GR translation: one balmy night lying to off Matosinhos
Mike Jing
gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Sat Jul 13 22:19:24 CDT 2013
V383.23-384.2 (P389.29-390.8) The crew that hijacked this U-boat are here
out of all kinds of Argentine manias. El Ñato goes around talking in
19th-century gaucho slang—cigarettes are “pitos,” butts are “puchos,” it
isn’t caña he drinks but “la tacuara,” and when he’s drunk he’s “mamao.”
Sometimes Felipe has to translate for him. Felipe is a difficult young poet
with any number of unpleasant enthusiasms, among them romantic and unreal
notions about the gauchos. He is always sucking up to El Ñato. Beláustegui
acting ship’s engineer, is from Entre Rios, and a positivist in the
regional tradition. A pretty good knife-hand for a prophet of science too,
which is one reason El Ñato hasn’t made a try yet for the godless
Mesopotamian Bolshevik. It is a strain on their solidarity, but then it’s
only one of several. Luz is currently with Felipe, though she’s supposed to
be Squalidozzi’s girl—after Squalidozzi disappeared on his trip to Zürich
she took up with the poet on the basis of a poignant recitation of
Lugones’s “Pavos Reales,” one balmy night lying to off Matosinhos. For this
crew, nostalgia is like seasickness: only the hope of dying from it is
keeping them alive.
I have included the page numbers for both the Viking and Penguin editions.
What does "lying to" mean here?
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