At the beginning, he got to know[1]
the North of Yakutia[2]
and Mirny, where he worked three years. In Mirny they had to open up a diamond
mine which was under a dirty grey crust of ice. The land was a hopeless[3]
tundra disfigured by piles of old sick coal, and prison camps, a wasteland
bathed in nights which gave you frostbite,[4]
lacerated, eleven months of the year, by blizzards strong enough[5]
to cut your skull apart, and underneath it were, still sleeping, the scattered
limbs and beautifully curved giant horns of furry rhinoceroses, woolly beluga
whales and frozen[6]
reindeer.[7]
He would picture all this to himself in the evening, sat at the hotel bar in
front of a glass of strong clear liquor, always the same scheming whore
caressing him endlessly, while trying to talk him into a wedding in Europe in
exchange for loyal services ; but
he never laid a hand on her, he never could : he would rather have nothing
rather than screw this woman who did not desire him ; he stuck to his guns
on that.
Anyway, these diamonds in Mirny,[8]
they had to dig down to get at them, to break up the permafrost using dynamite, then drill out a Dante-esque
hole, as wide as the town itself – they could have thrown headfirst in the hole
the fifty storey housing blocks which
were soon to grow up around there – then, with a head flashlight, they had to
climb down into the orifice, attack the walls with a pick axe, dig out the
soil, sort the underground galleries into a tree structure, going sideways far
out into the hardest and darkest distant parts. Then they had to shore up the corridors
and put down the rails, pass an electric current through the mud, burrow into
the soil, scratch away at the loose stones and sieve through the entrails,
searching for that splendid sparkle. That went on for three years.[9]
Once his contract had run out, he went back to France on a not very
democratic Tupolev plane. His seat in Economy Class sagged dreadfully ; a coil[10]
of metal wires threaded its way under the cloth of the chair back, breaking
through it here and there leaving a wire which hurt your back.[11]
He had a few more contracts then, and found himself as site manager in Dubai,
having to raise[12][13]
a luxury hotel out of the sand, a palace as vertical as an obelisque but as
secular as a coconut tree, and having to work in glass this time, glass and
steel, with lifts like bubbles sliding along gilded tubes, and marble from
Carrare for the circular lobby in which a fountain gurgled out a sound of
petrodollar luxury amidst polished green plants, animal-hide sofas and
air-conditioning.
A woolly rhinoceros
Tupolev
[1] Because of the preterite
tense in French, one cannot translate as « knew » (= connaissait). It
must be some verb or verb expression which can happen at a specific time.
[2] « North
Yakutia » is not good, sinc eit
suggests it is the name of the country, like North Korea.
[3] Someone found
« despair-inducing » , which is very good.
« Disheartening » is ok.
[4] « Frostbitten
night » is possible.
[5] The narrator says that the
wind *could* cut into your skull. This is obviously hyperbole, so you must not
use a structure which says that skulls were actually cut into.
[6] Not « iced » which
is generally for cold drinks.
[7] Seasonal reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j11rwc6Sf4o
[8] If you are interested in
diamond mining, see here https://beyond4cs.com/faq/diamond-origins/how-they-are-mined/
[9] Sentences with verbs are
vastly preferred in English.
[10] « clump » was
good.
[11] Remember anglophones are
less precise : « j’ai mal aux reins » : I have a backache.
[12] A good time to revise the
difference between to rise, to raise and to arise, and to remember that the
difference between a rise and a raise is not the same as the difference between
to rise and to raise. Essential short exercise here : http://random-idea-english.blogspot.fr/2010/11/confusing-words-quiz-verbs-rise-raise.html
[13] Someone suggested
« conjure up » which is excellent.
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