I was an early reader, there being few other things to do when it was raining. Luckily there were a lot of books in our small abode, though not many of them were for children. However, the devil finds books for idle eyes to read, which is why I read all those Dell murder mysteries at far too tender an age. Helpful warning: Beware blondes in red nightdresses—either they have pistols in their evening bags or they’ll attract murderers like flies, and you don’t want to get caught in the line of fire.

  But French cereal boxes and murder mysteries were not the only things requiring decipherment by me. There were also the funny papers, which were then at their height. The characters in them said “Waal” and “H’aint,” if hillbillies, or “Vot’s up?” if the Katzenjammer Kids, with Germanish accents; and various other strange things. Many of them swore in punctuation marks: you were supposed to add the actual swearing yourself. But ours was a non-swearing family; at the worst, my mother might say “Dad-ratted” or “She gave him Hail Columbia”—so I could see the swearing in the comics, right there on the page, but I couldn’t hear it. A swearing vocabulary is now essential to a translator, there being so much of it in writing of the present age, but such was not the case then. (Though swearing was forbidden, gags we would now think of as racist and misogynist were thick upon the page, and nobody gave them a passing thought.)

  Then there was sex. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not permitted in the United States until 1959; 1960 in Canada. People made love by means of asterisks until those watershed court decisions. “And then they were one, dot dot dot dot dot,” the text would say. “She was strangled, but had not been interfered with,” was an intriguing newspaper euphemism. “Mum, what does this mean?” “I’m busy, ask me later.” When I first saw the term child molester in a newspaper, I thought it said child mole-ster, a job available to children, in which they would be paid for collecting moles. This isn’t quite as stupid as it sounds: I’d seen people collecting worms.

  Other sources of puzzling words were the science fiction magazines of the times. It was still the bug-eyed space-alien monster era, so these stories featured many languages containing high-value Scrabble letters such as Q, X, and Y. My older brother and I were thus fluent inventors of bizarre names for the space aliens we were fond of putting into our handmade books. Helpful hint: Don’t go for a walk on Neptune. Everything there, animal or vegetable or combo, has a Q, an X, or a Y in it, and is lethal.

  Thus already pre-loaded, as it were, with verbal scrambled eggs, and, not incidentally, well primed to be a coiner of neologisms later in life, I entered my adolescent years. We were not taught languages properly then. There were no language labs—it was all written work—and we had no access to the vocabularies of swearing or sex. Think how much more interesting French would have been with a few choice Madame Bovary excerpts, or Latin with a sampling of the more outrageous epigrams of Martial! But it was not to be. Caesar droned on about himself in the third person, conquering this, overthrowing that, while we drew arms on the Venus de Milo in the textbook; and in French class, the pen of my aunt rested inexorably on the desk, in the past, the past perfect, and the future perfect.

  We were taught Latin by an Indian man from Trinidad, and French by a woman from Poland. (This was postwar.) German was taught at lunch hour by a flustered Bulgarian; we’d sit there munching our cheese sandwiches while the unfortunate woman waxed lyrical over the dative. Then it was on to university, where Anglo-Saxon and Middle English were added to the list of things that needed to be translated by me. What practical use were the languages I learned then? Some; although the first time I went to France, I found I could ask neither for a coffee nor for a bathroom, these not having been mentioned by Racine.

  Shortly thereafter—shortly in geological time—books that I myself had written were being translated into other languages. One of the first to tackle the job was Grasset, in France, whereupon a fight broke out between the French end of things and the Quebec one. My book was set in those very Quebec north woods of which I have spoken, so local word choice was a matter of pride for the Québécois distributor. “This must not sound so French,” he said. “Abitibi is not the Bois-de-Boulogne.” But of the alternative phrases he suggested, the French said, “Mais—c’est pas français!” “But—this is not French!” Which is what my high-school Polish French teacher used to say about my compositions.

  Many have been my adventures with my translators, over the years. “Is this funny, or is it not funny?” I have been asked. “Both” is hard to describe. “Ah. It is the Anglo-Saxon humour,” they have been known to say; meaning dark, I do believe. “What is granola?” my first Chinese translator asked. “What is a Smile Button?” And if they did not know what granola was, what else might they not have known, without knowing that they did not know it?

  It would be exciting to live in Ursula K. Le Guin’s future world, where an ansible translates immediately for you as you roam from galaxy to galaxy, experiencing fresh languages and brand-new modes of experiencing reality. A language that’s heavy on the nouns, like English, has trouble with languages that are slanted more toward gerunds. Do we live in a world of solid objects, or in one of process? What do you think? Or rather: How do you say?

  But we’re here, on this Earth. We don’t have ansibles; instead we have translators. They’re better; because, unlike machines, they can appreciate nuance, and they can create individual interpretations. It’s been my privilege to work with some excellent translators over the years: seeing my work through their eyes and ears has given it other dimensions, even for me. To quote W.G. Sebald to his own translator: “I don’t think it could have been done better & I am truly grateful to you for the long hours and the enormous effort you must have put into this.”

  So thank you, Dear Translators. As writers, we are in your hands. As readers, you open doors for us that would otherwise remain shut, and you allow us to hear voices that would otherwise remain silent. Like writing itself, your work rests on a belief in the possibility of human communication. That’s no small hope.

  In parting, let me say: Merci bien. Tak. A sheynem dank. Arigatou gozaimasu. Muchas gracias. Vielen Dank. Megwich. Grazie. And, from the Inuit: Naqurmiik.

  On Beauty

  (2014)

  Little girls don’t have to be very old before they get tangled up with Beauty: the idea of it (“Aren’t you pretty!”), the entrancing objects that go along with it (“See, that’s you in the mirror”), even its enticing taboos (“That’s Mummy’s lipstick, don’t touch”). For a child, there’s something magical about Beauty. It’s pink. It’s sparkly. It shimmers. You can put it on, and a lot of five-year-olds, given their first fairy-princess ballerina dress, refuse to take it off.

  But Beauty can have some strange things about it, as kids learn early. In the Mother Goose rhyme about the milkmaid and the gentleman, he comments on her pleasing appearance, then questions her about her financial status. “My face is my fortune,” she replies. “Then I can’t marry you,” he says. “Nobody asked you,” she retorts, putting him in his place; but still, questions remain in the child’s mind. What does it mean—that her face is her fortune? Is her face detachable, and if it comes off and is sold, what might be underneath it?

  In my own childhood, the detachability of faces connected with the popular saying “Beauty is only skin-deep,” quoted by grown-ups as a palliative when some other little girl had a more attractive party dress. The implication was that a beautiful soul was more to be admired than a beautiful exterior, as in Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast wins love through a mix of engaging conversation, sentimentality, and a stunning palace. However, we young girls noted that this combo worked only for males: the tale was not called “The Unfortunately Plain Though Well-Meaning and Affluent Girl and the Beast.”

  Nor was the notion of superior inner beauty consoling to us princesses-in-waiting. So what if beauty was only skin-deep? We little girls did not therefore despise it. No: we wanted beautiful exteriors ourselves, so that other little girls might envy us instead of the other way around. In addition to which, it was obvious to us that in order to be transformed from a grubby kitchen slave to a gasp-making fascinator, you’d need a supernatural godmother and a killer dress. Magic and fashion had a part to play, and they were joined at the hip.

  Oh, and don’t forget the shoes. The shoes were very important.

  There were other female characters in such fairy tales—evil witches, false brides, malevolent sisters—and they were ugly every one; or at least—in the case of Snow White’s wicked stepmother—not as radiant as the heroine. Did we ever pause to consider their point of view—how diminished they must have felt in view of the heroine’s aggravating loveliness? A high rate of Barbie Doll disfiguring has taken place over the years, and attic trunks conceal many a hairless Barbie, tattooed with purple Magic Markers and minus her arms. Could it be that their one-time owners suspected themselves of not being up to the Cinderella standard and, in a ritual act of reverse sympathetic magic, were taking it out on their dolls? Could these angry girls have been restored to self-esteem by a weekend course in makeup, a session with a fashion consultant, and a really good manicure? Possibly. Though possibly not.

  * * *

  —

  The positive side of Beauty, we child readers learned, was that with its aid you could rise in life. When we grew a little older and got stuck into Greek mythology, however, it became clear that there was a negative side to Beauty, as well: if you were too beautiful, you would attract the unwelcome attention of the gods, a sadistic and undisciplined lot. If the god was male, he would chase you around, and then you’d be either kidnapped and dragged off to the Underworld, like Persephone, or raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, like Leda, and have to give birth to an egg; or, to avoid such a fate, you’d be changed into a tree or a river. This was not how we wanted to spend our Saturday-night dates.

  If the god was female, you might find your beautiful self held up as a prize in a beauty contest, like Helen of Troy, who was then doomed to fall in love with Paris, run off on her husband, and start the Trojan War. Or you might become an object of jealous rage, like Psyche, who annoyed Venus by being too attractive. This isn’t a problem that generates a lot of sympathy—it’s like being “too rich”—but it’s instructive to know that some have had it. Envy can generate results in the real world, spite and malice being among them.

  So how much Beauty was too much was a crucial question for growing girls in the 1950s, which was when I started pondering such matters. And, just as important to consider: What kind of beauty was best? For there was more than one variety on display. The beautiful women in the men’s magazines, such as Playboy, were different from the beautiful women in the women’s magazines, such as Vogue; nor has that changed, though the superficial details such as hairdos morph yearly.

  Why do the two diverge? Men’s magazines show images of women the way men would like them to be: large breasts and hips—signalling fertility—and inviting smiles, signalling compliance. As for makeup, it’s excessive, signalling either Come Hither or Face-for-Sale. These are not people you would want as a fiancée: they’re too generally available, either for money or as part of a willing sexual exchange. But, just like Vogue models, they’re constructs. “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap,” Dolly Parton once quipped, and she was right about that: the tarty look is as carefully lit for the photo shoot as its good-taste opposite.

  Women’s fashion magazines, by contrast, contain images of women the way they themselves wish to appear when outfacing rivals or discouraging unwanted suitors: slender figures decked out in elegant clothes and topped with blank expressions, hard-to-please pouts, artfully made-up faces, bored scowls, and even menacing frowns.

  Could it be that the aloofness of these images has to do with self-defence? The aim of Cinderella is to be desired, but she herself must not place herself at a disadvantage by being too desiring in return. To want something you don’t have is to be vulnerable, especially if that something is a love object: desire makes you too readily seducible, and readily seducible girls easily make fools of themselves, allowing others to jeer at them, or worse.

  Thus, no ingratiating smiles. The blank-faced woman has a forbidding wall around her: you can look, but you can’t touch. She doesn’t need you, she doesn’t care about you; she’s sufficient unto herself, like all those Cruel Mistresses of courtly love poetry. The extravagant clothes and high-end makeup jobs send the same signal: You can’t buy me except at my own price, which is apt to be very high, because I already have what I want.

  That’s the message for potential love partners. For other, competitive women, the message is: I am what you aspire to. Envy me. Oh, and if I let you inside my charmed circle, that will be a privilege for which you should be grateful.

  * * *

  —

  The ancient Egyptians painted their faces as protection against malign forces, and the objects used to cast this spell—the beauty materials—were themselves potent. For the Greeks, extraordinary beauty was at the very least semi-divine. Glamorous, charming, fascinating, entrancing, enchanting—all these words trace their origins to the supernatural. Skin-deep or not, curse or blessing, disdainful or seductive, reality or constructed illusion—beauty retains its magic power, at least in our imaginations.

  And that’s why we continue to buy those countless little tubes of lip gloss: we still believe in fairies.

  The Summer of the Stromatolites

  (2014)

  A summer! But which of the seventy-five summers I have spent? The summer of 1957, when I was a waitress at a boys’ camp on an island in Lake Huron and first ate a rattlesnake? The summer of 1965, when I was writing The Edible Woman in exam booklets on a card table in Vancouver? Perhaps the summer of 1976, when we took our three-month-old to a log cabin in the Quebec north woods, with no electricity or running water, and gave her baths in the dishpan?

  Or something more recent. Perhaps the summer of 2012, when we finally sailed east through the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic, with the Adventure Canada group. One of our first stops was at a recently discovered field of stromatolites—the fossilized mounds of blue-green algae that first created atmospheric oxygen 1.9 billion years ago. Stromatolite means “stone mattress,” and that’s what these fossils look like: rounded pillows of stone—though in cross-section they look more like layered pastries.

  Led by the on-boat geologist, making our way over the low-growing red, yellow, and orange foliage (for in those parts it was already autumn), protected by the bear-gun carriers who are always on hand in the Arctic in case of polar bears, and eyed by ravens, we shed our life jackets and clambered up the fossil ridges to explore the many stromatolites on view. Some had shattered into quarters, and it struck me that one of these heavy wedges would make a good murder weapon. It also struck me that if you snuck around the edge of the third ridge you’d be out of sight, not only of the gun carriers, but of everyone else.

  The dinner-table conversation that night turned to murder, as it tends to do on boats. How could you murder someone here, without getting caught? Graeme Gibson, my partner of forty years, had the perfect plan. The murder would have to be committed onshore, since a corpse on the boat would be conspicuous; and you couldn’t push your victim over the rail, considering the long hours of daylight and the hordes of bird-watchers cluttering up the place.

  The victim would have to be travelling alone, and killed early in the trip, before he’d got to know anyone very well. Then the murderer would have to make it appear that his cabin was still inhabited. Graeme had yet more practical tips, and I made a mental note never to get on his really bad side.

  “Stone Mattress” was such a suggestive phrase that I couldn’t resist writing a story of that title. I began it on the boat itself, and read the first parts to my fellow passengers. They all wanted to know how it would come out, so I promised to finish it, and then publish it.

  And I did finish it, and I did publish it: first in The New Yorker, and now in the collection called—not unsurprisingly—Stone Mattress.

  The murder weapon is on my kitchen table.

  Kafka

  THREE ENCOUNTERS

  (2014)

  In 1959, when I was nineteen, I wrote an essay about the work of Franz Kafka. It was eleven pages long, with thirty-two lines per page and an average of thirteen words per line, which, by multiplying thirty-two by thirteen by eleven, gives a count of approximately four thousand five hundred words. (That’s how we used to do word counts, back in the dark ages before our computers took over that task.) Every one of those words was typed by me using a manual typewriter, and, since I couldn’t touch-type—evidence of which is everywhere on the somewhat grubby pages, in the form of scratchings-out and inky corrections and over-typings—I must have been very dedicated to Kafka. Which, as I recall, I was. But why?

  I’m wondering that as I reread my essay now. As so often happens when folks attempt to tackle Kafka, or indeed any writer with more than one layer of possible meaning, my real subject was not the author of the books, but the author of the essay: me, a somewhat stern-minded and pedantic neophyte writer preoccupied with her own pressing artistic concerns. I start off on a bright note—“Franz Kafka was one of the foremost literary innovators of the twentieth century”—fair enough, though the century was little more than half over in 1959. The rest of that paragraph isn’t too bad, as such things go: “His name has been linked with those of Joyce and Rilke, and is often mentioned when the progenitors of such modern experimentalists as Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus are being discussed. One has only to read…” Goodness, how formal, that “one”! Should I have used “we”? Perhaps. But I did not.