F. X. Caldeira

F. X. Caldeira (Filomela Xabregas) is the longtime translator for V. M. Straka. She provides the translation for Ship of Theseus as well as the annotations. She includes a coded message in the footonotes of the chapters, ostensibly directed to Straka.

Among Straka scholarship, Caldeira was equally mysterious as the author with no public information regarding birthdate or birthplace, no other known works or correspodence, and nothing was heard from Caldeira after the publication of SoT (except the information that someone with that name apparently died in Brazil). She is generally regarded to be a man with proposed names Francisco or Filip. Some consider Caldeira to be a fictional persona, an alter ego of Straka.

Caldeira is not highly regarded among scholars who cite apparent mistakes in the translations. Bolton argues that Caldeira's annotations in SOT suggest "he" is schizophrenic.

Biography
Filomela Xabregas was born in Brazil. She claimed to be mutilingual.

Jennifer Heyward discovered the name "Filomela" showed often in the crew of the Imperia as a translator from Brazil to NY between 1923-4. Apparently she arrived to NY between 1924 and 29.

In November of '24 Straka sent a telegram to Karst & Son voiding previous translation arrangements, ordering them to open a new office in NY and have Caldeira to work as his translator. Lewis Looper sent a letter to Straka warning him that he shouldn't take her, arguing that she is an unknown quantity and money grabber. Looper disappeared from the public soon after.

Now as an employee of Karst & Son she worked with beginning with The Spotted Cat (1924). As she reveals in the foreword of SoT, they kept regular correspondence although she never learned his identity.

Straka was sending his works, written in a different language each time, in onionskin typescript in creased manila envolopes to translate. 13 novels were published in more than 20 years this way. As he was the only known stable correspondent of Straka, she was a victim of harassment, stalking, burglaries and threats by those who wanted to know about Straka.

When Lewis Looper disappeared again in 1930, FXC was most often asked to play the role of go-between between Straka and his adversarial editors.

Ship of Theseus
As she told to Eric Husch, in early 46 Guthrie MacInnes went to New York and met Caldeira with a story about how he desperately needed to contanct Straka. Caldeira said she doesn't know, and he attempted to bribe her.

The Ship of Theseus was written in Czech and Caldeira had spent most of a year on it and sent a telegram to Straka urging him to finish it. In 1946, May, she received a telegram from Straka summoning him from NY to Hotel San Sebastián in Havana to hand her the 10th final chapter in person but was killed before he could do so. His room was empty with signs of struggle and policemen loading a body in a truck. She gathered the last chapter from manuscripts with help from a maid who cleaned Straka's bed. The last page was missing.

After Karst & Son suddenly ceased operations in 1946, Caldeira formed her own publishing company, Winged Shoes Press (a nod to The Winged Shoes of Emydio Alves), and used her own considerable expense to publish Straka's final book. The volume contained a foreword and was aggressively annotated; unprecedented in Straka’s body of work. In the foreword, Caldeira made several claims about Straka for the first time. She reveals that the final published chapter is a reconstruction from that manuscript.

Hiding secret messages in her translation of SoT, she expected a sign of life from Straka for the following 10 years. She left a bag with something important in Grand Central Station, which however was stolen.

No message came and she decided to disappear, fearing that McInnes's new S group was after her.

Flight to Brazil
Her name appears in a November 1959 passenger's manifest of a ship from NY to Sao Paolo. The next year the Winged Shoes Press office space was evicted for nonpayment but of course she never responded.

As Eric Husch discovered, she suddenly left to the NE in the early 60s. There was no trace of her, not even in Lençóis. Arturo's cousin helped her fake her death in 1964. There is a death notice in Feira Nova and a photo with an unmarked grave there. An “F.X. Caldeira” is believed to have died in Brazil in 1963 or 1964, but even this is not well-supported. After this she lives in Maraú as "Erelinda Pega" (= "magpie" in Portuguese; as told to Eric, she couldn't resist the pun). Few people know who she actually is, even when she used her real name, and the Portuguese translations (the best according to her) are famous there.

All this time she wrote while listening to Carmina Burana (because Straka loved it). She completed about 30 novels that she didn't publish.

Around 1975, a "kind and polite Frenchman" comes to her and Arturo and hands her an envelope which contained the 10th chapter of SoT. Caldeira apparently never opens it.

In the 80s she married an older man, who died 5 years later.

At her older age she looked tiny. Local people like Arturo tended her.

Later life
Eric Husch traced her and interviewed her. She believed that Straka was one of the S but doesn't know which one. Leaving, she held his hand tight and wished him and Jennifer Heyward good luck and told him "don't make the same mistake we did".

Later a man claiming to be Eric's colleague came to her and he made her nervous. Arturo had to send him away.

Her last few days she set things in order, listening to music and thanking and saying good bye to people. She died in her sleep.