Translator

by Nina Schuyler

  In this village, living in this hut, there is no one to serve her, no one bringing her three meals a day. No parties, no banquets, no lovers beckoning to her under her window. How will she survive here if she’s cut off? She is so ill-prepared. If the shop clerk at the grocery store refuses to serve her, as he did this morning because she did not have enough money? And she didn’t have enough money because she has no idea how much things cost. If she’s refused access to the water well, as she was yesterday because she lives on the upper part of the street, which doesn’t receive water on Wednesdays?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Something jars her awake. Hanne bolts upward in bed. She hears a bird chirping, sees the pale yellow light of morning, a moment of lightness before the weight of dread collapses on her chest, turning her breath, short, shallow. The translation, mistranslation, mistake, mis, meaning bad, wrong. The word “incompetent” burrows in, refuses to depart.

  She lies down again, squeezes her eyes shut. The heaviness in her chest is quickly coating her brain, making her thoughts confused, slow. Those dreary, weepy scenes she gave to Jiro’s wife, they actually belonged to Jiro. Some part of Jiro, of Moto, remains forever tangled up in the pain of loss. Doubting whether he should have let his wife go. Like a wounded animal licking old wounds, reopening them. Again and again. And that error has led to other errors. She stops breathing for a moment. She’d made Jiro far more heroic than Moto—Moto who lets himself be battered by every emotional wind; who chose to let his wife go and now refuses to forget and move on; who drinks to wallow some more.

  The publisher will hire a new translator, who will discover all her errors. The International Translators Association might decertify her. She failed, failed miserably at the thing she values the most, so why shouldn’t they strip her of her credentials? If anything means something to her, if anything is holy, it is the art of translation.

  Yes, Brigitte, I do believe in something. Not an afterlife or a god, but my work. In her mind, what she has done to Kobayashi’s novel is sacrilegious. Kobayashi was right. She put too much of herself into the work, what she wanted it to be, instead of accepting it for what it was. The Association has every right to toss her out.

  And then?

  She’ll have to find other employment. Menial labor is the first thing that comes to mind. She’s being unreasonable, but she can’t stop herself from imagining a sweatshop where she sits, one among hundreds of other poorly paid women, hunched over a sewing machine, churning out endless pairs of pants. Eight, ten hours of stitching, not enough time to speak or think a single thought, a half hour for lunch, a ten minute bathroom break, and when she returns home, exhausted, she falls into bed, only to do it all over again the next day.

  She realizes she’s being melodramatic, but the problem is she can’t imagine a future. Or rather, what she does imagine is bleak: a life empty of meaning because no one will ever hire her to do a translation again. She is not, unfortunately, a member of Moto’s school of thought where meaning is there for the taking. She will be denied a meaningful life because she will forever be prohibited from doing what she loves. Because she is incompetent. Because she failed at her job. Kobayashi’s charge hits her full force: what you have done is wrong.

  Enough. She wills herself to stop this descent, for that’s what it feels like—a free fall into self-flagellation. But isn’t that what she deserves? She watches herself pick up the phone, aware that some part of her is trying to save herself. She dials her own phone number. Grasping at anything, she thinks, as she listens to the rings with a flutter of hope that there will be a message from a publisher. A new translation project waiting. The rings begin to sound like an alarm. After the twelfth ring, she hangs up. When was the last time she had this long of a break between projects? Maybe there’s a letter for her waiting in her mailbox, but she doubts it. No one writes letters anymore.

  She marvels at herself, to the level she will stoop as she dials Tomas; she’s willing to bring him into her increasing dread. “I have to ask you for a favor.” She wants him to check her e-mail. She has no computer here. Could he see if there is a message, anything about her translation of Kobayashi’s novel? Or a translation project? Anything at all? Something from Claire Buttons?

  “You’re still in Japan?” he says.

  She hears him tap his computer keys.

  “Nothing, Mom. What’s going on?”

  She’s too mortified to tell him: the accuracy of Kobayashi’s claims. She can barely bring herself to think about it. There is a long silence. “How are my granddaughters?”

  “Why are you still there?”

  Her heart is pounding. She asks him to call her publisher.

  She hangs up and waits. Out the window, everything is a blur. It seems hours go by when the phone finally rings.

  “He pulled it. Kobayashi demanded it. Kobayashi is paying for a new translator to do it over.”

  In her mind, she’s back in the cellar, Oma mad, her face a pale red. What did Hanne do this time? Spill a dot of milk on a clean floor? Track in a trace of mud? Ten years old, missing her mother too much, she wet the bed again, unable to untangle from the sheets in time to make it to the bathroom because in her dream she was holding on to her mother’s wrists as her mother withered and pulled away. Incorrigible child. You do your own cleaning of the sheets. Scrub them twice and hang them outside on the line. Not Oma’s job, she didn’t make the mess. Then down to the cellar, blacker than black ink, blacker than the darkest night, with the rats scratching behind the walls and in the coal bin. Once a rat ran across her boot and she screamed “Mama!” Oma called down to her she’d have to stay another hour for making such a racket. So she put her back against the cold concrete wall and tried to will herself beyond the blackness by conjugating English verbs. Scream, screamed, had screamed, screaming.

  “Mom?” says Tomas. “Are you there? What do you want me to do?”

  She imagines Kobayashi racing home after their confrontation and calling the publisher. I put my trust in Ms. Schubert, and she betrayed my story. She should be ashamed. Hanne sees his face, full of anger and hurt. You know nothing. Dark sludge flows through her veins. Of course Claire hasn’t called. Hanne is only as good as her reputation. And her reputation, now, is permanently stained. The world will forever turn its back on her. It wants nothing more from her.

  She draws a deep breath. “I’ll manage.”

  She calls the airlines. Though what she’ll do upon her return, she hasn’t a clue. A cheery Japanese woman says there’s nothing available until Sunday—three days away, unless she wants to spend several thousands of dollars. It will have to be Sunday. Hanne hangs up and stares at the old apple tree. Its bare branches wave at her in the slight breeze. What is she going to do here for three long days? Whenever she’s around Moto, she will be reminded of her failure, of what she has lost.

  She makes herself put on her coat and set out for a walk. The dog stubbornly tags along. She takes a dirt path that crosses over a wooden bridge. On the other side, she passes by rows of Shinto shrines, miniature A-framed structures with one side left open, like a doll’s house. A shrine to the wind god, the water god, air god, travel god, with fifty or more pairs of shoes dangling from the thick branches of a pine tree. She wonders if there is a god of misfortune to whom she can leave an offering.

  When she returns to the house, Moto is sitting at the eating table. The stereo is playing something bluesy. When she comes over, she sees the table top is covered with puzzle pieces. He’s putting together a puzzle. A picture of a bowl of red apples. Is this her future? Piddling away her time over a puzzle?

  “I want to apologize for yesterday,” she says. “You’ve been nothing but generous and accommodating and kind. I’m sorry I accused you of pulling a ruse.”

  His hair is a tangle, unruly. His eyelids are puffy and she can only describe his eyes as sad. Look at him, she tells herself. Give him your full and deliberate attention. Don’t impose something on him that isn’t ther
e. This is a man who is resigned, beaten, defined by what he has lost.

  “Apology accepted,” he says in Japanese. It seems he has no energy to pull the English words out from his sluggish brain. Or maybe he’s finished helping her.

  He finds the corner piece of the puzzle. She looks at the cover of the box and sees that the puzzle has five thousand pieces. They seem a jumble, impossible to put together. He’s completed less than a quarter of it. Hours and hours to go.

  She’d like to go back to the cottage and crawl into bed, but it requires too much effort. The music fills the room. He searches the scattered pieces. She closes her eyes and rests her cheek on her fist. Minutes must pass by. “Thought I’d go to the pool,” he says. “Try to shake off this stupor.” He rubs his forehead. “If you want to come along.”

  She watches him closely, looking for signs that his offer is a polite pretense. He gives her a half smile that seems to say, haven’t you at least figured out this? I’m not one for such nonsense.

  “The translation. I made grave errors,” she hears herself say. “I believe my career as a translator is officially over.”

  He sets down his puzzle piece and looks at her. “I’m sorry to hear that. Isn’t there a way to fix things?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I thought everyone in America gets a second chance. Sometimes a third or fourth. Here we just commit hari kari and call it a day.”

  She thought he’d be more upset. But then again, she didn’t ruin anything of his. “I thought you were far more resilient. But you haven’t recovered from your wife’s departure. And you have no interest in doing so. There is the type of person who glorifies his pain and suffering. Who wants to be defined by it. Who finds a kind of beauty in the pain.”

  She almost added, just like Brigitte.

  He shakes his head, half smiling.

  “What?”

  “In your confession, or whatever you want to call it, you just insulted me again.”

  She feels her face redden. “I meant to plead guilty and explain my errors. It seems I must keep apologizing.”

  “But the way you phrased it,” he says. “Why am I explaining this to you? You’re the word master. It’s clear that you put a lot of value on this idea of resilience, and you’ve decided I don’t have an ounce of it. In your grade book, I get a big fat zero. Have you ever considered there are other values that might be important to someone besides resilience? Such as experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion? Guess what? I don’t have a one-year or five-year plan. I’m here to experience life, and that includes being present for all of it, not just a small lousy corner of it labeled joy or mirth. Even going through the miserable pain of loss and down the long road of grief.”

  She sits up, knocking several puzzle pieces onto the floor. “But if you’re stuck longing for your wife, how are you experiencing all of life? Life is going on right now and you’re missing it because you’re drowning in your longing for your wife. Haven’t you chosen to confine yourself to a small lousy corner?” She hopes he hears the sincerity in her question because she means to be sincere.

  “The most profound thing, the most real thing to me right now is the loss of my marriage and my wife. Besides, I’d say it takes a lot of resilience to go through this hell. Not deny it or try to forget it. Which I think is impossible anyway.”

  “But what about the rest of your life? As you said earlier, you’ve fallen off your stage.”

  He shrugs. “The stage is still there. I’m just not on it right now.”

  “What if this fallow period causes permanent damage? You will forever be off the stage if you don’t put up more of a fight.”

  “A fight against what?”

  “This malaise. This wallowing.”

  “Is that what you fear, Hanne? That you’ll be thrown off your stage unless you kick and scream and demand to stay on it?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “What do you think exists off your stage? Nothing? Let me tell you, there’s life there too. It might be unfamiliar, but it’s there. It emerges beyond your own will. And yes, there is something quite beautiful about it. Pain can pare things down to what’s most important. A clarity comes. And here’s another thing you don’t understand about me. I told you before, but you didn’t seem to hear it. I don’t have a choice. I am buried in this right now.” He looks directly at her. “You don’t know what to make of me, do you?”

  “Frankly, I don’t. I don’t understand why you can’t make a decision to take charge. Discipline may be an archaic word these days, but it can be invoked to push through things.”

  “Well, we’re different.” He leans over, picks up the fallen pieces and studies his puzzle. It seems he’s lost interest in this discussion. A minute seems to pass by before he notices she’s still there. “That’s all I can say right now.”

  At the indoor ocean, she sees he is, in fact, the one who charges back and forth beyond the waves, swimming expertly, flawlessly, lap after lap. Driven, a single-minded focus, a straight arrow slicing through the blue, each arm clearing the water in a perfect stroke. It looks as if someone wound him up, set him in the water—a swim machine—and said “Go!”

  In this small way, he’s like Jiro. Her Jiro, rather. A superficial detail that she happened to get right. A small triumph that gives her no satisfaction.

  She considers changing into her suit, but the sun (heat lamp?) on her back feels good, and the rhythmic roar and retreat of the waves are soothing. She closes her eyes, letting the warmth penetrate. Like the waves, a question comes and goes: What will become of her?

  Wasn’t that the question that plagued her about Brigitte? What would become of Brigitte if Hanne didn’t do something? After Hiro died, Hanne pleaded with Brigitte to go to school. To try harder. To keep up her grades. To imagine a better future. “I can’t,” said Brigitte. “I can’t stop thinking about Dad. The world feels broken to me.”

  “Let’s fix it,” Hanne said to her. “We’ll start a new project.” Hanne suggested they learn Arabic together. Or maybe go on a trip. France. They hadn’t been there for years. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the croissants with the chocolate center, Brigitte loved it there. She wore a red beret everywhere.

  No. She couldn’t.

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand. I can’t.” Her eyes teary.

  Someone had to be stalwart, a pillar. Someone had to remain steadfast and firm. Someone had to push, sometimes push hard. And wouldn’t that rub off on Brigitte? Make it all feel less impossible? That’s what Hanne told herself. But now she wonders, is that what Brigitte needed? How well did Hanne understand her role in Brigitte’s life? If Brigitte’s anything like Moto, Hanne’s prodding wouldn’t have done any good.

  Moto swims to shore. Shaking his hair, spraying water everywhere. There’s his lean, powerful body, his strong chest muscles and arms. Normally, she’d feel the stirrings of desire. Moto wipes his face, beginning at his forehead, pulling his hands down over his eyes, his chin, as if rubbing off a film and the real Moto—the one missing nothing—might emerge from underneath. But it’s the same Moto, with shadowy circles below his eyes. He wraps a white towel around his waist and heads in his floating gait to the locker room.

  She sits in the warm sand and waits for him outside the locker room.

  His hand is on her shoulder. He’s dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and he sits beside her. “You didn’t swim?”

  “No. For some reason, I didn’t feel like it.”

  He smiles his leonine smile. “Watch out, Hanne. You’re going to become a good-for-nothing like me, wasting away your talent, the stage disappearing in front of you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Renzo announces he’s going to have a dinner party tomorrow night. A farewell party for Hanne. Oh, dear god, no, she thinks. He’ll invite his good friends. They’d love to meet her. He’s at the eating table, surrounded by cookbooks, and he’s rif
fling through pages of colorful fish dishes and soups.

  “You needn’t go to the trouble for me,” says Hanne, taking a seat at the table. She’s in no mood for parties, for anything festive. She is exhausted just thinking about meeting a group of new people. The cheery façade one must hide behind.

  “No trouble at all.” He puts on his glasses, then takes them off again. “Let me propose something. With your perfect Japanese, maybe you’ll think of moving here? Many interesting people live around here.” He pauses and smiles slyly at her. “And you seem interested in Moto.”

  It seems Moto has told him nothing about her translation, about Kobayashi’s book. “You misunderstand.”

  “Moto is a good man. He’s just in a slump right now.”

  “It’s presumptuous of you to be arranging your brother’s life.”

  The dog sits beside her and whines. She finds her coat. Renzo, it seems, is not done trying to persuade her; he’s at the door in his coat and scarf, holding the leash.

  Outside the air is cold. The trees seem taller, with their tips lost in the clouds.

  “I’ve served as go-between for a number of very happily married couples,” he goes on, pulling on gloves. “As you grow older, you need a good companion.”

  How exasperating! “I’m sure you don’t mean—”

  “Let me finish. I’m a good ten years older than you. I’ve crossed some of the territory you’re about to enter. It’s hard to grow old alone. Your friends die off or become ill and are no longer mobile. Your children are involved with their own lives, as they should be. I’ve learned to keep my loneliness in check with several female companions.” He gives her a quick smile. “But an intelligent, cultured woman such as yourself requires much more from your relations than I.”