Translator

by Nina Schuyler

  Moto slips off his shoes and tosses them near the door.

  He doesn’t look well. Deep blue circles beneath his eyes, a heavy sag to his face and eyelids, and a crease—a new wrinkle?—cuts through his birthmark. It’s back to the shape of Montana, but now it’s sliced in half. His face looks too lived in, as if he’s spent the last few days living out a thousand lives.

  Renzo is all over Moto, a mix of joy, exhilaration, anger—“Where were you? Why didn’t you call?”

  “I’m so glad you’re all right,” says Hanne.

  They stand in the foyer. Moto raises his eyebrows, as if to say: what’s the fuss about? He went to a friend’s house, he says. He fell asleep.

  “For three days? You must have been drinking and blacked out. When is this going to stop? Lazy! That’s what you are. Lazy and a drunk! I was worried sick! I thought you were dead. How could you make me worry like this? You are so selfish!”

  Moto looks like he’s about to say something, but then walks away.

  “Where are you going now?” Renzo follows right on his heels.

  Hanne tries to interject. “We’re going to have breakfast—”

  “A goddamn glass of water,” says Moto, turning to confront his brother, who almost runs into him.

  “Next time you can tell me where you’re going,” says Renzo, barely able to keep his voice level. “That’s the least you can do.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t want my help? Fine. You’ll lose it all. Everything. See if I care. But you’ll hear our parents and our ancestors crying out from their graves.”

  Moto rolls his eyes and heads to the kitchen.

  Out on the patio, Renzo can’t sit still. He paces back and forth, picks up clippers, sets them down. “What’s wrong with him? Is he sick? On drugs?”

  “It’s a difficult time for him,” she says, just talking, trying to fill the charged air with something else. “His wife, his employment. It’s hard for him to stay engaged with the world, let alone carry on the day-to-day. You must go easy on him.” She can hardly believe she’s saying these words. In another life, she was Renzo shouting the exact same things.

  Moto spends the entire day in his room. Renzo presses his ear to the door. A low rumbling of a snore. He’s sleeping again! How can that be? Three days of sleep and he needs more? Renzo paces back and forth in the front dining area. Finally he says he’s going out. He can’t stand it. Did you see how he looked? An old man, he looks older than me, cries Renzo, picking up Morsel and cradling him like a baby. “Last night I had a nightmare that Moto went to sleep and never woke up.”

  After Renzo leaves, the silence is stifling. The house, as always, is freezing. She sits at the table and turns on the heater, waiting for Moto to wake, wondering: what worlds whirl under his eyelids?

  When, an hour later, Moto is still asleep, she finds the keys to his car and drives in a downpour to the grocery store. The least she can do is stock the refrigerator. As she pushes the cart up and down the aisles, her brain feels like mush, each thought straining through mud to make its way to the surface. What do they need? What’s wrong with Moto? Seaweed, salmon, more rice, what else? Is he sick? He misses his wife so much he’s making himself ill? Drinking himself into a comatose state? Fallen into depressing despair? She goes round and round the grocery store, as if hunting for something, though she has no idea what it is.

  When she gets back, she hears dreary music with lyrics repeating, Life is so boring, Life is so boring, coming from Moto’s room. She knocks lightly.

  “Come in.”

  She pokes her head in. “How are you feeling?”

  In the murky light, he’s sitting up in bed, wearing a flimsy blue robe, his bare chest partly exposed. He squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them wide. His deep-set eyes look even deeper and his face is sweaty, pale. He makes a strange sound, like a swallowed breath.

  She’s not sure when Renzo is returning, she says, so she’ll cook dinner tonight. “If you have any special requests, let me know.”

  She’s never been inside his bedroom. It isn’t the smell of sleep in the air or the rustle of his sheets that stir her as he adjusts himself on the bed. Lining his walls are more than two dozen masks. Red, blue, green demons with bulging eyes and horns, an old man with wrinkles, a gray beard, his hair tied up in a topknot; a man, his mouth partially opened, as if he’s about to laugh or cry, another man with a white complexion, wide-eyed, who looks like he’s seen a ghost or is a ghost; then a row of women—a young woman, with a broad forehead, high arched eyebrows and full cheeks, a middle-aged woman, her lips taut, her forehead wrinkled, and an old woman, her face lined, a quiet dignity.

  Expressions of horror, despair, alarm, they seem alive, about to speak. As if they held the spark of life. How do you wake up to this and feel all is right with the world?

  “You look like you should eat something now,” she says.

  He nods slowly.

  She brings him a bowl of miso soup and brown rice crackers. With a trembling hand, he sips a couple of spoonfuls of soup, eats a cracker. “Just wanted to drown this sad old heart,” he says.

  “Have you tried speaking to your ex-wife?”

  “In the early months. Every day. Then she told me to stop calling,” he says, rubbing his eyelids. He is back to speaking English, which she takes as a good sign. At least he has the energy for that.

  Hanne doesn’t know what to say. “Moto,” she says, her voice gentle, “you can’t hold on to her forever.”

  He doesn’t reply, but she can guess what he’s thinking—he has no choice in the matter. She doesn’t push him.

  Evening falls and Moto shows no sign of emerging. She listens outside his door and hears him snoring. She has a bowl of soup, then lies on the tatami mat, listening to the rain hit the roof tiles, which eventually lulls her to sleep. The next thing she knows, it’s morning and sunlight floods the room. She heads to the cottage, showers, dresses, and returns to the main house. She’s greeted with the sound of the Bossa Nova spilling from Moto’s room.

  She taps on his door.

  “Open.”

  She steps inside. His face is less puffy, and his eyes look more alert. He runs his hands over his face. “I’ve got to stop drinking.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Maybe next week. Or the week after.”

  Her gaze locks on to the masks, the faces glaring, shouting, screaming, wailing, laughing. He must see her fascination with them. Noh masks, he tells her. Made of cypress wood. Some are 250 years old.

  What draws her over to the mask of a middle-aged woman? The mouth is a long gash, as if at the start of an expression of alarm, or sorrow, or a boisterous laugh.

  “Have you been all these people?” she says.

  “At one time or another. People think a mask covers up. But it’s not true. It makes everything possible. You can put yourself into any state of being.”

  She takes the mask of the middle-aged woman off the wall and holds it out to him. For a moment, he does nothing. Then he reaches for it. The air seems to tremble as he slips it over his head. His center of gravity instantly sinks, and now he’s gliding over to his desk, his head moving in a level line, one arm out in front of him, as if to prevent a collision or perhaps to touch something. Tipping back his head, the mouth of the mask appears to open, as if he’s about to speak, and then he is speaking, not speaking, he’s singing along with the record. It’s a light sound, almost playful, tripping and skipping down the scales. A female voice.

  Has he been waiting all this time? Waiting for someone to hand him a mask? His voice is frighteningly beautiful, as beautiful as the other night. And the ease with which he turned into this woman—this is where he belongs, she has no doubt.

  But just as she decides this, he grips the back of the chair, his knuckles turn white, and he begins to moan, as if in horrible pain. She rushes over and grabs his shoulder, heat radiating through his thin robe. “Moto?” she whispers, afraid she might break some
thing. A spell? But shouldn’t it be broken? “Moto!” She’s about to shake him, to call for help, when his entire body shudders and the cry of agony stops.

  He turns toward her. She’s staring into the face of a middle-aged woman. Is he in a trance? Acting out a play?

  Before she can ask, he removes his mask, and there he is, his flushed face, his birthmark, small, shaped like a heart, and he’s grinning madly, as if he might never stop.

  “I can feel her,” he says, his voice excited, bright. “My God! I can feel this woman’s anguish!”

  “Is that good?”

  But she need not ask. He is glowing, as if lit up from within.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Kanpai,” A toast to you, says Renzo, raising his wine glass.

  Renzo has insisted on taking her to the restaurant in Kurashiki, ordering one dish after another to celebrate in lavish style the news. Moto is at rehearsal, as he has been for the past two days because he’s been given a part in the upcoming Noh production.

  “You’re giving me far too much credit,” says Hanne.

  She doesn’t pretend to understand what happened. The touch of a mask and—presto! his heart is beating vigorously, his engagement with life restored. Was that what happened? How is it possible to know or understand anyone?

  But really, what does it matter? Moto has found his way back and Renzo is elated. Even the restaurant owner has come by the table to refill their sake glasses—on the house!—and say “Omedeto gozaimasu,” Congratulations!

  Renzo is saying they’ll probably perform in an elegant theater in Kyoto. Out the window the old men are gathered at the round stone tables, playing their last round of Go in the dying light.

  “You must stay and see him perform. The real him,” says Renzo.

  “The real him?”

  “On stage, that’s where he’s most alive. You’ll see.”

  Renzo plans to go to the Buddhist temple tomorrow to make an offering and pray to his ancestors. “You’re welcome to come along.”

  If she did believe in prayers and ancestors who haunted and cajoled, what would she say to the Germans on her mother’s side, philosophers and priests brooding about whether reality existed or biding their time until they departed from this wretched world? Or to the Dutch scientists on her father’s side, with their busy minds dissecting the world in order to explain it, understand it, turn it into a theory?

  And why would her parents want to hear from her? Her mother’s perpetual look of dissatisfaction would harden into something more severe—“My god, what’s become of you? After everything I did for you, this is what you are?” And her father? She’s not sure she’d even recognize him. A man in a brown suit. Let them have their peace. “Thank you,” she says, “but I’m going to pass.”

  A breeze swirls the willow leaves, like green paper prayers at a Shinto shrine. A girl runs by the window, chasing loose notebook pages. Pages float into the canal and the girl stands on the bank and cries. A woman, presumably the girl’s mother, runs over and tries to fish the papers out with a stick.

  A familiar scene, thinks Hanne. Brigitte’s kite stuck in the big oak tree, Brigitte weeping, Hanne first tried to release it with a stick, then kicked off her flats, put on her tennis shoes, and scaled the tree, carefully making her way to the third brittle branch, while Tomas stood below her, certain she was going to fall, calling out “Be careful, Mom!” Sitting on a branch, she reached high above her and, after many tries, rooted out the kite. Brigitte sprang up from the grass, shouting with delight. Afterwards, both children regaled her by telling the story over and over to Hiro, to their friends, to her. She became something of a hero to them. She thought it would be locked into their memories, a beau geste never to be forgotten. But eventually the story turned into something else, turned against her, evidence that she was stubborn, unwilling or unable to give in, to give up.

  Now she is suddenly overwhelmed with sadness that almost makes her cry. How easily good intentions are seen as bad, a hero becomes a villain, competence becomes incompetence.

  Ono no Komachi comes to mind, a possible scene unfolding: alone in her hut, she notices the shadow of someone standing in the doorway, someone who’s come to taunt her, to ridicule the woman who has been tossed out of the official court. What does this shamed woman do? Hanne imagines several scenarios, but there’s one she likes best. Komachi nods an acknowledgment and returns to her poem. She who has been stripped of nearly everything has come to peace with her fall. She has work to do; so please, let her get on with the making of poems.

  Can she become like the poet? Forget everyone and everything and just proceed, as if nothing happened? Hanne gazes out the window. Fog smears the trees, making them vague. That’s how she feels, vague, ghostly, as if she’s been erased.

  When she gets back from the restaurant, she calls Tomas.

  After the usual chitchat, Tomas says “What are your plans?”

  “Plans?”

  “I mean job-wise. Are you going to come back and look for a job? Maybe get your old teaching position back?”

  When was the last time she paid a bill? She doubts she’ll be compensated for the translation of Kobayashi’s book, minus perhaps a small kill fee, and she doesn’t have an upcoming project. Plans? She feels the knot in her back tighten.

  She tells him she’ll stay for Moto’s performance, she must see the real Moto, whatever that might mean. Then she’s not sure what next. Maybe to Tokyo or travel up to Hokkaido to see the nesting grounds of the red crowned cranes. She and Hiro did that right after they were married. But then she’d feel compelled to visit his parents, which she’d rather not do. They didn’t bother to conceal their disappointment that he’d married a woman who was not Japanese. Even with her perfect Japanese, she doubts she’d be acceptable now. “I guess I’m at loose ends.”

  She looks out the window. The sky is giving in to the dark. And now she recalls her dream from last night. Everywhere she turned, she kept bumping into a large gray cube, hard-edged, a dull, dark gray; it seemed to know exactly where she was going. For a while she thought she could walk right through it, if she persevered, if she willed herself not to stop; but after slamming her body into it enough times, her arms and legs badly bruised, she knew it was impossible. Attempting to go around it was also out of the question; it repositioned itself every time she changed her direction. What was this thing? How did it get here? When she tried again to charge through it, she hit herself against it so hard that it knocked her down, knocked the wind out of her, and she sat up in bed, wide awake, gasping for breath.

  Tomas asks if she’s checked in with her doctor. Tomorrow, she tells him she’s going to call her doctor tomorrow, though she has no intention of doing so. She realizes she’s resigned herself to speaking only Japanese. English, and all her other languages, they belong to a former life.

  He begins talking about holiday plans—Christmas. Does she want to come to New York, or should they come to San Francisco? Or maybe they should meet on neutral territory.

  Neutral territory? Are they at war? “It’s only March.” Is it March? She’s not even sure what month it is.

  “How about Colorado?”

  She sighs. Removes her earrings and necklace and massages her sore toes. For some reason, her good shoes don’t fit her any longer. “Fine. How are the girls? I miss them.”

  Then: “Brigitte called and needed money.”

  “Why?”

  A pause.

  “Christ.” Then: “Don’t worry, Mom. I took care of it.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything. Colorado. Or we could head to Tahoe.”

  “Can I help? How much money?”

  “No.” He sighs. “She wouldn’t accept help from you anyway.”

  Like a slap to the face. “Why not?”

  “Do we have to go over this now? I’ve told you all this before.” He waits for what seems like a long time. “She believ
es you kicked her out of your life at the very time she needed you most. You sent her off to boarding school when she was so traumatized—that’s her word, not mine—about Dad’s death.”

  She doesn’t remember him saying it like that. She doesn’t remember him saying the words “traumatized,” or “needed you most.” She thinks she’d remember that. That strong language. Those loaded words.

  She repeats what she’s told him before, what she’s told everyone before—Brigitte was ruining her life. Something had to be done. To protect her. Save her.

  He sighs again. “I know, Mom, I know. That’s how you see it.”

  She tightens her grip on the phone cord. “What does that mean?”

  “Look, you wanted to get into this, not me. She said she needed you and you turned your back. You sent her away. Abandoned her. And it doesn’t matter what I believe. But I warned you not to. I told you she was too sensitive.”

  “I thought she’d eventually understand that it was in her best interest.”

  “What about when Maria moved away?” he snaps.

  Brigitte’s best friend from Russia. When Brigitte was eleven, Maria’s parents separated, then divorced, and Maria’s mother took her back to Russia. Hanne knew Brigitte would be upset, but it went beyond that. Brigitte refused to eat or do anything. One harsh or impatient word and tears spilled from her eyes.

  At dinner one night, Brigitte pushed her food around on her plate with a fork and said she had to go to Russia. She missed Maria so much. Hiro said she was fortunate to have had such a good friend. But, Hanne interjected, they weren’t going to yank her out of school for such a trip. She could wait until summer. They’d set up a list of chores for Brigitte to earn the money for the airfare. She could see by the way Hiro looked down at his plate that he disagreed. But he wouldn’t challenge her in front of Brigitte. They’d have their disagreement behind closed doors.

  “But I have to go,” said Brigitte, shaking her head slowly, as if acknowledging some unspoken thought.

  “You will. But not now.”