The Plimsoll Line (18 page)
Authors: Juan Gracia Armendáriz
You would have to be an anonymous observer to keep in time with the undulation of the air, that kind of breath now invading everything, and to noiselessly take off from the house, though the cat, leaping onto the man’s lap, senses him in the background, with the exact urgency required by a presence it is necessary to identify among the shadows—an anonymous observer that has merged with the smoke now climbing up through the lowest branches of the oaks, rising, and then dissolving at a sufficient height to perhaps see, down below, a man stroking a cat on a deckchair, and a house that is a dot of light, a tiny relief in the now almost nocturnal topography of the valley.
Juan Gracia Armendáriz (Pamplona, 1965) is a Spanish fiction writer and contributor to many Spanish newspapers. He has also been part-time professor at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, and has many works of literary and documentary research.
As a writer, he has published a book of poems, short stories, non-fiction books—biographical sketches and a historical story—and several novels.
The Plimsoll Line
is part of the “Trilogy of Illness”, formed by three separate books that reflect his experience as a person with kidney trouble. The novel was awarded the X Premio Tiflos de Novela 2008
.
Jonathan Dunne translates from the Bulgarian, Catalan, Galician and Spanish languages. He has translated work by Tsvetanka Elenkova, Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Lois Pereiro, Carme Riera, Manuel Rivas and Enrique Vila-Matas among others. He has edited and translated a two-volume
Anthology of Galician Literature
1196-1981 / 1981-2011 for the Galician publishers Edicións Xerais and Editorial Galaxia and a supplement of
Contemporary Galician Poets
for the UK magazine
Poetry Review
. He has written two books about language and translation—
The DNA of the English Language
and
The Life of a Translator
—as well as the poetry collection
Even Though That
. He directs the publishing house Small Stations Press.