牧歌的な地方から来た働き者の田舎者

リン・ディンという作家のショートショートの題名なんですが、とてもすてきですよね。
Monkey Businessの翻訳増量号に収録されています。もち訳者は柴田先生。
タイトルからしてモトさんが好きそうだなーというのが伝わります。
和訳まで書き写してしまいたいところだけどなんとなく気が引けるので、原文だけ載せておきます。大好きなんだもん。


A HARDWORKING PEASANT FROM THE IDYLLIC COUNTRYSIDE / Linh Dinh

I was illiterate until yesterday. All these squiggly - tattooed on every available surface, all around me, all my life - suddenly started to make sense yesterday. Until yesterday I did not know that the invectives and commands constantly swarming around me were actually made of words. I thought they were mosquitoes, or dust, or flecks of paint, each one leaving a prickling sensation on my thin, almost transparent skin. Yesterday someone said something in my vicinity and I finally decided to write it down, a phonetic transcription, to the best of my abilities: FUAK YOU MOFTHEARFUAKIER.

I wrote that down with a blue pen on a yellow piece of paper. I finally wrote, I thought, now I'm a writer. If I had merely transcribed the above as a blue thought onto my yellow memory, I would still be seen as a hardworking peasant from the idyllic countryside.