Translator (2 page)

Then in a quieter conspiratorial tone, “You're a creature out of the ordinary, my dear,” said her mother. “More evolved than most, and, I'm afraid, little understood because of it.” She told Hanne that with each new language, Hanne became, quite magically, larger and grander than before. And now with seven languages, her mother smiled brightly, “you've become grandest of all. How can any of those silly girls understand you?”

Now Hanne says to her son, “Interesting. What is reasonable behavior?” She stifles a yawn. Her eyelids are heavy, dry. She is exhausted from her self-imposed work schedule. But once she begins work today, she knows she'll tap into energy she didn't even realize she had and will probably work until midnight again, unless she calls David. After spending so many hours in her mind, David reminds her she has a body. A fifty-three-year old body, she tells him, a body that still has hot flashes, though she no longer has to carry a kerchief to mop her face. A kind man, he always corrects her—a beautiful body, a desirable body, a body he wants to make love to. She runs her hand along her gray V-neck sweater and tucks a loose strand of hair back into her chignon.

Tomas is still talking about his case, and now he's resorted to legal jargon and case citations. A cloud covers the weak sun, darkening the room. Across the street on the front porch of an old Victorian stands a tall, wiry man in a fire-engine-red coat and black pants. His hair is a mop of wild black curls, he's too flamboyantly dressed to belong in this neighborhood. He's holding a dozen or so brightly colored flowers and dropping them one by one—peonies? Mums?—deliberately, precisely onto the sidewalk below. Hanne imagines him standing on a bridge, tossing the flowers into a river below. Is he celebrating something? Commemorating a death?

Tomas sighs, probably realizing his mother's mind is somewhere else, and abruptly shifts gears. “I got some news about Brigitte.”

“Oh?” She tries to sound nonchalant.

“I got a call she was taken to a hospital. That's all I know. Could be nothing. Could be something.”

The image of a feverish Brigitte comes to mind. Bright red cheeks, so lethargic, her lips chapped and cracking. She must have been six, maybe seven, and for days and days she was burning up with fever. Hanne set everything aside, stretched out beside Brigitte on the couch, and read to her or watched movies. Time sloughed away like an unnecessary skin, as Hanne tended to her, putting the cup of ice water to her lips, offering her saltines, scratching her back to lull her to fitful sleep.

Tomas wakes her from her reverie. “When I know more, I'll call you.” He pauses, then adds “If she allows it.”

“If she allows it,” repeats Hanne, her voice heavy with cynicism.

He sighs again. “You know how it goes. I figured I could tell you this because someone else called me, not her.”

Brigitte continues to have sporadic contact with Tomas, as long as he doesn't reveal their conversations to Hanne. Tomas says he has to go. He'll discuss taking the trip to Monterey with Anne and be in touch.

After Hanne hangs up, she stares at the lone tree across the street, waving its spindly branches in the air as if trying to grab hold of something. So thin, so fragile, it looks at any moment like it might topple over. She steps into the kitchen, makes coffee, and eats half a piece of toast to try and settle her stomach. The best thing to do is to lose herself in something demanding. Something hard. Something that requires all of her.

She heads to her office, turns on Chopin's Preludes Opus 28, and sits at her desk. Her mother's desk, the only piece of furniture Hanne kept. Though why she did is baffling because when she looks at it, she sees her mother's long, straight back. Her mother always sat facing a window. In Switzerland, a window that looked out at the garden of flowers. In Turkey, a window that looked out at a fig tree; in Norway, one overlooking the icy ocean; in Cairo, a farmer's market. Always another place, another window. A litany of windows. Hanne sees herself standing in the doorway, staring at her mother's rigid back, imagining the bumps of her vertebrae perfectly aligned, like a message written in Braille that she'd never understand, no matter how hard she tried.

Always her father was away at work or traveling, and then, when Hanne was ten, he was gone for good. So it would be her mother she'd tell, though she can't remember what she was waiting to say. Whatever it was, it would never be uttered because her mother whipped around, her perpetual look of disappointment fully displayed: “Don't interrupt me!”

What was the Muse whispering to her that was so important? Not great works of literature, or even mediocre ones. Would that have made it easier? She was poring over corporate documents. French, Swiss, German, anyone who would pay, her mother orchestrating the grand movement of goods, translating French to German, German to English, her Muse murmuring the languages of commerce, of moneymaking. At some point, her mother installed a lock for the door because, she said, “I need utter and complete silence, without even the itch of a thought that I could be disturbed.” The entire house enshrouded in silence, Hanne waiting for the Muse of commerce to shut up.

There is no more waiting for her mother, who died twenty years ago and has taken her place alongside her parents in a cemetery in Kiel. Just as her father, who remains a shadowy presence in her memory, had assumed his place with his family members in a cemetery in Delft years before. Where Hanne will end up is easily solved; she'll not lie beside either one of them, but be cremated. But death isn't looming—she has too many obligations—what is looming is her deadline.

She re-opens Kobayashi's novel.

The next day, Jiro wakes. The house feels bigger, relieved of heaviness and gloom. There is no need to reach over and touch his fingers to her neck to find a pulse. No need to run downstairs to see if she's plunged a knife into her heart. Or overdosed on pills or stepped outside and thrown herself in front of a car. He read somewhere that each culture has its preferred way of committing suicide. His wife, however, considered all ways. But now he can luxuriate in a pool
of calmness and ease his way into the day.

Sunlight streams in through the bedroom window and he becomes aware of vast acreage in his mind that is wonderfully uninhabited. Where just yesterday it was populated by worry, anxiety, and vigilance, there is now a small country of nothingness. He wasn't even conscious of how much of his mind was devoted to, no, obsessed with her well-being. He feels a funny little smile on his face. He is, finally, a free man.

Then Kobayashi writes,
Heya ga uzuiteiru.
The room is throbbing.

Throbbing with what?
Uzuku
is normally used for something negative—throbbing wounds or aching. But how can that be? He is not physically injured, he suffers no bodily pain. Figuratively, too, he suffers no aches or pains. In fact, Jiro has just regained a huge swath of his mind. A free man is what he just called himself. He is rid of shame and guilt, as much as a human can be. After many months, he's done everything possible to save his wife, and with that comes the knowledge that he can do nothing more. What you've done is brave and admirable, she murmurs to Jiro. So you can't be throbbing with pain, either physically or emotionally, can you? And the next sentence supports that:
He picks up his violin and begins to play.

Hanne can't remember the last time he played his violin of his own free will. In the past year, he's been so depleted that he barely makes it to symphony rehearsals. So this playing of the violin must signal the re-entrance of joy into Jiro's life. Or is he playing a lament to finally shutting the door on Aiko?

She translates the line:
The room seems to throb.
But she makes a note to come back to this section because she's not entirely satisfied with how it reads.

After he finishes playing, he eats a quick breakfast and heads to his car. He'll be early to rehearsal. When was the last time that happened? Perhaps Fumio will be there and they can practice together. Or Chikako, the flutist. Chikako, tall and lanky, with the sexy mole at the corner of her upper lip.

Chopin's lyrical precision winds its way into Hanne's consciousness. For a moment she closes her eyes and listens. How can anything be so beautiful? This, she reminds herself, is what her translation should rise to. It must sing the human condition.

She works steadily, carefully. Translation is an art, she's said countless times, requiring all the skill of a writer and then some, because the story, written in one language, one as different as Japanese, must be made as meaningful in another language. It is no small undertaking: each human language maps the world differently. Each language fosters a different way of thinking. She's always told herself that in between her paid translation projects, she'll begin work on something of her own. In the past few years, she's toyed with the idea of writing something about the ninth-century Japanese poet Ono no Komachi. At first she had thought she'd translate Komachi's poems from Japanese to English, but too many people already have come before her: all her poems have been unearthed and translated. She is, in fact, relieved. What she really wants to write is a play. She is enamored not only of the written but also the spoken word, and a play, her play, will allow her to work in both forms. Besides, the spoken word affects her differently than the written. Days after seeing a play, lines from the performance still bounce around in her head. It's as if her brain recorded the play and watches it again and again.

Indeed Chikako is there. They talk. Jiro tells her what happened, and she displays the requisite amount of sympathy, assuring him he did the right thing. For years she watched her mother care for her grandmother and by the end of her life, her mother was bone tired. The prolonging of one life drastically depleted the other. Symphony rehearsal goes extremely well and Jiro is congratulated by his fellow violinists for mastering so quickly a difficult section.

Then Kobayashi writes:
Jiro wa isoide uchi e kaeri, toko ni tsuku.
He hurries home and goes to bed. He is not fleeing or running away from anything. Jiro is not shirking responsibilities. He is weary from an eventful day. She translates it:
He heads home and goes to bed.

But then she stumbles:
He
weeps uncontrollably.

Hanne looks up as if a stranger has just entered the room. Even in the darkest moments of caring for his wife, as her condition deteriorated, Jiro displayed the fine qualities of composure and restraint. It's out of character. And it isn't at all believable. After a long string of dismal months, he finally and most deservedly had an extraordinary day. Why cry now?

For a solid year, ever since Aiko confined herself to the darkened house, limiting herself to the bed or the overstuffed armchair, occasionally shuffling through the house, he has shopped for groceries, picked up the dry-cleaning, cleaned, and, when he could, left the symphony early to cook dinner, though she rarely ate more than a couple of bites. Thank god they didn't have children, thinks Hanne, or he'd have had to assume the child-rearing as well. Upon the advice of one of her doctors, who said she suffered from a weak kidney, Jiro spent money he didn't have on a vacation to Hawaii, hoping a change of scenery might help. Her trip in the car was the result of three weeks of coaxing by her newest doctor—let her drive and perhaps she will gain her konjo, or willpower.

She translates:
He weeps uncontrollably, feeling a serenity he didn't know he was missing.

For several minutes she stares at what she's written. Does it feel right?
Is
it right? So much of this is intuition and insight gained through living a life. There is the life of words and there is the life of the translator—her life. She paces her study, running the sentence through her mind again. It is right. He's earned his freedom and this peace. He no longer has to be in such tight control. The catharsis of weeping is part of his new freedom. She moves to the next section.
Jiro calls Aiko's doctor to find out how she's doing. The doctor says not to worry, she's in good hands. They even have her eating three meals a day. In a week, she'll look so much better. After the call, Jiro plays a piece by Antonio Bazzini, one of his favorite composers. He plays it over and over until he is infused with delight.
When he's done, he feels like celebrating. He calls Chikako and asks her out to dinner.

Hanne translates a chapter at the restaurant, where Jiro has a wonderful time. They make plans to see each other again. On Friday night, he goes to Fumio's party, knowing she'll be there. He spots Chikako across the room and feels his hand move as if it might find its way across the expanse and explore her spine. She is talking to a man who has a sly smile and startlingly shiny shoes. Occasionally she glances over at Jiro, as if to measure the lust in his eyes. His eyes fix on her, the body that is unknown to him but feels so necessary.

Then Hanne comes to a long section that occurs nearly a year later. There are scenes of weeping, staring at random objects, talk of a lost, lonely soul wandering the earth alone. Kobayashi didn't use a subject or personal pronouns. That's not unusual in Japanese, but it doesn't help her. And the verbs don't lend much direction either—standard form and sometimes informal in present tense. It could be anyone, anyone but Jiro. Because in the next chapter he and Chikako are a steady couple. He can't stop thinking about Chikako's heart-shaped face, her easy smile, how quick she is to laugh.

Maybe Kobayashi has moved into Aiko's point of view. There is the image of a sterile stretch of corridor. That has to be a hospital, decides Hanne. But does that make sense? The doctor has repeatedly assured Jiro that Aiko is doing better. But is she? Who can this mystery narrator be? And who is muttering “Don't go,” like a mindless mantra? Maybe Jiro's music. Maybe Kobayashi took a risk and personified it, let it roam from hospital room to hospital room like a ghost.