We’re in sunny rural Asturias on the northern tip of Spain this Translation Tuesday, courtesy of Laura Marcos, where a happy afternoon with pals is starting to drag on. It really has been nice, but David has to go. He makes his excuses, bats away the protests of his mates, and hurries home in quiet relief. The lie that David offers his mates is unconvincing, but the truth, the real reason he must leave so abruptly, is scarcely believable.
Marcos’s characters chatter, banter, spar, and deflect; their speech has been translated from the Asturian by Robin Munby into a kinetic, quipping English with a marked Scouse inflection. He explains:
“One of the great pleasures in working on this piece was building a textual bridge stretching across the thousand or so kilometres that separate Mieres from my own hometown of Liverpool. […] This is the English I most commonly speak myself, and so it is the form that comes most naturally to me when rendering the kind of informal dialogue present in Laura’s story. Choosing to use it here was also a conscious attempt to forge a textual link, to narrow distances, as well as to reject the universality of supposedly ‘standard’ forms of English.”
The afternoon had passed by in a happy haze of sunshine, laughter and more than a few drops of sidra, but for the last while, David had been shuffling about in his seat, stealing glances at his watch. He was getting restless. As well as his frustration at having to go home so soon, he knew he’d be in for some grief. It was always the same when he made an early exit. The best he could do was to let it all wash over him, try and get through it as quickly as possible without it turning into an argument. Arguments weren’t his thing, even if the others – Frechi especially – seemed to treat them as sport. Without them noticing, David had been gently edging his chair back with his bum so he’d have enough room to stand up. He waited for the opportune moment – one of those slight pauses between conversations – then said:
‘Okay, time for me to head off…’
‘What? We’ve only been here five minutes!’ Frechi shot back.
‘Yeah, yeah, but I’ve got Paula waiting at ours…’
‘Why don’t you call her and tell her to come and join us? We can go and get some food, it’s ages since we’ve seen you,’ said Tamara, Frechi’s girlfriend.
‘I know, it’s just I can’t today. Next weekend, maybe…’
‘I can’t, I can’t. Go on then, why can’t you?’ said Frechi. ‘Give her a call! And if she wants to stay in, no problem, but at least you can stay here. Just for once, try being your own man…’
‘Thing is we’re up at the crack of dawn tomorrow…’ David was standing now, and he was getting tired of having to explain himself.
‘Crack of dawn? On a Sunday?’ said Marce, leaning across the table, eyebrow raised, ‘doing his commissar bit’ as they called it. But commissar or not, he was still going easier on David than Frechi was. And at least with Marce you knew he was only messing.
‘Yeah, I know, but we’re going to her aunt and uncle’s place tomorrow. The hay needs cutting. We said we’d go over and help…’
‘Right, but you can stay till twelve at least, no? Come on, we’ll go and get a bit of dinner and another drink or two and you’ll be tucked up by midnight. You’ll be up bright and early no bother. Go on, give Paula a bell and come for a bite!’ said Tamara, her tone more conciliatory.
‘Nah, seriously, I’m knackered anyway to be honest. It’s not to be. Next weekend though? We can sort something right now for next Saturday if you want?’
‘Next Saturday my arse. Don’t know why I bother. Fun sponges, the both of you, you know that?’ Frechi could see he wasn’t getting anywhere, and when he wasn’t getting anywhere, Frenchi got personal.
‘Alright, alright. Well, have a good one,’ said David, relieved the back and forth was drawing to a close and freedom was finally in sight. ‘I’ll get that last round on my way out. See you next weekend.’
‘I hope you’re ripped apart by wolves, you and that jailor you call a girlfriend,’ said Frechi, by which time David was already making his way past the bar, with a quick wave goodbye.
‘Ah come on, give him a break, you know what he’s like. So what if he’s a bit of a square? There’s a David in every group, it’s just the way it is,’ said Tamara, giving Frechi a gentle shove.
‘My dad always said you can’t trust his type, clean-shirts,’ said Frechi, the cigarette between his lips bobbing to the rhythm of his words. He lit it as he finished speaking, putting the final touch to his cinematic pose.
David left the bar and hurried home, the warm, evening air stroking his skin. He checked his watch again. The days were still long: nearly half nine and it wasn’t yet dark out. When he reached the entrance to their building, he was about to go in, but was briefly startled by the sound of the lock. Someone had pressed the button to open it from the inside, and David stood back to let them out. It was a neighbour, an older man, from his grandparents’ generation. The man was accompanied by an ugly, snub-nosed little dog on a lead, which recoiled, barking, as soon as it saw David.
‘Shush, Fifi, don’t be silly, that’s our neighbour. How are you, David? Back home already?’
‘Afraid so.’ David gave a slightly awkward smile. ‘We’re out in the hayfields tomorrow with Paula’s lot, so we’ve got an early start.’
‘Ah, haymaking is it? Where’s that? Round here? El Cuetu way?’
Paula and David had only moved in six months ago, but their neighbour took little more than a week or so to suss out exactly who their families were and place them precisely within the time-space continuum of the town and its environs. Paula used to joke he was an undercover agent for the land registry office.
‘No, it’s over at her uncle’s place, towards Sistiago. That’s why we’re up so early.’
‘Early, right…but you kids, you’ve got the stamina. I bet you’d be up mowing those meadows no matter what shenanigans you got up to the night before. I did my fair share back in the day, I’ll tell you that. And at fiesta time, don’t get me started…’
‘Sure, yeah, course,’ David interrupted, ‘but you know, every Saturday…it gets a bit much…Anyway, I better go in for my tea, then it’s off to bed.’
‘Absolutely! To bed! Very sensible!’ David wasn’t enjoying his neighbour’s mischievous tone, on top of the hurry he was already in. ‘Alright then, good luck with that early start of yours! And goodnight!’
David started making his way up to the first floor, and before he’d even reached the top of the stairs, he heard Paula opening the door to their flat.
‘I could hear you chatting to Servando. I was getting nervous.’
‘Yeah, Frechi was kicking off as usual, then bloody Servando turns up…Better get a move on.’
‘Well come in then, tea’s ready. I’ve done escalopes.’
‘I don’t know if I’ve got time, love. I might be better off taking it in with me. Leave one of my hands free and I’ll eat while we’re getting ready,’ he said on his way into the kitchen.
Paula raised her eyebrows.
‘It’ll be fine! Look, I’ll stick it in some bread and if I make a mess, I’ll clean it up tomorrow.’
‘Alright, if you say so…’
Paula waited as David pottered about in the kitchen then made his way to the bathroom. She followed. Everything was set up: the chains, the handcuffs, the gag, and the bath, one of those adapted ones for disabled people. They’d bought it when they got the flat (when their parents asked, they said they’d been offered it on the cheap, a steal). They’d lined it with an old duvet to muffle the noise. David got in and fastened one of the handcuffs round his left wrist, threaded the other through one of the grab rails, and attached that to his left wrist as well. Then he and Paula wrapped the chain around his torso and through the other rails before Paula fastened it with a padlock.
‘Leave the gag for a sec so I can finish my sandwich.’
‘Alright, that way we can have a bit of a chat as well,’ said Paula, kneeling down next to the bath so they were at the same height. ‘So how are Frechi and Tamara doing?’
‘Fine, they were asking after you as ever. They want us to go and see them the weekend of the eighteenth.’
‘Oh yeah? Sounds good. Is the eighteenth alright?’
‘Should be. Two weeks today, right? Practically a new moon. I checked. Not even half.’
‘What did you tell them this time?’
‘Pff, told them we had to get up early to help your uncle with the hay. Told Servando the same.’
‘Nice. So, speaking of tomorrow…’
‘What do you fancy?’
‘I thought maybe the beach. But you’ll be a bit of a wreck, no?’
‘I don’t care, let’s do it. I can have a sleep there. But we better avoid Abanes. If we bump into the others they’ll be fuming.’
Their eyes met and they shared a conspiratorial smile.
‘So how’s your evening shaping up?’
‘Nothing special, thought I might watch a film, then bed. Let’s see if I actually manage to get some sleep this time.’
‘Don’t make life easy for you, do I?’
‘It depends. It’s worse when it’s on a weekday. I feel a lot more relaxed now with the upstairs neighbours away.’
‘Alright love, think it’s time for you to make a move…’
The gave each other a quick kiss.
‘You make me sick and I’ve never loved you,’ said David, screwing up his face in mock disgust.
‘I know, I know.’
‘And you?’
‘Same. Don’t get me wrong, only reason I put up with this nonsense is I’m atoning for the sins of a past life.’
‘Night.’
She stuffed the gag in his mouth, tied a towel around his head, then kissed him on the cheek and gave him a quick hug. His skin felt rough, different.
‘Night love,’ she said. Before she got up, she switched on a small lamp, turned off the main light, then stepped out of the bathroom and double-locked it from the outside.
Translated from the Asturian by Robin Munby
Laura Marcos (Mieres del Camín, 1982), is a writer, poet, teacher and translator from Asturias. Her short story collection Cuentos de ser y de tar was published in 2017, while her poetry collection Díes otros won the 2019 ‘Fernán-Coronas’ Poetry Prize. Her poetry was also included in the Asturian-language anthology La prueba del once. She is one of the founders of the AsturPoetry project which aims to bring Asturian poetry into English.
Robin Munby (Liverpool, 1991) is a literary translator and writer based in Madrid. His translations have appeared in publications including The Glasgow Review of Books, Wasafiri Magazine, Subtropics, Cambridge Literary Review, World Literature Today, The Spanish Riveter and Asymptote. He works from Spanish, Russian and Asturian into English.
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