Translating Memory and the Strange

Just in time for changing leaves, trick-or-treaters, and tales of horror, I sat down to reread a book that has stayed with me for a decade: Edith Grossman’s translation of Carmen Laforet’s Nada.  A strange gem of a novel, Nada explores the plight of Andrea, a college student grappling with her bizarre family in Franco-era Barcelona.  Portraying a diverse cast haunted by the memory and legacies of the Spanish Civil War, Nada manages to terrify without a single ghost or ghoul.

I’ve noticed that the most effective translations meld tones and narratives seamlessly, making no sudden movements that leave the reader bewildered.  Nada is no exception, carefully balancing Gothic and coming-of-age genres; Andrea must reconcile her memory of her well-to-do Barcelona family with the horror they’ve become.  In a plot device similar to my recent take on The Other Woman , we get a compelling glimpse of a female friendship with ulterior motives—a connection that, oddly enough, works to the narrator’s advantage.

When I first read Nada, I was about Andrea’s age and dealing with a rough transition to college life, so the alternately scary and amusing depiction of her relatives had a lasting impact.  Despite some difficulties on her trip to Barcelona, Andrea arrives in good spirits, excited to begin university—until she knocks on her family’s door and “it all seem[s] like a nightmare.”  This twisted family reunion includes her befuddled grandmother; her disapproving aunt, Angustias; her uncle Juan, whose face resembles a “skull” alongside his “disheveled” wife, Gloria; and her second uncle, Ramón, a charismatic violinist with a shady past.

Far from the opulent hospitality Andrea expected, this ragtag crew is so grotesque as to be humorous.  When Andrea asks to wash up after her trip, her aunt’s severity is ridiculous: “You’d dare to take a shower this late?”  She despairs, thinking that even the bathroom seemed like a “witches’ house” complete with a “macabre still life.”  Even worse, her family is quick to draw her into their ugly dysfunction.  Juan is unstable, frequently punching Gloria while she is holding their baby.  Ramón seems especially sinister, shifting between charm and underhanded opportunism; there’s some suggestion he’s a former spy who was tortured during the Civil War.  Angustias watches Andrea like a hawk, convinced she must chaperone her to protect the family’s reputation.

In spite of her miserable home, Andrea creates a content life for herself by forming a friendship with Ena, a fellow student with a magnetic personality.  She first approaches Andrea to meet her “famous violinist” uncle, Ramón, but she and Andrea rapidly become close.  Ultimately, Ena begins an affair with Ramón, but cuts it off abruptly.  As Andrea soon learns, Ena’s mother was once obsessed with Ramón, who accepted money from her wealthy father to abandon her; her daughter’s affair enacts revenge for this humiliating memory.  Juan’s wife, also tormented by a love triangle with Ramón, reports his black market dealings to the police.  Rather than face police torture and ruin, Ramón ends his life and a dark battle of the sexes simultaneously.

Though these cycles of hurt and retaliation seem momentous in scope, Andrea also indulges in fun and experimentation.  She regularly parties with a would-be Bohemian crowd, college students who pride themselves on “imitating” Picasso and whose prosperous circumstances are a far cry from her poverty.  Eager to carve out her own identity, she accepts when Ena’s father offers her a job in Barcelona: “…I’d go back to Madrid with him.  We’d travel in his car.”  A friendship begun for retribution creates an escape route.

Mario Vargas Llosa and other writers have observed how Carmen Laforet was a little-known breath of fresh air, a respite from pompous Franco-era literature. Nada presents the seamy underbelly of that rigid society: the loss of cultural and individual memory, fractious relationships, broken art. Andrea’s determination to survive is the triumph that makes this novel worth reading.

Carmen Laforet, Nada, trans. Edith Grossman (Modern Library, 2007)

Photo Credit: Image by Daria Nepriakhina from Pixabay.