German Translation Exercise: Dark Tidings by Catherine Shepherd
An excerpt from a German thriller, translated into English.
This is probably going to distress some people, but I’ve already had to scrap one translation this week due to racism. I have to do better flagging the word “Kontinent” as something to approach with trepidation in the future, that’s on me. There are themes of child abuse in this excerpt, so if you’re sensitive to that, please feel free to skip this week. For what it’s worth, I also got really into this translation, even if it isn’t typical fare for this blog, and I wanted to continue onward past the cliffhanger at the end of this.
Dunkle Botschaft
His small hands flipped clumsily through the rough papers. Suddenly, he stopped on a certain page and traced his finger to the first line. The mathematical problem stared back at him, and he gave a sigh of desperation. It rattled around in his head. The solution was close at hand, when suddenly the light of the lamp on his writing table began to flicker. This brief diversion was enough to begin to break his concentration, and the sharp pain in his stomach did the rest. Hunger and thirst nagged at him. Because he hadn’t yet solved the problem, his pangs would only worsen. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Suddenly, his eyelids shot open as the old planks of the hallway outside the door creaked.
“Two minutes left,” commanded the voice of his grandfather through the crack in the door.
He didn’t bother to look back. His eyelids came back down to the paper, and he traced his finger across the sheet. If he couldn’t manage to get through it today, he wouldn’t get any food or water until tomorrow. The door slammed shut and the boy felt like he could breathe again.
He concentrated back to the column of numbers that were nothing more than an expression of his grandfather’s malice. He gave him more and more problems every day, some of which were impossible to solve. He enjoyed seeing his grandson suffer. He enjoyed pressuring him and punishing him when he failed. For him, there was nothing better. The child wasn’t a loser like his father was; that meant his grandfather was less willing to loosen the reins oh him. Either he solved the problem and answered the question or he starved. Without hard work, there was no reward, after all. His grandfather always told him that he held his fate in his own hands. He was able to decide how things went for him.
“Five times two minus twenty-seven divided by three,” he read aloud, and the words caused his lips to tremble. He hesitated because the second part of the equation was more complicated than he was used to. He took a second to think it over and scratched down a number with uncertainty, then moved on to the next problem. It contained squares and square roots. He wasn’t even allowed to use a calculator. His head throbbed. He gave an answer and filled the rest of the paper with solutions. He jumped up, but sat back down immediately to double check his work.
Grandfather hated mistakes. Mistakes brought punishment. There was hardly anything he was more afraid of.
He gently rubbed his left arm. Even that brief contact hurt. Yesterday he hadn’t finished the exercise, but today his stomach was growling so much that he just had to solve the problems. It was summer break, and he wasn’t able to scrounge on his typical school lunches. Something always fell off somewhere, but if he had to stay under his grandfather’s sword of Damocles, he stood no chance. Even if he became insanely weak, his desire for food and drink gave him an unforeseen power. He checked another problem. His solution seemed to fit. Again, he hoped it was right as he tiptoed over to the door. The child quietly opened it and listened for any sounds on the stairwell but the grandfather could not be heard.
He carefully walked down the steps to the first floor. The rotten boards of the old house creaked with every movement, even though he was light on his feet. He stopped at the edge where the wood had worn away in the middle. The smell of something roasting wafted in from the kitchen. He took the last step and carefully glanced into the living room. His grandfather sat snoring on the couch with his head leaning sideways. He turned away and followed the tempting scent. The child knelt in front of the oven and his mouth immediately began to water. He licked his lips greedily and looked back at his math problems with a longing sigh. One of the problems had a four-digit solution. He picked up the padlock that hung from a chain on the oven door. If he entered the right four numbers, then he would be able to open it. The child nervously turned the small dial, until the numbers matched what he had written. He waited to hear the succoring click of the latch, but nothing happened. Again, he worked at the dial, hoping that he had entered the numbers in the wrong order, but again he heard nothing.
Once more he repeated his actions, transposing the last two numbers.
Nothing.
His heart was racing as if he had just finished a sprint. He desperately sucked in another breath of that delicious scent. Finally, he resorted to pulling at that damned lock. The chain beat noisily against the glass pane. He became frightened and turned around towards the living room. The first thing he saw was the rough slipper. His view drifted upwards to the fat legs in the dark, clothed in stained sweatpants, then to the massive gut that hung over the belt.
“Got it wrong again, didn’t you, you little idiot?” his grandfather snorted and crawled up so close to him that he was able to see every pore on his crepuscular face.
The child remained silent and lowered his gaze. The fear blocked up his throat. How should he reply? That the questions were too hard to answer without a calculator, or that he needed more time? The his grandfather’s reply was always the same. It was hopeless. He forced himself past the fat man and scurried towards the kitchen door.
“Fine, go back to your room!” roared the old man and he grumbled at him from the bottom of the stairs.
He ran as quickly as he could and scurried into his room. The child cowered on the floor in front of his bed and held his arms over his head. He felt like a hunted animal. He knew what would come, and closed his watering eyes. His right arm was positioned over the left, so that whatever may come, he could still use his left for writing. Already, he felt the belt hit him. The pain knocked the wind out of hi. He bit his incisors so hard into his lower lip that his jaw creaked. The belt whizzed again through the air and this time met with his shoulder. An intolerable burning sensation raced through his nerve endings. It was so violent that he couldn’t even bring himself to scream. The strap came again and again, without stopping, until he no longer felt it, and bright flashes began to dance before his eyes.