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The initial site of dislocation on Célanire s body, represented by
the scar on her neck, and Philcox s translation of Condé s description
of it, emphasizes Célanire s opacity : the fantastic powers that she
possesses as a cheval. 6 While Célanire is entertaining Hakim, one of
the Foyer s guests, she cannot hide her excitement when explaining to
him the cultural relevance behind the Guadeloupean costume she is
wearing, a matador gown. For personal reasons, she made some mod-
ifications to the traditional garb: she added a collaret and omitted the
customary madras head tie, gold-bead choker, and earrings. These
details reveal the great lengths to which she will go to hide her scar
from others. Once revealed, however, the scar s monstrosity (96)
conjures up images of Frankenstein s creation, especially because of
the way Célanire s neck has been stitched up and patched together.
Condé writes:
Un garrot de caoutchouc violacé, épais comme un bourrelet, repoussé,
ravaudé, tavelé, enserrait le cou. On aurait dit que celui-ci avait été coupé en
deux parties égales, puis rafistolé tant bien que mal, les chairs rapprochés
par force et bourgeonnant dans tous les sens comme elles le voulaient. (96-
97)
Philcox translates:
A purplish, rubberlike tourniquet, thick as a roll of flesh, repoussé, stitched
and pockmarked, wound around her neck. It was as if her neck had been
slashed on both sides, then patched up and the flesh pulled together by
force, oozing lumps all the way around. (61)
6
In Condé s novel, the African characters believe that Célanire s body is the
vehicle or means by which evil spirits have been able to cross over from the other side
of the ocean. The person whose body enables this crossing over is referred to as a
cheval or a horse. Every horse can be potentially recognized by finding the
appropriate sign or mark on its body, a task that is not easy to accomplish (33).
Okawa 173
Philcox s translation tones down the inexplicable power and force that
Célanire oftentimes exudes. The choice to translate bourgeonnant
dans tous les sens comme elles le voulaient as oozing lumps all the
way around diminishes both her scar and its uncontrollable nature;
the omitted words, comme elles le voulaient, could have been
translated as [oozing lumps] in whatever direction the flesh chose to
go. Furthermore, Philcox s translation of the word un garrot in the
medical sense of tourniquet can in no way allude to its two other
definitions in Le Robert & Collins: 1) the punishment and/or torture of
shackling a prisoner and 2) the withers of a horse or the ridge between
the animal s shoulder bones. The hideous premise upon which Céla-
nire s throat is initially slashed, the scar on her neck thus translated
and read by Hakim as the mark of a cheval, and all of the anguish
caused by the subsequent destruction and deaths left in her wake are
here replaced by the tourniquet s primary mission of saving a person s
life and healing wounds.
The description of the scar reinforces Célanire s fractured rela-
tionship to herself and others. Her constant state of turmoil and unrest
is captured by Philcox s translation, and it reaches its peak when
Célanire s husband takes her to Peru for a vacation at the end of the
novel. During the trip, Célanire s behavior could again be described as
odd for a number of reasons: her loss of appetite, her disengagement
from prior intellectual interests and humanitarian causes, her nocturnal
wanderings and isolation, and most strikingly, her decline in physical
health and appearance. She is incapable of speaking or even uttering a
sound, and not one medical doctor is able to diagnose her illness. In
the French, Condé describes her strange behavior with: Célanire
semblait désarticulée (325), which Philcox translates as: Celanire
seemed dislocated (221). In contrast to the translation of un garrot
as a tourniquet, Philcox s choice of dislocated, rather than disar-
ticulated or disjointed, here departs from the medical definition of
désarticulée. While dislocated can still refer to the physical dis-
placement of a bone in the human body, it also has a less scientific
definition in Webster s: to put out of place or to force a change in
the usual status, relationship, or order of; to disarrange or to disrupt.
In this particular example, Philcox s choice of words helps to create a
certain kind of unintelligibility or chaos that parallels his wife s writ-
ing, which Condé herself has characterized as un tas d influences
174 FLS, Vol. XXXVI, 2009
dans tous les sens [& ] une sorte de bouillabaisse& ( Moi, Maryse
Condé 124). In this light, the word dislocated brings forth several
possible contexts from which to frame and read Condé s representa-
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