ekleksographia wave two

Sitting in a café not 2 blocks away from where the book was written — at least partially, at least if we believe the author, I read (and reread, rereread — ri,ri,ri, laughing laughter spreads ((like the wind — rhi, in Arabic—?)) like something on my breakfast bread) Nabile Farès' Le Champ des Oliviers ("The Olive Grove"), book 1 of his La Découverte Du Nouveau Monde, "The Discovery of the New World" — which, do I have to add, is NOT about America, but about Algeria, its invention, or re-invention.

When I read I translate (we all do that, though mainly into "sense," our sense, taking it away from language) but I am afflicted: I (also) translate as I read into other languages, into English in this case as the original text is in French (well, at least on the surface: it is traversed by kabyle Berber and Arabic, or those are it's basement vaults, its subterranean blood circulation systems, waterways, canalizations, rhizomatic networks — like the ancient irrigation systems spreading the water welling up from a deep source in the desert into a network that becomes oasis lushness, which is how I see Maghrebian literature as the lushness of writing in the contemporary desert of French literature — as both necessary irrigation and irritation).

And this French text is exhilarating again this morning, translating immediately (well, no, I stop & search for the English words, but I'm not "really" translating yet, I am not writing it down, it is only a part of my "reading" of Farès' text) thus immediately haltingly or haltingly immediately into some sort of English that I may or may not ever write down as a translation. I order an other coffee ("an elongated coffee," un café allongé, i.e. the waiter will bring the little espresso / harsh, overroasted, certainly not the "pure Arabica" it would claim to be if I had the folly of asking after its origins / in a larger cup accompanied by a little silver pitcher of hot water with which I'll "elongate" the beverage) — an excuse, somewhere, somehow, subconsciously, to be able to lay the book down a minute, take off my glasses, eyes smart, rub them, look across the street, at the sky, still blue, but not a Mediterranean blue here in the pays d'oïl, relax the sight, but the translation machine keeps churning, I am thinking of the paragraph just read, it has the word bikini in it twice, & it should be easy to translate — but I'm not sure that it is in fact, there must be more going on here for Farès to insist on the word, putting it into caps the second time around: BIKINI. The coffee comes, I irrigate the stingy espresso with a flow of hot water, now no more need to add sugar, sip some, return to the book. Here are the sentences I've been thinking about:

    Siamois II remet ses frusques. Un bikini grandeur majuscules: BIKINI. Un tricot de peau assorti aux sourcils: brousailleux.

Which, fairly straightforwardly translates as:

    Siamese II puts his gear back on. A bikini of capital size: BIKINI. An undershirt matching the eyebrows: bushy, tousled.

But why, why would this weird & hilarious character (who of course has a double in the book, called Siamese I) wear a bikini. I cannot figure it out either in French or in English. What can he mean? Could it be a reference of some sort to the Bikini Islands? Nope. Just a sort of fun play on making the smallest piece of vestment women wear large, larger? A capital tiny bikini? There is nothing so far in the text that would make the "Siamese II" character a woman anyway. A transvestite? A cultural travesty of some order? All I can hear is the "bik" which could possibly go to ballpoint, in French "un bic," the writer's instrument.

Can't find it. Finish coffee, go home. Locate texts on Farès — my luck, the first one I come to cites an interview with Farès speaking about exactly these lines, this word. Farès explains to a bemused interviewer (who had also thought of the ballpoint pen!):

    Take for example what I write there in caps I AM A BIKINI There it is, written in large letters. Why do you laugh? It is one of the most important things in the book, this word BIKINI that makes you laugh!