Moab is my Washpot, by Stephen Fry

 

I have mixed feelings about the author whose avowed brilliance is tempered by strange behavior, apparently due to his being subject to bi-polar disorder, as well as his aversion to Israel and Zionism. His half-Jewish background may partly account for the latter, and possibly even the former, but it doesn’t make me like him any better.

On the other hand, to see him act and to read his book is to love and admire him, both for his vast talent and for his disarming honesty. I laughed and cried, alternately gasping in admiration and clutching my head in dismay, as I read the 430 pages of this book, and am looking forward to reading its sequel. Even more exhilarating is the news that the third volume in the series has just been published. But I think I’ll give my quest to acquire additional Fry reading matter a rest for the moment.

There is no doubt that Stephen Fry has a way with words, as well as having something akin to total recall with regard to the sometimes audacious, sometimes salacious, aspects of the first twenty years of his life. He was obviously a troubled teenager, but if you are sent away to boarding school at the age of seven that is hardly surprising. According to Fry’s account, there is a certain similarity between public school and Borstal (he has experienced both), and to be deprived at such an early age of what one would hope is the warmth and security of family life must affect the individual in some way, for better or for worse. But then the question that has to be asked is: why don’t all those children who are sent away to boarding school at an early age turn out to be disturbed? Perhaps they do in some way or another, but then they’re not Stephen Fry, who would habitually steal money from his fellow-pupils in order to buy sweets, as well as playing pranks of various kinds on teachers and fellow-pupils alike.

Admittedly, Stephen’s father was somewhat eccentric, apparently being something of a genius, totally devoted to his work as an independent inventor and developer of various kinds of scientific measuring equipment. He seems to have been reasonably successful at this, being able to live in an enormous house which also served as his physics laboratory, workshop and production floor. He was a very distant person, and it was on Stephen’s mother, whom he adored, that the burden of bringing up three children fell (though of course there were servants who helped around the house and with the children when they were small).

One of the most touching parts of the book is Fry’s long and detailed account of falling in love at school at the age of fourteen with a boy about a year younger than himself. The pre-pubescent boy evidently possessed an almost ethereal beauty, and Fry describes the feeling of being hopelessly in love with astonishing fidelity, managing to evoke emotions that most of us have felt at one time but have long forgotten. The memory of that love, which may or may not have been unrequited, haunts Fry almost throughout the book, and although his tone is for the most part flippant and conversational, when it comes to this topic he plumbs depths of emotion that are both terrifying and uplifting.

After an undistinguished school career, eventually being expelled from yet another school, having been caught red-handed by the matron from whose handbag he was trying to steal money, Stephen spent some time in a detention centre and was eventually given a two-year suspended  sentence and placed under probation. Once again, he failed to live up to his innate ability, but it was at this point that he decided to take himself in hand, managing to persuade the reluctant head of an external college to not only let him sit his A-levels again but also to sit for the Cambridge Entrance Exams.

By dint of his hard work, amazing memory and extraordinary intelligence, Stephen managed to excel in all his exams, and was offered a scholarship to Queens College, Cambridge, justifying his parents’ belief in him and serving to console them for all the trouble he had caused them till then.

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A Dismal and Delightful Week

My week began with the stranger who walked into the local hairdresser’s where I was sitting and asked if the car parked further along the road was mine. It was. “Well, I’ve caused some damage to the windscreen,” he informed me. In the process of cutting branches off a tree in his garden one of them had fallen right onto my windscreen, smashing it, then bounced onto the bonnet, causing further damage. The result: three days at the garage and several thousand shekels of damage.

I had a very full programme that week, with activities in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, so that it was necessary to resort to public transport, lifts from friends and my husband, and even the occasional taxi. Until recently, Mevasseret Zion, where I live, was on the route between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv but recent changes to the road system means that we are now cut off from the highway. The bus route that used to go directly to and from Tel-Aviv from Mevasseret is now limited to a couple of hours in the morning, and vice versa in the evening. Oh well, such is life. I managed to get the bus to Tel-Aviv, but wasn’t so lucky on the way back, which meant changing buses, catching the shuttle-bus and calling my husband to collect me from the distant bus-stop.

But the reward for all this inconvenience was being able to attend the conference of the Israel Translators Association, with its plethora of fascinating lectures and the chance to meet up with old friends and colleagues. After all, translators are generally ensconced in their homes with their computers, and in this day and age one doesn’t even need to venture outside to go to a library to consult a book or to go to the post office to send off a completed text. Thus,  an opportunity to meet up with other translators is very much appreciated.

The Conference had many interesting lectures on offer. I was particularly intrigued by the title of Dr. Basilius Bawardi’s talk, ‘How Did Sherlock Holmes Build a Nation? The Cultural Translation of Nasib al-Mashalani into Arabic at the Turn of the 20^th Century,’ and found myself plunged into Egyptian society in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, when the aforementioned Nasib al-Mashalani (about whom very little is known) took it upon himself to translate works by Conan Doyle into Arabic. He did not always acknowledge his source, sometimes presenting the stories (when they did not involve Sherlock Holmes) as his own. According to Dr. Bawardi, the translator’s objective was to disseminate the concepts of law and order, adherence to norms of morality and respect for the police. Apparently, in his translations of the Sherlock Holmes stories the police are regarded as purveyors of justice rather than being the corrupt and bribable element they constituted in Egypt at that time (or the inept force depicted by Conan Doyle). In an aside at the end of the lecture Dr. Bawardi mentioned the mind-boggling fact that al-Mashalani had begun his career by translating the books of Enid Blyton.

Anothere fascinating lecture was given by Inbal Saggiv-Nakdimon and concerned the problems encountered by translators of science fiction and fantasy into Hebrew. As well as having to invent terms for concepts and objects which appear in these kinds of texts, there is the additional issue of consistency for such terminology within a series, for example when a later volume is published at a different time and is given to a different translator. In addition, across the genre different terms may be used by different translators for similar concepts or objects. The presence in the audience of other translators in that genre gave rise to a lively discussion about the different words used for the concept of ‘telekinesis,’ regarding which it transpired that there is as yet no accepted term in Hebrew.

The highlight of the conference was the final lecture, given by the acclaimed Israeli writer, Amos Oz, about the translation of his books. As well as writing novels which are known for the richness of their characterization and beautiful Hebrew prose, Oz possesses the gift of being able to speak clearly, concisely and in an engaging way. Thus, he held the audience captive with his account of the way he and Nicholas de Lange worked together on translating his first novel, My Michael, into English, some fifty years ago. He admitted that his ability to monitor translations of his work into Korean or Japanese is limited, but he asks those translators to read him a passage or a page out loud in order to gauge whether they have accurately captured the ‘music’ of his prose.

Amos Oz also spoke about his approach to the writing process. It was interesting and inspiring to hear how he starts each day at 4 a.m., when he goes out to walk in nature, and it is this communing with the natural world that gives him his perspective on life and the universe. He contends that this enables him to utilize his own natural empathy and curiosity about people to imagine himself in their place in various situations.

The insights, intellectual stimulation and social interaction that I experienced that day filled me with joy, providing a delightful contrast to the rather dismal beginning of the week.

Capturing the Enigma; the Unsung Heroes of HMS Bulldog

 

In May 1941, at a time when the Second World War was in full swing and the British forces were doing their utmost to block Hitler’s rampage across Europe, the battle to control the ocean was of paramount importance. Convoys of ships transporting troops and bringing much-needed supplies and materiel to Britain from the USA and Canada were routinely hunted down and attacked by groups of German submarines, known as wolf packs, causing untold damage to the British navy and mainland, not to mention suffering and death to the sailors manning those ships.

The British war effort was conducted on a number of fronts, among them that of intelligence. Inter alia, the British were doing their utmost to decipher the codes used by the Germans to disseminate their military messages to their troops, whether on land or at sea, but their efforts were frustrated by their inability to gain access to the encoding machine used by the German for this purpose. The existence of the machine, known as Enigma, was known to the Allied forces, but without a working exemplar it was impossible to ascertain precisely how it was used. Although the Poles and the French had managed to work out some aspects of the code, they were still far from attaining perfect knowledge of the way the machine worked. The British had set up an extensive system for decoding and translating messages at Bletchley Park, and tremendously important espionage work was implemented there, including the development of what came to be known later as the first computer, by Alan Turing. As is well known, Turing played a seminal role in understanding the workings of the Enigma machine and deciphering the code.

How the actual machine came to be in the hands of British Intelligence is the subject of this book by Patrick Spencer which tells an exciting tale of the pursuit and capture of a German u-boat by a British destroyer. HMS Bulldog, commanded by Captain Joe Baker-Cresswell, as he shepherded a convoy of merchant ships across the North Atlantic. From being the hunter he became the hunted, but the depth charge he set off succeeded in hitting the German u-boat that was pursuing his vessel. The u-boat was listing, and its crew abandoned ship. At that point Captain Baker-Cresswell decided that instead of finally sinking the German vessel his men would board it and take whatever they could find, known as ‘doing a Magdeburg,’

The operation was complex and risky, as the u-boat was in the process of sinking, but the men of the boarding party were determined to remove anything they could find that looked as if it might be of value, whether papers or equipment. Thus it was that one of the men came across what looked like a peculiar typewriter which was bolted to a wooden surface. Using the screwdriver that he had included in his bag of tools before leaving the ship, the officer managed to release the machine. It was only with great difficulty and considerable dexterity that the men managed to haul the heavy machine up to HMS Bulldog, where it could finally be identified as an actual Enigma machine. Displaying great bravery, the boarding party returned to the u-boat several times to remove whatever they could find that might be of value to the war effort.

The commander began towing the captured u-boat back to Blighty behind his ship, but when it began to sink beneath the waves he cut the tow-rope and let it go to the bottom. The operation was later given the name ‘Operation Primrose,’ and every effort was made to ensure that the Germans did not realise that the British had managed to seize hold of an actual working Enigma machine. In fact, Winston Churchill kept the details secret for months even from his close ally, President Roosevelt. The decryption of the Enigma code enabled the British forces to anticipate the movements of the u-boat wolfpacks, significantly reducing the loss of ships and contributing significantly to the victory of the Allies