My earliest memory is of a pot stand. It is set into a corner with a cupboard on one side and, on the other, a shallow step. This is where my head begins. The step leads to another room, and far on the other side of the room, there is a white-haired woman sitting in a chair.
Discussions with my mother lead to just one pot stand, in a seaside cottage the summer I was eighteen months old. It was, she says, made of black iron and it stood beside a real step and the white-haired woman must be her own mother who died when I was six. This image of her is all that I have, and even then it is not so much an image as a sense. She may have been asleep, but I think she was reading. And there was something very quiet and covert about the pot stand, which was a pyramid affair with shelves for four pots. I can remember a little saucepan on the top shelf. I am tempted to say that there was a big saucepan on the bottom one, but this is pushing things a bit. I would give anything to remember what the lino was like.
At nine months, the baby puts her head in a pot and says, Aaah Aaah Aaah. She says it very gently and listens to the echo. She has discovered this all by herself. By way of celebration, I put my own head into the pot and say, Aaah Aaah Aaah. Then she does it again. Then I do it again. And so on.
The rest of my family don’t believe that I remember the pot stand, on the grounds that it is a stupid memory and, anyway, I was far too young. It is the job of families to reject each other’s memories, even the pleasant ones, and being the youngest I am sometimes forced to fight for the contents of my own head. But my brother broke his elbow that summer. My mother had to take him to hospital in Dublin and my grandmother looked after us while she was away. This was the first time in my life that I was without my mother for any length of time. If she had stayed, then am certain that I would not have remembered anything at all of that house — not the pot stand, and not my grandmother either.
We pilfer our own memories, we steal them from the world and salt them away.
I first left the baby when she was four months old. Some of the days when I was away, she spent with my mother. I wonder what image might remain with her from that time: a colour, a smell, a combination of shapes perhaps, affectless and still — and in the distance, someone. Just that. Someone.
And in the foreground? The carpet perhaps. I hope she remembers my parents’ carpet, the one I remember as a child, with a pattern of green leaves like stepping-stones all the way down the hall.
I have another, possibly earlier, memory of pulling the wallpaper off the wall from between the bars of my cot. My mother is absent from this scene too, but though the Pot Stand Memory is neither happy nor unhappy, this one is quite thrilling. I almost certainly ate the paper. The plaster underneath it was pink and powdery, and I imagine now that I can remember the shivery taste of it. I also remember the shape of the tear on the wall, or I think I do. At any rate, I see it in my mind’s eye — a seam on the left, stunningly straight, with four gammy strips pulled away, like a fat raggedy set of fingers, on the right.
I know this memory is, in some sense, true, but when I try to chase it, it disappears. It exists in peripheral vision, and presents itself only when I focus on something else — like typing, for example. When I stop writing this sentence and look up from the screen to try to see the pattern of the wallpaper — a blank. Memories, by their nature, may not be examined, and the mind’s eye is not the eye we use, for example, to cross the road.
I wonder if this is the way that the baby sees things: vaguely and all at once. I imagine it to be a very emotional way to exist in the world. Perhaps I am being romantic — but the visual world yields nothing but delight to her. There are (it seems) no horrors, no frights. Tiny babies see only in monochrome. I imagine colour leaking into her head like a slowly adjusted screen — tremendously slow, like a vegetable television growing silently in the corner of the room. I imagine her focus becoming sharper and deeper, like some infinitely stoned cameraman adjusting his lens. ‘Oh,’ she says — or something that is the precursor to ‘Oh’, a shallow inhalation, a stillness as she is caught by something, and begins to stalk it: careful, rapt — the most beautiful sound in the world: the sound of a baby’s wondering breath.
Something pulls in me when she is caught like this. For months I am a slave to her attention. The world is all colour, light and texture and I am her proud companion. I have no choice. None of us do. In a café, three women look over to smile at her, and then, as one, they look up. ‘Oh, she likes the light,’ says one, and this fact pleases us all. Immensely.
The light, of course, is horrible, and this is one of the reasons mothers think they are losing their minds: this pride in the baby looking at the light, this pride in the light as they introduce it to the baby, ‘Yes, the light!’ There is a certain zen to it; the world simple and new as we all stop to admire the baby admiring a wrought-iron candelabra with peculiar dangly bits and five — yes, five! — glowing, tulip-shaped bulbs.
She is years away from knowing from what ‘five’ might be, but maybe she already gets the ‘fiveness’ of it. This is the way her eyes move: One, one more! Another one! All of them! The other two. The first one again, another one! Something else.
Sometimes she holds her hand up like the baby Christ, and looks as though she contains everything, and understands it all. I do not ask to be forgiven, but still I feel redemption in the completeness of her gaze. And I feel the redemption in her fat baby wrists and her infinitely fine, fat baby’s hand. The baby is a blessing, but sometimes she does, she must, also bless, which is to say that she simply sees, and lifts her hand, as a sign.
I pick the baby up and we look in the wardrobe mirror, which has always been for her a complicated delight: What is it? It’s a baby! She smiles, it smiles back! (Complication upon complication! It’s me! It’s me! she says, and all her synapses, as I imagine, going ping! ping! ping!) She sees me smiling at her in the mirror; she sees her mother turning to smile at her in the room, and oh, it’s too much, she lunges forwards to examine the knob on the wardrobe door.
There are actually two knobs on the wardrobe. One is wooden and the other, for some reason, is an amber-coloured plastic. The baby goes from one to the other and back again. One of the first confusions in her young life was when myself and Martin both looked at her at the same time: ‘Oh no, there’s two of them.’ It almost felt unfair.
As she grew older, there was nothing she liked more than to be held by one of us and to look at the other, in a somewhat haughty way. Older still, she is completely content when the two of us are with her, quietly in a room. She has travelled from one, to two, perhaps to many. I think of this as she goes from the wooden knob to the amber one — a fairy tale of sameness and difference. This one. That one.
Of course, the first difference between this and the other is not between mother and father, or even between baby and ‘baby in the mirror’, but between one breast and . . . the other! If women had five teats, then mankind might, by now, be living on the moon.
Yesterday, it was warm, and I took off her socks and stood her on the grass. She loved this, but maybe not so much as I did — her first experience of grass. For her, this green stuff was just as different and as delicious as everything else — the ‘first’ was all mine. Sometimes, I feel as though I am introducing her to my own nostalgia for the world.
In the meantime, grass is green and springy and amazingly multiple and just itself. It might even be edible. Everything goes into her mouth. This is the taste of yellow. This is the taste of blue. Since she started moving about she has also experienced the taste of turf, of yesterday’s toast, and probably of mouse droppings, because it was weeks before I realised we were not alone in the house. Paper remains her ultimate goal, and she looks over her shoulder now to check if I am around. That wallpaper looks nice.
I really do wish I could remember my own wallpaper, instead of just the tear I made in it. The baby sleeps in my cot now — the one my father made over forty years ago with some half-inch dowel, and a fairly ingenious sliding mechanism for the side to be let down. I sat beside it one night, feeding her, and I tried to remember what it was like to be inside; the view between the bars and the ripped wallpaper on the wall. Someone, over the years, had painted it nursery blue, but I remembered a green colour, I could almost recall chewing the cross bar at the top. The baby sucked, her eyelashes batting slowly over a drunken, surrendered gaze, and as my attention wandered I saw, under a chip in the blue paint, the very green I ate as a child. A strong and distant emotion washed briefly over me and was gone.
My mother, or someone, pulled the cot away from the wall and, in time, the wallpaper I do not remember was replaced with wallpaper that I do remember (flowers of blue, block-printed on white). Babies love pattern so much I have begun to regret my own attempts at tastefulness. Not a single curlicued carpet for her to crawl over, not a single flower on the wall. Even her toys are in primary colours and her mobile is from the Tate, cut-out shapes, like a Mondrian floating free.
Once I stop trying, I seem to remember my mother giving out to me about the ripped-up wall. She would have been upset about the wallpaper. Perhaps this is why I remember it. It was my first real experience of ‘NO!’
My own child thinks No! is a game. I say it once and she pauses. I say it twice and she looks at me. I say it three times and she laughs. The punch-line!
Tasteful as it is, she loves the mobile. It has a big red circle that spins slowly to blue, and a little square that goes from black to white. There are various rectangles that don’t particularly obsess her but, taken all in all, it is the thing she likes most in the world.
We moved when she was nearly eight months old, and it was another two weeks before I got round to stringing up the mobile for her again. When it was done, she shuddered with delight. It happened to her all in spasm. She realised, not only that the mobile was there, but also that it had once been gone. She remembered it. In order to do this she needed to see three things: the mobile in the old flat, the new room without the mobile, the new room with the mobile. Memory is not a single thing.
Martin says that his first memory, which is of one brother breaking a blue plastic jug over another brother’s head, is false. His mother tells him that they never did have a slender, pale blue plastic jug. He thinks he dreamt about the jug, and that the dream also contained the idea that this was his first memory, as he dreamt a subsequent ‘first memory’ of people waving to him from a plane while he stood in the garden below. He was convinced for years that this was real. This makes me think that we are very young when we search for our first memory — that single moment when we entered the stream of time.
My own mother, who is curator and container of many things, among them the memory of my pot stand, worries that she is getting forgetful. The distant past is closer all the time, she says. If this is true, then the memory of her own mother is getting stronger now; sitting in a house by the sea, surrounded by children who are variously delighted, or worried, or concentrating on other things.
When you think about it, the pots can’t have stayed there for long. I would have pulled them down. There would have been noise, though my memory of them is notably, and utterly, silent. Perhaps what I remember is the calm before a chaos of sound and recrimination. That delicious, slow moment, when a baby goes very, very quiet, knowing it is about to be found out.
The other morning, the baby (silently) reached the seedlings I have under the window, and she filled her mouth with a handful of hardy annuals and potting compost. I tried to prise her mouth open to get the stuff out. She clamped it shut. She bit me (by accident). She started to cry. When she cried, her mouth opened. She was undone by her own distress and this seemed so unfair to me that I left her to it. I hadn’t the heart. Besides, it said on the pack that the compost was sterilised.
But she will not let my finger into her mouth, now, even to check for a tooth (she is very proud of her teeth), and when she clamps it shut and turns away she is saying, ‘Me,’ loud and clear. ‘Oh,’ a friend said, when she started to crawl, ‘it’s the beginning of the end,’ and I knew what she meant. It is the beginning of the end of a romance between a woman who has forgotten who she is and a child who does not yet know.
Until one day there will come a moment, delightful or banal, ordinary or strange, that she will remember for the rest of her life.
Anne Enright, 'Time' in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 65-72.
A miña lembranza máis temperá é dun estante de potas. Está nunha esquina, cunha lacena nun lado, e no outro, un chanzo baixo. Aquí é onde comeza a miña mente. O chanzo leva a outra sala, e na outra punta da habitación, unha muller de cabelos brancos está sentada nunha cadeira.
As discusións que teño coa miña nai levan só a un estante de potas, nunha cabana xunto ao mar no verán no que eu tiña dezaoito meses. Estaba, polo que di ela, feito de ferro negro e atopábase de pé xunto a un chanzo, este como era debido, e a muller de cabelos brancos debe ser a súa propia nai a cal faleceu cando eu tiña seis anos. Esta imaxe dela é todo o que teño, e aínda así é máis unha noción que unha imaxe. Poida que estivese durmida, pero eu penso que estaba lendo. O estante tiña algo que o facía pasar desapercibido, era un chisme en forma de pirámide con andeis para poñer catro cazos. Lémbrome dun pequeno cazolo no andel máis alto. Diría que había unha pota grande no derradeiro, mais xa me estaría pasando un chisco. Daría o que fora por recordar como era o linóleo.
Con nove meses, o bebé mete a cabeza na pota e di, Aaah Aaah, Aaah. Dio cun ton avelaíño, e escoita o eco. Todo isto descubriuno ela soíña. Como celebración, poño eu tamén a cabeza na pota e digo, Aaah Aaah Aaah. Logo ela faino de novo. Logo eu fágoo de novo. E así.
O resto da miña familia non me cre cando digo que recordo o estante das potas, argumentando que é un recordo estúpido, e que, de todos xeitos, eu era demasiado cativa. É traballo da familia rexeitar as lembranzas dos outros, incluso aquelas que son agradables, e ao ser a máis nova ás veces véxome obrigada a loitar polos contidos da miña propia mente. Pero ese verán meu irmán crebou o cóbado. Miña nai tivo que levalo a un hospital en Dublín e miña avoa coidou de nós mentres que ela non estaba. Esta era a primeira vez na miña vida que non tiña a miña nai aínda que fose por pouco tempo. Se, polo contrario, se quedara, estou certa de que non recordaría nada daquela casa - nin o estante, nin tampouco a miña avoa.
Raspuñamos os nosos propios recordos, roubámolos do mundo e gardámonolos.
A primeira vez que me separei da meniña, ela tiña catro meses. Algúns dos días nos que eu estaba fóra, ela pasábaos coa miña nai. Pregúntome que imaxe daquela tempada podería ficar con ela: unha cor, un olor, unha combinación de formas, quizais, intranscendente e inmóbil – e na distancia, alguén. Só iso. Alguén.
E no chan? Poida que a alfombra. Espero que recorde a alfombra dos meus pais, a mesma que eu recordo de nena, cun padrón de follas verdes, como un camiño de pedras que chega ao fondo do corredor.
Teño outro recordo, poida que máis temperán, no que racho o papel pintado da parede polo medio das barras do meu berce. Miña nai está tamén ausente desta escena, e aínda que o Recordo do Estante das Potas non é nin feliz nin triste, este é bastante emocionante. Estou case certa de que comín o papel. O xeso que estaba debaixo era rosa e poeirento, e imaxino agora que podo recordar o seu sabor friento. Recordo tamén a forma dun rachón na parede, ou coido que o fago. En calquera caso, teño a imaxe na miña cabeza – á esquerda, unha liña dunha rectitude impresionante, e no lado dereito, catro tiras eivadas que arranquei, como se fosen un gordo e farrapento conxunto de dedos.
Sei que este recordo é, dalgunha maneira, verdadeiro, pero cando tento perseguilo, desaparece. Existe en visión periférica, e preséntase só cando me concentro noutra cousa – como teclear, por exemplo. Cando deixo de escribir esta frase e levanto a vista da pantalla para tentar ver o padrón do papel pintado – nada. As lembranzas, por natureza, non se poden revisar, e o ollo co que vemos os recordos non é o ollo que empregamos para, por exemplo, cruzar a estrada.
Pregúntome se é así como o bebé ve as cousas: vagamente e de golpe. Coido que é unha maneira moi emocional de existir no mundo. Quizais estou idealizando as cousas – mais o mundo visual non lle aporta máis que deleite. Non hai (ou iso parece) horrores, nin medos. Os meniños só ven en monocromático. Imaxino cor pingando na súa cabeza coma unha pantalla que se vai axustando lentamente –moi amodo, coma un vexetal en forma de televisión crecendo en silencio na esquina da habitación. Imaxino a súa concentración volvéndose máis aguda e fonda, como un cámara totalmente drogado axustando as lentes. “Oh” di ela – ou unha versión anterior a ‘Oh’, unha inhalación pouco fonda, unha quietude cando se prenda de algo, e comeza a acosalo: coidadosa, engaiolada– o máis fermoso son neste mundo: o alento abraiado dun bebé.
Algo se revolve dentro de min cando a acho desa maneira. Son escrava da súa atención durante meses. O mundo está cheo de cor, luz e textura e eu son a súa orgullosa compañeira. Non teño outra opción. Ninguén de nós a ten. Nunha cafetería, tres mulleres a miran para sorrirlle, e entón, a un tempo, levantan a mirada. “Oh, gústalle a luz”, di unha delas, e iso agrádanos a todas. Inmensamente.
A luz, por suposto, é horrible, e este é un dos motivos polos que as nais pensan que se están volvendo tolas: este orgullo cara o bebé que observa a luz, este orgullo cara a luz ao presentarlla ao bebé, “A luz, si!". Producíalle certa paz; o simple e novo mundo ao deternos para admirar ao bebé que está admirando un candelabro de ferro forxado cuns peculiares triscos colgando, e cinco – si, cinco! – relucentes brazos en forma de tulipán.
Fáltanlle cinco anos para saber que podería ser ‘cinco’, pero ao mellor xa entende a ‘cincocidade’ do asunto. Este é o recorrido que fan os seus ollos: Un, un máis! Outro máis! Todos eles! Os outros dous. O primeiro de novo, outro máis! Outra cousa distinta.
Ás veces levanta a súa man como o neno Xesús, e parece como se o contivera todo, e o entendera todo. Non pido que me perdoen, pero aínda así sinto redención na ‘completude’ da súa mirada. E sinto a redención nos seus pulsos gordos de bebé e na súa infinitamente fina man de bebé reboludo. A meniña é unha bendición, pero ás veces tamén bendí, ten que estalo facendo, ou sexa que simplemente ve, e levanta a man, a xeito de sinal.
Collo a nena no meu colo e mirámonos no espello do roupeiro, o cal sempre foi unha diversión complicada para ela: Que é iso? É un bebé! Ela sorrí, e aquilo respóndelle con outro sorriso! (Complicación tras complicación! Son eu! Son eu!, di ela, e imaxino a todas as súas sinapses facendo ping! ping! ping!). Ve como lle sorrío no espello; ve como súa nai se vira cara ela para sorrirlle na habitación, e oh!, é demasiado, bótase cara adiante para examinar o pomo da porta do roupeiro.
Hai, de feito, dous pomos no roupeiro. Un é de madeira e o outro, por algunha razón, é dun plástico de cor ámbar. O bebé vai dun a outro e volta de novo. Un dos primeiros desconcertos da súa curta vida ocorreu cando eu e Martín a miramos ao mesmo tempo: «Ai, non, son dous». Pareceunos mesmo inxusto.
Conforme ía medrando, non había nada que lle gustase máis que estar no colo dun de nós e poder ela así mirar ao outro, cun certo ar de altivez. Agora que é aínda máis vella, síntese absolutamente satisfeita cando estamos os dous con ela nunha habitación sen falar. Viaxou dun, a dous, poida que a moitos. Penso nisto cando vai do pomo de madeira ao ámbar – un conto de fadas de semellanza e diferencia. Este. Ese.
A primeira diferencia entre ese e o outro non está entre nai e pai, ou mesmo entre bebé e ‘bebé no espello’, senón que, por suposto, entre un peito e… o outro! Se as mulleres tivesen cinco peitos, a humanidade podería estar xa vivindo na lúa.
Onte foi un día cálido, e saqueille os calcetíns para logo poñela de pé na herba. A ela encantoulle, pero poida que non tanto coma a min – era a súa primeira experiencia ca herba. Para ela, esta cousa verde era igual de diferente e deliciosa que todo o demais – o de ‘primeiro’ era cousa miña. Ás veces, sinto que lle estou amosando a miña propia nostalxia polo mundo.
Mentres tanto, a herba é verde e vivaz e incriblemente múltiple e tan característica. Podería mesmo ser comestible. Todo acaba na súa boca. Este é o sabor do amarelo. Este é o sabor do azul. Desde que empezou a corricar tamén experimentou o sabor da leiba, da tostada do día anterior, e probablemente das feces dos ratos, porque tardei semanas en decatarme de que non estabamos sós na casa. O seu principal obxectivo segue a ser o papel pintado, e agora mira por encima do seu ombro para ver se ando por alí. Gústame a pinta que ten ese papel.
Desexaría recordar como era o que tiña eu na habitación, e non só rachón que lle fixen. O bebé durme agora no meu berce –naquel que fixo meu pai, hai máis de corenta anos, cunha chaveta calquera de media polgada, e un mecanismo bastante enxeñoso para escorregar o lateral abatible. Senteime ao seu lado unha noite, mentres lle daba de comer á nena, e tentei recordar como era estar dentro del; as vistas polo medio das barras e o papel rachado da parede. Alguén, ao longo dos anos, pintárao de cor azul bebé, mais lembrábame dunha cor verde, podía case recordar como mordía a barra horizontal de riba do berce. O bebé chuchaba, as súas pestanas batían lentamente sobre a súa mirada ebria e rendida, e vin, cando a miña atención vagou, baixo un pequeno rachón na pintura azul, o mesmo verde que comera de nena. Apropiouse de min unha emoción forte e distante que se esfumou no intre.
Miña nai, ou algunha outra persoa, apartou o berce da parede e nalgún momento o papel pintado que non recordo foi substituído por un papel do que si me lembro (flores azuis gravadas sobre un fondo branco). Aos bebés gústanlle tanto os padróns que empecei a arrepentirme por tentar decorar con bo gusto. Nin unha soa alfombra con floreos pola que gatear, nin unha soa flor na parede. Mesmo os seus xoguetes son de cores primarias, e ata o móbil do seu berce veu do museo Tate, con figuras recortadas, como se dunha árbore flotante de Mondrian se tratase.
Cando deixo de intentalo, creo recordar a miña nai berrándome por mor da parede rachada. Estaría molesta polo papel. Poida que por iso o recorde. Foi a miña primeira experiencia real co ‘NON!’
A miña propia filla pensa que Non! é un xogo. Dígollo unha vez e detense. Dígollo dúas veces e mírame. Dígollo tres veces e rise. Aí estaba o chiste!
Aínda que era de bo gusto, a ela encántalle o móbil. Ten un gran círculo vermello que se torna lentamente azul, e un cadrado pequeno que vai de negro a branco. Hai varios rectángulos que non lle obsesionan especialmente mais, con todo, é a cousa que máis lle gusta neste mundo.
Mudámonos cando estaba a punto de cumprir oito meses, e demoreime dúas semanas máis en colgarlle o móbil de novo. Cando rematei, ela tremeu de ledicia. Para ela, todo iso aconteceu nun espasmo. Decatouse, non só de que o móbil estaba alí, senón tamén de que antes non o estaba. Lembrábase del. Para facer iso, ela necesitaba ver tres cousas: o móbil no piso vello, a nova habitación sen o móbil, e a nova habitación co móbil. A memoria non é unha cousa illada.
Martín di que o seu primeiro recordo, un dos seus irmáns rompendo unha xerra azul de plástico na cabeza doutro, é falso. Súa nai dille que xamais tiveron un xerra estreita, e de plástico azul pálido. El acha que soñou sobre a xerra, e que o soño contiña tamén a idea de que este era o seu primeiro recordo, pois tivo un soño subseguinte sobre un ‘primeiro recordo’ de xente que o saudaba desde un avión mentres que el estaba no xardín de abaixo. Durante anos estivo convencido de que era real. Isto faime crer que somos moi novos cando procuramos o noso primeiro recordo –ese momento único no que entramos na corrente do tempo.
Á miña nai, que garda e preserva unha gran cantidade de cousas, entre elas o recordo do meu estante de potas, preocúpalle estarse volvendo esquecediza. O pasado distante está cada vez máis próximo, di ela. Se isto é certo, entón o recordo da súa propia nai estase volvendo máis forte: sentada nunha casa xunto ao mar, rodeada de rapaces que estaban ou ledos, ou preocupados, ou atentos a outros asuntos.
Se o pensas ben, as potas non puideron ficar alí moito tempo. Eu xa as tería arrebolado. Tería que haber ruído, aínda que os meus recordos diso son, notable e completamente, nulos. Poida que do que me lembro sexa a calma antes do caos de son e discriminación. Ese delicioso e vagaroso momento no que enmudece un bebé porque sabe que están a piques de ocuparse del.
Unha mañá, o bebé (silenciosamente) alcanzou as plántulas que teño debaixo da ventá, e encheu a boca cunha presa de plantas e abono. Tentei abrirlle a boca e sacarlle o que introducira. Mais pechouna cunha dentada. Mordeume (por accidente). Empezou a chorar. Ao chorar, abriu a boca. Provocouse tal angustia que quedou desfeita, e iso pareceume tan inxusto que a deixei estar. Partíaseme a alma. Ademais, no dorsal do paquete indicábase que o abono estaba esterilizado.
Pero agora non deixa que lle meta o dedo na boca, mesmo para revisar se lle saíu un dente (está moi orgullosa dos seus dentes), e cando sela os beizos, vírase, dicindo “eu”, en voz alta e clara. “Oh”, díxome unha amiga, cando empezou a gatear, “éche o principio do fin,” e eu sabía a que se refería. É o principio do fin dun romance entre unha muller que esqueceu quen era e unha meniña que aínda non o descubriu.
Ata que un día chegará un momento, sexa precioso ou banal, común ou raro, do que se lembrará para o resto da súa vida.
My earliest memory is of a pot stand. It is set into a corner with a cupboard on one side and, on the other, a shallow step. This is where my head begins. The step leads to another room, and far on the other side of the room, there is a white-haired woman sitting in a chair.
Discussions with my mother lead to just one pot stand, in a seaside cottage the summer I was eighteen months old. It was, she says, made of black iron and it stood beside a real step and the white-haired woman must be her own mother who died when I was six. This image of her is all that I have, and even then it is not so much an image as a sense. She may have been asleep, but I think she was reading. And there was something very quiet and covert about the pot stand, which was a pyramid affair with shelves for four pots. I can remember a little saucepan on the top shelf. I am tempted to say that there was a big saucepan on the bottom one, but this is pushing things a bit. I would give anything to remember what the lino was like.
At nine months, the baby puts her head in a pot and says, Aaah Aaah Aaah. She says it very gently and listens to the echo. She has discovered this all by herself. By way of celebration, I put my own head into the pot and say, Aaah Aaah Aaah. Then she does it again. Then I do it again. And so on.
The rest of my family don’t believe that I remember the pot stand, on the grounds that it is a stupid memory and, anyway, I was far too young. It is the job of families to reject each other’s memories, even the pleasant ones, and being the youngest I am sometimes forced to fight for the contents of my own head. But my brother broke his elbow that summer. My mother had to take him to hospital in Dublin and my grandmother looked after us while she was away. This was the first time in my life that I was without my mother for any length of time. If she had stayed, then am certain that I would not have remembered anything at all of that house — not the pot stand, and not my grandmother either.
We pilfer our own memories, we steal them from the world and salt them away.
I first left the baby when she was four months old. Some of the days when I was away, she spent with my mother. I wonder what image might remain with her from that time: a colour, a smell, a combination of shapes perhaps, affectless and still — and in the distance, someone. Just that. Someone.
And in the foreground? The carpet perhaps. I hope she remembers my parents’ carpet, the one I remember as a child, with a pattern of green leaves like stepping-stones all the way down the hall.
I have another, possibly earlier, memory of pulling the wallpaper off the wall from between the bars of my cot. My mother is absent from this scene too, but though the Pot Stand Memory is neither happy nor unhappy, this one is quite thrilling. I almost certainly ate the paper. The plaster underneath it was pink and powdery, and I imagine now that I can remember the shivery taste of it. I also remember the shape of the tear on the wall, or I think I do. At any rate, I see it in my mind’s eye — a seam on the left, stunningly straight, with four gammy strips pulled away, like a fat raggedy set of fingers, on the right.
I know this memory is, in some sense, true, but when I try to chase it, it disappears. It exists in peripheral vision, and presents itself only when I focus on something else — like typing, for example. When I stop writing this sentence and look up from the screen to try to see the pattern of the wallpaper — a blank. Memories, by their nature, may not be examined, and the mind’s eye is not the eye we use, for example, to cross the road.
I wonder if this is the way that the baby sees things: vaguely and all at once. I imagine it to be a very emotional way to exist in the world. Perhaps I am being romantic — but the visual world yields nothing but delight to her. There are (it seems) no horrors, no frights. Tiny babies see only in monochrome. I imagine colour leaking into her head like a slowly adjusted screen — tremendously slow, like a vegetable television growing silently in the corner of the room. I imagine her focus becoming sharper and deeper, like some infinitely stoned cameraman adjusting his lens. ‘Oh,’ she says — or something that is the precursor to ‘Oh’, a shallow inhalation, a stillness as she is caught by something, and begins to stalk it: careful, rapt — the most beautiful sound in the world: the sound of a baby’s wondering breath.
Something pulls in me when she is caught like this. For months I am a slave to her attention. The world is all colour, light and texture and I am her proud companion. I have no choice. None of us do. In a café, three women look over to smile at her, and then, as one, they look up. ‘Oh, she likes the light,’ says one, and this fact pleases us all. Immensely.
The light, of course, is horrible, and this is one of the reasons mothers think they are losing their minds: this pride in the baby looking at the light, this pride in the light as they introduce it to the baby, ‘Yes, the light!’ There is a certain zen to it; the world simple and new as we all stop to admire the baby admiring a wrought-iron candelabra with peculiar dangly bits and five — yes, five! — glowing, tulip-shaped bulbs.
She is years away from knowing from what ‘five’ might be, but maybe she already gets the ‘fiveness’ of it. This is the way her eyes move: One, one more! Another one! All of them! The other two. The first one again, another one! Something else.
Sometimes she holds her hand up like the baby Christ, and looks as though she contains everything, and understands it all. I do not ask to be forgiven, but still I feel redemption in the completeness of her gaze. And I feel the redemption in her fat baby wrists and her infinitely fine, fat baby’s hand. The baby is a blessing, but sometimes she does, she must, also bless, which is to say that she simply sees, and lifts her hand, as a sign.
I pick the baby up and we look in the wardrobe mirror, which has always been for her a complicated delight: What is it? It’s a baby! She smiles, it smiles back! (Complication upon complication! It’s me! It’s me! she says, and all her synapses, as I imagine, going ping! ping! ping!) She sees me smiling at her in the mirror; she sees her mother turning to smile at her in the room, and oh, it’s too much, she lunges forwards to examine the knob on the wardrobe door.
There are actually two knobs on the wardrobe. One is wooden and the other, for some reason, is an amber-coloured plastic. The baby goes from one to the other and back again. One of the first confusions in her young life was when myself and Martin both looked at her at the same time: ‘Oh no, there’s two of them.’ It almost felt unfair.
As she grew older, there was nothing she liked more than to be held by one of us and to look at the other, in a somewhat haughty way. Older still, she is completely content when the two of us are with her, quietly in a room. She has travelled from one, to two, perhaps to many. I think of this as she goes from the wooden knob to the amber one — a fairy tale of sameness and difference. This one. That one.
Of course, the first difference between this and the other is not between mother and father, or even between baby and ‘baby in the mirror’, but between one breast and . . . the other! If women had five teats, then mankind might, by now, be living on the moon.
Yesterday, it was warm, and I took off her socks and stood her on the grass. She loved this, but maybe not so much as I did — her first experience of grass. For her, this green stuff was just as different and as delicious as everything else — the ‘first’ was all mine. Sometimes, I feel as though I am introducing her to my own nostalgia for the world.
In the meantime, grass is green and springy and amazingly multiple and just itself. It might even be edible. Everything goes into her mouth. This is the taste of yellow. This is the taste of blue. Since she started moving about she has also experienced the taste of turf, of yesterday’s toast, and probably of mouse droppings, because it was weeks before I realised we were not alone in the house. Paper remains her ultimate goal, and she looks over her shoulder now to check if I am around. That wallpaper looks nice.
I really do wish I could remember my own wallpaper, instead of just the tear I made in it. The baby sleeps in my cot now — the one my father made over forty years ago with some half-inch dowel, and a fairly ingenious sliding mechanism for the side to be let down. I sat beside it one night, feeding her, and I tried to remember what it was like to be inside; the view between the bars and the ripped wallpaper on the wall. Someone, over the years, had painted it nursery blue, but I remembered a green colour, I could almost recall chewing the cross bar at the top. The baby sucked, her eyelashes batting slowly over a drunken, surrendered gaze, and as my attention wandered I saw, under a chip in the blue paint, the very green I ate as a child. A strong and distant emotion washed briefly over me and was gone.
My mother, or someone, pulled the cot away from the wall and, in time, the wallpaper I do not remember was replaced with wallpaper that I do remember (flowers of blue, block-printed on white). Babies love pattern so much I have begun to regret my own attempts at tastefulness. Not a single curlicued carpet for her to crawl over, not a single flower on the wall. Even her toys are in primary colours and her mobile is from the Tate, cut-out shapes, like a Mondrian floating free.
Once I stop trying, I seem to remember my mother giving out to me about the ripped-up wall. She would have been upset about the wallpaper. Perhaps this is why I remember it. It was my first real experience of ‘NO!’
My own child thinks No! is a game. I say it once and she pauses. I say it twice and she looks at me. I say it three times and she laughs. The punch-line!
Tasteful as it is, she loves the mobile. It has a big red circle that spins slowly to blue, and a little square that goes from black to white. There are various rectangles that don’t particularly obsess her but, taken all in all, it is the thing she likes most in the world.
We moved when she was nearly eight months old, and it was another two weeks before I got round to stringing up the mobile for her again. When it was done, she shuddered with delight. It happened to her all in spasm. She realised, not only that the mobile was there, but also that it had once been gone. She remembered it. In order to do this she needed to see three things: the mobile in the old flat, the new room without the mobile, the new room with the mobile. Memory is not a single thing.
Martin says that his first memory, which is of one brother breaking a blue plastic jug over another brother’s head, is false. His mother tells him that they never did have a slender, pale blue plastic jug. He thinks he dreamt about the jug, and that the dream also contained the idea that this was his first memory, as he dreamt a subsequent ‘first memory’ of people waving to him from a plane while he stood in the garden below. He was convinced for years that this was real. This makes me think that we are very young when we search for our first memory — that single moment when we entered the stream of time.
My own mother, who is curator and container of many things, among them the memory of my pot stand, worries that she is getting forgetful. The distant past is closer all the time, she says. If this is true, then the memory of her own mother is getting stronger now; sitting in a house by the sea, surrounded by children who are variously delighted, or worried, or concentrating on other things.
When you think about it, the pots can’t have stayed there for long. I would have pulled them down. There would have been noise, though my memory of them is notably, and utterly, silent. Perhaps what I remember is the calm before a chaos of sound and recrimination. That delicious, slow moment, when a baby goes very, very quiet, knowing it is about to be found out.
The other morning, the baby (silently) reached the seedlings I have under the window, and she filled her mouth with a handful of hardy annuals and potting compost. I tried to prise her mouth open to get the stuff out. She clamped it shut. She bit me (by accident). She started to cry. When she cried, her mouth opened. She was undone by her own distress and this seemed so unfair to me that I left her to it. I hadn’t the heart. Besides, it said on the pack that the compost was sterilised.
But she will not let my finger into her mouth, now, even to check for a tooth (she is very proud of her teeth), and when she clamps it shut and turns away she is saying, ‘Me,’ loud and clear. ‘Oh,’ a friend said, when she started to crawl, ‘it’s the beginning of the end,’ and I knew what she meant. It is the beginning of the end of a romance between a woman who has forgotten who she is and a child who does not yet know.
Until one day there will come a moment, delightful or banal, ordinary or strange, that she will remember for the rest of her life.
Anne Enright, 'Time' in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 65-72.
A miña lembranza máis temperá é dun estante de potas. Está nunha esquina, cunha lacena nun lado, e no outro, un chanzo baixo. Aquí é onde comeza a miña mente. O chanzo leva a outra sala, e na outra punta da habitación, unha muller de cabelos brancos está sentada nunha cadeira.
As discusións que teño coa miña nai levan só a un estante de potas, nunha cabana xunto ao mar no verán no que eu tiña dezaoito meses. Estaba, polo que di ela, feito de ferro negro e atopábase de pé xunto a un chanzo, este como era debido, e a muller de cabelos brancos debe ser a súa propia nai a cal faleceu cando eu tiña seis anos. Esta imaxe dela é todo o que teño, e aínda así é máis unha noción que unha imaxe. Poida que estivese durmida, pero eu penso que estaba lendo. O estante tiña algo que o facía pasar desapercibido, era un chisme en forma de pirámide con andeis para poñer catro cazos. Lémbrome dun pequeno cazolo no andel máis alto. Diría que había unha pota grande no derradeiro, mais xa me estaría pasando un chisco. Daría o que fora por recordar como era o linóleo.
Con nove meses, o bebé mete a cabeza na pota e di, Aaah Aaah, Aaah. Dio cun ton avelaíño, e escoita o eco. Todo isto descubriuno ela soíña. Como celebración, poño eu tamén a cabeza na pota e digo, Aaah Aaah Aaah. Logo ela faino de novo. Logo eu fágoo de novo. E así.
O resto da miña familia non me cre cando digo que recordo o estante das potas, argumentando que é un recordo estúpido, e que, de todos xeitos, eu era demasiado cativa. É traballo da familia rexeitar as lembranzas dos outros, incluso aquelas que son agradables, e ao ser a máis nova ás veces véxome obrigada a loitar polos contidos da miña propia mente. Pero ese verán meu irmán crebou o cóbado. Miña nai tivo que levalo a un hospital en Dublín e miña avoa coidou de nós mentres que ela non estaba. Esta era a primeira vez na miña vida que non tiña a miña nai aínda que fose por pouco tempo. Se, polo contrario, se quedara, estou certa de que non recordaría nada daquela casa - nin o estante, nin tampouco a miña avoa.
Raspuñamos os nosos propios recordos, roubámolos do mundo e gardámonolos.
A primeira vez que me separei da meniña, ela tiña catro meses. Algúns dos días nos que eu estaba fóra, ela pasábaos coa miña nai. Pregúntome que imaxe daquela tempada podería ficar con ela: unha cor, un olor, unha combinación de formas, quizais, intranscendente e inmóbil – e na distancia, alguén. Só iso. Alguén.
E no chan? Poida que a alfombra. Espero que recorde a alfombra dos meus pais, a mesma que eu recordo de nena, cun padrón de follas verdes, como un camiño de pedras que chega ao fondo do corredor.
Teño outro recordo, poida que máis temperán, no que racho o papel pintado da parede polo medio das barras do meu berce. Miña nai está tamén ausente desta escena, e aínda que o Recordo do Estante das Potas non é nin feliz nin triste, este é bastante emocionante. Estou case certa de que comín o papel. O xeso que estaba debaixo era rosa e poeirento, e imaxino agora que podo recordar o seu sabor friento. Recordo tamén a forma dun rachón na parede, ou coido que o fago. En calquera caso, teño a imaxe na miña cabeza – á esquerda, unha liña dunha rectitude impresionante, e no lado dereito, catro tiras eivadas que arranquei, como se fosen un gordo e farrapento conxunto de dedos.
Sei que este recordo é, dalgunha maneira, verdadeiro, pero cando tento perseguilo, desaparece. Existe en visión periférica, e preséntase só cando me concentro noutra cousa – como teclear, por exemplo. Cando deixo de escribir esta frase e levanto a vista da pantalla para tentar ver o padrón do papel pintado – nada. As lembranzas, por natureza, non se poden revisar, e o ollo co que vemos os recordos non é o ollo que empregamos para, por exemplo, cruzar a estrada.
Pregúntome se é así como o bebé ve as cousas: vagamente e de golpe. Coido que é unha maneira moi emocional de existir no mundo. Quizais estou idealizando as cousas – mais o mundo visual non lle aporta máis que deleite. Non hai (ou iso parece) horrores, nin medos. Os meniños só ven en monocromático. Imaxino cor pingando na súa cabeza coma unha pantalla que se vai axustando lentamente –moi amodo, coma un vexetal en forma de televisión crecendo en silencio na esquina da habitación. Imaxino a súa concentración volvéndose máis aguda e fonda, como un cámara totalmente drogado axustando as lentes. “Oh” di ela – ou unha versión anterior a ‘Oh’, unha inhalación pouco fonda, unha quietude cando se prenda de algo, e comeza a acosalo: coidadosa, engaiolada– o máis fermoso son neste mundo: o alento abraiado dun bebé.
Algo se revolve dentro de min cando a acho desa maneira. Son escrava da súa atención durante meses. O mundo está cheo de cor, luz e textura e eu son a súa orgullosa compañeira. Non teño outra opción. Ninguén de nós a ten. Nunha cafetería, tres mulleres a miran para sorrirlle, e entón, a un tempo, levantan a mirada. “Oh, gústalle a luz”, di unha delas, e iso agrádanos a todas. Inmensamente.
A luz, por suposto, é horrible, e este é un dos motivos polos que as nais pensan que se están volvendo tolas: este orgullo cara o bebé que observa a luz, este orgullo cara a luz ao presentarlla ao bebé, “A luz, si!". Producíalle certa paz; o simple e novo mundo ao deternos para admirar ao bebé que está admirando un candelabro de ferro forxado cuns peculiares triscos colgando, e cinco – si, cinco! – relucentes brazos en forma de tulipán.
Fáltanlle cinco anos para saber que podería ser ‘cinco’, pero ao mellor xa entende a ‘cincocidade’ do asunto. Este é o recorrido que fan os seus ollos: Un, un máis! Outro máis! Todos eles! Os outros dous. O primeiro de novo, outro máis! Outra cousa distinta.
Ás veces levanta a súa man como o neno Xesús, e parece como se o contivera todo, e o entendera todo. Non pido que me perdoen, pero aínda así sinto redención na ‘completude’ da súa mirada. E sinto a redención nos seus pulsos gordos de bebé e na súa infinitamente fina man de bebé reboludo. A meniña é unha bendición, pero ás veces tamén bendí, ten que estalo facendo, ou sexa que simplemente ve, e levanta a man, a xeito de sinal.
Collo a nena no meu colo e mirámonos no espello do roupeiro, o cal sempre foi unha diversión complicada para ela: Que é iso? É un bebé! Ela sorrí, e aquilo respóndelle con outro sorriso! (Complicación tras complicación! Son eu! Son eu!, di ela, e imaxino a todas as súas sinapses facendo ping! ping! ping!). Ve como lle sorrío no espello; ve como súa nai se vira cara ela para sorrirlle na habitación, e oh!, é demasiado, bótase cara adiante para examinar o pomo da porta do roupeiro.
Hai, de feito, dous pomos no roupeiro. Un é de madeira e o outro, por algunha razón, é dun plástico de cor ámbar. O bebé vai dun a outro e volta de novo. Un dos primeiros desconcertos da súa curta vida ocorreu cando eu e Martín a miramos ao mesmo tempo: «Ai, non, son dous». Pareceunos mesmo inxusto.
Conforme ía medrando, non había nada que lle gustase máis que estar no colo dun de nós e poder ela así mirar ao outro, cun certo ar de altivez. Agora que é aínda máis vella, síntese absolutamente satisfeita cando estamos os dous con ela nunha habitación sen falar. Viaxou dun, a dous, poida que a moitos. Penso nisto cando vai do pomo de madeira ao ámbar – un conto de fadas de semellanza e diferencia. Este. Ese.
A primeira diferencia entre ese e o outro non está entre nai e pai, ou mesmo entre bebé e ‘bebé no espello’, senón que, por suposto, entre un peito e… o outro! Se as mulleres tivesen cinco peitos, a humanidade podería estar xa vivindo na lúa.
Onte foi un día cálido, e saqueille os calcetíns para logo poñela de pé na herba. A ela encantoulle, pero poida que non tanto coma a min – era a súa primeira experiencia ca herba. Para ela, esta cousa verde era igual de diferente e deliciosa que todo o demais – o de ‘primeiro’ era cousa miña. Ás veces, sinto que lle estou amosando a miña propia nostalxia polo mundo.
Mentres tanto, a herba é verde e vivaz e incriblemente múltiple e tan característica. Podería mesmo ser comestible. Todo acaba na súa boca. Este é o sabor do amarelo. Este é o sabor do azul. Desde que empezou a corricar tamén experimentou o sabor da leiba, da tostada do día anterior, e probablemente das feces dos ratos, porque tardei semanas en decatarme de que non estabamos sós na casa. O seu principal obxectivo segue a ser o papel pintado, e agora mira por encima do seu ombro para ver se ando por alí. Gústame a pinta que ten ese papel.
Desexaría recordar como era o que tiña eu na habitación, e non só rachón que lle fixen. O bebé durme agora no meu berce –naquel que fixo meu pai, hai máis de corenta anos, cunha chaveta calquera de media polgada, e un mecanismo bastante enxeñoso para escorregar o lateral abatible. Senteime ao seu lado unha noite, mentres lle daba de comer á nena, e tentei recordar como era estar dentro del; as vistas polo medio das barras e o papel rachado da parede. Alguén, ao longo dos anos, pintárao de cor azul bebé, mais lembrábame dunha cor verde, podía case recordar como mordía a barra horizontal de riba do berce. O bebé chuchaba, as súas pestanas batían lentamente sobre a súa mirada ebria e rendida, e vin, cando a miña atención vagou, baixo un pequeno rachón na pintura azul, o mesmo verde que comera de nena. Apropiouse de min unha emoción forte e distante que se esfumou no intre.
Miña nai, ou algunha outra persoa, apartou o berce da parede e nalgún momento o papel pintado que non recordo foi substituído por un papel do que si me lembro (flores azuis gravadas sobre un fondo branco). Aos bebés gústanlle tanto os padróns que empecei a arrepentirme por tentar decorar con bo gusto. Nin unha soa alfombra con floreos pola que gatear, nin unha soa flor na parede. Mesmo os seus xoguetes son de cores primarias, e ata o móbil do seu berce veu do museo Tate, con figuras recortadas, como se dunha árbore flotante de Mondrian se tratase.
Cando deixo de intentalo, creo recordar a miña nai berrándome por mor da parede rachada. Estaría molesta polo papel. Poida que por iso o recorde. Foi a miña primeira experiencia real co ‘NON!’
A miña propia filla pensa que Non! é un xogo. Dígollo unha vez e detense. Dígollo dúas veces e mírame. Dígollo tres veces e rise. Aí estaba o chiste!
Aínda que era de bo gusto, a ela encántalle o móbil. Ten un gran círculo vermello que se torna lentamente azul, e un cadrado pequeno que vai de negro a branco. Hai varios rectángulos que non lle obsesionan especialmente mais, con todo, é a cousa que máis lle gusta neste mundo.
Mudámonos cando estaba a punto de cumprir oito meses, e demoreime dúas semanas máis en colgarlle o móbil de novo. Cando rematei, ela tremeu de ledicia. Para ela, todo iso aconteceu nun espasmo. Decatouse, non só de que o móbil estaba alí, senón tamén de que antes non o estaba. Lembrábase del. Para facer iso, ela necesitaba ver tres cousas: o móbil no piso vello, a nova habitación sen o móbil, e a nova habitación co móbil. A memoria non é unha cousa illada.
Martín di que o seu primeiro recordo, un dos seus irmáns rompendo unha xerra azul de plástico na cabeza doutro, é falso. Súa nai dille que xamais tiveron un xerra estreita, e de plástico azul pálido. El acha que soñou sobre a xerra, e que o soño contiña tamén a idea de que este era o seu primeiro recordo, pois tivo un soño subseguinte sobre un ‘primeiro recordo’ de xente que o saudaba desde un avión mentres que el estaba no xardín de abaixo. Durante anos estivo convencido de que era real. Isto faime crer que somos moi novos cando procuramos o noso primeiro recordo –ese momento único no que entramos na corrente do tempo.
Á miña nai, que garda e preserva unha gran cantidade de cousas, entre elas o recordo do meu estante de potas, preocúpalle estarse volvendo esquecediza. O pasado distante está cada vez máis próximo, di ela. Se isto é certo, entón o recordo da súa propia nai estase volvendo máis forte: sentada nunha casa xunto ao mar, rodeada de rapaces que estaban ou ledos, ou preocupados, ou atentos a outros asuntos.
Se o pensas ben, as potas non puideron ficar alí moito tempo. Eu xa as tería arrebolado. Tería que haber ruído, aínda que os meus recordos diso son, notable e completamente, nulos. Poida que do que me lembro sexa a calma antes do caos de son e discriminación. Ese delicioso e vagaroso momento no que enmudece un bebé porque sabe que están a piques de ocuparse del.
Unha mañá, o bebé (silenciosamente) alcanzou as plántulas que teño debaixo da ventá, e encheu a boca cunha presa de plantas e abono. Tentei abrirlle a boca e sacarlle o que introducira. Mais pechouna cunha dentada. Mordeume (por accidente). Empezou a chorar. Ao chorar, abriu a boca. Provocouse tal angustia que quedou desfeita, e iso pareceume tan inxusto que a deixei estar. Partíaseme a alma. Ademais, no dorsal do paquete indicábase que o abono estaba esterilizado.
Pero agora non deixa que lle meta o dedo na boca, mesmo para revisar se lle saíu un dente (está moi orgullosa dos seus dentes), e cando sela os beizos, vírase, dicindo “eu”, en voz alta e clara. “Oh”, díxome unha amiga, cando empezou a gatear, “éche o principio do fin,” e eu sabía a que se refería. É o principio do fin dun romance entre unha muller que esqueceu quen era e unha meniña que aínda non o descubriu.
Ata que un día chegará un momento, sexa precioso ou banal, común ou raro, do que se lembrará para o resto da súa vida.
Translation commentary
María Olalla Santos Barral
Anne Enright’s Time is a story about the past and the present, it is a non-linear recounting of her first memories of childhood as well as the first experiences of her young daughter. The narrative structure requires us to be very careful about verbal tenses to prevent a mistranslation that could change or hinder the reading of the text. During the process, some translation techniques were required to adapt the original text into the Galician language, as a means to make it more fluent for a Galician speaker, without distorting the meaning of the story.
It was not always possible to make literal translations that would be coherent or sound natural in Galician, which is why there are syntactical and lexical modifications in some of the passages of the text. For instance, in the sentence “There was something very quiet and covert about the pot stand”, a literal translation, while doable, would sound alien in Galician; the result, “O estante tiña algo que o facia pasar desapercibido” (“There was something about the pot stand that made it go unnoticed”), inevitably suffered a minor semantical change. There are a few instances in which using a calque is possible, as with “cincocidade”, which is a literal translation of “fiveness”.
In other cases, it was important to make some additions for the sake of intelligibility; for example, the translation of “vegetable television” is “un vexetal en forma de televisión” (“a vegetable in the form of a television”). On the contrary, while the many references to “wallpaper” were initially translated as “papel pintado” (“painted paper”), for reasons of fluidity, “pintado” (“painted”) is at times omitted, only if the reference to the wallpaper is obvious. Something similar happens with the case of “baby”; the Galician word “bebé”, a masculine noun, is sometimes exchanged for “meniña” ou “nena” (“little girl” or “girl”, respectively) in order to avoid repetition in the target language.
There are a few references that could be obscure to a general public of Galician speakers. The two most obvious cases are “Tate” and “Mondrian”. In the first case, “museo” (“museum”) was added to "Tate", therefore referring to it as “Tate museum”. In the case of Mondrian, a footnote with a short explanation about the painter was used. The translation of “mind’s eye” was more challenging: it was difficult to find a translation that both made sense in Galician and could translate the text faithfully. It was doubtful whether a literal translation of “mind’s eye” (“ollo da mente”) would be understood by the reader and whether the context would be sufficient to grasp the idea. The first choice was an attempt at conveying the meaning as accurately as possible without losing any transparency for a Galician reader. Therefore, the original sentence “the mind’s eye is not the eye we use….” was translated into “a memoria non é a facultade que empregamos…” (“the memory is not the faculty we use…”). This translation was discarded for a few reasons: it was too different from the original sentence, and even so, the meaning was still not exactly expressing the idea of the text. At last, the chosen translation was “o ollo co que vemos os recordos”, meaning “the eye with which we see memories”, adding a short description of the ‘mind’s eye’ concept.