Translator

by Nina Schuyler

Tomas chimed in with a long list of things he wanted, but didn’t get, as if he was trying to console his sister. As he went on, Brigitte quietly pushed back her chair, went to her room, and shut her door. A moment later, she came out and announced that she’d just swallowed a bottleful of aspirin.

  Now Hanne says: “She was eleven when that happened. When she went to boarding school, she was fourteen. She was a different girl by then, a very different girl. Once she was at boarding school, everything was fine. She made new friends, so many new friends.”

  “She hasn’t spoken to you in six years. How is that fine?” She can hear the fury in his voice. Is it because he’s been made responsible for Brigitte? Bearing the full burden of parenting? How many phone calls has he fielded from Brigitte asking for something, requesting guidance? “Did we live in the same house? With the same person? But I forget. This is what you do. Assign qualities to people so you can approve of them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Whatever you told yourself about Brigitte then so you could justify sending her to boarding school and believe she’d be fine.”

  “What a horrible thing to say.”

  He exhales loudly. “Christ, I’m under a lot of stress right now. Forget I said that. Forget the money. Forget everything.” He says he’ll buy her ticket to Colorado and he’ll rent a condo. They’ll have plenty of room. A week together for Christmas. And now he says he must go—a million things pressing.

  She sets the receiver down in its cradle and watches the gingko trees flutter their heart-shaped leaves. A gray morning light saturates the room. She sees three small green buds nestled on the high branches of the apple tree. Soon the air will be scented with apple blossoms and summer with sweltering heat. A sign that things do not remain the same. And they haven’t, have they? Things have gotten worse. Brigitte requires money. The word money clattered around in her head last night, along with a steady stream of thoughts—Brigitte needing money, and for what? Medical bills? Car crash? Pregnancy? Money, and how will Hanne earn money if she has no job? But Brigitte won’t take her money.

  Still, she pulls out her checkbook and writes a check to Tomas for five hundred dollars. Hardly anything, she knows. For Brigitte, she writes on the memo line, her hand trembling.

  Renzo’s car is gone. She makes herself eat breakfast, then heads back to the cottage and stares at her play. What kind of story is it that ends with the main character’s life just fizzling and fading away? Ono no Komachi is banished from the court—and then what? She dies a crazy old woman? She tries to think what this woman could have learned in this abandoned state. Loneliness? The ache of her heart? Or might someone or something come along and cause the poet’s life to take another unexpected turn? She feels a flutter of excitement, but not enough to stop her from lying down on the bed and falling asleep again. Hours later, when she wakes, the dog is a small circle nestled on top of her feet.

  Bleary-eyed, she gets up and wanders through the cold, empty house, with Morsel right on her heels. She does the few dishes in the sink, sweeps the kitchen floor. The wind picks up, blowing ghostly notes in the house made of paper walls. She makes herself go outside and sit in the back yard, hoping the fresh air will lift the dark mood that has settled over her shoulders like a shroud. Maybe she won’t stay for the Noh production; she’ll head back to San Francisco. But then what? She still can’t speak any English.

  For dinner, she has a bowl of miso soup. She finds a black-and-white TV in the upstairs study and watches the news, not paying much attention, but occasionally repeating random words out loud, as if to hear a voice, any voice—“purge,” “roving,” “stolen,” “new zoo,” “betrayal.” When the drama shows come on, she still sits there, watching flickering images of women and men kissing, shouting, weeping into pillows.

  In the morning with the house still empty, she takes the dog and heads out. She’s getting a taste of how old age will be, she thinks, these long stretches of nothing and no one. No. Not old age. Her life now. She briskly walks past the tall grasses.

  When her legs are weary, she registers very little except her exhaustion. This is what she hoped for. To wear herself out. Though along the way, a phrase has gotten stuck in her head: I have been forsaken like a memory lost. Over and over it plays; she can’t remember who said it or if she’s remembering it correctly. When she gets home, she and the dog collapse; the dog splays out on the floor, panting, its pink tongue lolling out of its mouth. She flops down on her bed, her legs throbbing. Good, she thinks, too tired to move. There’s nothing she wants to do but lie here. She closes her eyes and sleeps until the sound of a car wakes her. She quickly brushes her hair and heads to the main house.

  Midori steps out of a taxi. She hands some money to the driver and saunters up the front path. “I forgot some things,” says Midori. “It’s hard living so scattered. Some things here, some things at my apartment.”

  Midori smiles coyly at Hanne and slips off her pristine white high heels. Beside them are Hanne’s walking shoes. How dirty they’ve become. A dark stain colors the toe of one shoe and both soles are worn thin. They were new when she arrived, and now they look as if she’s trekked thousands of kilometers.

  Midori heads to Moto’s bedroom. Hanne puts on the tea kettle and sits at the table. A bowl of purple plums is in front of her. She picks one up. An astonishing purple. She rubs her thumb over its smooth, taut surface. Unexpectedly, the image of Moto’s chest comes to mind. His robe spilling open, revealing his smooth, hairless chest.

  The tea kettle whistles and Hanne brings out tea cups and the pot. Midori is waiting at the table.

  “Renzo said you’ve enjoyed your stay here,” says Midori, biting into a plum. “You know, you do look better. The worry lines have left your face.”

  Hanne lets pass the irritation of having a woman half her age assess her appearance. This woman, who in the past barely said a word to her, is now conversing. Perhaps without the male gaze flitting up and down her body, Midori no longer feels compelled to play the sex bomb.

  “So Moto is back on stage,” says Midori. “It was just bad karma being used up. Now the good can return.”

  Karma, from Sanskrit meaning action. This must be the kind of mystifying talk that has kept Brigitte spellbound over the years. Life assured and reassured, absolved of everything, it’s nothing personal, this hardship, this pain. And the implicit guarantee that life will go on and on, the unfortunate or devastating only an incidental event. She can understand the appeal. Maybe if she’d been introduced to this spiritual mumbo-jumbo when she was Brigitte’s age, she too would have signed up.

  “He’s something to behold.”

  “I’m sure,” says Hanne.

  Midori sets her cup down and leans forward. “Let me tell you a secret. Off stage, he’s nothing like what you see on stage. Who could be that way all the time? I’m telling you this so you don’t get the wrong idea about him. So many women fall for him and end up disappointed.”

  How much easier if this chapter of her life was about a love story. “And you, Midori? You’re not disappointed?”

  Midori shakes her head emphatically. She says she never knows when she’ll see him again. He comes and goes as he pleases. “I accept him for who he is.”

  “And who is he?”

  Midori laughs, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know. You make it sound so simple. As if you could just say who he is.”

  She thinks Midori is being evasive and coy. “Oh, come on. Try.”

  She stops laughing and looks directly at Hanne. “No, you try.”

  In the morning, when she opens the back door and enters the kitchen, Hanne hears light music trickling over her. Relieved, she knocks on his door.

  “Come in.” He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting through his CDs. “I’m sorry if the music was too loud.”

  “Not at all.” The silence has been stifling, she wants to say, as
if I’ve been sentenced to solitary confinement. And also: it’s awfully good to see you. She’d like to hug him. The simple act of human contact.

  “I’ve got the day off.” Before she can suggest that they do something together—a walk, breakfast, anything at all, he’s says he’s come to pick up some music to take back to his hotel room. He’s in rehearsal from morning to dusk, he says, and he hasn’t had one drink since his return. His face is full of color, his eyes bright, shining, his birthmark barely there. It seems his return to the theater has suited him. More than suited him.

  “You look good,” she says. “You’ve found your stage again.” She sits at his desk. “So how is it? Does it feel as if you never left?”

  He doesn’t answer right away. “It’s different. Better. It’s like dying and coming back to life. Everything is vibrant, alive and incredibly beautiful, so beautiful you want to weep.”

  She pictures Charon carrying Moto across the River Styx and depositing him on the verdant shore of life, shaking his fist at Moto: “Now is not your time.”

  “I was walking down the street yesterday and stopped at a puddle,” he says. “The sun was shining and the puddle was glimmering and sparkling. Cars were zooming by, people rushing behind me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. It was holding light and dark, the road beneath it, the clouds and sky overhead. The longer I looked, the more I saw. Not just the road beneath, but the dirt and the rocks and the worms, and above, the birds and the stars, the entire galaxy. I haven’t felt this alive since—I can’t remember.”

  She remembers her ecstatic entrance into the world after the hospital—that was soon gone. She has to stop herself from saying that that feeling won’t last.

  He looks at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

  The music is still playing. He waits, and it seems he will wait until she speaks.

  “My daughter.” Why is she telling him? There’s nothing he can do, that anyone can do. This is her burden, her cross. “There seems so little I can do for her. I feel so helpless. I’ve made so many mistakes.”

  He comes over to her, folds himself around her.

  Is this part of his coming back to life? Or hers?

  “She’ll find her way,” she says, wanting to believe that, wanting to pull herself together.

  He runs a finger from her throat to her breast bone, his touch full of appreciation. Wordlessly, they drift over to the bed into the tumble of blankets and sheets that fold around them like waves. His fingers spill all over her, unbuttoning her blouse, her skirt. She hesitates only a moment before unzipping his trousers. He lifts her hair and kisses the back of her neck, her mouth, tentative, then more insistent. She’s nearly forgotten the part that’s alighting, heating her body. He’s saying something, wiping the tears from her face.

  Coming up out of it. Something along the way awakened and now swells inside her. An ache that catches in her throat. They lie in bed on the smooth white sheets, the smell of sex in the air. The shade is pulled down, the room dark, and the world feels like a vast emptiness, only the two of them left. He strokes the inside of her arm. She closes her eyes to stop them from watering.

  “Here,” he says, and hands her a tissue.

  Not passion for him. She’s overwhelmed by a deep, raw longing for Brigitte.

  In the morning, the ache for Brigitte has lodged in her chest.

  “Oh, Hanne, you look so beautiful and sad,” says Moto.

  At his urging they head to the pool. She swims in the ocean, which she’s learned is always kept a steady 26.1 degrees Celsius. When she gets out of the water, she lies on her beach towel in the white sand and listens to the waves roll onto shore. As Moto predicted, she finds herself thinking the waves are real, as well as the ocean, the sand, the warm breeze ruffling her hair.

  Moto comes out of the water and kisses her cheek. She feels a foolish happiness. She asks him to tell her again what it’s like to come back from the dead. The words well up inside him and spill over to her. Him, wanting her to experience what he is experiencing, and her, listening greedily.

  She closes her eyes and drifts. Her throat is dry. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. Where is her water bottle? She looks around, trying to get her bearings—she’s at the beach, Moto is swimming again, the waves are gently rolling in, palm trees waving in the breeze, and a girl is sitting beside her in the white sand.

  The girl’s knees are drawn up to her chest, and she’s staring at Hanne. Her black hair is tied up in a ponytail, she smiles shyly. She must be ten or eleven, thin limbs, toenails painted seashell pink. Is this the sister of the boy who asked for a pen? She hands Hanne a paper origami crane and scampers away. On one of its blue wings, there is writing in English. A pine tree pines for you.

  Another memorized line of English learned at grammar school? The girl has already vanished in the crowd. Probably hiding, watching Hanne’s reaction, giggling. She reads the line again. Her head pounds, not like it did after the accident. The throbbing is in the back of her head, as if someone threw a ball from behind and smacked her. Was she struck by something as she dozed? Or last night, sleeping in Moto’s arms, did she dream something hit her and as the fake beach has become real, so has her dream?

  She puts the crane on her towel. Then picks up her book, Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Japanese. She found the book in Renzo’s library and tucked it into her bag, thinking she’d spend the day reading. But the book is so poorly translated that she finds it impossible to read without re-translating it. Life’s nothing but a dark shadow, a poor player fretting on stage. And then it’s over. She can remember the original sentence from secondary school: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.

  She picks up the girl’s handwritten note again. “Pining,” she says with immense effort. Her ear perks up. She says it again. The pursing of her lips, followed by a puff of air, a sound gliding upward to the front of her mouth, the tip of her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth, her soft palate relaxing, letting the air pass through her nose.

  “Pining,” she whispers. “Pine. Pining. Pines.”

  She stands up and tries to get Moto’s attention. He’s charging back and forth in the water. She looks around to see if anyone heard her; if there is someone she might speak to. “Hello,” she says to no one. The segment of her brain right beneath her forehead is pounding. “Hanne Schubert. My name is Hanne Schubert.”

  She is speaking English.

  She walks to the water and swims out to him.

  Is it all back? She recites memorized passages of Macbeth out loud. The words come slowly, but it seems that her entire cartload of English has returned, intact. How hard she worked to master this language. She remembers a teacher with chestnut hair writing an English word with white chalk on the blackboard—though she can’t recall which classroom or what country—and she is at her scratched wood-top desk, hungrily copying it down. After the final bell, rushing home, not stopping at the candy shop, because she’d assigned herself more vocabulary, more exercises to do. The Germanic-based words came easily, so she concentrated on the elegant Latinate words. English soon became her preferred language. A language of action, of power, of agency, with its verb usually located at the beginning of the sentence, she used it all the time, instead of her German. Soon, English words came to her more quickly than German or Dutch. She hears herself explaining to her mother, “It’s the first global lingua franca, which means the whole world is open to me. I can travel anywhere, live anywhere, become anything, and one day I’ll move to America.”

  Moto sees her and swims toward her. When Hanne announced her intentions, her mother snapped: “You’re no genius. If you want a chance at any of those possibilities, you better work harder than everyone else. You’ve got to prove yourself worthy.”

  Now a vision comes to Hanne, but not one of possibilities. She sees herself cl
early—a woman living in San Francisco alone, in bed by nine, awake by six, a brisk walk, a purchase of a coffee, a hot bun, back to her silent apartment to work (what work?), a light supper of dark bread, prosciutto, brie, and a bowl of udon, in bed again by nine. So stark! So dull! So dull because she centered her life on the narrowest of perches; there she is, her former self in her king-size bed, a middle-aged woman fighting off a hot flash and the bed suddenly looks like a white raft, the anchor pulled up. She’s adrift with the wreckage that is her life, floating out to sea.

  But she’s not there, she tells herself. She’s here. And there are still possibilities. She need not settle for her old life.

  “Good morning, Moto,” she says in English. “So very nice to see you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Noh Theater is a stately red-brick building, a former textile mill from the nineteenth century where silk was once woven into bolts of beautiful cloth for kimonos. The machines are long gone, replaced by tiered red velvet chairs nailed to the floor in a semicircular ring, their attention riveted on the stage. The stage is essentially empty. No curtain separates it from the audience, nothing is hidden—glassy wood floors, only a backdrop of a painting of an old gnarled pine tree. Over the main stage, four pillars support a roof, which looks like it once belonged on a Shinto shrine. It is Japan’s version of beauty, everything stripped to its essence.

  Renzo points to the bridge on the left that leads to the main stage. That’s where Moto will enter, he says. “We watch as he moves from the real world to the stage. See the green curtain at the beginning of the bridge? Behind that curtain, there’s a room where he looks at the mask until he can summon the spirit of the character.”

  Summons the spirit of the character? She feels the momentum of curiosity stir: How does he do that—and get it right?

  Someone calls out to Renzo. He excuses himself and trots across the theater to a group of his friends. the great noh actor is back, that was the headline in this morning’s local newspaper, which Renzo cut out and proudly announced to her that his parents and ancestors were rejoicing in their graves. Renzo is shaking hands with a whole crowd of people, a big grin on his face. Moto is clearly the draw, the reason the theater is packed and buzzing with excitement. She watches Renzo, who is nodding and smiling. She has yet to tell him that her English has returned, though her other languages are still off in an anteroom of her brain. Does she think that if he knew, he’d have sent her back to San Francisco? Not permit her to see Moto perform? But if that’s true, why does she feel a growing apprehension as the time approaches for the plays to begin?