Re: GR translation: pipesmoke-and-cabbage café

[Mike Jing]

On closer inspection, it also interpreted "hammer-and-forge" literally as
the game "bell and hammer", so it may not actually be a brothel, but that
makes the interpretation of cabbage as woman even more puzzling.


On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 1:49 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V569.25-31, P579.19-26   Slothrop returns from the brown back room of a
> pipesmoke-and-cabbage café, and an hour’s game of hammer-and-forge
> with—every boy’s dream—TWO healthy young ladies in summer dresses and
> woodsoled shoes to find the crowd begun to coagulate into clumps of three
> and four. Oh, shit. Not now, come on . . . . Tight aching across his
> asshole, head and stomach inflated with oat mash and summer beer, Slothrop
> sits on a pile of nets and tries, fat chance, to will himself alert.
>
> The published translation interpreted "cabbage" here as slang for woman,
> which would make the "café" a brothel. That can't be right, can it?
>
> I thought it just describes the smell of the place, is that correct?
>
>