Transparent things

The question of the title – Tralatitions – was another kettle of fish. Readers did not realize that two types of title existed. One type was the title found by the dumb author or the clever publisher after the book had been written. . That was simply a label stuck on and tapped with the side ' of the fist. Most of our worst best-sellers had that kind of title. But there was the other kind: the title that .shone through the book like a watermark, the title that was born with the book, the title to which the author had grown so accustomed during the years of accumulating the written pages that it had become part of each and of all. No, Mr. R. could not give up Tralatitions.

Hugh made bold to remark that the tongue tended to substitute an "l" for the Зecond of the three "ts." "The tongue of ignorance," shouted Mr. R. His pretty little secretary tripped in and a

19

We are back in New York and this is their last evening together.

After serving them an excellent supper (a little on the rich side, perhaps, but not overabundant – neither was a big eater) obese Pauline, the -femme de mЙnage, whom they shared with a Belgian artist in the penthouse immediately above them, washed the dishes and" left at her usual hour (nine fifteen or thereabouts). Since she had the a

torrent. He contented himself instead with the resume Ar-piande gave him upon returning to the settee of gray plush near the fake fireplace. As had happened on previous occasions, around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and scrapes suddenly came from above: it was the cretin upstairs dragging a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture (catalogued as "Pauline anide") from the center of his studio to the corner it occupied at night. In invariable response, Armande glared at the ceiling and remarked that in the case of a less amiable and helpful neighbor she would have complained long ago to Phil's cousin (who managed the apartment house). When placidity was restored, she started to look for the book she had had in her hand before the telephone rang. Her husband always felt a flow of special tenderness that reconciled him to the boring or brutal ugliness of what not very happy people call "life" every time that he noted in neat, efficient, clear-headed Armande the beauty and helplessness of human abstraction. He now found the object of her pathetic search (it was in the magazine rack near the telephone) and, as he restored it to her, he was allowed to touch with reverent lips her temple and a strand of blond hair. Then he went back to the galleys of Tralatitions and she to her book, which was a French touring guide that listed many splendid restaurants, forked and starred, but not very many "pleasant, quiet, well-situated hotels" with three or more turrets and sometimes a little red songbird on a twig.

"Here's a cute coincidence," observed Hugh. "One of his characters, in a rather bawdy passage – by the way should it be 'Savoie' or 'Savoy'?" "What's the coincidence?"

"Oh. One of his characters is consulting a Michelin, and says: there's many a mile between Condom in Gascogne and Pussy in Savoie."

"The Savoy is a hotel," said Armande and yawned twice, first with clenched jaws, then openly. "I don't know why I'm so tired," she added, "but I know all this yawning only sidetracks sleep. I think I'll sample my new tablets tonight."

"Try imagining you're skimming on skis down a very smooth slope. I used to play te

She remained seated, lost in thought, for another moment, then red-ribboned the place and went for a glass to the kitchen.

Hugh liked to read a set of proofs twice, once for the defects of the type and once for the virtues of the text. It worked better, he believed, if the eye check came first and the mind's pleasure next. He was now enjoying the latter and while not looking for errors, still had a chance to catch a missed boo-boo – his own or the printer's. He also permitted himself to query, with the utmost diffidence, in the margin of a second copy (meant for the author), certain idiosyncrasies of style and spelling, hoping the great man would understand that not genius but grammar was being questioned.

After a long consultation with Phil it had been decided not to do anything about the risks of defamation involved in the frankness with which R. described his complicated love life. He had "paid for it once in solitude and remorse, and now was ready to pay in hard cash any fool whom his story might hurt" (abridged and simplified citation from his latest letter). In a long chapter of a much more libertine nature (despite the grandiose wording) than the jock talk of the fashionable writers he criticized, R. showed a mother and daughter regaling their young lover with spectacular caresses on a mountain ledge above a scenic chasm and in other less perilous spots. Hugh did not know Mrs. R. intimately enough to assess her resemblance to the matron of the book (loppy breasts, flabby thighs, coon-bear grunts during copulation, and so forth); but the daughter in ma