In Other Words (26 page)

Reading this passage, I was both stunned and comforted. They could have been my sentiments, my words.

Then I read, unable to put it down, her celebrated trilogy of novels, beginning with
The Notebook,
which the author considered an autobiographical work, and which I find an absolute masterpiece. I was even more captivated by the lapidary, purified, incisive quality of her writing. The effect is overwhelming, as powerful as a punch in the stomach. Although I read Kristóf in Italian, I can perceive, even in translation, the effort implicit in the writing. I intuit the linguistic mask in which she, like me, finds herself constrained and at the same time free. Knowing
her work, I feel reassured, less alone. I think I've met a guide, maybe even a companion, on this path.

And yet there remains a fundamental difference between her and me. Ágota Kristóf was forced to abandon Hungarian. She wrote in French because she wanted to be read. “It became a necessity,” the author explains. She regretted not being able to write in her native language, and so she always considered French “the enemy language.” I, on the other hand, choose willingly to write in Italian. I don't miss English, not even the superior control it gives me.

Kristóf's work brings into focus the fact that an autobiographical novel is not always what it seems, and that the boundary between imagination and reality is blurred. The protagonist of
The Third Lie,
the third volume of the trilogy, says: “I try to write true stories, but, at a certain point, the story becomes unbearable, precisely because of its truth, and so I'm forced to change it.”

Even a novel drawn from reality, faithful to it, is not the truth, just as the image in the mirror is not a person in flesh and blood. It remains, that is, an abstraction, no matter how realistic, how close to the facts. In the words of Lalla Romano—another writer who in her novels has, like Kristóf, always played with things that really happened—“in a book everything is true, nothing is true.”

Everything has to be reconsidered, shaped anew. Autobiographical fiction, even if it is inspired by reality, by memory, requires a rigorous selection, a merciless cutting. One writes with the pen, but in the end, to create the right form, one has to use, like Matisse, a good pair of scissors.

My journey is coming to an end. I have to leave Rome this year and return to America. I have no desire to. I wish there were a way of staying in this country, in this language.

I'm already afraid of the separation between me and Italian. At the same time I'm aware of a significant, formal distance between me and English, an idiom in which I haven't read for three years. The decision to read only in Italian led me to take this new creative path. Writing comes from reading. Now, in spite of my uneasiness, I prefer to write in Italian. Even if I remain half blind, I can see certain things more clearly. I feel more centered even if I'm adrift. I feel more at home, in spite of the discomfort.

This book leads me to a crossroads. It forces me to choose. It brings home to me that everything is upside down, overturned. It asks me: How to proceed?

Should I continue on this road? Will I abandon English definitively for Italian? Or, once I'm back in America, will I return to English?

How would I return to it? I know from my parents that, once you've left, you're gone forever. If I stop writing in Italian, if I go back to working in English, I expect to feel another type of loss.

I can't predict the future. I prefer to enjoy this moment, the work just finished. In spite of the doubts, I'm very happy to have written and published a book in Italian. Working on the Italian proofs as we closed the text, I felt moved. One could say that it's an indigenous book, born and raised here in Italy, even if the author was not.

In Other Words
will now have an identity independent of me. The first readers will be Italians; it will be found, first, in Italian bookstores. In time it will be translated, transformed. Next year it will be published in America, in a bilingual edition. Yet it will have specific, localized roots, although it remains hybrid, slightly outside the frame, like me.

Thanks to this writing project I hope that a piece of me can remain in Italy, and that consoles me, even though I hope that every book in the world belongs to everyone, or to no one, nowhere.

—
ROME, DECEMBER
2014

Every book seems to me an unattainable goal until it is finished, but this one more than any other. I couldn't have done it without the support and careful attention of Sara Antonelli, Luigi Brioschi, Raffaella De Angelis, Angelo De Gennaro, Giovanni De Mauro, Michela Gallio, Francesca Marciano, Alberto Notarbartolo, and Pierfrancesco Romano.

Particular thanks to Gabriella Giandelli for her illustrations for the chapters that appeared in
Internazionale;
to Marco Delogu, whose photograph inspired the story “Half-Light”; and to the Centro Studi Americani in Rome, a place of the heart.

Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction:
Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth,
and
The Lowland.
She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; the PEN/Hemingway Award; the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; the Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for
In altre parole
.

Ann Goldstein is an editor at
The New Yorker
. She has translated works by, among others, Elena Ferrante, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Primo Levi, Giacomo Leopardi, and Alessandro Baricco, and is the editor of the
Complete Works of Primo Levi
in English. She has been the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and awards from the Italian Foreign Ministry and from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A Paola Basirico,

Angelo De Gennaro,

e Alice Peretti

…avevo bisogno di una lingua differente: una lingua che fosse un luogo di affetto e di riflessione.

—ANTONIO TABUCCHI

V
oglio attraversare un piccolo lago. È veramente piccolo, eppure l'altra sponda mi sembra troppo distante, oltre le mie capacità. So che il lago è molto profondo nel mezzo, e anche se so nuotare ho paura di trovarmi nell'acqua da sola, senza nessun sostegno.

Si trova, il lago di cui parlo, in un luogo appartato, isolato. Per raggiungerlo si deve camminare un po', attraverso un bosco silenzioso. Dall'altra parte si vede una casetta, l'unica abitazione sulla sponda. Il lago si è formato subito dopo l'ultima glaciazione, millenni fa. L'acqua è pulita ma scura, priva di correnti, più pesante rispetto all'acqua salata. Dopo che ci si entra, ad alcuni metri dalla riva, non si vede più il fondo.

Di mattina osservo quelli che vengono al lago come me. Vedo come lo attraversano in maniera disinvolta e rilassata, come si fermano qualche minuto davanti alla casetta, poi tornano indietro. Conto le loro bracciate. Li invidio.

Per un mese nuoto in tondo, senza spingermi al largo. È una distanza molto più significativa, la circonferenza rispetto al diametro. Impiego più di mezz'ora per fare questo giro. Però sono sempre vicina alla riva. Posso fermarmi, posso
stare in piedi se mi stanco. Un buon esercizio, ma non certo emozionante.

Poi una mattina, verso la fine dell'estate, mi incontro lì con due amici. Ho deciso di attraversare il lago con loro, per raggiungere finalmente la casetta dall'altra parte. Sono stanca di costeggiare solamente.

Conto le bracciate. So che i miei compagni sono nell'acqua con me, ma so che siamo soli. Dopo circa centocinquanta bracciate sono già in mezzo, la parte più profonda. Continuo. Dopo altre cento rivedo il fondo.

Arrivo dall'altra parte, ce l'ho fatta senza problemi. Vedo la casetta, finora lontana, a due passi da me. Vedo le distanti, piccole sagome di mio marito, dei miei figli. Sembrano irraggiungibili, ma so che non lo sono. Dopo una traversata, la sponda conosciuta diventa la parte opposta: di qua diventa di là. Carica di energia, riattraverso il lago. Esulto.

Per vent'anni ho studiato la lingua italiana come se nuotassi lungo i bordi di quel lago. Sempre accanto alla mia lingua dominante, l'inglese. Sempre costeggiandola. È stato un buon esercizio. Benefico per i muscoli, per il cervello, ma non certo emozionante. Studiando una lingua straniera in questo modo, non si può affogare. L'altra lingua è sempre lì per sostenerti, per salvarti. Ma non basta galleggiare senza la possibilità di annegare, di colare a picco. Per conoscere una nuova lingua, per immergersi, si deve lasciare la sponda. Senza salvagente. Senza poter contare sulla terraferma.

Qualche settimana dopo aver attraversato il piccolo lago nascosto, faccio una seconda traversata. Molto più lunga, ma niente di faticoso. Sarà la prima vera partenza della mia vita. Questa volta in nave, attraverso l'oceano Atlantico, per vivere in Italia.