Translator

by Nina Schuyler

  Over the years, she’s narrowed down her options, finally confining herself to a small island, the art of translation. Her work, what she’s deeply cared about, devoted herself to like a faithful servant, and sacrificed so much for—Kobayashi feels she failed miserably at it. How can that be? If, indeed, he read it, how could he have such a skewed reading? It matters, Tomas, she composes to herself. It matters because if I find that I’ve successfully translated Moto onto the page, then the itch of doubt will be gone. In her mind, she can see Tomas raise an eyebrow, as if to say: doubt? Yes, doubt, Tomas. That Kobayashi would make such a scene, spewing his accusations in public for everyone to hear, his charges are not so easily dismissed.

  She lies down on the hard bed but can’t sleep. Something is nagging at her. She showers and heads over to the house. Inside, she hears the slurred words of the singer Tom Waits, who to her ear sounds like a drunken derelict, his voice trampled by cigarettes and alcohol and who knows what else. She knows him because Brigitte used to listen to him too.

  In the big empty room, where last night they floated along to music, Moto is stretched out on his back on the tatami mats. He’s reading a book and listening to the dreadful music, his head propped on a pillow. She glances at the book’s title: Dead Souls, Gogol’s unfinished novel. An English translation. Of course Kobayashi took artistic license, changing superficial details, but Jiro never read anything but the newspaper.

  “You can read English?” she says. “And you like Gogol?”

  He leans over, turns the music down. “Yep. And I speak fairly good English. I’m full of neat tricks.”

  “I’m envious.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  She tells him what had happened, the fall, the loss of her first languages. She doesn’t mention the hospital or the surgery or much of anything else, so by the time she finishes, it hardly sounds like anything at all.

  Still, he murmurs, “All the things one can lose. Would it help you if I spoke English? Maybe it would jar something loose.”

  How kind of him to offer. “But that’s asking too much of you.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I get to practice my English.” He tells her that long ago he had an American girlfriend, so his English isn’t too shabby.

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  He studies her. “I offered.”

  She takes a seat at the table and asks who translated his book. He shows her the name on the title page. “Nabokov approved of the Bernard Gilbert Guerney translation,” she says. “Nabokov said the plot didn’t really matter, it was the writing, which in Russian reads much more like a poem than a novel.”

  “I forgot,” he says. “You’re a translator.”

  He speaks American English, not British, and his cadence and rhythms are quite good.

  “What are you working on now?” he says in English.

  You, my friend. “I’m in between projects,” she replies in Japanese.

  She tells him about her play, and he mentions the Noh play about Komachi.

  “Yes, I’ve read it. I plan on doing something very different.” She points to his book. “When you’re done with it, I’d like to hear your opinion of this translation.”

  He glances at the book. “I don’t know if I’ll finish it.”

  “No? Why not?”

  He shrugs. “I might lose interest.”

  “But you’re more than halfway through.”

  “So?” he says, smiling faintly. Watching her, he closes the book and sets it down on the floor.

  “It seems you’ve already devoted so much time to it. It’ll be a waste just to quit.”

  He doesn’t answer, just smiles as if he knows something she does not.

  Without warning, a memory of Brigitte comes to her. An argument with Brigitte, who wanted to quit her French lessons. She had decided she didn’t like French anymore and wanted to learn Mandarin. Hanne had just picked her up from school, and Brigitte rushed to the car with an armload of library books about China. Her fourth-grade class had begun studying China and Chinese history. “They invented the compass and paper and printing and when I get older, I want to travel there and maybe live there,” she said, her eyes the hue of thrill. With the extra hours freed up if she quit French, she’d study Mandarin. She smiled shyly at Hanne. “And that’s a language you don’t know, is it?”

  But to walk away from five years of French lessons. It seemed so rash, so impulsive. Her French teacher called her his best student. All those hours spent learning verb tenses and nouns and sentence structure and exceptions to the rules.

  As she drove home, Hanne lectured Brigitte about the often-grueling nature of life, how it’s far more difficult than she might ever imagine, and she needed to learn to persevere. “When your father, brother, and I set our minds to something, we don’t give up,” she said. “No matter the odds or risks or difficulties. It’s gotten us where we are today, and that’s no small feat. Other people meet with hardship and tread no further. We forge ahead. You have to decide what kind of person you want to be.”

  “I’ll probably be both,” said Brigitte.

  Hanne didn’t know if Brigitte meant it, or she was just trying to be infuriating.

  Moto is still smiling at her, as if he’s thinking “So you’ve found me lacking. What are you going to do about it?” And he’s still looking at her, studying her, as if he wants her to know he sees right into her, her views, her judgment, and is amused.

  “I can’t do something if my heart isn’t in it,” he says.

  “So you give up when things become difficult,” she says.

  “I didn’t say that.” He still has that smile, though bigger, as if he’s even more amused than before. “I’ve enjoyed many things that are difficult.”

  The tea kettle whistles. Moto tucks his knees to his chest and rocks himself onto his feet. Instantly, he is on his feet. In a million years, she couldn’t do a move like that.

  Hanne and Brigitte had argued about her quitting French lessons all the way home and into dinner. No, she’s not remembering right. Hanne lectured and Brigitte sat there stone-faced, not saying a word. Finally Hanne forbade her to quit French. If she wanted to take up Mandarin, she’d have to find a way to fit it in. And now she sees her daughter slumped in her chair, her face pale, shoulders rounded, a posture of exquisite dejection. How cruel, how unrelenting Hanne was. And the worst thing about it is that she can still hear the excitement in Brigitte’s voice as she bounded into the car and said she wanted to study Mandarin, the excitement that Hanne ultimately crushed.

  In the kitchen, Moto takes the kettle off the burner and opens cupboards, finding the canister of green tea and two cups. A stack of dirty dishes in the sink diverts him. A rarity: a Japanese man his age who serves tea and does the dishes. He rolls up his sleeves and scrubs hard at the stuck food, and, when he finally removes it, puts the wet dish in the dish rack.

  “Do you miss acting?” she says.

  “Do I miss it? Not particularly.”

  “Years and years of acting and you don’t yearn for the audience? The lights? The thrill of performance?”

  He starts in on another dirty white plate. “I guess I’ve fallen out of it.”

  Fallen? Like falling out of a habit? A dream? Perhaps he doesn’t know the English word for what he’s trying to say. “What does that mean?”

  He’s running the sponge around and around, as if considering her question. “Or maybe it released me. I don’t remember it,” he says slowly. “I can remember how to move and dance and sing. But I can’t feel it anymore.”

  Moto sets the plate in the rack, then puts his hands under the faucet, letting the hot water run on them. Steam rises up, fogging the window above the sink.

  “Has that ever happened to you?” he says. “Something you once loved with every cell of your body is sucked of all of its juice?”

  If anything, her work holds her even more firmly in its grip. If someone called her up right now and offer
ed her a translation project, she’d jump at it. “I can’t say it has.”

  He turns the water off and says, in a soft voice, “Are you happy, Hanne?”

  How quickly they’ve moved from being mere acquaintances to something familiar, intimate, and most likely contentious. “I’d love to have my language faculties back. But I won’t let myself complain.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t find it very becoming.”

  “You should give it a try. You might enjoy it,” he says.

  “And you, are you happy? All is well?”

  He shrugs. “It is how it is.”

  This time she hears in his voice profound resignation. “So you’re a fatalist? You’re dealt a hand and you just resign yourself to it?”

  He laughs at her. “Is that what translators do? Put a name to everything?”

  Not just one name, she thinks.

  That night, she cooks supper for the three of them. No one feels like driving to Kurashiki, so she uses what’s on hand—nothing fancy, vegetable soup, red beet salad, garlic potatoes.

  “Just with this soup, you’ve earned your keep,” says Renzo. He explains to Moto that Hanne wants to pay them to stay in the cottage.

  Moto studies her a long time before announcing, “All right. That meal just earned you three days.”

  “No,” says Renzo. “Four. And why are you speaking English?”

  Hanne explains what had happened to her.

  “I thought it might help Hanne to hear English,” says Moto, turning to Hanne. “And before you object, Hanne, I get to practice.”

  Renzo says he’s so sorry to hear about the accident. Unfortunately, his English isn’t very good, so he won’t be able to assist. Then he smiles. “But I’ll grant you five nights for this meal.”

  “You two are making fun of me,” she says.

  Renzo laughs.

  “Four it is,” says Moto. He pounds the table with his fist.

  “I was raised by very proper and dignified Europeans who believed in decorum and etiquette,” she says, “and above all honor and decency.” She could go on—good shoes and an ironed skirt, clean socks and underwear before exiting the house, a thank-you note for every gift or kind gesture, and a written invitation required to attend any party, any function.

  “Okay. Only three nights,” says Moto.

  After supper, Moto gets his coat and heads out. To where, he doesn’t say, but Hanne guesses to Midori’s. Hanne retires early. When the dog scratches on her door, she lets it in and pats the end of the bed, hoping it will settle there and warm her freezing feet.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next day, Moto is up early. He’s driving toward town to go swimming. She informs him Renzo has invited her to continue to stay in the cottage.

  “Renzo loves company,” says Moto.

  “And you?”

  “Depends on the company.” He smiles. “Stay. As long as you like.”

  “Thank you. Just a couple of days.”

  And now she must impose again. Can she accompany him to town so she can retrieve her luggage from the hotel? She’s wearing the same clothes from a day ago and they’ve begun to feel like a second, oily skin.

  “My god! What an imposition,” he says, mocking her. “Told you it would be fun having you around.”

  “I’m glad I’m entertainment for you.”

  “I’m just playing around.”

  Which you always seem to be doing, she thinks.

  They head out to the garage. She’s expecting a dirty clunker filled with old newspapers, crumpled receipts, empty soda cans, torn upholstery with dirty foam exposed. Instead, he drives a shiny black Mercedes, as pristine as if it had been bought yesterday.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed,” she says, touching the shiny hood.

  “I like to keep you guessing,” he says, opening the car door for her.

  She climbs into the passenger seat. The car still has its smell of newness. He doesn’t get in right away. It seems something across the street has beckoned to him. He walks across the street, then comes back over to her side of the car. “You have to see the clouds. They look like huge ships sailing across the sky.” He makes her get out and look.

  She sees clumps of white billowy clouds. No ships, not even a sail.

  “Quixotic, that’s what you are, Moto,” she says, getting back in.

  “Oh, yeah. The woman who must name everything,” he says, backing out on the gravel driveway and heading down the narrow two-lane road.

  “We’ve kept ourselves busy over the centuries, naming and organizing and categorizing. Why not use them?” she replies.

  “Do you ever wonder when you’re busy naming, what you might be leaving out?”

  “That’s the beauty of knowing more than one language. The act of naming conjures more than one word for me, and each word hauls with it its own nuances, as well as cultural, associational, and etymological overlays. Suddenly, that one word has expanded into a large world.”

  “Of words,” he says.

  “Of course. What else?”

  “I would think the beauty of speaking many languages is that you could talk to people. You know, travel to a foreign place and not feel foreign.” He points to a squirrel on a bare birch tree branch and smiles brightly. “He’s moving so fast, he’s making that thick branch bounce. See it?”

  She watches the squirrel leap to a telephone wire. “I don’t travel much anymore. Occasionally I visit my son and his family, but that’s about it. Besides, I’ve been reduced to only one language.”

  “Lucky for you it’s Japanese. If it was Armenian, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

  The morning air is cold. She didn’t come prepared for this weather. She needs to buy a heavier coat and a scarf.

  “You mentioned a son.”

  She tells him a son and a daughter. Tomas and Brigitte. “And you? Do you have children?”

  He takes a deep breath and for a long time doesn’t speak, as if he’s lost all memory of English words. “Unfortunately, we were never blessed that way.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They drive by fields of soybean and barley, and then a lake. He points out the geese, says they look incandescent, as if they’d swallowed light bulbs. “Such beauty for no obvious purpose.”

  Hanne always wished she had that impulse: to be drawn to the world in front of her, not always reaching for something beyond herself. Jiro had it. Brigitte, too. “You’re fortunate, Brigitte,” she told her daughter many times. “This world is enough for you, isn’t it?”

  Now Moto says: “Your daughter. You don’t travel to see her?”

  “That’s for another time, I think.”

  “Fair enough.” Minutes seem to go by. “And what about translation?” he says. “Where does the beauty lie there?”

  “I’ve always explained it as an effort to deepen the connections of the world. One culture converses with another, and the recipient culture receives a new vision of the world.”

  Even before she finishes, she’s assaulted by the memory of Kobayashi humiliating her—your hopes of uniting mankind.

  She concedes it’s a romanticized version of translation. She’s making it appear grand, and making herself appear far more magnanimous and generous than she really is. By the way Moto is smiling, as if there’s an old joke between them, he must be aware of that too. Why does it always feel as if he’s seeing right through her?

  “And it enchants me,” she says. “It gives me pleasure purely for what it is.”

  “You mean you like it.”

  “Yes. I like it. Love it.”

  “You know, I’m a pretty informal guy. You don’t have to talk to me as if you’re giving me a lecture.”

  “I’m just speaking. It’s the way I speak. I was raised in a very proper household.”

  “I’m just saying you can lighten up with me.”

  “I thought the Japanese language with its proper, polite—”

  “Yeah, w
ell, not me.” There’s a long pause. “You know, it’s like you think it over before you speak. It puts a lot of distance between you and everyone else.” He glances at her. “You’re guarded. That’s why you do it, right? To protect yourself. But listen, I promise I won’t bite.”

  Guarded? Why is he scrutinizing her? “I pay attention to what I say and how I speak, that’s all.”

  They drive on in silence. Out the window, she looks at farm-houses, pastures filled with brown cows. She has no idea where they are. They pass by a temple and an orchard of bare fruit trees. Hanne considers all the ways to broach the subject and finally settles on something simple, direct. “So I understand you’re no longer married.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ve moved on, then.”

  He smiles faintly.

  “Is Midori your girlfriend?”

  “Back to the labels,” he says, smiling. “Why? Are you going to make a move on me?”

  She feels herself blush. When is the last time she’s done that?

  He laughs. “Let’s see. She’s an aspiring actress. A fairly good voice-over actress. A woman who has a closet full of pantsuits and shoes. A pretty lousy cook. Should I go on?”

  “I meant in relationship to you.”

  “A woman who wants to learn everything about my voice. Who likes to hang out with me when I’m in a good mood. When I’m not, she’d rather not. And I don’t blame her one bit. I can be a real stick-in-the-mud.”

  Did she really think this elusive man would give her the answer? It’s almost as if he is intentionally vague, hiding from her, playing around, ducking away each time she probes. Why is that? He’s tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel. Hanne looks out the window at the rice fields. Maybe it’s early in his relationship with Midori. In the beginning, before Jiro and Chikako became a couple, Jiro dated other women. When Jiro was asked about his relationship with Chikako, he, too, was noncommittal.

  Moto pulls into the parking lot of the hotel and she runs in, checks out, and gets her luggage. She’s not sure she’s doing the right thing, camping out in their cottage, but Japan is exorbitantly expensive, and, as she’d hoped, she’s getting to spend time with Moto.