Journal of Italian Translation

Blossom S. Kirschenbaum /Fernanda Pivano
world and we headed out toward the highway. Passing in front of
a westernized shoe shop we recognized or thought we recognized
from his strange attire one of the Bedouins seen the day before along
the street. He was squatting on the ground and in a pensive and
diffident way he kept turning between his hands a pair of women’s
shoes, the kind from the Third World, ten years out of date.
I thought:
“Everything’s turning to shit.” I said:
“Let’s hope he doesn’t buy them.”
“What’s that?” asked Lino, who was busy photographing the
Bedouin.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
When we arrived at the frontier I was still thinking about my
Bedouin and I forgot him only on account of the difficulties of crossing
back again, even more muddled than those of entering.
We arrived at the hotel in the late evening and found that
horrible guide waiting for us. He pretended that we had forgotten
which day it was, that he had waited for us since morning; he
made out that he expected to be paid. What a nuisance. But there
were no other guides available, and we came to an agreement with
him for the next day.
“We must go to the Castle,” he said peremptorily.
That evening we read in the Blue Guide about what the Castle
was and the next day there we were on the ancient Phoenician
beach. Young boys were in the water up to their knees. They had
already raked through the sand and now they were looking around
underwater for greenish Roman shards of glass that they sell to
tourists as Phoenician and that I complying with the rule bought
along with a lovely star in relief on a round coin fascinatingly oxidized.
I had in mind that Lino should make a ring out of it but Lino
never made it.
The visit to the Crusaders’ Castle I recall poorly. Lino, as always,
photographed everything without paying attention to me
and while I wandered through the corridors in the darkness between
high walls, dank and black, I was unexpectedly attacked by
the so-called guide, who leapt upon me from behind.
“Make love, make love,” he panted in English behind me while
I tried to decide whether to scream. Lino on the other side of the
thickness of the walls did not hear and when I managed to break
loose I began to run as in an anxiety nightmare, through those very
labyrinths about which so much is said these days at literary conferences,
closely pursued by the guide who was laughing like a
maniac out of the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. The more I ran the
worse I got lost, and I threw myself into a state of anguish fit to tell
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