gambini had read in the literary pages the night before or earlier that morning. But the conversation, however obtuse, had a function. It was a preparation of Váldez’s mind, a means of purging himself of domestic details and the peripheral small interests of his active mind. When they reached the large room in the library which was Váldez’s office they had depleted themselves of everything but their immediate intention to pursue the task of translation.

There was a large mahogany desk at one end of the room which was once occupied by a previous Librarian, but Váldez never used it. It was a joke between the two men that on those occasions when photographs were required of the great writer, the photographers invariably insisted on Váldez being seated at the huge, somnolent desk. Váldez usually acceded to their demands. The desk was famous for its darkness, its mass and learned presence. But it had little or no bearing on the real life of Váldez. Instead its function had evolved into one of those elegant, perfectly plausible fictions which Váldez composed with such care and perhaps with a certain mischievous irony. It was real in one sense, unreal in another.

Ignoring the iconic presence of the desk, they sat instead at a simple rectangular wooden table in another part of the room. Gambini produced from his old leather briefcase a rough translation he had made of the story they intended to work on. Váldez knew his writing in Spanish so intimately that Gambini had only to begin with a single phrase in Spanish for the entire story to form itself in Váldez’s mind. Usually, before Gambini had finished the first sentence, Váldez nodded in recognition.

Now a pause occurred, and a certain amount of manoeuvring on the part of both parties often took place. Váldez was hoping Gambini would suggest the first phrase of English. As often as not, Gambini would oblige, reading from his rough draft. Then he and Váldez began that daily interchange of thoughts about the shape and form of the translation. Each sentence would be minutely examined, overhauled, reworked, rewritten. The resulting construction would be read again by Gambini, and its weight and cadence considered. When it was satisfactory, they would proceed to the next sentence.

Complex currents flowed between the two collaborators. Sometimes, during the course of their work, Gambini sensed that Váldez felt particularly strongly about a certain passage. On these occasions it was Gambini who, setting aside his American impatience, waited for Váldez, slyly pretending to hesitate until — after a long and tentative silence — Váldez put forward the first sentence. Gambini picked up on the sentence, scribbled a note or two, and suggested a refinement, building on Váldez’s initial impulse. So both men continued, quietly but intensively, for several hours, constructing further on their initial tentative beginning, until it was time to adjourn.

In the evening, Gambini took home the draft and continued to work on it, weighing individual words, attempting to bring a rhythm and completeness to the new sequence of sentences, preparing to test Váldez’s opinion the following day. In the course of this exhaustive process Gambini remembered the words that Váldez often repeated like a mantra, “Forget the Spanish; fling it aside and be free.” At other times Váldez said, “Don’t worry about the original. We must not treat it as holy writ. Remember, this is for English-speaking readers.”

When they had both shaped the translation to their satisfaction, Gambini would return home and write up a fair version incorporating all their changes and annotations. The following day he presented the final version to Váldez, who listened intently while it was read. There might be one or two small changes. After Váldez’s final approval, they passed on to the next piece of work.

2

Váldez’s historical relation to the English language was a complex one. When he was in his twenties as a young poet and essayist, the Argentine intelligentsia were, almost to the last person, ardent Francophiles. The highest ambition and consecration for an Argentine writer was French publication. There were various reasons of history and culture as to why France proved a model for the Argentine literary classes. But in one respect Buenos Aires and Paris shared an important similarity. Buenos Aires dominates Argentine cultural life in much the same way that Paris dominates French intellectual life. English literature might have its Celtic bastions or its solid provincial bases, but in Argentina Buenos Aires monopolises culture. There was no alternative power base from which to challenge the ruling orthodoxy. This fact makes Váldez’s rejection of the Francophilia of the Buenos Aires cultural milieu even more striking.

Against this background of French cultural predominance, Váldez struck out on his own. His maternal grandmother was English and he was conscious of his ancestry. He regarded English as the great literary language, the language into which he wished he had been born. It was a view of life which put him at odds not only with Buenos Aires, but with almost all the Spanish-speaking writers of his generation. Was there perhaps an element of calculation in this choice? Was it a move designed to set him apart from the run of Argentine literary society, the first step towards that characteristic distance he attempted to place between himself and other Spanish writers of his time? Or was he simply responding to his own partly English ancestry, to memories of reading certain classic English novels in his father’s library during his youth? Whatever his motivations, it was a dangerous and radical departure. The likelihood was that he would become isolated and be considered nothing more than an eccentric.

There were other, and perhaps deeper, explanations for this radical move. In the writer’s permanent struggle for a narrative voice, Váldez often said that the constraints imposed upon his particular form of literary expression by the Spanish language were real and significant. Váldez searched obsessively for compression and concision, but in his view the prevailing literary conventions of the language meant that Spanish was not the perfect mechanism for achieving it. When Váldez first met Pablo Neruda, Váldez recorded afterwards that the prime topic of conversation was the limitation of the Spanish language, what Váldez called the “impossibility of full expression in Spanish”.

There were perhaps technical reasons for this discontent. To a great degree Spanish is a far “purer” language than English. The domination of its Latin roots gives it a powerful, coherent, and perhaps monolithic quality. In classical literature its characteristic sound is a series of magnificent, rolling cadences. By contrast, English has a subtlety and accuracy precisely because it is an impure language, a mongrel language, more or less evenly influenced by Latinate and Anglo-Saxon roots. It is almost as if the English writer has a choice of more than one language in which to express himself. By switching between Latinate cadences and sharp Anglo-Saxon syllables, a skilful writer can subtly shift the sense and tailor sound to mood and meaning. To Váldez, Shakespeare’s astonishing range of expression and inflection was rooted in this mongrel richness of English language origins.

In the course of his collaboration with Gambini, Váldez seemed almost obsessed with obliterating the Latinate roots of his Spanish writing. Much of his own innovation in the Spanish language was based upon types of sentence construction more common to English usage. For this reason, the pseudo-Latinate cadences of the earlier English translations of his work were an object of particular scorn for him. His ideal was that his work should be created afresh in the English language, preferably purged of its Latinate roots.

As an illustration of this belief, Gambini liked to tell the story of a time when they were visiting the University of Oklahoma. Between assignments they found they had time on their hands. Váldez suggested that they start on an English draft of a story Váldez had recently written. This was the first time they had ever made a first draft together. When they finished, the story was sent to a magazine in New York and accepted. A month later the proofs came, and Gambini foresaw a disaster. The Anglo-Saxon words were so predominant that the English had lost its naturalness. Latin origins are a part of English, Gambini argued. Váldez, when this was pointed out, laughed and agreed. The story was duly amended and published to considerable acclaim.

When asked about Váldez’s attitude to the English language, Gambini replies, “It is a pity that that those translators who sit in academic departments in American universities never met Váldez. They think his writing in Spanish is deliberately obscure because they don’t have the resources of knowledge to understand him. They look at his Spanish originals and they are perplexed. Accordingly, they make the fundamental mistake of thinking that Váldez intended to perplex — that he wished to purvey a form of metaphysical obscurity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Váldez was precise, one of the most precise men I ever met. He was honest and open. He brought to the Spanish language not obscurity but sharpness and economy. In terms of meaning, too, he honed his ironies not to conceal, but to express the truth of the contradictory nature of life.”

3

At the same time as Gambini faced the complexities of translating Váldez’s work into English, he was aware he was dealing with a man of strong character and fierce conviction. Váldez’s manner, for example, although it was not designed to dissimulate, often gave a misleading impression of the nature of the man himself. At the start of their collaboration Váldez, then approaching seventy, stammered habitually and appeared hesitant in manner. But these frailties hid a forceful mind and a reputation for being ruthless with those whom he no longer admired. Gambini knew of several previous collaborators with whom Váldez was no longer in contact. “Váldez never talked about people for whom he no longer felt sympathy,” Gambini said. “He said nothing either good or bad about them. For him they had ceased to exist.” Several friends of Váldez had warned Gambini that one day he might receive a phone call from Váldez, courteous and urbane as always, but informing him that their relationship was now at an end. Thereafter, Gambini knew, there would be no turning back. “It was quite obvious to me from the start,” Gambini says, “that Váldez had a habit of passing on when a literary relationship had ceased to provide him with the stimulation he needed. It was part of his personality, a personality utterly dedicated to literature.

“As a consequence I taught myself to expect that phone call at any time,” Gambini says. He knew that it could come out of the darkness in the night, or without warning during some banal part of day, with nothing but the low drone of traffic in the background. “In certain respects,” Gambini continues, “I was like a man who trains himself that each day might be his last. It was always going to be Váldez’s own decision as to when our collaboration would end. In the meantime, I would use every day God gave me to do good work with him.”

4

Gambini’s use of the word “God” is ironic, given that he derives from a long line of Protestant Italians, latterly devoted to the anarchist tradition. Gambini considers himself to be wholly agnostic. He says, “I refuse to call myself an atheist, because an atheist is someone who is defined by his lack of belief in God. I object to being classified by a negative.” His father was a landscape gardener in Boston, and Gambini was brought up in an immigrant Italian community. When he was a youth, he remembers visiting a small, informal drinking club frequented by his father and run by anarchists where money was never exchanged directly. You took a beer and chalked it up on your slate. At the end of the week, with the arrival of the weekly wage, the debts were settled.

The anarchist community believed fiercely in mutual aid. Gambini’s experience of this active form of local communism informed his attitude to literature, and provided a key to his own strong and somewhat direct personality. He was not solitary by nature. He was an habitual co-operator. He regarded literature in much the same light as he treated a common political objective — as a matter for urgent and sustained collaboration. Although he was fierce in his opinions, he liked working in company, listened carefully, and was always willing to argue the point.

Whereas Váldez was largely neutral and pragmatic in his politics, Gambini was radical and iconoclastic. Where Váldez emphasised literary continuity — amongst his favourite subjects were libraries and the storage of past literatures — Gambini was no respecter of tradition for its own sake. Váldez thought of himself as a moderate conservative — as merely one individual in a long line of literary figures. Gambini, by contrast, viewed Váldez as a revolutionary who had transformed Spanish literature. Where Váldez was a repository of literary achievement, Gambini brought a youthful fire to their collaboration. The combination had its tensions. But it worked unexpectedly well, not least because each was fiercely committed to the realisation of the overall project.

Despite their differing outlooks, in Gambini Váldez found perhaps the perfect collaborator for the purpose he had in mind. As an Italian-American Gambini was brash, but he was young enough at thirty-four not to have fallen into irreversible habits. Like Váldez, Gambini had fallen in love with the English language. But unlike Váldez, it was Gambini’s first language. He had saturated his mind in its literary forms and was a stringent student of its eclectic constructions, its pungent grammars and vast evolving word base. Gambini complemented Váldez by bringing that final edge of rigour to the labour of translation into English.

In support of the daily programme the two men had set themselves, Gambini’s concentration was ferocious. He was driven by unremitting zeal for the task in hand. Váldez fed off this energy, and guided it to his best advantage. It was arguably the most productive period of Váldez’s life. In addition to the massive task of revising and recreating a significant body of his oeuvre in English, he wrote two new books of stories, Doctor Grimaldi’s Account and The Book of Tears. In the previous seventeen years, by comparison, he had managed to finish one eight-page story.

Thus it was that Gambini became the final instrument in Váldez’s one remaining ambition, an ambition which had haunted him since his early years as a writer. In the hothouse of Argentine literary life, much has been made of the proposal that Gambini exploited Váldez for his own ends — for self-aggrandisement, personal ambition, money or fame. The truth appears simpler. Each found in the other the means to achieve his own goals, his own vision of literary excellence. Gambini saw a great writer isolated in a court of flatterers and sycophants, largely unknown outside his own country and culture, and wanted to bring his work to wider English-speaking audiences. As much or more, Váldez exploited Gambini to achieve his central ambition — to see his own works translated into a form which did justice to the peculiar richness of the English language, a language for which Váldez had a complex love and lifelong obsession.

A number of revisionist academic critics have suggested recently that Gambini dominated Váldez, that he pressed the frail old man towards translations which were counter to his own intentions and his own interest. When Gambini hears this, he breaks into a rueful smile. In answer he says, “Imagine the circumstances. On the one hand you have a young translator from Spanish to English. On the other you have the greatest writer in the Spanish language, Argentina’s most prestigious national figure. Did Váldez achieve this position by being weak-minded, by being easily influenced? This is a man who not only has revolutionised the writing of Spanish — bringing it to new clarity and precision — but who chose to move against the grain of his entire literary milieu by dedicating himself to the English literary heritage as opposed to French. This is a man of fierce intellectual independence and monumental will. As to my bullying him, Váldez, although he was in many respects a pure and simple man, was also the master of the ironic comment. He could floor his opponents, or anyone who displeased him, with a single phrase. To propose that I was able to bully Váldez is a suggestion which borders on the comical.”

Matthew Spencer, for example, in a typically revisionist article in Lingua Franca, cites certain tape recordings of Váldez and Gambini working together. Spencer stresses that Gambini appeared the dominant partner, with a hesitant Váldez following his lead. Gambini says, “That simply confuses appearance with reality. Váldez spoke hesitantly because he had a stammer from childhood, and was approaching seventy. If I speak strongly and clearly, it is because I was born a Yankee, and I was less than half his age at the time. These are simply the superficialities of appearance and custom. It shows, once again, that these critics who say such things are treating surfaces rather than substance. The fact was that Váldez by then had retired into a life of great honour. He had no need to devote himself, day after day for the best part of four years, to a translation of his work into English. The reason that this elderly, frail, blind man performed this sustained effort was that it was a lifetime’s ambition to create definitive English translations which would express the true spirit of his work. That was what drove Váldez on, and as his collaborator, I was a willing party to his ambition.”

5

When the Váldez/Gambini translations first appeared, mainly in the New Yorker, they were hailed, almost without exception, as masterpieces by the leading writers and academics of the time. Typical of the response was Professor Christopher Talbot, who wrote in Biquarterly magazine:

Váldez is not only being translated, moved from one side of the Spanish language barrier to the English. Because Váldez oversaw every word, and took advantage of the circumstances to purify his Spanish originals, these are not translations at all, but original texts. They are different from the previous Spanish ones, but fully their equal in sanction, dignity, and intention. Perhaps in due course they will be considered definitive of Váldez’s opus. After all, in historical terms they represent the last opportunity of Váldez to revise the main body of his work and give it what may be considered its final, mature form. But in certain respects that is to consider only one dimension, and to underplay the further significance of these translations. In the English language itself, they represent a hugely important addition to the literary canon, at least as important as any other contribution in the latter part of the twentieth century. Without a doubt, accident and history both played their part in their creation, but that is hardly unusual in the history of letters. We are simply fortunate that the circumstances underlying this remarkable body of work proved efficacious for their achievement.
It is known — from various quotations from Váldez himself during a lifetime of literary application — that he felt the prevailing Spanish language inhibited his own particular interest in compression and accuracy. But now let us consider the other side of the equation. Paradoxically, Váldez has bought to the English language a Spanish spirit, a language of high metaphysics and peerless speculation which re-opens the borders of modern English-language fiction. This in turn is already beginning to influence a new generation of English-speaking writers. Váldez will always have a great and honourable position in Spanish, which is itself one of the front rank literary languages. But his importation into English through these magnificent translations is an event whose importance to our own literary culture cannot be overestimated.

That was more than thirty years ago. It is now over twenty years since Váldez’s death, and circumstances have changed. Since then a new generation of academics, perhaps keen to overthrow the iconic status of these translations, have mounted a counter-attack. They have raised once again the spectre of Gambini’s dominating influence, and rehearsed the old accusation that he was a brash American who used Váldez for his own ends. Gambini smiles with a patience which is perhaps long-earned. “If my primary interest had been to exploit Váldez for my own ends, I went about it in a strange way. For example, I became acquainted with Váldez because I was interested in his poetry, which is neither the most famous nor the most commercial aspect of his writing. Until then, I had been engaged in translations of Jorge Guillén, a Spanish poet Váldez and I discovered that we both admired. As we discussed Guillén and other poets we began to build up a certain confidence between us. Váldez liked my English translations, and I wanted to translate some of his poems.

“But in one respect I behaved very differently from other translators. When something puzzled me, I consulted Váldez directly because I thought he knew best. None of his previous translators did that. In fact it almost seemed a revolutionary act. Váldez was delighted to talk through the more difficult aspects, to be consulted on his own work. Nearly always, he had a good reason for writing something. Quite often I found that a particular means of expression was limited by the options available to him in Spanish, and he and I agreed it could be approached afresh in English. Working on his poetry, we built up mutual confidence in the process of consultation over my translations which later became the basis of our long collaboration on the prose works.

“After my attempts at translating his poetry, he asked me to translate some of his prose works, starting with his hitherto untranslated stories from El Ateneo. Once more, the point I am making is that it was Váldez who first invited me to undertake translations of his prose fictions, not the other way round. As for money, my initial interest was the poetry, which was and still is the least profitable part of his work.”
Gambini continues, “What made me persist with the prose translations over such a long period was, among other things, the pleasure and education of working with Váldez himself. He had an extremely pure and powerful mind, and one of those personalities which can see through the outer surface to the heart of things. Working with him was in certain respects a frightening but also a hugely rewarding experience. Idealistically, perhaps, I hoped that I could help him in his lifelong dream of turning his works into a form of English which would do justice to the literary weight of his original intellect. I also thought that together we could clear all the obfuscation and inaccuracy which attended the earlier translations into English.”

6

Of this powerful, complex personality Gambini has commented, “Váldez had his faults, as we all do. But he also possessed the classical virtues. Above all he was simple and unpretentious and direct. He was utterly dedicated to his work, in the same way that a saint is dedicated to his vocation. About Váldez it is true to say that the imagination was more important to him than the real world. The imagination took precedence over the facts of daily life. But in Váldez’s case he demanded nothing for those virtues — not even, like a saint, the promise of a reward in the afterlife. To him, the privilege of living in this imaginary world was its own reward.

“When I say Váldez regarded the physical world as secondary to the imaginative world in almost every sense, let me give a precise example. During the Second World War, when Váldez was already a major figure in Argentine culture, he publicly disapproved of the Peronistas’ support of the Axis powers as opposed to the Allies. The government, knowing that overtly to harm the great icon would have been counterproductive to its own interests, undertook instead to ‘promote’ him from his mundane job as a librarian to that of ‘Inspector of Poultry and Rabbits in the Public Market’. Actually, there was no need to inspect poultry and rabbits, and this almost poetically absurd position had been deliberately concocted precisely to deflate Váldez’s standing. In answer, Váldez calmly resigned from his position as Librarian — which was the real intention behind the promotion — and subsisted for several years by giving private tuition and lectures on philosophy. Eventually, when the Allies proved victorious, and Váldez’s anti-fascist stance was less politically contentious in Argentina, Váldez was quietly reinstated in his old job.”

Gambini, recalling this history, added, “To me, the incident demonstrated the difference between a political administration which was materialist in its worship of power, and a writer who regarded that entire physical and material world to a greater or lesser extent as unreal. Eventually it was the government itself who appeared absurd in their attempts to undermine Váldez. When he was reinstated as Librarian, Váldez simply continued to think and write and inhabit his own imaginative world, as he had always done. Instead it was his political opponents and persecutors who were forced to reconsider their position.”

7

“In one respect, however,” Gambini says, “Váldez was directly affected by his physical circumstances. Blindness is a terrible misfortune, and Váldez had been going blind slowly for most of his adult life. It was a hereditary affliction. His father too had suffered from blindness, and there was nothing he could do about it. Yet as the darkness closed about him his imagination became more liberated, his focus more intense. He did what great souls do. He used his affliction to intensify and concentrate the focus of his mind. That was why it was a privilege to work with him. You knew you were in the presence of one of those great, simplified beings.

“Speaking as someone who loves literature, to collaborate so closely with Váldez was not unlike a monk who has the privilege of working with a religious luminary or saint. There was no doubt in my mind that this was one of the leading figures in twentieth century literature. In addition, I would suggest that after our English translations he became perhaps the most influential figure of his era on other writers. Seeing him almost every day for those four years, sharing his imaginative world with him, was itself an experience. Even the word ‘experience’ is perhaps superficial here, because it suggests something on the outside of you. Being with Váldez, with someone who had used his own affliction to deepen and strengthen his own character, altered your own perceptions. I gained a different internal perspective. My sense of continuous impatience with the external world never disappeared, but I became calmer, more detached, more able to concentrate on what I considered to be important.

“Even so, it is difficult to give the real flavour of Váldez’s personality. I have used the word ‘saint’ and you might deduce from that that he was religious or holy. But in terms of conventional faith at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Where religion was concerned Váldez was a complete agnostic, or at the very least an extreme sceptic. At the same time it would not be true to say that he ignored religion. He was fascinated by its strange details, its arcane subtexts, rather than by its central teaching. You might say he merely considered it to be another branch of fiction.

“Váldez himself was enormously strong and self-reliant. That pose that you see in the photographs — sitting in a chair with his face turned up towards the light like a seraph — was his natural posture. When I called at his apartment so that I could accompany him to the library, sometimes I would knock on his door and enter his room and he would be seated calmly in his chair in precisely that pose. As often as not, because he was thinking so deeply, he did not know that someone had entered. His head was lifted high, staring sightlessly into the dark and into his own imagination. When I spoke again or touched his hand his eyes would flicker and he would say “Gambini?” and then, “Is it time to go?” Because of the depth of his meditation, it would astonish him that the time was already four in the afternoon.

“Our daily schedule might seem strange, starting our serious work in the middle of the afternoon. But then Buenos Aires had a different time clock compared with European cities. People ate late at night, seldom before nine or nine-thirty, and went to bed in the early hours. To some extent the rhythm of our working day conformed to local custom. When I called by at Váldez’s apartment at four in the afternoon, we would then walk to the Library, and begin our work there. Ensconced at the table, it was our habit to work at the translations for about three or four hours. We would usually finish our work at about eight and set out again to walk to Váldez’s apartment. On our way we would often call by at a café for a coffee or a chocolate, and there we would talk about things other than our daily labours. It was an opportunity to wind down after our work. Usually I would deliver Váldez to his apartment at about nine. Then I myself would return home to my own apartment and eat out, in conformity with the local custom. Very often I was mentally exhausted by the intensity of our mutual labours, and it was a pleasure to relax with others for dinner.

“It was not only a culture which ate late, it was also a society which habitually ate out. Partly because of this, the restaurants were superb — well-patronised and inexpensive and usually serving excellent food. Sometimes after eating I would work late into the night or the early hours to make a fair copy of what Váldez and I had done that day, and to prepare a rough draft of the translation we were intending for the following day. At other times I would do my preparatory work the following morning, before setting out once more in the afternoon to meet Váldez and escort him to the library for our next session. It seems astonishing that almost four years went by like that. But it demonstrates our commitment to the task of translation, and how much effort Váldez himself put into that labour.”

8

Continuing the conversation a little later, Gambini said, “At various stages I have spoken — perhaps quite rightly and appropriately — about Váldez’s virtues. He also had strange and unexpected eccentricities. These seemed to me to be minor, and did nothing to alter his greatness. Even so, they had an effect on his later life, and for that reason they are worth noting.

“The first of his eccentricities was a certain political naiveté. He was constantly being awarded honours by various countries in the Spanish-speaking world. Other South American states would announce that they were about to bestow upon him their highest cultural awards. For example, he was offered a major cultural award by Chile, at the time when General Pinochet was its dictator. This occurred after our active collaboration was over, but when we were still in occasional contact. The invitation involved receiving the award from the Chilean government itself, at a large and lavish ceremony.

“When Váldez asked my opinion, I said to him that to accept an award from such a country while under the heel of a military dictator would simply give credence to the regime. But Váldez himself had a different view, one which I thought was naïve. It seemed to him that the award came not from Pinochet — who would probably never have heard of him, and certainly would not have read any of his books — but from the Culture Ministry, acting on behalf of Chilean culture and literature. He said that whoever was in power was a relatively brief and temporary matter, that he owed it to the Chilean literary tradition and to Chilean writers to receive the award graciously and without making a political fuss. He answered that he thought it was I who was politicising the issue.

“We argued, mostly good-heartedly, about this. I said that he was technically right — that the idea of the award probably did come from the Chilean cultural authorities. But the fact that the honour was being presented publicly, on behalf of the government, created an important political dimension, whether he liked it or not. If a writer of his standing in the Spanish-speaking world accepted such an award, it would be interpreted as lending his prestige to the Chilean regime.

“As it happened, he accepted the Chilean award. In one respect I was right — the Pinochet government made capital of it. Partly as a result of this Váldez achieved the reputation of being right wing, or reactionary, whereas the truth was that he was such an individualist it would have been absurd to stereotype him politically. To give only one example, an archetypal right-winger or reactionary, particularly in South American culture, is nearly always religious, or — like most of the Generals — leans on the history and tradition of the Catholic church. But as I have said before, Váldez was an utter cynic when it came to religion. Another of the factors which branded him with the image of a conservative was that in South America the organised left wing tended to be almost as authoritarian as the right, sometimes more so. The Peronistas, who supposedly represented the working classes, and drew their support from the poor, were close to being fascists, and had a history of supporting other fascist governments. Váldez loathed the Peronistas as corrupt, power-hungry hypocrites — and he was used to being the focus of their disapproval.

“At that time in Argentina, when the choice was between the Generals and the Peronistas, there wasn’t the same left-leaning liberal culture that exists in the main European cultures. A man like Váldez, who believed in the individual conscience above everything, found himself isolated, and therefore vulnerable to political attack from either right or left. That was one of the reasons that I was so insistent that he should exercise great care in accepting honours from governments with authoritarian regimes. In that volatile, highly polarised environment his political affiliations could be misunderstood and misrepresented.

“His politics, and the way that he left himself open to political misrepresentation, were one aspect of his life that caused me considerable concern, mainly because I felt they could affect his literary reputation in the longer term. He could have alienated the literary classes, and they in turn might have discouraged new readers from approaching his work. Actually, viewed in retrospect, the brilliance of his writing and his genius overcame the various political slanders that were directed at him. Unfortunately, there was another eccentricity that had a much more direct bearing on his future reputation. I admit that I didn’t foresee the importance of this one at all.”

9

“When Váldez and I first met, he was already a literary idol in a court of sycophants. His attitude towards such people was that he would listen patiently to their flattery and their tendentious questions, and then give somewhat gnomic responses which often disguised his dislike of them.

“I avoided these courtiers like the plague. Few of them had any capacity for literary discrimination, and most of them were interested in Váldez for his fame, not for the work he had done. It seemed to me that what he said to them was his own business, and the less I had to do with them the better. From the start of our collaboration I made it clear to Váldez that I myself had no interest in forming part of that court, or in playing their games, which consisted of various ways of ingratiating oneself with the great writer. My interest was entirely concentrated on working on the translations, and I made it clear to Váldez too that as far as I was concerned his relations with the courtiers were his own business. No doubt one of the consequences of ignoring the courtiers was that they started to hate me. They thought I had usurped them in the great man’s affections, so they plotted amongst themselves. Because Váldez generally ignored their whisperings against me, I didn’t take much notice of them.

“There were several incidents that made them dislike me all the more — utterly superficial matters, it seems to me, but then the courtiers were motivated by superficial considerations. The first was that in my daily walk to and from the Library with Váldez, it happened that a photographer took several photographs of us. One of them became famous. We are both walking along the sidewalk and the frail, elderly Váldez is hanging on to my arm, with that beautiful angelic smile on his face. Certain photographs, because they capture a single instant, have a magical, irrational quality. The photograph in question has its own dynamic. It is in black and white, and people have commented that there seems to be an invisible connection between the two men, as between a son and father. When the photograph was published and became famous in its own right, it seemed to provide visible evidence to the courtiers that an outsider was usurping their position.

“The second occasion arose partly because Váldez himself spoke in such a manner about my work to the cultural authorities that in due course I was awarded the Commander of the Order of May, Argentina’s highest cultural award. The courtiers knew that the award, for what it was worth, was based upon Váldez’s own immense authority. Because — given their nature — they were obsessed about awards and other baubles, that annoyed them too. It wasn’t helped by the fact that one of Váldez’s real literary friends, the distinguished writer Alphonso González, when writing about this award, said, ‘Luis Váldez is pre-eminent as a Spanish writer, but his world eminence is due to one man, his English-language translator Victor Gambini.’ I didn’t say it, and I didn’t think it of myself, but it seems that was the last straw for the courtiers.

“As things turned out, it wasn’t the courtiers themselves who adversely affected Váldez’s international reputation. They developed a passionate hatred of me, which lasts to this day. But if that is the price for working so closely with Váldez, it is a cross I am happy to bear. The real threat to his reputation came from a different direction.

“Amongst this court of flatterers there were various young women. Váldez had a romantic, an idealised idea of the muse. To his mind the muse was not simply an abstract ideal but was embodied by a female persona, an intellectual companion or soulmate. This strangely romantic view was partly due to Váldez’s own personal history. You should remember that Váldez was one of those men who was not highly successful with women when young, but who became increasingly attractive to women as he grew older. Sometimes it seemed to me that this unexpected opportunity to enjoy the company of attractive women in his later years — particularly when his work was done and he had time on his hands — distracted him, and even turned his head. When he was younger he was struggling to earn a living in the half-world between literary journalism and writing novels and poetry. He was never handsome, and he had a pronounced stammer and a certain earnestness of manner. Even at a young age he was losing his sight and had strong glasses which made him look owlish. I am saying this to make the point that he was not every woman’s idea of an attractive man. But as he grew older, he began to be perceived as an heroic figure — the great, blind solitary writer who lived within his own intense imagination. Spanish-speaking cultures generally admire and revere their leading writers and artists, more so than in the case of the English-speaking world. As this prestige settled on Váldez it happened that, unexpectedly, and for the first time in his life, numerous young women became interested in him. They wanted to be seen with him, were warmed by his wisdom, liked nothing more than to accompany him to a restaurant, a dinner party or another social occasion.

“Váldez’s reaction to these young women was therefore complex. I suspect that they were largely non-physical relationships, though occasionally they were emotionally intense. To me a person’s sexuality is his own business. In this respect I am a typical liberal. My impression was that Váldez’s sexual impulses, such as they were, were consistently heterosexual. But at the same time, for personal, psychological and historical reasons, he was deeply withdrawn. Whether he did not like physical contact or had simply become used to being solitary as a result of his dedication to the craft of writing, it would be difficult to say. But one of the consequences of his isolation was that he hated to be touched unexpectedly.

“Sometimes this had peculiar but revealing consequences. In the strongly Latin culture of Buenos Aires, there is a tradition of genuine warmth and physicality in the typical greeting between people of both sexes. It is common, for example, for men to embrace one another in a heartfelt and sincere manner. Váldez hated this. He would react to being embraced as a physical violation, often abruptly throwing away the arms of the person involved. People who did not know this about him could be deeply offended. Several times in the course of my association with Váldez I witnessed such incidents when visitors or literary dignitaries who embraced the great writer experienced his heartfelt revulsion at physical contact. Out of compassion for the people concerned I would draw them aside afterwards and explain to them that Váldez was one of those unusual people who hated to be touched by anyone, and there was nothing personal in his action towards them. I hoped that in a number of cases this reduced the occasional shock and surprise caused by Váldez’s reaction to being embraced.

“Váldez had known physical love with women. He had affairs in his youth. He was married and separated. But my impression was that the physical affections played a relatively small part in his later life, compared with the overwhelmingly intellectual passions. I am saying this because it gives an insight into what happened later, in the final few years of his existence. Here was a man in whom physical sexuality played a relatively minor role, but in whom the romantic ideal of a female soulmate, a muse, retained enormous mystical power.

“One of his companions was Rosa Yakuza. She was a person of no great literary distinction, but she was considered to be beautiful, and Váldez liked her to read to him. I suspect that Váldez, after a lifetime of almost monk-like dedication to his craft, felt that he deserved a degree of female companionship and psychological intimacy. The problems arose because they were in many respects very different personalities. Rosa Yakuza liked parties and social attention, whereas Váldez enjoyed her companionship and her reading to him. Even when Váldez and I were engaged in our most intense period of translating, this strange relationship was developing in the background. It seemed to me that each used the other for their own ends, but insofar as I was aware of it, this seemed to me perfectly reasonable and hardly unusual.

“When our long labour of translation finally came to an end, Váldez’s work was no longer the central theme in his life. He retired from literary effort, and that was when this unusual relationship between the great writer and his young female reader began to take centre stage. I heard that it was a very stormy relationship, characterised by screaming fits, prolonged emotional crises and temporary reconciliations. Somehow it lasted, perhaps because it was based on a balance of terror. If Váldez refused to attend the very functions that he so despised, Rosa Yakuza would withdraw her attention and would not read to him, and he would be left alone in his blindness and isolation. At the same time, she craved the social attention of being associated with the great man.

“The workings of the heart are mysterious to an outsider. Who knows what each of them gained from their relationship? I prefer to keep to the facts. Ten years after I left Argentina, Váldez contracted a lethal form of pancreatic cancer, and travelled to Switzerland with Rosa Yakuza knowing that he had only a limited time to live. There, on his deathbed, less than two months before he died, he was married to her by proxy. There was an underlying logic in these events. At the time of Váldez’s last days, Argentina was still a country ruled by Catholic religious practice. In Argentina he could not have married Rosa Yakuza. Although Váldez had been separated from his first wife, and had obtained a legal separation, the Argentine state did not recognise divorce. So the marriage with Rosa Yakuza was conducted by proxy from Switzerland through an official in Paraguay, and the marriage papers in turn were faxed through from Paraguay to Switzerland. It was an odd arrangement, made more strange by the fact that shortly afterwards the official who oversaw the proxy marriage was himself arrested and imprisoned on a completely separate charge of fraud.

“I kept out of things. But I remained in touch with various acquaintances in Argentina who had been genuine literary friends and collaborators. What was shocking to those who knew Váldez was the way that Roza Yakuza subsequently took over and organised his estate, sacking formerly loyal publishers and attempting to extract maximum revenue. Almost her first act was to employ a famous New York literary agent who rejoiced in the nickname of ‘the hyena’ as a means of brutalising publishers. As part of this attempt to re-order the Váldez literary estate, I myself became the subject of Rosa Yakuza’s anger.

“Váldez had insisted, in various letters and contracts, that as the instigator and partner of his approved English translations, I should receive 50% of any income derived from those translations. But this division of income, specified by Váldez himself and underlined by a dozen signed contracts from him, excited Rosa Yakuza’s jealousy. She wanted all the translation income for the estate, which is to say, for herself. She and ‘the hyena’ persuaded Váldez’s English language publishers to withdraw the Váldez-Gambini English publications, in which every word had been vetted and approved by Váldez himself, in favour of granting new translation rights to an unknown academic from the University of Puerto Rico. The singular advantage of this arrangement to Rosa Yakuza was that she paid a fixed fee for the new translations, and owned them a hundred percent for herself.

“In the event, the translations were grotesque, nothing short of calamitous — carelessly written, without any sense of rhythm, and recreating exactly the mistakes and obfuscations which Váldez had so disliked in other, earlier English translations. The long-winded Latinate constructions which Váldez had tried so hard to eliminate during his translation work with me had been reinstated, often in English which was itself garbled. After that, Váldez’s reputation in the English language began a slow but inexorable decline, which has not halted until the present day.

“I have sat quietly by and watched Váldez slowly but subtly lose his great reputation as a writer of international standing. It is true that an older generation remains faithful to the translations which I made with Váldez, but it is sad that a younger generation finds itself unable to penetrate the obscurity and appallingly poor language of the new translations. It has been a rather melancholy process.”

10

Gambini, finishing his story, added, “It would appear that Rosa Yakuza was assisted in her work of replacing the Váldez-Gambini translations by a motley collection of literary academics who were only too happy to lend their weight to the new translations, some even praising them in lavish terms. The English language, as well as the Spanish, has its retinue of sycophants. Unfortunately, it is not only revisionist academics in far-away universities who have attacked the translations from the insulated safety of their offices. Buenos Aires itself was a rumour machine, motivated by the same frustrated courtiers who took such a dislike to the imposition of this brash Yankee translator in Váldez’s affairs.

“Other things assisted the rumours. Buenos Aires was a culture which lacks the English obsession for accuracy, a culture which was, in Váldez’s own words, ‘imaginative rather than empirical’. This encouraged a great flow of gossip and anecdote, which in turn obscured the important issues involved.”

When Gambini’s daily work with Váldez ended in July 1971 — though he continued to work alone for a year afterwards in regular consultation with Váldez — eventually Gambini travelled to Britain, and found a permanent home there. Meanwhile, the rumour mill of Argentine literary society continued to churn. Stories emerged that Gambini had left Buenos Aires because Váldez and Gambini had experienced a rancorous split. It was claimed, too, that at a certain time, at the end of 1971, finally Váldez had had enough of Gambini, of his zeal, of the draining working regime that their collaboration imposed upon him. Gambini says, “That at least is partially true. But can you blame him for feeling tired? The fact was, when Váldez had achieved with my collaboration what he regarded as the definitive English translations of his most important work, he became one of the great figures in world literature. After first triumphing in Spanish, he then became a literary titan in the English-speaking world. He was feted like a monarch, invited to one great English-speaking university after another. In America and Britain, he was invited to receive doctoral honours and other awards. He came home from this triumphal tour and he knew that the rest of his life would be an anticlimax. He wanted to live his final years in peace. He was exhausted, as he had every right to be, after the work we had done together. There was no rancour between us. It was a natural end to those intense and extraordinary years.”

How did this end actually come about? One winter evening, it seemed, Gambini received the phone call that certain friends of Váldez had always predicted. Váldez’s tone was measured, slightly hesitating, but its intent was unmistakable. “Don’t come to work today, Gambini. I am tired. I don’t think I wish to continue,” Váldez said.

How did Gambini respond? In his biographical account he wrote, “I was sad, but also perhaps a little elated at the prospect of freedom. The intensity of our collaboration had taken its toll on my own life, too. After the main body of the collaborative work was done, I wasn’t averse to looking for fresh pastures.”

Even so, Gambini lingered in Buenos Aires for another year, tying up loose ends. Precisely how much was he in touch with Váldez during that period? Several times a week, according to his own diaries of the period. Váldez and he continued to see each other socially, and they used to discuss various aspects of the continuing translations whenever they met. “Remember”, he says, “that during the course of the previous years of our daily collaboration, I was his closest confidant. What had happened was that the daily working routine was over, but we continued to see each other as friends and partners in the project of English translation.”

Another of the rumours was that Gambini had done his best to persuade Váldez to continue the daily work of translation, even harangued him. “More fiction,” Gambini says. “After Váldez said he was tired, I never again mentioned the matter of working with him in the old pattern. I knew that what Váldez’s friends had said was true. Once Váldez made up his mind about something, that was final. Besides, I had reason to be pleased with what we had done in those four years. We had translated perhaps seventy percent of Váldez’s finest work into English. What remained to translate was largely odds and ends.”

Did he not remonstrate with Váldez to at least finish the remainder of the translations? Gambini says, “No, not at all. In fact Váldez wrote to me asking me to continue the translations on my own, and encouraging me to do so. As for our direct collaboration, the moment Váldez said, ‘I am too tired to continue,’ I started to prepare myself mentally to leave. I stayed a year longer because of unfinished work on Váldez’s translations and because I had made a number of good friends in Buenos Aires. I also finished several other smaller collaborative projects, and started further work on an anthology of Argentine short stories by other writers. When the most pressing commitments were fulfilled, I and my family left for England.”

In the course of that historic relationship, were there other sources of tension? “Of course,” Gambini says. “Dealing with Váldez was made more complex because he was surrounded by rumours. Sometimes he was actually slightly mischievous. And he wasn’t above sowing jealousy, either, amongst his court of admirers. Because I was closest to him during the course of our active collaboration, I witnessed some of these minor machinations, though I took care not to become involved.” Was there, then, at least an element of malice in Váldez’s own personality? “In my view these minor digressions were not malicious, though sometimes those involved thought they were. He was lonely and he craved amusement. Such diversions were for his own entertainment.”

Perhaps because they were both aware of the differences between them, between the Argentine literary icon and his young American translator, both men made their psychological accommodations to the collaborative enterprise. Each developed a mythology of jokes and nicknames for the other. Váldez sometimes called Gambini “Nap”, short for Napoleon. Once, when Váldez was visiting Brazil to collect an important prize, an organiser of festivities pointed to a chair at the head of the table and, indicating Váldez’s place, bowed to the great writer and said “O Grande Váldez.” Váldez, who so disliked pomp, was hugely embarrassed by the incident.

Sometimes, in satiric reference to that occasion, Gambini would call Váldez “O Grande”, the Great One, pronouncing O Grande in the Brazilian style, so that it sounded phonetically like Ooh Granjee. “That nickname never failed to amuse him,” Gambini says. “I always used it in terms of the utmost ironic politeness, and he would smile like an archangel.”

When Gambini left for England, the rumours multiplied after his departure. Gambini says that one example suffices to show how the Buenos Aires rumour machine could create fictions almost as arcane as those of Váldez. After Gambini had left Buenos Aires, Váldez was asked by one of his literary friends whether he was still in contact with Gambini. “I haven’t heard from him for some time,” Váldez is reported to have said. Then he added, “For all I know he may have been killed in a car crash in Scotland.” These words were passed around the literati of Buenos Aires. Soon Váldez’s words began to take on the force of an absolute truth. Many in that rumour-dominated society began to believe that Gambini was dead. One day Gambini phoned up his friend Paco Guillermo in Buenos Aires. Guillermo, identifying the familiar tones of his voice, almost suffered a heart attack when he heard this communication from the dead. After he had recovered a little, Guillermo said, “I thought you were speaking from hell.”

Despite the machinations against him, and the effective abolition of the great translations by Váldez’s widow, Gambini remembers Váldez himself with extreme fondness. “The real Váldez,” Gambini says, “the Váldez I knew during those four intense years, hated ceremony, and adulation was just a game. However mischievous he sometimes seemed, he was a great man. At his heart he was deeply committed, wholly dedicated to literary expression.”

Gambini remembers one incident in particular which places Váldez in his memory perhaps more precisely and intimately than anything else. To Gambini it also illustrates in direct terms Váldez’s life-long obsession with the nature of imagination and physical reality.

They were walking to the Library one day, Váldez clinging to his arm as usual, when Váldez informed Gambini that he urgently wanted to urinate. Gambini, pragmatic as always, looked around for the nearest café. He assisted Váldez across the road, spoke briefly to the proprietor, and accompanied Váldez through to the urinal at the back of the café. But by the time they reached the latrine it was too late. Váldez had wet his own trousers. Gambini was mortified at this indignity nature had inflicted upon the great man. He stammered his heartfelt sympathies, and apologised profusely and sincerely for not finding a urinal in time. But Váldez seemed composed, and instead was concerned to comfort Gambini. That strange yet familiar seraphic smile entered Váldez’s expression. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Gambini,” he said softly. “After all, none of this is real.”

© Warwick Collins 2008